Promise of Joy

by Allen Drury

  “We will maintain our determination to resist your imperialism,” Orrin said levelly, “whenever and wherever it tries to encroach further upon the right of men and women to decide their own destiny free from dictatorship, military bullying, mind control and secret police. Is that a clear enough answer?”

  “Clichés!” Tashikov said in the same scornful tone. “Clichés! What will you do all this noble ‘resisting’ with? You had better study your military defenses, Mr. President, I think. They are not what you apparently imagine.”

  “I know what they are,” Orrin said sharply.

  “Not much,” Tashikov remarked softly. “Not very much, are they, Mr. President?”

  “Do you want to try us, Mr. Chairman?” Orrin inquired with equal softness. “Be my guest.”

  “Pah!” Tashikov said—and he actually did say “Pah!”—a short disgusted sound that would have been melodramatic had he not been so obviously quivering with anger. “You make idle threats, Mr. President, idle, foolish and empty threats! You know as well as I do that United States armed forces have been allowed to slide to nothing—nothing!—while we have been steadily expanding all over the world. Your Congress and your recent Administrations have deliberately crippled you. We have not understood such insanity but you know we have taken advantage of it, Mr. President. You know we have not been idle. Oh, no! We are everywhere—everywhere. You would not dare defy us now.”

  “We just have,” Orrin pointed out coldly. “We had an alert and you didn’t dare defy us, did you?”

  “Well—” Tashikov said, openly taken aback for a second but recovering quickly. “Well—that was an error on our part, I will freely admit that. It was an error. We knew you were bluffing and we should have called you. We knew we should. You would have done nothing—nothing—because you can do nothing. We knew it. We will not make that mistake again.”

  “I repeat,” Orrin said, trying hard to control his temper and succeeding with a major effort, “try us, Mr. Chairman. Just try us. We have a few things left, you know: enough bombs to destroy you, enough missiles to get them there, enough subs and planes and ships to take you down with us. You would not survive any more than we, were you so stupid as to try it. I hope for your sake, and for ours, and for the world’s, that you would not dare to be so monumentally insane and irresponsible.”

  For a moment it appeared that his antagonist must burst with emotion, so apoplectic did he look; but he mastered it with an obvious effort and spoke in a voice that shook yet held a measured and apparently quite genuine menace.

  “I give you fair warning, Mr. President: do not interfere with us. Do not challenge us. Do not attempt to impose your capitalist-imperialist views upon us or upon any of our friends. The result would be dreadful for you. We will not hesitate to punish you ruthlessly. We will not hesitate to use every weapon we have against you. We may give you warning or we may move by surprise before you know it. Either way we will win because we have the power, Mr. President, and your country, by the recent decisions of its own leaders, does not. We have something else, Mr. President, superior to any weapons: we have the will. And America does not.”

  “I have the will,” Orrin said sharply. His small opponent gave him an angrily sarcastic glance.

  “Yes, we concede that. We know in Moscow that you have the will. But we also know that almost no one else does. Witness your own campaign, Mr. President. Witness your own victory. America is more divided than ever between the warmongers like yourself and the weaklings who are so in love with the idea of ‘peace’ that they will give us anything if we but demand it forcefully enough. You have the will, yes, but how many of your countrymen can you carry with you when the showdown comes, Mr. President? How many?”

  “‘Can’ carry with me? ‘When’ the showdown comes?”

  Tashikov shrugged.

  “We are alone, we are talking facts. That is why I wanted to be alone, to talk facts. You and I know it is ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ So be on guard, Mr. President. You will need all your will—because a majority of your countrymen no longer have any to back you up.”

  He sat back with a sudden triumphant little movement of the body, positive, self-satisfied and smug, staring with bright little eyes as cold as death—whose harbinger they might well be, for Orrin, for both their countries and for the world.

  Orrin regarded him for a long moment before he spoke, his face impassive because it had to be: quite literally the most important thing in the world at this moment was that he not show weakness of any kind to Vasily Tashikov. When he spoke it was in a quiet, almost conversational tone.

  “You talk insanity, Mr. Chairman. You talk of the murder of the world. You talk of inhumanity beyond inhumanity. You have left the human race and I pity you for it. I pity you for it.

  “Nor,” he said, and his tone sharpened a little, “am I impressed by it. Never as long as I am in the White House will you force the United States of America to abandon its principles, its policies or its beliefs. If I have to blow up the world I shall do so, to stop you from it. And don’t place too much reliance on the fact that others may not agree. I shall be President of the United States, and I shall do the deciding. Your people tried to kill me once”—Tashikov gave him the sudden black, automatic scowl, but Orrin really was unimpressed and looked it—“they may try again. But if I live and occupy the office to which I have been elected, I will never yield to your blackmail. Never.

  “So keep that in mind, Mr. Chairman.

  “It is a factor.”

  And once again across the remains of Dolly’s lunch they gave one another grim stare for grim stare, neither flinching, neither averting his eyes, neither, apparently, yielding in the slightest.

  The silence was finally broken by Tashikov in a voice so impersonal and devoid of intonation that it seemed almost disembodied.

  “We are finished. We had better go.”

  “I agree,” Orrin said. He rose, went to the door, opened it, called Dolly. She appeared at the foot of the stairs, took note of their faces; an expression of alarm, quickly banished, crossed hers.

  “It might be best and least conspicuous if you each took your own cars back,” she said. “I’ll call them.”

  “Thank you for the lunch,” Orrin said.

  “It was very good,” Tashikov said.

  They left.

  Behind them she stood in the beautiful doorway of beautiful “Vagaries,” hand crushed to mouth, eyes wide with a terrible fear for the world.

  “I hope you didn’t yield an inch,” the President said.

  “I did not,” Orrin said. “I’m putting my account of the conversation on tape for you. He is very intransigent—very.”

  “I hope you won’t yield an inch in your Inaugural, either.”

  “I certainly will not.”

  “Good. But brace yourself. I think they’ll stay quiet for the next couple of months, but the minute you’re in—watch out. They’ll try something.”

  “I think I’ll be ready for them,” Orrin said grimly.

  “Good,” Bill Abbott said again. “Let me know what I can do to help in the meantime.”

  “Just stand there and keep your finger in the dike,” Orrin said with a returning humor.

  The President chuckled.

  “Trust your Uncle Bill. I ain’t about to yield nuthin’, neither.”

  And for the next two months, while Orrin carried on his concluding duties as Secretary of State—met with many visitors—sought and received advice from many people—put together his immediate working staff for the White House, and department by department built up what he considered a very good Cabinet headed by Robert A. Leffingwell as Secretary of State—the President remained true to his word. There were minor skirmishes in both Gorotoland and Panama, but the alert seemed to have temporarily stopped Moscow’s tendency to global adventurism. Although he told Orrin he had been seriously considering carrying through with his announced threat to blockade Panama if there was any major attempt by
the Soviets to supply Felix Labaiya’s forces with additional matériel, the attempt did not materialize and the blockade did not become necessary. An uneasy status quo prevailed over both battlefields. In a public-relations sense this was an awkward and embarrassing situation for the Administration, making it appear over-anxious and bringing many bitter attacks both foreign and domestic. In the practical areas where it counted, it was much preferable to open hostilities.

  The only thing more preferable, the President confided with a sigh when they met shortly after the new year to confer on final plans for Inauguration on January 20, would have been peace itself. But despite intensive behind-the-scenes diplomacy in a dozen capitals including their own, no offer that could be trusted to last came from the other side.

  “They want to prolong it until you get in and then let you have it,” the President warned again.

  Again Orrin said, with a calm certainty he did not altogether feel but nonetheless had to show, even to William Abbott: “I’m ready for them.”

  So the hurrying days moved on to his date with destiny. On the home front the anti-war movement seemed to be in a lull reflecting the lull in the war zones. The economy remained relatively stable, Christmas buying reflected a reasonable market and the customary euphoria of the season. The most noteworthy news item on January 19 was the possibility of snow on Inauguration Day. A major new storm was blowing in out of the West. It appeared likely that Washington would be inches under, and shivering, by the time the official party reached the Capitol at noon the next day.

  At 10 p.m. he went to thanksgiving services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, across Lafayette Square from the White House. He was accompanied by William Abbott, the old Cabinet, his own Cabinet, Hal, Crystal, Ceil and Valuela; Cullee Hamilton and Sarah Johnson (who would be married at 11 a.m. tomorrow morning in a special ceremony in the Rotunda presided over by the chaplain of the Senate); members of his campaign and White House staffs; Warren Strickland, the Munsons, Lafe Smith and other old friends from the Senate; and such friends from the diplomatic corps as Lord and Lady Maudulayne of Great Britain, Raoul and Celestine Barre of France, Krishna Khaleel of India.

  During the services the memory of his wife, kept off in some relatively unhurtful area for weeks by the incessant overwhelming rush of public business, came back like a knife, and for several moments, head bowed, hands desperately clasped together as if sheer physical pressure would help, body shuddering with recurring waves of suppressed sobs, he wept for her. Then the moment passed, a relative peace returned; he was able to stand, looking tired but smiling, at the door to wish them all a calm Godspeed into the night as the services ended.

  On the way home he asked to be driven past the Lincoln Memorial, where more than one of his predecessors had repaired in moments of national or personal anguish. Even at that hour, in the wind now growing steadily harder and more cutting off the frozen Potomac, a few tourists were still there. Respectfully they stood back for him and the little group that accompanied him, the inevitable Secret Service, his son, his daughter-in-law, Ceil and Valuela.

  Brooding, mysterious, inscrutable, unfathomable, his expression meaning many things to many men, the Emancipator stared down upon him. Help me, he thought: I shall need it. Impassive, keeping his own secrets, confiding in none, the Emancipator looked over his head into far, unknowable distances.

  Hesitantly but warmly the tourists gave him a smattering of friendly applause as he led his party back down the steps.

  Even in the short time of their visit the wind had increased, the temperature had dropped.

  It was very cold.

  Soon there would be snow.

  7

  In the morning, in one of those concerted lemming-like movements toward a common objective which frequently characterize all Right-Thinking members of the media, he was told in editorial, column and telecast, what he should say in his Inaugural Address.

  A wondrous blueprint for a marvelous world emerged.

  “Now is the moment,” the Times informed him and the readers it so often led by the hand down the righteous paths they should go, “when Orrin Knox, after falling short of greatness for so many years, may at last achieve it. His Inaugural affords him an opportunity unparalleled in American history.

  “Now is the moment for him to lay aside the old, bitter, outworn foreign policies of the past and come forward with a new charter for this nation and for all mankind—a Charter of Peace which will light humanity to happiness and stability for generations to come.

  “Now is the moment for him to turn to the nation he and his followers have for so long considered the enemy of America—the Soviet Union—and, trusting in the human decency and fairness of its leaders, as he wishes them to trust in his, say to them:

  “‘America wants peace. America wants peace with such determination and responsibility that America will do whatever is necessary to achieve it.

  “‘As a first step, America will withdraw at once from all the hostile, imperialistic, antagonistic military positions which she occupies all around the globe.

  “‘America will call home her navies, withdraw her armies and air armadas, abandon her incessant spying upon the Soviet Union, give up the fear-ridden, hag-ridden attitude of suspicion which has dominated her foreign policy for so long.

  “‘America will trust in the sincerity of the Soviet Union’s desire for peace, will accept the Soviet Union’s good faith, and will build upon it eagerly and willingly as the surest guarantee of peace.

  “‘America will trust the Soviet Union, for America knows that only in trust between our two countries can real world peace be achieved.’

  “Something along these lines, we submit to Orrin Knox, is what he should say to the Soviet Union, to America and to the world today.

  “We do not believe, with the small of vision, that this would mean an increase in Soviet intransigence.

  “We do not accept, with the myopically fearful, that it would mean any sort of ‘surrender’ to the Communist ideology.

  “We do not agree, with the fainthearted, that it would mean national disaster.

  “On the contrary, we believe it would open the door at last to that universal peace for which all nations and all peoples hunger so desperately.

  “We hope to hear something like this, today, from our new President.”

  The Post, while less disingenuous in its approach to him, and less sanguine that its hopes would be answered, was equally clear as to what it thought Orrin should do.

  “We are doubtful,” it said, “that the incoming President of the United States possesses the vision and the statesmanship to do what really needs to be done to cut the Gordian knot entangling U.S.-Soviet relations. But if he did, we think this is what he would do:

  “He would declare an end immediately to all the antiquated, outmoded, no longer operative assumptions of fear of the Soviet Union upon which American foreign policy has been built for so many long, sad, futile years.

  “He would put his trust in the good faith of the Soviet Union and offer it a gesture of simple decency and good will so monumental and precedent-shattering that the Soviet Union, we believe, would have no decent alternative but to accept.

  “Specifically, he would:

  “Withdraw American arms from all those places around the protesting earth where American power and imperial arrogance achieve no genuine security for anything, but only create division and hatred.

  “Abandon foreign naval bases which keep the Navy where it has no business being, and bring the fleets home where they belong, to serve the only purpose which is rightfully theirs: to defend the United States of America.

  “Close the Army and Marine bases which serve only to maintain the fat frauds of the Pentagon in the luxury to which they have persuaded the taxpayers to let them become accustomed. Bring home the troops, reduce their numbers to bedrock, assign them the only task which is rightfully theirs: to protect the United States.

  “Shut down the Air Force
bases which threaten the world. Ground the high-flying money-gobblers, clip their wings, bring them back to roost at home where they belong, doing the only job that is rightfully theirs: protecting the United States.

  “We do not, as we say, expect Orrin Knox to do all, or even a part of, these things. Yet what a glorious day it would be for the world if he did!

  “It would not mean, as the doomsayers would have us believe, an unprincipled and cataclysmic seizing of advantage by the Soviet Union. It would not mean a ‘surrender’ of the United States to Soviet ambitions and Soviet power.

  “It would not mean any of the phony disasters that phony prophets have been forecasting for too many dismal years.

  “It would be an act of faith begetting faith, of trust begetting trust.

  “It would mean peace.

  “We do not think Orrin Knox has the guts or the vision.

  “But we would certainly like to see him try.”

  Frankly Unctuous, looking out from the circle of familiar faces whose owners comprised his network’s customary panel of experts on all things domestic, foreign, earth- or universe-shaking, laid it on the line with equal fervor in his customary plum-pudding tones:

  “America waits this morning to hear from its new President—waits and hopes.

  “Hopes with a desperate hope that Orrin Knox will find in himself the vision and the strength to make of his Inaugural Address a beacon light for all mankind.

  “Hopes that the moment will bring him, as it has so many of his predecessors, to a new stage of his life, encompassing a new vision, a new dream: