Promise of Joy

by Allen Drury

  “Well,” Lafe said finally, his voice trembling a little but managing to stay reasonably steady, “the first is that I asked Mabel to marry me this morning and she said yes.”

  “How wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Lafe, I am so pleased for you both. That is good news, indeed.”

  “I thought it was nice,” Lafe said carefully, “particularly since she’s been so bitter about politics since Brig died, and so determined to stay in Utah and not venture out.”

  “Why should she now?” he asked, mood abruptly changing, with a detached and almost ironic curiosity that, even in this moment, was also typical Orrin. “Are things any better?”

  “No,” Lafe said with no attempt at dissembling. “But I think she finally decided that it was best to be together with someone you love if—if things are really going to come to the final showdown.”

  “I would like to be able to do that too,” he said with a sudden terrible bleakness, “because I think perhaps they are. But at the moment, those I love are not—not here.”

  “I know,” Lafe said in a tone as desolate as his. “Is there any way you can—any way—”

  “No,” he said in the same far-off, abandoned-by-the-fates voice. “There can be no weakening by the United States in this situation or, I am convinced, the United States will go under. This means there can be no weakening by the President of the United States. So I am caught.” And suddenly, pounding his fists on the arms of his chair with a furious futility that shattered his companion completely for a moment, he cried, “Caught, caught, caught!”—and covered his face with his hands, eyes closed, rubbing his forehead slowly, pressing hard as if to drive out the demons that resided there.

  For several minutes, while Lafe watched with a fearful absorption, he said no more. Then finally he looked up and in a voice that by some miracle managed to be relatively steady again, asked:

  “And what is the other good thing?”

  “Well, you know Jimmy Fry,” Lafe began with care, because this was perhaps his most emotional subject, perhaps even more than Mabel, particularly since they were sharing it together.

  “Yes,” the President said. “I know Jimmy. Have you—?”

  “Orrin, we’ve broken through!” Lafe cried exultantly. “We’ve broken through! He spoke to us! He said something! We’re getting through at last, Orrin! We’re getting through!”

  And this time it was his eyes that unexpectedly filled with tears, the President’s that responded.

  “I’m delighted,” Orrin said gravely. “I am so glad for you and Mabel, Lafe. Tell me about it.”

  “Well,” Lafe said, blowing his nose vigorously and plunging gratefully into his narrative, “it happened this morning after Mabel agreed to marry me. I have that new setup for us all on Foxhall Road, you know, and I brought Jimmy down to it from the sanitarium on the Hudson several days ago. He seemed to stand the trip very well, and to accept the new surroundings very well—not that we really knew, because, as you know, it has never been possible to communicate. But this morning, after Mabel said yes, we decided we’d take Pidge and go and tell him.”

  “How is Pidge?” the President asked, with a brief but affectionate smile for Mabel and Brig’s lively six-year-old.

  “Oh, she’s fine,” Lafe said, proud and fondly parental. “Bright as a button and getting brighter every day. And fascinated by her new big brother, which I expect is why it happened.”

  “He spoke to her, then,” Orrin said.

  “Nope,” Lafe said firmly, “he spoke to all of us.”

  “All right,” the President said, again with a fleeting smile. “Go on.”

  “We went into his room and he was sitting by the window staring out at the trees—that heartbreaking blank look that his father and Cullee and I have seen so many times up at Oak Lawn. So Mabel and I went over toward him and suddenly Pidge went into a little dance and began to sing, ‘Mommie’s marrying Uncle Lafe! Mommie’s marrying Uncle Lafe!’ And then when he didn’t respond, she went up to him and pulled at his arm and said, ‘Hey, Jimmy! I said Mommie’s marrying Uncle Lafe! Aren’t you happy?’ And, Orrin”—his tone became hushed—“do you know what he did then? First of all, he actually turned his head toward us, which he’s hardly ever done before. And then he said—he said, Orrin—in a sort of croak, like a robot, almost, but quite distinctly—‘That’s nice. Are we happy?’ And Pidge crowed, ‘Yes, we are happy!’ And he said, again in that mechanical sort of way, but making sense, ‘Yes, we are happy.’

  “Then”—Lafe smiled a little—“Mabel cried and Pidge cried and I cried—and Jimmy just sat there and never said another word, and hasn’t since. But he did it, Orrin—Mr. President—he did it. And if he’s finally done it, then he can do it again. I’ve been on the phone to doctors all day, it seems like, and they seem to think that now we’ve finally broken through, we can go on from there if he has love and care and patience. And God knows he’s going to have them. So,” he concluded, and again for a moment before the realities of the hour closed in on them again he sounded excited and happy, “that’s my second piece of good news. A pretty good budget for one day, don’t you think?”

  “A wonderful budget,” the President said, and for a moment he, too, seemed taken out of himself to participate in a happier world. “I am so glad for you on both counts, Lafe. You have a kind heart, one of the kindest I know, and you’ve earned the happiness.… And it is reassuring, what you call ‘the continuity of life,’ even”—and the lighter mood ended for them both as swiftly as it had begun, the awful burden of the moment came rushing back—“even in such a world.”

  And abruptly lightness was gone, brightness was gone, the night was filled once more with fear and horror and awful things. And again the President’s expression changed, he put his face again in his hands, began again the slow, steady rubbing of his forehead to drive out the demons there.

  “When does it begin?” Lafe asked softly.

  The President lifted his head, glanced at the clock.

  “Twenty-six and one-half minutes, may God have mercy on us all.”

  Lafe’s answer was a quotation, uttered so low that the President could hardly hear him:

  “‘Let us wear on our sleeves the crêpe of mourning for a civilization that held the promise of joy.’”

  “Oh, no,” the President responded in an agonized whisper. “Oh, no. Don’t say that, Lafe. It isn’t true. Not yet.… Not yet.”

  But in all the night that lay over Washington, the night that lay over the world, no man at that moment could discern the hope that might disprove it.

  “Would you like me to wait with you?” Lafe asked finally. The President nodded.

  “Please.” A last glimmer of Orrin shone through before he returned head to hands and began the strong, persistent, driven rubbing of his gray but unshakable face. “I can’t think of better company to pray in.

  So the minutes passed and approached the hour, and so in their hearts and in the hearts of men everywhere hope died further—and further—and further—… until approximately eleven minutes before the President was to open the direct line to the Pentagon and give the order.

  He was mentally readying himself to do so, trying not to think of his son and daughter-in-law about to die, trying not to think of many other brave people about to die, trying not to think of the world’s agony he was about to increase, trying to draw from some ultimate reserve some ultimate strength, when suddenly there came a hurry and a bustle and the loud cries of excited voices in the hall, and even as they looked up astounded the door burst open and Blair Hannah rushed in shouting:

  “Mr. President! Mr. President! Good news! Good news!”

  And so, of a dreadful sort, it was; and so he found himself, as the phrase shot ironically through his mind, saved by the bell.

  Saved by the bell.

  But who could say for how long?

  Or why?

  No one would ever know what happened—what general, colonel, major, captain, lieut
enant, sergeant, corporal, private, fired the first shot—what terrible, years-long, deliberately government-created tension finally exploded in what brain or heart.

  It did not matter.

  It happened, and the world went mad.

  The first headlines shouted:

  Soviet, Chinese troops clash in field in Gorotoland! Bloody battle flares between allies!

  Two hours later they screamed:

  Asia in flames! Sino-Soviet clash spreads instantly to homelands! Communist giants clash all along four-thousand-mile border! Savage fighting between Russ and Chinese! Hong Kong reports Chinese make initial gains, Soviets pushed back!

  Three hours after that, sounding, most believed, the death knell of the planet:

  ATOMIC WAR!!!

  Soviets hit Chinese with missiles, Chinese retaliate! Report seven major cities wiped out, hundreds of thousands dead! Radioactive cloud drifts toward south pacific! World on brink of Armageddon!

  But this was not quite true yet, for, terrified and sobered by what they had done, the giants paused:

  Both sides halt attack! Moscow demands immediate Chinese surrender or “complete destruction of entire country!” Chinese demand immediate Soviet surrender or “total annihilation of soviet imperialism, nation and people!” Ultimatums expire at midnight! Fate of earth at stake!

  But midnight came and went, and Earth, though just barely, was still here. And then came finally the face-saving power-preserving that had to come if the terminal insanity of mankind was not, at last, to occur:

  Russ, Chinese turn to U.S. as rumors of uprisings against both governments reach outside world!

  Both sides appeal to Knox to mediate!

  President holds key to saving globe from final destruction!

  Saved by the bell.

  And now the bell was tolling for him.

  ***

  Book Three

  1

  “Hi,” said the voice he had never thought to hear again. “You’re a hell of a hard man to get through to, I must say.”

  “It’s a little busy around here,” he responded, half laughing, half crying, with relief. “Where are you? Are you both all right?”

  “We’re at the East Gate,” his son said. “We’re both all right.” He hesitated and his excited tone turned grave. “It hasn’t been easy, but we’re both all right.”

  “Thank God for that,” he said simply. “Get in here as fast as you can.”

  “On our way,” Hal said.

  While he waited for them to walk down the drive, into the West Wing and along the chaotic, crisis-humming corridors to the Oval Office—one of the longest three-minute spans he had ever experienced—the gamble he had taken with their lives suddenly assumed such an enormity in his mind that he felt he could hardly breathe. It had been a desperate gamble, a terrifyingly honest gamble, a gamble he had sincerely believed to be his only recourse. At the time, under the remorseless pressures that then existed, it had seemed the only thing he could do. Now, as always with desperate solutions when pressures are suddenly removed, it appeared utterly unreal, unnecessary and monstrous.

  So it appeared to him who had done it. How must it appear to those who had been its potential, its almost certain, victims? How would his children regard him now, who had just yesterday forced himself to sentence them, in effect, to death?

  The agonized uncertainty must have been in his face when the door opened, for they paused on the threshold, as he paused behind the desk, and for a tense, unreal moment they looked at one another like strangers. Then Crystal gave a little cry and rushed forward into his arms, Hal followed, and they all found themselves laughing, crying and hugging one another at the same time.

  He needn’t have worried: they understood. A dreadful weight lifted suddenly from his heart.

  “Well,” he said shakily, “sit down and let me look at you.”

  “Shouldn’t we—?” Crystal began. “I mean, can you—aren’t you too busy to waste time on us right now?”

  “Good God,” he said. “Waste time on you?” A sudden twinkle came into his eyes. “What else is there to waste time on?”

  “Now that” Hal said with mock severity, “is being downright disingenuous.”

  “Yes,” he agreed; a little silence fell; and they studied one another again, not this time with tension or strangeness, but as three who had passed through the fire together.

  “How did they treat you?” he asked finally. “Aside from—aside from—”

  “It wasn’t pleasant,” Hal said gravely, and for the first time he brought his bandaged left hand, which he had been half concealing at his side, into full view and rested it carefully on his knee. “And Crystal lost a little hair. But on the whole”—his eyes looked far away, remembering—“it wasn’t bad. And,” he added in the words his father still needed to hear, “we knew you had no choice. And we believed in what you were doing. So that made it a little easier to face what—what we thought we might have to face. Other than that, though,” his tone became more conversational, and less tense, “it wasn’t too bad. They fed us reasonably well and kept us isolated or blindfolded all the time. We never saw them, but I would say there were about five, wouldn’t you, Crys?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A white man and a white woman, two black men and a black woman. About our age, we thought, most of them well educated and cultured and very hep on the world—as they see it. Which isn’t”—she smiled wryly—“quite the way we see it.”

  “How did they let you go?” he asked. “Did you see them? The FBI will want to get all this right away, of course.”

  “They turned us out in Rock Creek Park about half an hour ago,” Hal said. “Fortunately we found a cab right away. We promised them we wouldn’t talk to the FBI.” His expression turned as wry as his wife’s. “You’ve no idea what good friends we parted when it suddenly became clear that we were all on the same side after all, trying to settle this hellish mess in Asia. But for once,” he said, and his face became grim, “a Knox is deliberately going to break his word. We’ll tell the FBI everything we can possibly remember about the scum and I hope they find them and shoot them down ‘while trying to escape.’”

  “They won’t do that,” Crystal said, “because now everything’s changed and we are all on the same side. Our little episode will be lost, forgiven and forgotten in the rush of things. It will be a long time before anybody will start thinking about it again. And then it won’t matter.”

  The President nodded.

  “Very true and very shrewd. A great wave of let-bygones-be-bygones is sweeping over the world today. But tell the FBI anyway. There may come a time when the balance returns. When it does”—his expression for a moment turned as grim as his son’s—“I too will be in favor of rather severe exactions.… I want you to know,” he added quietly, “that I’m so grateful to have you back that I—that I”—his eyes filled again with tears, but he went on—“that I can’t really express it.”

  “You ain’t the only one, Pop,” Hal said with a deliberately cheerful flipness that set them all laughing together, albeit a little shakily.

  “No,” his father agreed, blowing his nose. “Why do you suppose they really let you go?”

  “No point in holding us any more, is there?” his son inquired with a touch of Knox tartness. “Who wants to do anything to bother you? You’re the world’s great hero now, aren’t you?”

  And so he seemed to be, he reflected after they left to go back to the Mansion to talk to the FBI and then get some much-needed sleep … so he seemed to be. Orrin Knox the world’s villain was suddenly Orrin Knox the world’s savior. Of all the great ironies of history, he thought, surely this must be one of the most exquisite.

  He looked at the reports, maps, papers strewn everywhere across the enormous desk and gave way for a moment to a helpless laughter—so overwhelming were the things that confronted him. But, like his children’s when they left him, it was a relieved and almost happy laughter, for at least now he ha
d options once more. Now he was in charge of things again. Through him the world had one last chance to save itself. Once again Orrin Knox was the master of events, not their plaything.

  And the greatest irony of all was something that had occurred to him instantly, though in the terrible crisis that confronted mankind it might not occur to most others until very much later on, if then.

  He was saved by the bell—not by any effort of the American President, not by any recognition by the world of America’s decent purposes, not by any triumph of American principles or American courage or American strength, or his own principles or his own courage or his own strength—but simply because two ravenous beasts of history’s jungle had, for reasons known only to them and already, he suspected, forgotten in their joint terror at the awful results of their mutual hatreds, turned on one another.

  He could not claim that America had brought sanity back to the world: the endless patient efforts of succeeding Administrations had not accomplished what a single rifle shot in Gorotoland had done. He could not claim that Orrin Knox’s genius or patience or integrity or human worth or diplomacy had contributed anything to bringing the world back to its senses: some unknown soldier’s blind instinctive reaction to an enemy he had been taught for years to hate had done more than Orrin Knox, for all his piety and wit, could ever do.

  Nor was there any endorsement of Orrin Knox’s policies, any vindication of the beliefs and principles for which he had stood all his life. He had always argued for firmness and unwavering strength in the face of Communist imperialism. So, he had held out for firmness and unwavering strength, and what had it got him? It had been on the very verge of getting him complete disaster, when a sheer fluke of fate had saved him from it.

  If anything, he could thank, not himself, but the insane antagonisms, suspicions and mutual jealousies of the leaders of the two Communist giants who for years had trained their citizens to hate one another. Now history with its terrible impartial justice had permitted those leaders to achieve their purpose; and like all who were permitted to achieve a purpose so obscene, history had handed them with it the bones of ruin and the skull of death.