Advise and Consent (55 page)

“Well, then,” he said in a relieved tone that surprised her, for it disclosed a depth of concern she had not known was there, “there’s nothing to worry about, is there? I told you it was going to be all right.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “You told me.”

“So you see,” he said comfortably, “all those worries weren’t necessary at all, were they?”

“I guess not,” she said. “Lafe called, too.”

“Oh?” he said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“Well, he said he wanted to take you to lunch somewhere quiet and get you away from it all for an hour or so, and I told him I thought that would be a good idea, and to come get you.” She smiled again, a little uncertainly. “Was that all right?”

He grinned.

“That was fine,” he said. “I wonder what he’s got on his mind? Something Bob and Orrin put him up to, I’ll bet.”

“He didn’t say,” she said. “He said to tell you to be of good cheer, the troops are with you.” And in spite of her best intentions her eyes, reddened from their quarrel and her talk with Beth, filled with tears again.

“Goodness,” she said. “I’m certainly weepy today.”

“Well, you’ve been worried,” he said, “and I appreciate it. I really do.” And he reached out and with one finger gently traced the outline of her right cheek from ear to chin.

“As long as
all
the troops are with me,” he said softly, “I guess I can manage.”

“They are,” she said, blinking rapidly as she turned to watch their daughter advancing toward them over the lawn, holding her ball before her in both hands. “Especially us.”

So he felt much better suddenly, for the Lord had given him a sign after all, he had love and he had friends and the day seemed to mean what it said when it held out hope.

“Before the press gets on the floor,” the Majority Leader murmured casually, resting one hand on Senator Strickland’s shoulder and looking thoughtfully up at the crowded galleries fifteen minutes before the opening, “I think I should tell you that I would like mighty much to adjourn this here old Senate in about five little old minutes flat. Would you be willing to go along with little old me on that?”

“I might,” the Minority Leader said with a smile, “if the price is right What’s it all about?”

“We have a problem, as you know,” Senator Munson said, “and I don’t want to give anybody a chance to get up and sound off about it and make it worse before we can make it better.”

Particularly Fred,” the Minority Leader suggested, and Bob Munson smiled.

“Particularly that case of overhypoed venom,” he agreed. “I think we’ll get along much better all around if we just quit in a hurry. Harley’s agreeable. Okay?”

“Well, let me see,” Warren Strickland said in mock thought. “Sam Eastwood has his heart set on taking off after the Indian Bureau; Walter Calloway was going to attack the British; Harold Kidd thinks we ought to reduce excise taxes; and I believe Verne Cramer told me he wanted to say a few significant words about Algeria. And of course there is a certain amount of business pending—the Justice Department appropriation, for one thing. Will Seab let you get by with putting that over until next week?”

“I have some hopes,” Bob Munson said, “that we will be long gone by the time both the distinguished Senator from South Carolina and the distinguished Senator from Wyoming reach the chamber.”

“Have you talked to Brig?” Senator Strickland asked, and the Majority Leader nodded.

“Yes, I’m satisfied he has something on his mind,” he said, “and we’re trying to work it out. That’s why I want to avoid aggravating everything here. Are you with me?”

The Minority Leader smiled.

“I’m against this nomination,” he said, “but for you, Bobby”—he bowed slightly, with a little twinkle—“sure.”

“Thanks, pal,” the Majority Leader said hurriedly as the first reporters began to come on the floor for the pre-session briefing. “Collect when you want to.”

“I will,” Senator Strickland promised with a chuckle.

“Well, Bob,” AP said, “anything to add to that clear, forthright statement we got earlier?”

“Not a thing,” Senator Munson said blandly, “so why don’t you run along?”

“What do you think, Senator?” UPI asked Warren Strickland. “Does it make sense to you?”

“Heavens,” Warren Strickland said. “Washington stopped making sense to me about one month after I got here, and it never has since. Surely you old hands don’t expect it to?”

“Are you going to protest the subcommittee’s action?” the Houston
Post
asked, and the Minority Leader looked more serious.

“Certainly not,” he said. “I’m quite content to await developments.”

“There will probably be some on the floor today,” the
Times
suggested, and the Minority Leader laughed.

“Oh, I think we’ll get by without too much trouble,” he said comfortably.

“What’s coming up, Bob?” the
Herald Tribune
asked. Senator Munson looked thoughtfully through the papers on his desk.

“We have the Justice Department appropriation scheduled,” he said, “and maybe one or two minor claims bills.”

“Fairly short session, then,” AP suggested.

“Fairly short,” Bob Munson agreed.

“Think he’ll go for that?” the
Post
inquired, gesturing toward the back of the chamber, and Senator Munson turned to see the junior Senator from Wyoming enter in a purposeful way.

“I think,” he said impassively, “that we may be able to keep him within reasonable limits.”

“We hope not, Senator,” UPI told him. “Your loss would be our gain—in news, that is.”

Senator Munson chuckled.

“Oh, we’ll give you some news,” he said. “It may not be what Fred expects, but you’ll have some.”

“What’s this,” the
Times
demanded, “have you got a letter from the White House to read?”

“Nothing so sensational,” the Majority Leader said. “Wait and see.”

“We will,” AP promised as the bell sounded and they began to hurry off the floor. “We'll be right up there in the press gallery waiting.”

The clock stood at noon and the Senate composed itself as the last of the reporters trailed out the door and Carney Birch stepped forward solemnly to give the prayer. There were perhaps fifteen Senators on the floor in addition to the two leaders; George Bowen of Iowa; Walter Turnbull of Louisiana; Clement Johnson of Delaware; and so on. They were going to be surprised, too, the Majority Leader reflected, but it couldn’t be helped. This was the best way. He bowed his head dutifully.

“
Lord,
” the Chaplain said, “grant us Thy blessings on these deliberations and make us truly worthy of the trust Thou hast placed in us. Amen.”

“Is that all?” Bob Munson started to say, half aloud, and then caught himself with a wink at the Vice President, who winked back. The chaplain gave him a dignified look and disappeared into the back lobby. Carney obviously wasn’t taking any more chances.

“Mr. President!” the Majority Leader and the Senator from Wyoming said together, and Harley said calmly, “The Senator from Michigan.”

“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, “I move that the reading of yesterday’s Journal be dispensed with.”

“Without objection, it is so ordered,” Harley said, and, “Mr. President!” the two Senators said again.

“The Senator from Michigan,” the Vice President said, and Fred Van Ackerman gave him an indignant look.

“Mr. President,” Senator Munson said, “I move that the Senate stand in recess until noon on Monday.”

“What the hell?” Clement Johnson said audibly to Walter Turnbull, and, “Mr.
President!
” Senator Van Ackerman cried angrily, but before he could even complete the words Harley was saying calmly, “Without objection, it is so ordered.” And with a bang of the gavel he rose and was out of his chair and on his way off the floor even as the galleries began to buzz with excitement and the few members present, looking at one another in considerable bafflement, gathered up their papers, and began to leave.

“Mr.
President!
” Fred Van Ackerman cried again to Harley’s disappearing back in one last protesting wail, and then he dropped it and came forward angrily down the center aisle. Above the reporters in the press gallery were still watching intently, and he came forward into the well of the Senate until he was standing almost directly beneath them.

“Come down to the President’s Room right away,” he called. “I’m going to hold a press conference.”

“And so what’s on his little mind?” AP asked as they crowded out of the gallery and hurried to the elevator to go down to the floor.

“I’m damned if I know,” UPI said, “but I imagine after Bob’s little piece of legerdemain it may be newsworthy.”

“Wasn’t that neat?” the
Herald Tribune
remarked. “Zip, zip, zip. Now you see them, now you don’t.”

“I expect it will be a fairly short session, he says,” the
St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
observed. “And Warren Strickland right there acting as his water boy. Honest to Christ I wonder, sometimes.”

“Oh, well,”
The Wall Street Journal
said with a grin. “Furious Freddy will make up for it. He ought to be primed for bear.”

And true enough, even as the elevator arrived and they crowded in to make the descent to the floor below, Senator Van Ackerman had turned back to the Majority and Minority Leaders and was making his views known to them.

“Pretty smart,” he said scornfully. “Pretty smart, you two. Is that what you call acting responsibly?”

“We’ll come to your press conference, Fred,” Senator Strickland said pleasantly, “and you can tell us off before the whole wide world, if you like.”

“You’d better,” the junior Senator from Wyoming said grimly, “because I’m going to.”

“Warren,” Bob Munson said, offering his arm, “be my guest.”

“With pleasure,” the Minority Leader said, bowing low.

“Oh, hell,” Senator Van Ackerman snapped. “Why don’t you get up a minstrel act and be done with it?”

And turning on his heel he hurried away to the ornate, gold-painted, chandelier-hung, mirror-walled room off the Senate floor where Senators meet the press for interviews when the Senate is in session. There where Presidents up through Woodrow Wilson used to come on the last night of the session to sign bills, he found most of the reporters already gathered, seated in the big chairs and crowded on the sofas, leaning against the big green-baize table in the center of the room, standing in little gossiping groups. He waited for a moment until Senator Munson and Senator Strickland came casually along, and then began abruptly and without preamble.

“What you have just witnessed on the Senate floor,” he said, “is typical of the atmosphere of secrecy and stealth which has surrounded the handling of this nomination from the first. You have seen the Majority and Minority Leaders deliberately mislead—yes, I say deliberately mislead, and I’m glad you’re here, Bob and Warren, I take pleasure in saying it to your faces—the Senate and the country as to their intentions. You have seen something I can only describe as a conspiracy, yes, a conspiracy, between the Majority and Minority Leaders to suppress the facts in this matter and keep the truth from the country.”

“Will you slow down, Fred,” AP said wearily. “Some of us aren’t shorthand reporters, you know.”

“Sorry,” Senator Van Ackerman said, and after a moment with a quick glance at his two impassive elders, he went on at a slower clip.

“I charge,” he said, “yes, I charge, that the senior Senator from Utah, the chairman of the subcommittee, is deliberately trying to put the nominee in a bad light and make the country think there is something evil about him, yes, something evil. He is deliberately trying to defeat the nomination by this phony act he has put on, this strange, peculiar secrecy and he is being aided and abetted, yes abetted and aided, by the senior Senator from Michigan and the distinguished Senator from Idaho. I say this is strange and peculiar, and that is what I think the conduct of the chairman of the subcommittee is in this matter, strange and peculiar.”

“Do you think he is strange and peculiar too?” AP inquired in the same bored tone, and for a second the junior Senator from Wyoming looked at him with a gleam of real dislike in his eyes.

“I’m not making any imputations about the Senator from Utah,” he snapped. “You can say that if you like, I won’t.”

“We can’t unless you do,” AP pointed out calmly. “We aren’t editorial writers. Is that all you have to say?”

“No, it isn’t,” Senator Van Ackerman said angrily, and for a second it seemed he might explode into one of his rages. But he didn’t, and his next words came more calmly.

“What I intended to do at today’s session,” he said, “before the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader decided to be so cute about it, was to move again, as I did yesterday, that the Foreign Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of the nomination, and that it be brought up immediately for a vote. That was what I intended to do today, I will say to the Majority Leader, and now that he has blocked me I tell him that is what I intend to do on Monday.”

“Do you have any reason to suppose that you will get enough votes to do it on the second try, Senator?” the
Newark
News
inquired, and Fred Van Ackerman looked smug.

“I have received some assurances of support,” he said. “I have reason to think I will have enough votes the next time. I will remind you I only lost on a tie vote yesterday. That gives me a good foundation to start with.”

“You actually think you have enough votes to do it?” UPI asked with undisguised skepticism. “You actually think you’ve gained and the Majority Leader has lost?”

“I do,” Fred Van Ackerman said firmly. “I certainly do.”

“What do you think, Bob?” the
Times
asked, and the Majority Leader looked bland.

“This is Fred’s press conference,” he said. “Warren and I are only here by invitation. And,” he added with a smile, “a cordial one it was, too, I can tell you. No, I haven’t any comment. Do you, Warren?”

“No, indeed,” the Minority Leader said, “except to say that in such close votes involving the traditions of the Senate, when attrition sets in it usually sets in against those who are trying to overturn the traditions rather than those who are upholding them. That is the lesson of history, but then,” he said gently, “this is a newer and more dynamic age we are being ushered into by the distinguished junior Senator from Wyoming, and maybe he has surprises for us.”