Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Political, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Spies & Politics, #Assassinations, #Thrillers
Promise of Joy (62 page)
“That’s a fair question,” he said slowly, “and no one has a better right to ask. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I feel you deserve an explanation, and I also want to clarify my own thinking about it.…”
He paused, thinking back to an hour ago, when, almost casually, he had conceded to Bill Abbott that the policy he had defended so vigorously up to now would have to be abandoned.
Why
had
the concession been so quick and so casual?
Because the situation had changed … and because he had known, subconsciously perhaps for days, that he was going to have to change with it.
It was as simple as that.
The problem remaining was to state it in terms objective enough and convincing enough so that the country and the world would understand and accept what he was now beginning to perceive as his only possible course.
He looked at the two earnest young faces before him. All right, here was the world: make them understand.
With a little affectionate smile at their solemn expressions, he began to do so, fumblingly at first, then with increasing fluency as he proceeded, selecting, rejecting, polishing, perfecting—writing the speech which now was inevitable.
When he had concluded some twenty minutes later, Hal gave him a glance as straight and uncompromising as his own.
“That clarifies
that
decision. Now what about the other one?”
“What’s that?”
His son smiled.
“Don’t be innocent. Who are we backing, the slippery Slav or the heathen Chinee?”
“Now, that,” he replied lightly, “is my secret.” But when he saw their expressions, a little amused but basically disturbed, disappointed, somewhat crestfallen at his almost flippant tone, he dropped it and spoke with complete seriousness.
“In due time … in due time.” His tone became lighter again. “I have to hold back some secrets, otherwise you kids wouldn’t listen, you’d have heard it all. Isn’t that right?”
“We’ll listen,” Hal promised, knowing he wouldn’t get farther by pressing. “You’d better get to bed and get some sleep. You’ve got a busy day ahead. And”—he looked much older than his twenty-seven years for a second—“so have we all.”
“Yes,” he said gravely, kissing Crystal good night. “Sleep well, you two, and I shall try to do likewise.”
In the Lincoln Bedroom as he began methodically preparing to retire, he spoke to the last and final arbiter, whose picture smiled at him from a dozen places in the room, as young girl, fiancée, mother, political partner, encourager, comforter, adviser, friend.
You see, he told her, here is Orrin Knox being inconsistent again—or consistent, I don’t quite know which. He says one thing—he means it. He changes his mind—he means it. He defies circumstance—he means it. He yields to circumstance—he means it.
I guess the old boy is pretty human, after all.
But, he said almost defensively, though he knew that he never really had to defend himself to her, in one thing he has always been consistent, and that is his desire to serve his country. It has been a curiously old-fashioned desire, maybe, in an age when the tricky win power and the sly abuse it. A curiously old-fashioned thing, that Orrin Knox should have basically no other aim than to do the best he knows how for his people and for all the other peoples whose destinies the destiny of his people might affect.…
Now the test had come, as it had so often, but never in such cataclysmic, imperative form: was that basic principle enough to guide him through the morass he faced? Because if it was not, then the world would quite literally end—or survive in such awful disarray that it would literally be generations, perhaps centuries, before it could ever put itself together again in any semblance of recognizable order.
Maybe good will, good faith, good heart, sincere, compassionate and idealistic purpose, were not enough. Millions had possessed them, since history began, and look where it had all brought the world at this moment: to an almost insoluble tangle of desires, ambitions, motivations—hopes, fears, loves—terrible, unyielding hatreds … to monstrous dealings between man and man and between nation and nation … to atomic war.
Millions before him had wanted to make the lot of mankind better.
Millions, also, had not.
It appeared that history might very well be about to render final judgment that the millions who wished mankind ill were the final winners, bringing all down with them in one last spasm of hate that would leave the world an empty sphere, drifting lifeless in the universe.
And against that judgment stood Orrin Knox and many other good men—still, he believed, the majority.
But he was the one to whom history, in its inescapable way, had given the final chance. He would have the support of the majority if he proved to be right. But it was not the majority who must make the decision, deliver the speech, push the button or not push it as some last inspired gleam of inspiration might advise.
It was Orrin Knox, President of the United States of America, alone at the pinnacle, alone in the vortex.
Hank,
he told her simply,
I wish you were with me now.
But she was not, and so he told her:
I will do my best.
And after three final telephone calls, went quickly to sleep, comforted in the final knowledge that she knew this, and supported him, and understood, as always.
At 1 a.m. a bleary-eyed and exhausted press secretary called together the bleary-eyed, exhausted night watch of the media, who were now on around-the-clock vigil at the White House, and gave them the morning headlines:
President to meet with military advisers at 8 a.m., address nation from White House at noon.
Intervention decision expected.
4
“My Countrymen,” said and perhaps for the last time—who knew what would happen, who could say?—America and the world quieted down to hear a President of the United States.
“I speak to you today at perhaps the gravest moment in the history of the world.
“Atomic war is raging in Asia, pushing toward Europe. A massive Chinese onslaught, undertaken without regard to human life or the restraints of caution that normally condition nations, is striking deep into the Russian heartland. One Russian government, unable to stem the tide, has gone down. A new one fights on, but who knows for how long or with what success? The sheer massed weight of eight hundred million Chinese is being hurled against the enemy. Devastated cities, atomic blows, deaths in the millions, are apparently meaningless when there exists such an overwhelming mass of humanity to draw upon. It is awesome, and it is terrifying.
“It does indeed seem, as many in the Congress believe and as many millions of you agree, that there will be no stopping the Chinese drive—that it will sweep over Russia, and then, carried perhaps simply by its own momentum, will continue on into Europe; and then, eventually, will turn to the Pacific and so, in time, to our own shores.
“Inspired by this fear, the Congress passed a resolution urging that America intervene on the side of the Russians. As you know, I vetoed that resolution. I did so because I believed that the best course for us was to stay out, to preserve our own strength, to stand ready to mediate, to pacify and ultimately to help rebuild.
“I still think that this could have been a viable policy.”
(‘“Could have been’!” they exulted at the
Post:
“We’re going in!”
“Now
we’re getting somewhere!” they jubilated at the
Times.
“Bless that foolish bastard, Orrin Knox!”)
“However,” he said gravely, “events have moved past that point. With the fall of the Shulatov government in Russia and the apparent rising Chinese determination to push the issue to a final conclusion as rapidly as possible, a new set of circumstances prevails.
“This is no less than the very real possibility of a complete rearrangement of the balance of power in the world. Despite the wishful thinking of recent years in our own liberal community, balance of power is the only practical way to keep the peace because it is the only method that takes into account the endless deviousness and boundless treachery of the human animal.
“Men try to be good, but far too many of them are not good. They need restraints, particularly when they organize into nations. They have to be made to behave, otherwise they do not behave. They can love you on Monday and kill you on Tuesday. And unless they know that they will be punished when they break the law, they will break it with impunity. And if they are men acting as nations, when they break the law they have the capacity to bring down the world, as witness what is going on at this very moment.
“For this reason I have concluded, reluctantly but I think realistically, that the situation has now deteriorated to the point where the United States of America, as the sole remaining uncommitted major power, has a duty to see to it that balance is restored.
“I do not say this because I am afraid of any ‘Yellow Peril’ from China, or because I am afraid of any ‘alien culture’ there. The Chinese nation is an ancient and honorable one, with aspects of great culture far antedating the great majority of the Western nations, including our own. I respect the Chinese history, the Chinese people and the Chinese culture. I do not respect the present Chinese vindictiveness toward Russia which is destroying both countries and which will lead, unless stopped, to the ultimate catastrophe for us all. The same applies, of course, to the Russian vindictiveness toward China, which they must bitterly regret, now that it is too late.
“That, too, must, for the sake of mankind, be stopped.
“It is solely on those factors that I base my decision. It is not based in any way, I hasten to add, on any great admiration or love for the Russian nation, which in recent decades has been the world’s greatest troublemaker, its greatest deliberate saboteur, its most vicious, most ruthless and most unprincipled imperial power.
“Nothing it has done in recent decades gives it any right to expect anything from the United States of America. We would be entirely justified in sitting back and letting it be destroyed—were it not that if we did so, even greater troubles would probably ensue for all mankind.
“I am quite sure that satisfied abandonment would be all that we could expect from Russia were the roles reversed. But America still has, I think, sufficient conscience and sufficient responsibility so that it cannot indulge itself in that pleasure. We, at least, have some continuing concept of responsibility to the world—imperfect as it may be, and imperfectly as we may have expressed it on many occasions, as our good friends abroad always make sure to tell us.
“We possess some demon that will not let us sit by. And for that demon, the world can thank God, for it has brought the world a lot of headaches but it has also rescued the world from many troubles.
“And while I am discussing Russia and China,” he said, and his tone turned a little sharper and his head came up and he looked straight into the eyes of his countrymen, “I think there are a few things to be said about America, too—since we’re getting right down to cases here, and since no one knows whether intervention as my advisers and I have conceived it will work or not work, and no one knows whether we will all be here tomorrow morning or not.…”
(A ghostly humor flickered across the nation. In spite of the situation no one could quite believe he meant this, though of course he did, absolutely.)
“America has not been so perfect, either, in these recent years.
“We have had an intellectual community, dominated by certain influential sections of the media, which has consistently denigrated, downgraded, vilified and sabotaged every worthwhile impulse and effort of its own country. Certain influential members of the academic world have eagerly gone along with this, where they have not directly inspired it. At their hands our history has been sneered at, our principles have been attacked, our society has been condemned, the basic good heart and innocent good will of the great majority of our people have been made the mockery and the destructive target of the arch know-it-alls who presume to control our thinking.
“And they have, my friends: they have. Through the schools they have turned out two generations, now, of whom a great many think very little of their country because they have been taught to think very little of it. Through the courts they have engaged in a steady campaign to weaken, destroy and subvert the laws necessary to maintain in our own society the same balance and order that must be maintained in the world, if both the world and our society are to survive. Through a certain intellectually fashionable segment of the churches, they have steadily and implacably chipped away at all those moral standards and guidelines by which sensible men, however weakly, imperfectly and humanly they may fail to measure up to them, still try to conduct society’s business, for society’s sake.
“And all this they have done in the name of a spiteful and shallow cleverness, a snide, in-group superiority, an intellectual arrogance, which, take it all in all, has been the greatest combination of reaction, intolerance, unfairness, hypocritical suppression of opposing viewpoints and downright ruthless
il
liberalism ever foisted on a great nation.”
(“Oh, come, now!” they hooted at the
Post.
“Hey, hey!” they chuckled at the
Times.
“Get
you!”
)
“And, my friends,” he said quietly, “it has hurt. Make no mistake about it. It has hurt this country grievously in many areas. It has
not
been just an intellectual joke. It
has
been important. It
has
mattered.
“So we come to this time of ultimate testing not the confident nation we should be, given the fantastic story of our beginning, our subsequent history and all the great and generous good that we have done in the world. For all our many faults, and I am the first to acknowledge them, we have nonetheless accomplished here miraculous things. Our thought manipulators should have accorded us the right to believe in them; they have not. They should be our pride and our strengthening; they are not. Because of the incessant attacks of some of our own people in influential position in the thought-controlling institutions of the country, we are uncertain of our heritage, crippled in our purposes, weakened in our ideals. It is a grievous burden, and a fearful responsibility rests upon those who have done it.
“But—here we are. Someday there may be a redress of balance and a return of perspective, and we hope there will be. In the meantime, we have today’s situation and today’s demand, and to that we must address ourselves.
“My friends,” he said, and again he looked straight into the cameras, “the situation in the heartland of Russia is obviously now moving toward some kind of climax. We do not know at the moment what this climax will be, nor do we know whether, if left alone, it would work itself out in the long run in a Chinese victory or a Russian victory.
“We do know, or at least my advisers and I believe, that we cannot wait any longer to find out. We must place our weight where it will do the most good for threatened humanity.
“Starting at eight this morning I conferred with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other advisers, including President Abbott and Mr. Justice Davis of the Supreme Court. We decided upon a plan of action.
“That plan of action began when I began to speak to you. It is now under way with many methods in many areas. During the next forty-eight hours, in a carefully phased, step-by-step program, it will progress to what we hope, and believe, will be a termination of the war.
“If we are right, we can begin to rebuild a sane and a better world.
“If we are wrong, it will not matter either to history, or to us.
“There are some of you, I am sure, who will greatly applaud what we are going to do. There are some of you who will violently condemn. To all of you I say:
“Suppose
you
were the President of the United States of America, faced with war between Russia and China.
“Suppose
you
had to make the decision to stay out or go in, and if your decision was to go in, who to help, and how to do it.
“Suppose
you
carried the burden on
your
shoulders, not in a relaxed time of easy decisions, but
right now.
“Suppose you had
my
share of our joint responsibility to the world.
“What would
you
do, my friends, you who applaud and you who condemn? How would
you
handle it?
“Think about it.
“Think about it!
“And then move on, with tolerance, with understanding and with compassion, to join me in the job we have to do.
“As I said to you before, when I addressed the Congress:
“‘It may be that we will survive to put the world together again—or we may just as likely go down with it. It is all uncertainty, all conjecture, all dark and desperate, all filled with frightful peril for us all.
“‘But we must be brave—and we must be strong—and we must look to our own defenses—and we must hold ourselves ready to help where we can—and we must pray.
“‘The Lord has preserved us through many perils, for some purpose. We must be confident that He will continue to do so. I make no pretense to you whatsoever that it will be easy. But I call on you to join me in meeting whatever the future holds, with courage, with determination, with unity and with faith in ourselves, our traditions and our purposes.’
“At noon our intervention began. Within forty-eight hours we will know whether it has succeeded, and whether peace can come.
“I bid you farewell for now, not in pessimism or foreboding, but in courage and in hope. I commend to you the same positive approach.
“We are doing the best we can, and we are doing it selflessly, generously and, we hope, helpfully for all mankind. The event rests in the hands of God, but you and I, his servants, bring to it the best that is in us. I am confident He will accept our offering, and to it give His blessing, and success.
“God bless you and God bless the United States of America.
“Until we meet again.”
And the anthem thundered up, the flag rippled across the screen. Against it his tired but confident face looked out for a last impressive, calmly emphatic moment before it faded slowly away.
For several moments, everywhere, there was silence. Typical of those who finally broke it were his friends of Supermedia.
“Do you realize,” somebody asked in an awed voice at the
Times,
“that he never told us
who
we were intervening for, or
how
we are going to do it?”
“That’s right,” somebody else agreed in an equally hushed tone at the
Post.
“He never did.”