1
Now the august day has come when he and Governor Edward Montoya Jason of California are to go to the Washington Monument Grounds and there before their countrymen pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor—and as much cooperation with each other as they can manage.
It is also the day when Secretary of State Orrin Knox, twice unsuccessful candidate for President, now Presidential nominee by fluke of death, circumstance, savagely bitter political battling and a squeak-in vote of 658 for him to 635 for Ted Jason, may find out whether he can trust the attractive, intelligent, equivocal flirter-with-the-violent that fluke and circumstance have thrust upon him as his running mate.
As he finishes shaving and prepares to rejoin his wife, Beth, in the living room of their comfortable, rambling old house in Washington’s secluded Spring Valley, he does not know just how much cooperation with Vice Presidential nominee Ted Jason there will be. But he has given Ted his word and he intends to keep it:
There will be as much as he can conscientiously contribute.
He will make a genuine effort.
Ambition and the country have a right to expect no less …
Ambition and the country!
How much he has done for both, in these recent hectic weeks that have seen President Harley M. Hudson win renomination in the wildly violent national convention; have seen Orrin become his running mate after a furious struggle with Ted Jason; have seen Harley’s death in the mysterious and still unexplained crash of Air Force One, followed by the accession to the Presidency of Speaker of the House William Abbott; and have seen that event in turn followed by the emergency reconvening of the National Committee, whose deliberations, surrounded by a violence even greater than that which shattered the convention, have finally resulted in Orrin’s nomination for President and Ted’s for Vice President.
Some have said that Ted, Governor of California, descendant of grandees and shrewd Yankee traders, darling of all that aggregation of uneasy citizens whose hopes and fears are symbolized and given voice by radically activist NAWAC—the National Anti-War Activities Congress—has flirted too much with violence.
Some—and they include Orrin and President Abbott—have said Ted has put himself in pawn to violence. Some—and they include Ted’s lovely wife, Ceil, who only last night abandoned her self-imposed exile at the great Jason ranch “Vistazo” north of Santa Barbara and flew back to be at Ted’s side for today’s ceremonies—have said that Ted has betrayed something essential in himself in so doing. And some—and they include all of those and many more besides, both in Washington and throughout the country—have made plain their fear that Ted may never be able to break free from violence and the begetters of violence, no matter how he tries.
And many of these—their uneasy discontent and frequently bitter criticism reaching him through a thousand channels in the past twenty-four hours—have said that Orrin Knox, in accepting Ted as his running mate, has betrayed everything Orrin has stood for in three decades of public life, and has taken a fearful chance with the country’s well-being for no other reason than sheer political opportunism and greed for office.
This, he knows, is the chief burden he carries before his countrymen today: the glibly cynical and disillusioned belief, on the part of so many, that Orrin Knox, so long regarded as a man of principle even by those who have disagreed with him most bitterly, is not so principled after all.
This he carries, and with it his worries about Ted, which are fully as lively, did his countrymen only know, as those anyone else may have. But how can he convince anyone of this now? He has apparently made a deal, hasn’t he? He has apparently reversed himself 180 degrees to accept Ted as his running mate, hasn’t he? He has apparently been just as much of a political trimmer and grasper after power as any he ever criticized in all his long and controversial years as Senator from Illinois … and he did not criticize with much charity, sometimes, in those days.
Fittingly enough, perhaps, many of his countrymen are not willing to grant him charity now.
And yet—and yet. Reviewing the immediate past as he casts an appraising glance at the steady eyes, the emphatic face, the brusque and somewhat impatient expression that stare back at him from the mirror, he does not find it in his heart to blame himself too much, even as he concedes that those who question him now do indeed, from their point of view, have more than reasonable grounds. He has had to answer for his decision to his son; and having done that, believes he can in the long run justify it to all but the most deliberately obtuse and intransigent.
In all these furiously tumbling weeks, the moment of greatest truth for Orrin Knox came, as it perhaps did for Ted Jason, on the night when the sinister forces of NAWAC waylaid and beat his daughter-in-law, Crystal Danta Knox, outside the national convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Crystal had lost the son she was carrying, and it seemed for a while that Orrin’s son Hal had lost all faith in his country, its political system and the ultimate human decencies that are the only protection men have against the fearful winds of decay and dissolution that howl unceasing around a free but sometimes achingly imperfect nation.
When his father selected for running mate the man Hal regarded as the principal cause of his wife’s beating and his son’s death, it seemed that Hal no longer had anything at all in which to believe.
But Orrin had brought him back, he tells himself with a sudden grimness that gives sterner lines to the strong, impatient face, and if he could do that, he can bring the rest of them back too. Hal had been utterly devastated by his choice of Ted Jason, yet Orrin had brought him back. It had not been easy. But it had been done.
Their principal conversation on the subject had occurred soon after former Governor Roger P. Croy of Oregon, Ted’s campaign manager, had left the Spring Valley house to give the press indirect but unmistakable affirmation that Ted would indeed be the Vice Presidential choice. Shortly thereafter had come a peremptory rap on the study door.
“Who is it?” Orrin had asked.
A voice he hardly recognized had said, “Me.”
“Oh,” he said, and suddenly felt tense, nervous and sick inside. “Come in.”
He glanced up quickly into the haggard, unhappy eyes of his son and glanced quickly away again.
“Sit down.”
“I will if you’ll look me straight in the eyes,” Hal said in a voice so low he could hardly hear it.
“Very well,” he said, though it cost him as few things in life had. “Now, do you want to sit down, or had you rather stand?”
“Why?” Hal demanded, standing. “In the name of God, why?”
“Because there are times when politics offers cruel choices,” Orrin said slowly, “and sometimes, even with the best will in the world, one gets caught in them.”
“Do you realize that that man, or his people, killed my son and your grandson?” Hal asked in a strangled voice.
Orrin sighed.
“Yes.”
“And do you realize that his gangs may do anything—destroy the country—put us under dictatorship—anything?”
“I think there is that potential, yes, if they’re not controlled.”
“Do you think that millionaire lightweight is controlling them? Was he controlling them this afternoon?”
“Sit down, Hal,” he said quietly, “and stop being rhetorical. I know just about everything there is to know about the character and motivations and strengths and weaknesses of Edward M. Jason, I believe. I don’t think there’s much you can tell me. And I don’t think there’s much to be gained from our fighting about it.”
“But I want to know why,” Hal said, sitting slowly down on the sofa. “I want to know why my father, whom I have always loved and respected and looked up”—his voice began to break but he forced himself on—“looked up to—why he has decided now that this man is worthy to move up one step from the White House. I don’t—I don’t even know why you think he’s worthy to associate with you personally, let alone be Vice President.…You’ve got to tell me something,” he said, staring at the rug. “I’ve got to have something left to believe.”
For several minutes Orrin did not reply, though his first impulse was to go to his son and put his arms around him as though he were a little boy. But it died, as such things do, because he wasn’t a little boy. Instead he tried to piece together something coherent that would make sense. He wasn’t sure it would, in Hal’s present mood—or his own, for that matter—but he knew he had to try.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that Ted Jason, at heart, is not a bad or an evil man. I think to a large extent he is sincerely convinced that he has a better answer for this country than I do. I think he really believes that if he could be elected President, things would somehow straighten themselves out and he could bring peace to the world at large, and to us domestically. I think he really thinks that.”
“Does that give him a license to kill my son?” Hal asked with a withering bitterness. His face suddenly dissolved. “My son,” he said in a choking voice. “Like I—like I was for you, when I was born. My son.”
Orrin closed his eyes and sat back with his hands over them for a long moment. Then he looked up, though not at his son.
“You make it very difficult.”
Again Hal spoke with a devastating bitterness.
“Am I supposed to make it easy?”
“Easier,” his father said. “Just a little—easier—that’s all.…I don’t think there’s anything you’ve felt in these past few days that I haven’t—well, I’ll amend that, because I do remember how it was with you, and I do know you’ve been feeling things I can only imagine. I don’t really know, because back in those innocent days this kind of violence didn’t stalk America the way it does now. I didn’t have to worry about my family then as we all do now. I didn’t think I was taking my life and theirs into my hands every time I took a stand on a public issue. But it’s getting close to that now. Give us another five years like this, and freedom of opinion will be pretty much gone. Unless”—his expression too for a moment became bitter—“you’re on the right side.…
“All I’m saying about Ted Jason,” he resumed presently, “is that he’s in that curious state of mind in which ambition really does dominate all. It dominates so much that everything is related to it. Everything becomes possible to it. Everything seems right to it. Everything can be fitted in … and everything that feeds it can be justified.”
“And that doesn’t make him a dangerous man?”
“Of course it does,” Orrin said. “Of course it does. And yet not a bad man, in the sense that say”—his eyes grew somber as he thought of Wyoming’s demagogic junior Senator, chairman of the National Anti-War Activities Congress—“Fred Van Ackerman is a bad man.”
“How do you separate them?” Hal asked with a skepticism that at least, Orrin was relieved to note, replaced the bitterness a little. “Behind Ted Jason stands Van Ackerman. And all the rest of them. If you take one, you take them all.”
“I think they can be separated,” Orrin said, “because I think in Ted’s mind they are separated. I think if he can be shown what they are, and what they’re helping to get the United States into, he will break away from them. Because I think, as I say, that at heart he’s a decent and well-meaning man.”
“But that isn’t why you’re taking him,” Hal said with a sudden shrewd bitterness. “Not just because you think maybe you can reform him someday.”
“Sooner than that,” Orrin said. “But, no, you’re right. That isn’t why.”
Hal gave him a long look, so painful for him that he actually squinted as he did so. His father could barely hear him when he spoke.
“You’re taking him because of some deal, then.”
“No,” Orrin said, and thanked God he could say it truthfully. “No deal.” A smile lit his face briefly. “Do you really think if I’d made a deal I wouldn’t have made it for more than twenty-three votes, boy? What kind of a dealer do you think I am?”
“Well,” Hal said, and briefly he too smiled a little, “maybe not. But there must be some reason—some reason. There’s got to be something that makes sense”—and again his voice dropped very low—“if you are willing to put the murderer of your grandson on the ticket.”
Again Orrin sighed and looked away.
“You do have a way of cutting a man up.”
Hal laughed, a dry, humorless sound.
“I’m told it’s inherited,” he said, and at his father’s sudden angry look he did not flinch or drop his eyes. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m trying. Give me a chance, will you?…In the first place, Ted isn’t a murderer—except as I suppose we are all murderers, who let things slide to a point where—things like that—can happen. Maybe I’m equally guilty, Hal. Did you ever think of that?”
Hal made a protesting movement but his father continued inexorably.
“Maybe I should have stepped aside at the convention. Maybe I should have stepped aside now, when the National Committee had to make its choice of a successor to Harley. Maybe I’m driven by power and ambition, too, beyond the point of decency—many think so, here and abroad. If I’d stepped aside, probably nobody would have hurt your wife and your—son. If I’d stepped aside in San Francisco, Harley would have had to take Ted, and maybe Harley would be alive now: who knows? It’s a fair assumption, even though Ted of course had nothing to do in any direct way with what happened to Harley. It was the climate—but maybe I’m as responsible as he is for the climate. Maybe if I’d gotten out of the way, Ted’s backers wouldn’t have felt they had to get desperate and do the things they have done. Maybe”—and again his eyes darkened at the thought of Helen-Anne Carrew, society columnist for the Washington Star-News, ex-wife of America’s leading political columnist, Walter Dobius, murdered because she was getting too close to discovering the violent elements behind Ted Jason—“maybe Helen-Anne would still be alive. Maybe all of this is my fault as much as his. Maybe all men who don’t deny the ambition for power when they catch a glimpse of where it can lead to are guilty.… Did you ever think of that?”
“But you couldn’t just walk away and let him have it!” Hal protested in a half whisper.
“No,” his father said quietly, “I could not, or I should have betrayed everything I believe in for this country, everything my whole life has stood for. So it isn’t so simple. And it isn’t for him, either.… The country is badly divided right now. We have enemies everywhere, both inside and outside, who would love to see us brought down, even though the fools will go down with us if we aren’t here to protect them. We need unity. He does command an enormous support among a great many sincere citizens who really do see in him the hope for peace that they honestly cannot see in me. This extends overseas as well. I’ve denied him the top spot by a very narrow margin, and many of those people are not going to be satisfied unless they can see him beside me—unless they can feel that he is offering some moderating influence on my policies, which they think are so horrible.”
“But you can’t accept his views on appeasing and giving in,” Hal said in the same dismayed half whisper.
“No,” Orrin agreed again, “I can’t. But one thing he said when he addressed the mob at Kennedy Center this afternoon did make sense, and that is that times change and people change.” He smiled a wry little smile, almost wistful. “I’m not anywhere near the positive soul I was in the Senate a year and a half ago, you know. I’ve been close to the center of the machine for a while as Secretary of State, and I know it isn’t so easy. It isn’t all black and white and cut and dried; it’s a sort of horrible gray, like fighting your way through a dirty fog where everything is hazy and blurred and you’re not even sure that the light ahead is a light: it may be just a—just a mirage.…No, I’ve changed, and I like to think for the better. And so can he. So will he, if I have anything to say about it. And I think I will.…He has good qualities—he wants to do what’s right for the country, I think—he just needs to be shown. And he does command an enormous popular support—”
“And you want to win the election,” Hal interrupted, his tone so bitter again that his father for a few moments was too crushed to reply. “You want the votes he can bring with him. You want to win.”
“Yes,” Orrin said at last, quietly, “I want to win. Because I think I can save the country and save the general peace, in the long run, and I want to try.…”
And there, of course, he had come squarely back to what seemed to him the essential justification of all his acts, as it was Ted’s self-justification too: peace, that great will-o’-the-wisp that had provided the basic inspiration for the actions of every American President in the past three decades. Peace, so glittering, so golden, so flickering, so faint. The greatest mirage of them all, for which men everywhere worked and labored and did unto other men horrible things, because to all of them peace did not mean peace unless they could somehow have it on their own terms.…
Later on, Hal, who in his bitter youthfulness had probed so many tender things, had given indication that he was forgiving his father, that he was finally convinced that Ted Jason had to share the ticket for the sake of what Orrin had told the National Committee must be an “Era of Reconciliation,” both at home and abroad. If Hal had seen it, even the skeptical among Orrin’s supporters could be made to see it. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of reconciliation among the hostile nations of the earth, and among the violently warring elements in America.…
This, in Orrin’s mind, transcends all other considerations, and to it he knows he will pledge himself publicly when, before the hour is over, he stands before his country and the world at the Washington Monument to make his acceptance speech and outline the policies he intends to follow if elected in November.
In these policies he hopes he will have the willing support of his running mate, for with that support will come the support of all the many millions who see in Ted Jason the world’s best hope for peace. If that support comes, then Orrin will not only win the election. He will also be able to move firmly to increase the chances for peace abroad and to diminish the power of the violent at home.
Without Ted’s full support, he knows that in all probability he cannot win the election, for Ted is the darling of the media, whose powerful pens and voices have made him the darling of the people, and Orrin very definitely is not. He has won his fight for the nomination. But his victory is openly and harshly begrudged.
He has not won the support of the media—could not, after all their years of mutually hostile battling over differing views of foreign policy—or of vast numbers of his countrymen who have been conditioned for the better part of three decades to be suspicious and resentful of Orrin Knox. His margin of victory for the nomination was small, his area of really genuine popularity is small. If he wins the White House, it will be because of votes reluctantly given him as an indirect endorsement of Ted Jason. If he wins, it will not be a recognition of the integrity of Orrin Knox, but a recognition of the popularity of Ted Jason.
This is not as he feels it should be, but being a blunt and pragmatic man, he knows this is how it is. And thus he is bound to his equivocal running mate whether he wants to be or not. All the conflicting elements whom he must somehow weld into a unified force enable Ted to hold him in pawn even more effectively than Ted himself, perhaps, realizes.
Exactly what Ted does realize about his own situation at the moment, Orrin finds it impossible to understand. After all the heated, frustrating and inconclusive conversations he and President Abbott have had with Ted—culminating finally in a flat ultimatum from Orrin that Ted must repudiate NAWAC and all the violent or be barred from the ticket—Orrin still does not know whether Ted has the slightest comprehension of the dangers he has been flirting with in his fight for the nomination—or, indeed, in what Orrin regards as his dangerously flaccid and complaisant attitude toward the never-resting imperialism of the Communist powers.
Ted has been, and remains, an enigma to Orrin, although Orrin thinks he understands the basic motivation, for it has been his own: Ted has wanted to win. So has Orrin, but not at the price of running with the pack that will, he feels, destroy America both at home and abroad if it cannot be checked.
Well, he tells himself abruptly: well. Grim lines come about the firm, emphatic lips. He intends to check the pack and, by God, he will, both at home and abroad. And if Ted Jason and his friends don’t like it, they can lump it. He will have the power and he will use it. They will have met not only their match but their master.
And as abruptly his mood changes, to be succeeded by an instant ironic bitterness as he surveys the world he wants so much to run. What will he have confronting him if he finally achieves his long-held ambition to sit behind the desk at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
Gorotoland, strategic key to the heart of Africa, in flames as its U.S.-supported hereditary ruler, flamboyant “Terrible Terry”—His Royal Highness Terence Wolowo Ajkaje, 137th M’Bulu of Mbuele—battles desperately to hold his throne against the onslaught of his equally flamboyant cousin, Communist-backed Prince Obifumatta.
Panama, in flames as the Communist-backed People’s Liberation Movement of Ted’s former brother-in-law, Felix Labaiya-Sofra, attempts to overturn the U.S.-backed government of the old oligarchy and seize the Canal.
In both countries, overt support for the revolutionaries, from both the Soviet Union and mainland China.
In both countries, commitments of U.S. forces by Harley Hudson that placed his immediate successor, William Abbott, in a most difficult position both in the eyes of the world and in practical fact—commitments that will put upon Bill Abbott’s successor the obligation to end both conflicts and get out as fast as possible, with honor if he can manage it, without honor if he can’t.
And domestically, all the anti-war turmoil, recently spilled over into a violence with sinister undertones that lead many to suspect that the excuse of foreign involvement is being used as the fulcrum for domestic revolution.
This lovely picture, full of so many potentially fatal pitfalls for the next American Chief Executive, is what confronts him now. It is, he suspects, the main reason why Bill Abbott has held firm to his decision to serve until January and then return to the House and the Speakership he has held for so many years.
Why in the hell would any sane man want the responsibility?
But, then, of course Orrin Knox knows why, for it is the same reason that motivates Ted, the same that has motivated every aspirant to the Presidency in recent years. Because he—in this case Orrin—believes he knows best. Because he thinks he has the answers—or, at least, some of them. Because, though he may not know exactly how he will go about it, he does know that he desperately wants to achieve world peace and restore domestic tranquility, and he honestly believes that he is more sincere and more determined about this than all his competitors.
Power is the great desideratum of all who rise above a certain level in American politics. But for the best—and they are many—it is not a completely selfish desire. Power to do something constructive for the country and the world is the name of the game, for the most earnest, the most idealistic, the most dedicated and the most sincere. Orrin feels—as all who achieve the highest office have had to feel, to survive all the scars of getting there—that he possesses these qualities in greater measure than anybody. Otherwise, why would he have been permitted to come so far and rise so high?
Just as he reaches this flight of self-righteousness—and just as his innate Knox self-skepticism and sense of balance starts to come to his rescue to keep him from going entirely overboard in self-congratulation—the door to the bedroom opens and the other half of the famous Illinois team of “Orrin and Beth” comes in.
“I know that look,” Beth says with a chuckle. “You’re telling yourself that nobody, but nobody, has more answers to anything than Orrin Knox does.”
“Hank,” he says blandly, using the nickname he has used ever since she was Elizabeth Henry, fellow student at the University of Illinois, so many years ago, “it is the only possible mood in which to approach an acceptance speech. Particularly,” he adds, looking less cheerful, “when you don’t know whether your running mate is going to go along with you or not.”
“Do you really have doubts?” she asks, coming forward to the mirror and leaning forward to adjust the off-the-face white hat she has chosen to go with the sensible green dress and comfortable white pumps she is wearing for this auspicious occasion. Their eyes meet as he replies thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t say I was entirely confident. Although he did promise me last night that he will absolutely, completely, unequivocally, cross-his-heart-and-hope-to-die repudiate NAWAC, the violent, the Communists and all their sleazy vicious doings.”
“The question,” she says with an equal thoughtfulness, sitting on the bed and studying the problem, “is whether they will repudiate him. And if they don’t, what they will do to you.”
“They will go along with me,” he says crisply, “as long as Ted is at my side.”
“And if he shouldn’t be—?” She gives him a quizzical look and he responds with one surprised and skeptical.
“Why won’t he?” he asks. “Knowing Ted Jason, I don’t believe he’s going to give up his position ‘one heartbeat away,’ etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. After all, if I’m not very successful in the next four years, I might not seek—or win—a second term. And he’s still young enough so that either way he’d be set to be the next nominee. He may make a few noises now and then just to show he’s still really a stout and independent fellow, but I suspect for the most part he’ll stick pretty close to stodgy old reactionary Orrin. Which, after all, is exactly what I want him to do. I need him. By the same token, he needs me. That’s why we’re together, and, I expect, are going to stay together.”
“I think you will intend to,” she agrees, still thoughtfully. He takes her up on it sharply.
“Then why won’t we?”
“You may not,” she says quietly, “be the only people involved, you know. Communists and the violent don’t always go away just because people say they should. Sometimes they have purposes more involved than we simple souls can believe.”
“But what would be the point in killing him, if that’s what you mean?”
“There wouldn’t be any point in killing him,” she agrees with a certain wry bluntness. “I agree with you, why should anybody kill him?”
“Hank,” he says calmly, “I am not going to start worrying at this late date about anyone killing me. I know some have wanted to, I know some still may; but the great majority are satisfied to have him on the ticket and in a position to become heir apparent—”
“He is the heir apparent,” she interrupts with a sudden sharpness of her own. “Watch out for yourself.”
“I won’t believe,” he says firmly, “that Ted Jason would be, or could be, party to any attempt on my life.”
“Any more than he was party to an attempt on Crystal’s,” she remarks quietly. “Nonetheless, it happened.”
“You and I,” he says with equal quietness, “have faced the possibility of assassination ever since I entered public life. It’s true, the chances are greater now, the occurrence being a thing that feeds on itself in a world of kooks and crazies—”
“Not always kooks,” she says, “and not always crazies. Sometimes very cold-blooded and very calculating people who know exactly what they’re doing. It seems to me you’re a sitting duck for someone like that.”
“So what would you have me do at this late date?” he demands. “Quit? Say, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean I want to be President, include me out, I’m going home’? Don’t be silly, Hank. You’re talking like a scared old lady now, not like the next behind-the-scenes President of the United States!”
“Well,” she says, smiling a little in response to his deliberately joshing tone, “it may have its humorous aspects, but even so—”
“And why are you so gloomy and apprehensive all of a sudden?” he asks, not knowing now that one day he will look back and wonder if she was the only one of the four about to meet at the Monument Grounds who felt that way. “I’ve been anointed by the Times, the Post, the networks, Walter Dobius, the Russians, the Chinese and the whole wide world—not very heartily, but they’ve done it. Ted Jason is going to keep me on the straight and narrow, the forces of imperialistic reaction have been put in check, God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world. We’re going to be under the greatest security and protection the country’s ever seen, today, so we might as well relax and enjoy it. Anyway, Hank”—and though still joking a bit, he becomes more serious—“you’d better not keep on in this vein or you really will give me the heebie-jeebies. And I can’t afford to have them. Too much depends on how we launch this campaign. Plus the fact that it’s all out of character, for you. You don’t normally go off on this kind of tangent.”
“No,” she says, rising with a smile and sudden decisive air that brings him a feeling of genuine relief, for he has been more disturbed by her uneasiness than he has wanted her to know. “It isn’t, and I apologize for being gloomy. I know we’re protected, I know everything is going to be all right. I expect we’d better go down. They must be almost ready for us.”
“Of course,” he says, suddenly serious, a perverse but inescapable reaction now that she is abandoning the subject, “if you really have a hunch, Hank—”
“Nonsense,” she says firmly, linking her arm through his as they hear cars and motorcycles downstairs, a sudden bustle through the lower part of the house which indicates that it is time for them to go and keep their appointment with the country. “It was just a thought, and a foolish one at that. Come along, maximum leader. Your panting multitudes await.”
“I hope they’ll like what I have to say,” he replies, and abruptly he turns and takes her face between his hands.
“Thank you for everything, Hank,” he says softly. “For all the kindnesses, down all the years.”
She blushes, a rare thing for Beth Knox, looking suddenly very shy and, in some curious way that of course does not exist except in mind and memory, youthful and freshly beautiful again as she had been when they first began courting.
“It’s mutual, my dear,” she says. She returns his kiss youthfully, too, and then, with a little smile at herself for not resisting the urge to become practical again, “Be good today. They expect a lot from you, and you have a lot to give.”
“Hank,” he says with a sudden enthusiasm, almost boyish in his turn, “with you beside me, I can’t be anything else but good. We’ve got a great four years ahead of us. A great four years!”
“Well, we know one thing, anyway,” she says with a chuckle as the first sirens begin below. “It won’t be dull.”
So the hour of acceptance comes bright and hot and clear, and from all the corners of the two cities, all the corners of the nation, the great throng gathers on the Monument Grounds around the stark white obelisk to fatherly George. Krishna Khaleel, the Ambassador of India; Soviet Ambassador Vasily Tashikov and his agricultural/secret police attaché; British Ambassador Lord Maudulayne and Lady Kitty; French Ambassador Raoul Barre and Celestine; and almost all their colleagues of the diplomatic corps, are there. Somewhere in the enormous multitude that laughs and yells and chatters, shoves and pushes and jostles in amiable contest for position, are the brilliant, twisted young black, LeGage Shelby, chairman of Defenders of Equality for You (DEFY); pompous, dough-faced Rufus Kleinfert, Knight Kommander of the Konference on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism (KEEP); and most of their fellow members of NAWAC. (Only Senator Van Ackerman is missing. Whispering now, he is in his fourteenth hour of filibuster against the Administration-backed Bill to Curb Further Acts Against the Public Order and Welfare.)
The Chief Justice is there, his wife already upset because she can tell from the way Mr. Associate Justice Thomas Buckmaster Davis is bustling about near the platform that he must have some preferred assignment she doesn’t know about. Senate Majority Leader Robert Durham Munson of Michigan and his wife, Dolly, are there, along with Majority Whip Stanley Danta of Connecticut, Crystal Knox’s father, and more than half the Senate. From the House, Representative J. B. “Jawbone” Swarthman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and possible strong contender for the Speakership next year, and his wife, “Miss Bitty-Bug,” are rubbing elbows, not too comfortably, with California’s giant young black Congressman Cullee Hamilton and his soon-to-be wife, Sarah Johnson. More than two hundred of their fellow House members are also on hand. All the members of the National Committee have already taken their seats on the platform.
Television crews are everywhere, and through the crowd there are many television sets in place to bring the ceremonies to the farthest reaches. Police with walkie-talkies are also everywhere, moving constantly, efficiently, yet amicably, their presence giving rise to a few catcalls but otherwise no indication of hostility. At regularly spaced intervals groups of four soldiers stand back to back facing their countrymen, guns, bayonets and gas canisters ready. Around the flag-decked platform and the dignitaries’ circle at the foot of the Monument, a tight cordon of Marines stands guard. Overhead the ubiquitous helicopters whir and hover.
Yet somehow, despite these precautions, there seems to be something in the air that indicates they will not be needed. Press and police estimate more than four hundred thousand present on this day that belongs to Orrin Knox and Edward Jason, yet with no visible exceptions they seem to be almost on picnic, so happy and relaxed do they look and sound. Even NAWAC’s banners are good-natured, and this seems to put the final touches on it:
Orrin and Ted: the Unbeatables … Hey, hey, great day! Bad times, go away! … Ted and Irrin have got us Roarin’ … We’ll have peace tomorrow and no more Sorrow …
Presently from far off there comes the sound of sirens, hailed with a great roar of greeting and approval. The sleek black limousine from Spring Valley comes along Constitution Avenue in the center of its police motorcycle escort, turns into the Monument Grounds and proceeds slowly to the foot of the obelisk. Two minutes later, more sirens, another great roar; the sleek black limousine from Dumbarton Oaks in the center of its police motorcycle escort comes along Constitution Avenue, turns into the Monument Grounds, proceeds slowly to the foot of the obelisk.
Out of their cars step the nominee for President and the nominee for Vice President, and their wives, and for a moment, in the midst of a wave of sound that seems to blot out the world, they stare at one another with a questioning, uncertain, hesitant yet friendly look. Then Orrin steps forward and holds out his hand, and as the picture flashes on all the television sets, a silence falls.
“Ted,” he says, and his words thunder over the Monument Grounds, the nation, the world, “Beth and I are glad to see you.”
“Orrin,” the Governor replies, “our pleasure.”
Impulsively and with a completely natural friendliness, Ceil steps forward and kisses Beth and then Orrin. Beth gives her a warm hug and then turns to embrace Ted. The television cameras zoom in, the still photographers push and shout and scramble. A shout of happiness and approval goes up from all the vast concourse.
Orrin links his arm informally through Ted’s and leads the way to the platform, through the dignitaries’ circle where friends and colleagues, opponents and supporters, greet them with an eagerly smiling, unanimous cordiality.
“It seems to be a happy day,” Orrin says quietly, words no longer overheard as the police hold back the press. “I’m glad.”
“So am I,” Ted says. “I think we have a great responsibility.”
“We do,” Orrin agrees. “I’m going to make a conciliatory speech.”
“I too,” the Governor says. “I had thought of sending it over for your approval this morning, but—”
“Oh, no,” Orrin says quickly. He smiles. “I trust you.” The smile fades, he looks for a moment profoundly, almost sadly, serious. “We’ve got to trust each other, from now on.”
“Yes,” Ted says gravely. “We must. I think we can.”
Orrin gives him a shrewd sidelong glance as they reach the steps of the platform.
“I have no doubts,” he says quietly.
“They’re going to need our help,” Beth says to Ceil as they, too, reach the steps and start up after their husbands.
Ceil smiles, a sunny, happy smile.
“I think,” she says with a little laugh, “that you and I can manage.”
The wild, ecstatic roar breaks out again as they appear together on the platform, standing side by side, arms raised in greeting, framed by the flags against the backdrop of the gleaming white needle, soaring against the hot, bright sky.
“Mr. Secretary and Mrs. Knox! Governor and Mrs. Jason! Look this way, please! Can you look over here, please? Mr. Secretary—Governor—Mrs. Jason—Mrs. Knox—this way, please! Can you smile and wave again, please?”
Finally Orrin calls:
“Haven’t you got enough?”
And from somewhere in the jostling tumult below them, of heads, hands, flailing arms, contorted bodies and cameras held high, there comes a plea of such anguished supplication that they all laugh.
“Please, just once more, Mr. President! All together again, please!”
“The things we do for our country,” Orrin says with a mock despair as they all link arms and step forward once more.
“Yes,” Ceil says happily. “It sometimes seems as though—”
But what it sometimes seems to Ceil at that moment will never be known, for they are interrupted.
No one in the crowd hears anything, no one sees anything. For several moments the import of the sudden confusion on the platform does not penetrate.
It is so bright and hot and sunny.
It is such a happy day.
They cannot quite comprehend, in that bright, hot, sunny, awful instant, the dreadful thing that has occurred so swiftly and so silently before their eyes.
It is not clear then, nor perhaps will it ever be, exactly what those who planned it had intended. But whatever they had intended, by some possibly inadvertent and unintentional miscalculation, they have accomplished more.
A husband and wife—but they are not the same husband and wife—stare at one another for a terrible moment suspended in time and history. Then she begins to scream and he begins to utter a strange animal howl of agony and regret.
Their puny ululations are soon lost in the great rush of sound that engulfs the platform slippery with blood, the Monument Grounds sweltering under the steaming sky, the two cities, the nation, the horrified, watching, avid world.
Edward Jason, Beth Knox slain … vice presidential nominee, running mate’s wife assassinated in Washington … secretary Knox, Mrs. Jason narrowly escape death in mêlée at monument grounds … police hold fake photographer suspect … nation’s leaders join in mourning governor Jason and Mrs. Knox … party thrown into confusion by loss of candidate … congress in recess … world appalled by new violence in U.S.…
And the second day:
Jason, Mrs. Knox lie in state at capitol … state funeral for both to be held tomorrow … secretary Knox, Mrs. Jason “improving,” remain in seclusion … presidential election scene clouded … party heads confer on new running mate for knox … anti-war elements restive at chance secretary may pick pro-war candidate … President Abbott reconvenes national committee for day after tomorrow …
And the third day:
Governor Jason, mrs. Knox interred at Arlington in somber state funeral … secretary, Mrs. Jason unable to attend … president says national committee faces “supreme responsibility” in choosing new running mate for Knox … furious political battle expected as pro-, anti-war forces seek to claim second place on Knox ticket … secretary’s son says he “must and will” choose his running mate … world still stunned by horror of double assassination as U.S. politics roars into high gear …
And life and history, as they must, go on.