Advise and Consent (15 page)
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Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Genre Fiction, #Political, #Contemporary Fiction
“It’s our contention,” said John Winthrop of Massachusetts in his dryly twinkling way, “that the nation prefers quality to quantity.”
“That’s no way to build post offices,” Bob Munson observed.
“Or conduct a foreign policy either, hm, Bobby?” Winthrop of Massachusetts suggested. Senator Munson made a face.
“It must be nice to have all the fun and none of the responsibility,” he said, and John Able Winthrop snorted.
“I never heard it put with such classic simplicity,” he said. “I only wish you’d tell me how to vote, if it’s as simple as all that.”
“I could tell you,” Bob Munson said, “but you wouldn’t listen.”
“I might,” Winthrop of Massachusetts said. “I may. But not yet awhile, My Yankee ancestors caution me to go slow on this one.” He clucked between his teeth in a parody of his Yankee ancestors and smiled blandly at the Majority Leader. “Yes siree bob, Bob,” he said.
“You and your Yankee ancestors,” Senator Munson said. “I wonder if your grandfather and mine had all these headaches when they sat in the Senate together from Massachusetts.”
“First World War?” Senator Winthrop said. “I guess they did. Probably felt the end of the world had come then, too.”
“I suppose,” Bob Munson said. “Only this time it probably has. Where’s Warren, Win? I thought I’d find him in here.”
“He’ll be back shortly. He got a call from the White House and decided to take it in his private office down the hall.”
“The White House?” Senator Munson said. “The President’s really working, isn’t he?”
“Didn’t he tell you he was going to call Warren?” John Winthrop asked in surprise. “I thought to hear Paul Hendershot talk that the two of you were in cahoots in some big plot to stampede us.”
“When did anybody ever stampede the Senate?” Bob Munson asked, and his tone was sufficiently wistful so that Senator Winthrop laughed.
“You sound as though you wished it were possible, Bobby,” he said. “What’s the matter, is life getting complicated?”
“It wasn’t so very at noon,” Senator Munson admitted, “but it is now. Anybody made any estimates over here?”
“Just what Warren says he told you this morning,” Senator Winthrop said. “It hasn’t changed much since then.”
“Maybe Seab has increased the tally some,” Senator Munson suggested, making the sounding he had come over to make; Senator Winthrop showed an expression of distaste.
“Seab,” he said, “is overdoing it already. I knew he would, but not this soon. That stuff goes big with the galleries, and you can see what the press is making of it”—and he held up the final edition of the
Star
with a banner headline reading SENATE IN BITTER ROW ON LEFFINGWELL—“but it doesn’t go big here. At least not with the old hands who count.”
“Well, I hope not,” Senator Munson said thoughtfully, peering out through the glass of the doorway into the Senate chamber just in time to see Albert G. Cockrell of Ohio go sweeping by with his slickly handsome good looks, his covey of adoring aides, and his hot-pants yen for the White House, “I hope not.”
“Anyway,” Allen Whiteside spoke up with a chuckle from across the cloakroom, “you know the Minority can always be convinced by a sound and logical argument from you, Robert. It’s like the dentist said to the salesgirl in Woody’s lingerie department—”
Bob Munson held up a hand.
“Not today, Al,” he said in a pleading tone. “I’m too weak to stand your little funnies. All I want is your lousy vote.”
Senator Whiteside gave one of his total laughs that started at the top of his head and worked down gradually, with many secondary earthquakes and other seismological disturbances, through his ample paunch to the tip of his toes.
“Ho, ho, ho,” he chortled like some cynical old Santa Claus who had been around for a long time, which he had, “do you now? And what will you give me for that?”
“I didn’t come over here to bargain,” Bob Munson said. “I just had to slap Charlie Abbott down about that sub contract and I’m not about to come over and bargain with the Minority when I won’t bargain with my own side.”
“You’ll bargain, Bob,” Allen Whiteside said shrewdly. “Not right now, but you’ll bargain. The day’s going to come, on this one.”
“We’ll see,” Senator Munson said. “What are you reading, Verne?”
“The
Federalist
” Verne Cramer of South Dakota said in his lazy, half-mocking way. “I take a refresher course in it about once a year, right after I reread the unexpurgated
Arabian Nights.
What’s on your mind?”
“Ha,” Bob Munson said tersely. Senator Cramer laughed.
“Tell the Prez to call
me
,” he suggested. “Maybe
I
can be had, with the right persuasion.”
“Ha,” Bob Munson said again, and looking once more through the glass into the chamber he finally saw Warren Strickland appear down the center aisle, tap Irving Steinman on the shoulder with a smile, and reclaim his seat at the Minority Leader’s desk.
“Take care,” Senator Munson advised the Minority cloakroom’s inhabitants, and went down to take back his own seat from John J. McCafferty. The ancient junior Senator from Arkansas was asleep, which didn’t matter because Taylor Ryan had the floor for an hour’s time on the Federal Reserve bill and was droning along in his sleek Princetonian way. When Senator Munson touched Senator McCafferty on the arm the old man jumped and looked up with a sheepish smile.
“Sorry, Bob,” he said apologetically, rising somewhat shakily to his feet. “Just dropped off. Taylor isn’t—he doesn’t—well, you know Taylor. I just dropped off.”
“No harm done,” Bob Munson said with a smile. “I would have, too. By the way, where’s Arly Richardson?”
“Haven’t seen him all day,” said Arly’s colleague. “Probably cooking up hell someplace.”
“For me,” Bob Munson said, and the old man chuckled thinly.
“Wouldn’t know, Bob,” he said. “Wouldn’t tell if I did know.”
“Thanks, John,” Senator Munson said. “Don’t get caught pinching the waitresses.”
Senator McCafferty looked startled, then laughed so violently Senator Munson thought he would fall down.
“Better that than some other ways, Bob,” he said between chokes of laughter. “Better that than some others!”
“Bring me some of that goat-gland extract, will you?” Bob Munson requested. “I could use it.”
But at this Senator McCafferty was completely overcome, and gesturing Bob Munson away with a gnarled and withered hand he went laughing and choking and wheezing and chuckling and staggering back to his desk at the side of the room while Senator Munson watched and marveled that he could make it without falling down.
The afternoon was drawing on apace, he noted, and he was beginning to get that restless, impatient feeling he usually did around 5 p.m. It ought to be time to quit pretty soon, and he was ready for it. He hunched his chair across the aisle to a place alongside Warren Strickland’s and leaned against his arm confidentially.
“I hear you got the word,” he said, and the Minority Leader smiled.
“I see you hear I got the word,” he said blandly.
“Was there anything I should know?” Senator Munson asked. Senator Strickland looked even blander.
“Just a chat between old friends,” he said, “on the parlous times in which we live.”
“You told him how many votes you could deliver for him,” Bob Munson suggested.
“I estimated how many votes I could deliver against him,” Warren Strickland said. “He seemed startled but undismayed.”
“That’s my boy,” Bob Munson said.
“I told him the Administration could probably make some headway on this side of the aisle,” Senator Strickland said seriously. “Particularly if Seab keeps on performing.”
“And Orrin doesn’t join him,” Bob Munson said glumly.
“Orrin?” Senator Strickland asked, surprised. “He certainly didn’t sound much like it this afternoon.”
“Orrin is a fair-minded man,” Senator Munson said, “but he didn’t commit himself to anything
....
Let’s get out of here,” he added abruptly. “It’s almost five and we’ve all got to get ready for Dolly’s.”
“I’m game,” Warren Strickland said, surveying the floor which now was empty of everyone save Taylor Ryan, Murfee Andrews, Julius Welch, and a handful of clerks and pageboys. “Taylor ought to be just about through.”
And so, in five more minutes, he was, concluding with a spiteful flourish that threatened to provoke Murfee and Julius into lengthy rejoinders. Senator Munson, however, was on his feet in a flash asking for recognition, and Harley Hudson, back in the Chair for the concluding moments of the session, hurriedly gave it to him.
“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said firmly, “I move that the Senate stand in recess until twelve noon on Monday next.”
“Without objection,” said Harley, banging his gavel, “it is so ordered,” and at once the pageboys began leaping about the chamber, shoving papers into desks, banging desk covers, shouting and calling to one another again in the big tan fishbowl of a room as the last tourists left, the press gallery emptied out, and the Majority Leader and his few remaining colleagues moved slowly out the doors.
***
Chapter 6
Night had come down on the District of Columbia, and with it clouds and a biting wind carrying promise of snow. The bright day Dolly had witnessed at 10 a.m. through her bedroom window had succumbed to the erratic climate of the nation’s capital and the most chronically frustrated Weather Bureau in the world was already hedging its bets with the cautious prediction that there might possibly be a blizzard if, of course, it didn’t clear. In private homes from Chevy Chase to Falls Church and from Westmoreland Circle to Forest Heights, department heads, agency employees, clerk-typists, secretaries, professional people, military folk, members of the press, lobbyists and what-have-you, and their wives were putting last-minute touches on the parties to which they had invited other department heads, agency employees, clerk-typists, secretaries, professional people, military folk, members of the press, lobbyists, and what-have-you, and their wives. Out among the embassies the Belgians, the Ceylonese, the Rumanians, and the Dutch were getting ready to entertain at lavishly decorated, lavishly catered receptions that would be attended by representatives of all the other embassies in town with which at the moment, they happened to be on speaking terms. In hundreds of giant apartment houses thousands of government girls were about to descend in thousands of self-operated elevators to meet thousands of government boys for a night on the town; and on Ninth Street and other drab haunts of Washington’s incorrigibly small-town sin, little aimless groups of sailors, soldiers, airmen, and marines from nearby bases had just begun to wander about looking for wine, women, and a place in which to enjoy them. Under the swinging chandeliers in the great white portico at Vagaries the Cadillacs, the Chryslers, the Chevvies, and the Fords were driving up to discharge their chattering, self-important cargo, the men encased in tuxedoes like a stream of glistening beetles, the women gussied-up fit to kill.
Night had fallen on the capstone of Western civilization, and sex and society were on the move.
For Dolly, standing just inside the door as the first car drew up, this was always one of the most exciting moments in life. It was even more so in Washington, where one never knew who the accident of timing would bring to one’s doorstep first. She played a little superstitious game with herself which usually proved out—the first arrival or two would set the tone of the evening, whether it was to be basically political, diplomatic, or just social. This time fate contrived the obvious by depositing both politics and diplomacy on the stoop at once: Bob Munson arrived in his tired old Buick just as Krishna Khaleel rode up with a flourish in the Indian Embassy’s sleekest chauffeured Cadillac. Senator Munson turned his car over to one of the parking attendants as K.K. got grandly out, and after an effusive greeting they advanced together upon their hostess.
“Ah, you see?” the Ambassador cried gaily. “I was wise to come early, you see; I am the chaperone of our dear Dolly and her gallant Senator.”
“I’m sure all sorts of terrible things would have happened if you hadn’t been here, darling,” Dolly said coolly, taking his hand and drawing him in. “We do appreciate it so.”
“I don’t,” Bob Munson said. “I resent it, as would any red-blooded American youth.”
“You,” Dolly told him, “are undoubtedly Washington’s most dazzling humorist.”
“Ah, you Senators,” K.K. said airily, moving on into the fern-decked hallway. “You and Hal Fry. All I get, all day long at the UN, is Hal making jokes. For me, at me, about me, but always jokes, jokes, jokes. If we had Senators in my country they would be less frivolous. They would realize life is a serious matter, for us poor Asians.”
“We all sympathize with you, K.K.,” Bob Munson said, “and of course we regret our own levity, too. I know Hal just wants to lighten your heavy load for you with an innocent jest now and then. He can’t help it if he isn’t properly reverent.”
“There you go,” K.K. sighed. “Just like he is. I think you are laughing pleasantly with me and suddenly you bite. It is disconcerting, you know?”
“Dear old K.K.,” Senator Munson said expansively, seizing him by the arm as Dolly turned away to greet the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of the Army, and an Assistant Secretary of State for something-or-other, and their wives, “do come in here someplace and let’s talk it over privately.”
The Indian Ambassador gave him a shrewd sidelong glance and smiled dryly.
“Yes, dear old Bob,” he said, “I know you wish to talk privately, and you wish to talk about your problem, Mr. Leffingwell. But I have already discussed this unfortunate, for you, matter with dear old Hal, who I know was on the telephone to you five seconds after to tell you what I said, and I really fail to see why I should discuss it any further with dear old Bob.”
“Have a drink,” Senator Munson said, steering him toward a bar in one corner, “and don’t be any more stubborn than you can help.”
“Really,” K.K. said in a different tone, and for a second Bob Munson was afraid he had gone too far, you always had to watch it with the Indians, they were always so alert to see an insult in everything and take umbrage at the slightest excuse, “really, Bob, I try not to be stubborn, I do indeed. It is simply my way of saying that there is really nothing I can
say to you that would in any way make clearer my already clear exposition to your good colleague from West Virginia.”
“He seemed to have a very firm grasp on what you meant,” Senator Munson agreed, “but I’d like to hear it, too. What do you want, scotch or bourbon?”
“Scotch and soda, please,” K.K. said, and Bob Munson ordered it and a bourbon and water for himself.
“Now,” he said against the glad greeting cries of Dolly, three generals, an admiral, the counselor of the Brazilian Embassy, and the Secretary of the Interior, and their assorted wives, “what have you folks got against Bob Leffingwell?”
The Indian Ambassador sighed, watching the rapidly-filling room with shrewd appraising eyes.
“That Hal,” he said. “Why does he think we have anything against your able Mr. Leffingwell? I am afraid I must not have made myself clear to him after all. I wished to indicate merely that we were proceeding with caution, which of course is necessary in this distraught world in which we live. I did not wish to indicate distaste, although apparently that is the interpretation given you by your attractive colleague.”
“Then you’re for him,” Bob Munson said quickly, and K.K. sighed again.
“Honestly,” he said, going into one of his more petulant moods, “does nothing I say make sense to anyone? Mr. Leffingwell is a difficult and controversial man. In some ways he is excellent, but in some others, of course, not so excellent. In general I would say we are for him, except when it comes to those features of character and interest which, of course, might dispose us to be against him. On the whole, I think that is our position,” he said thoughtfully; and then, with firmness, “Yes, I am sure of it. You may count upon it.”
“Well, thanks so much, K.K.,” Senator Munson said. “You know how helpful this is in our thinking about it. Because seriously, you know, if anyone has a really violent dislike for him, it would have some bearing on what the Senate does. We don’t want to confirm someone who starts with a dozen enemies abroad to begin with; he’ll make enough as he goes along without an initial handicap. So I’m glad you’re not hostile.”
“Oh no,” K.K. said, and suddenly he laid a hand on the Majority Leader’s arm and said sympathetically, “We do not wish to complicate your problem, dear old Bob. I shall talk about it to my colleagues, you know. Our paths will cross sometime during the evening somewhere in this delightful house. There will be some clarification of views, perhaps. There will perhaps be other clarifications as the days go by. Then we will know better where we all stand. If the Senate wishes then to know our opinion, strictly unofficially, of course, why, we will probably have one.”
“Stated in English?” Senator Munson couldn’t resist, and the Ambass-ador gave him a rather wintry smile.
“Since that is the language of our past, our present and, it would seem, our future,” he said, “that is what it is most apt to be. And now I must circulate, dear Bob, and so must you. That is half our business, circulation, is it not?”
Senator Munson sighed in his turn.
“It is,” he said. “Take care, K.K. See you later.”
“
Arrivederci,
” the Indian Ambassador said with a pixyish expression and moved off toward a South American enclave that was beginning to form near one of the buffet tables. As he did so Bob Munson became aware of a reproving presence near at hand; large plump body, large dark face, large liquid eyes looking with wistful reproach: the Pakistani Ambassador. He sighed again, involuntarily, and cursed a small private curse at the burden of world leadership that made life at Washington parties a constant careful navigation between bruisable egos, vulnerable feelings, and quivering national prides. He did not, however, intend to talk to the Pakistanis yet a while, and so with a bright smile and a quick, “Good evening, Mr. Ambassador, don’t leave before I get a chance to talk to you, it’s important”—uttered with hearty haste before the Ambassador had a chance to do more than begin an uncertain half smile and start tentatively forward—he took his drink and moved slowly off through the growing crush toward Howard Sheppard, the outgoing Secretary of State, who had come in a moment before with his little gray wisp of a wife and now was standing near one of the bay windows with his usual drooping, uncertain, melancholy look. This was heightened by the inevitable he’s-on-his-way-out atmosphere that was already beginning to surround him. This inexorable attrition of prestige, which could reduce a man’s influence in Washington overnight, was now at work on the outgoing Secretary; the greetings he was receiving were just a little vague, a little absent-minded, a little oh-so-you’re-still-here; the fervent cordiality of yesterday was giving way to the half-puzzled, half-forgetful greeting of tomorrow. Although his resignation for reasons of health had been announced weeks ago, he had been around so long as Secretaries of State go that it had not seemed really final until the President named a successor. Now he had, and Howard Sheppard was occupying that lonely position of men in Washington who yesterday were all-powerful but today are only men. His expression changed from wan to a little less wan when the Majority Leader approached.
“Bob,” he said, putting a little more strength than usual into a normally languid handshake, “how nice to see you. Grace dear,” he added to the slight little figure he had carried with him through law practice, the governorship of Ohio and seven uneasy years in Foggy Bottom, “you remember Senator Munson,” and Grace said of course she did. Bob Munson felt he must say something to relieve the encircling gloom and offered the first thing that popped into his head.
“Well, Howie,” he said expansively, “you must be glad to be getting out of this rat race.” Then he remembered hastily that of course Howie wasn’t and tried to make amends.
“We’ll miss you,” he said firmly. “Your hand on the helm has held us steady, Howard. We’re going to miss it more than you know. I hope you’re not going to be leaving Washington? Surely you’ll stay close by and let us have your counsel from time to time?”
“I don’t think,” Secretary Sheppard said with a sudden flash of unexpected and uncharacteristic bitterness, “that
he
gives a damn whether I stay here or not.
He
hasn’t taken my advice on anything in six months.”
“Oh, now,” Senator Munson said soothingly, “I’m sure you’re mistaken, Howie. Why, he told me only this morning—”
“I don’t care what he told you,” Howie said morosely, taking a deep gulp of his Manhattan, “it was just words. Why do you think I’m quitting, Bob? This is strictly between us, you understand, but
he
wanted me to. I’m not sick, I’m sound as a dollar. But
he
said something about wanting to try a new approach with the Russians and maybe he should have a new face to do it. I’ve done everything I could to work out an accommodation with the Russians and I could have tried again, but
he
wouldn’t have it and I couldn’t refuse. I don’t know what this means for the country.”
“Continued good diplomacy, I hope, Howie,” Senator Munson said.
“I hope,” the Secretary said darkly.
“Well, I’m disappointed to know you feel this way, Howie,” Bob Munson said, and he really was, because Howie still had quite a few friends in the Senate and some of them might listen to him, “because I was counting on you to help me with the nomination.”
“Bob Leffingwell?” the Secretary asked in a tone so harsh that Grace murmured, “Now, dear,” in a worried way. “I wouldn’t help him for anything.”
“I hope that won’t be your final answer, Howie,” Bob Munson said earnestly. “There’s too much involved—”
“You’re damned right there is,” the Secretary said bluntly, “and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the Senate doesn’t make a mistake about it.”
“I’m sure it won’t,” Senator Munson said, with a certain coldness coming into his voice, “if you appear before Foreign Relations as the opening witness and testify in his behalf.”
“I’ll never do that,” Howie Sheppard said angrily and Bob Munson stared thoughtfully into his highball glass.
“I think you will, Howie,” he said gently. “I think I will ask the President to ask you to, and I think he will, and I think you will. I don’t want to get blood on Dolly’s oriental rug,” he said, and his voice dropped chattily to a confidential level, “but you’re not a rich man, Howie, and you don’t really want to leave diplomacy, and I know it as well as you do. The post of special ambassador to NATO is going to open up soon, as you know, and the President was asking me only the other day if the Senate would confirm you for it. I told him I thought we would. You’re sixty-seven years old, Howie, and it would be a very pleasant way to spend your later years, a good salary, a good social life, enough association with our allies to keep your hand in. I want you to have it. I want the President to give it to you. I think I can promise he will, but he certainly won’t if you’re not up there tomorrow morning crying your little heart out for Bob Leffingwell. Which you will be, Howie. I’m sure you will be.”