Advise and Consent (27 page)

These musings, which were not much different from similar musings he had indulged in many times before, were, he realized beginning to make him feel tense and upset and he knew he shouldn’t let himself get into that state. Not that he had anything to worry about concerning his own health—he wondered about the President, though; Bob had been so elusive about it on Friday, and Harley wondered nervously if there had been anything definite behind it—but after all, it
was
only one heartbeat, in truth, and he should keep calm about it, because if anything happened to that heartbeat and then anything happened to
his
heartbeat, the Speaker would succeed to the Presidency and Harley was damned if he was going to turn the country over to that crafty and self-satisfied gentleman. He might be worried about his own position, he might have feelings of inadequacy, he might be fearful of what would happen if the President died, but by God, he wasn’t that fearful. The job was his, the Constitution said so, and nobody was going to take it away from him, by God.

Just at that moment the phone did ring and he jumped guiltily, for he had gone on instantly to reflect that of course the only one who could take it away from him in that eventuality was the Lord Himself and the phone call in its unexpected sharpness seemed almost like an admonitory reminder from on high that he had jolly well better remember the fact. But when he picked it up it was to hear one of his secretaries announcing calmly that the Secretary of State was in the outer office and would like to see him. “Show him in,” he ordered and sat down hurriedly behind his mammoth desk, where he began reading thoughtfully through the only paper on it, a copy of the Senate Calendar of legislative business which he had read a thousand times before. When Howard Sheppard was ushered in he glanced up with a look of quick alertness that didn’t fool the Secretary very much and rose with an air of expansive greeting.

“Well, Howie,” he said, “this is a pleasant surprise. It’s always good to see you.”

“Mr. Vice President,” Howie said formally, “you’re looking well.”

“I’m feeling well, Howie,” the Vice President said comfortably. “I’d say you weren’t looking so bad yourself. You must be beginning to anticipate that retirement a little.” And then, like the Majority Leader, he realized that this was a delicate subject, flushed a little, and changed it abruptly.

“Sorry we missed you at Dolly’s the other night,” he said. “We went to La Salle du Bois beforehand and Ethel ate not wisely but too well, as you can do at that excellent place, and so we left earlier than we’d planned. I hear Bob Munson and the others got into quite a hassle with our ambassadorial friends. Were you there?”

“No,” Howard Sheppard said rather sharply. “It’s getting so nobody ever tells me anything anymore.”

“Well, now, Howie,” the Vice President said comfortably, “I don’t think there’s any reason for you to feel that way. I’m sure it all developed very spontaneously and there probably wasn’t time to invite you. I wasn’t invited either, for that matter.”

“Oh, well,” the Secretary said with an off-hand moroseness. “But
I’m
the Secretary of State.”

The Vice President looked decidedly miffed, and when he replied it was with a certain sharp enjoyment he would not otherwise have shown.

“Not for long, Howie,” he said crisply. “Not for long.” Then he added, as his annoyance grew with the full impact of the Secretary’s casual dismissal, “What brings you to me this morning? I’m in sort of a hurry.”

“It’s the Russians and the Indians,” Howie Sheppard said, oblivious to the effect of his previous remark—No wonder the President’s firing him, Harley thought. He’s certainly no diplomat!—and looking rather puzzled by the tidings he was bearing.

“What about them?” the Vice President inquired, his annoyance going rapidly as he thought he perceived a chance to be helpful. After all, Howie couldn’t help his mood; it was tough to be ignored and fired. Nobody could fire
him
, he reflected complacently.

“They want to see you,” the Secretary said.

“See
me?
” the Vice President asked blankly. “What on earth for?”

“I don’t know,” Howard Sheppard said. “All I know is that Vasily Tashikov came in to see me late Saturday afternoon and asked me to set up an appointment for him. At nine o’clock this morning Krishna Khaleel dropped by and asked the same thing. I didn’t get the feeling they’d consulted each other about it. I think they both just got the same idea at the same time.”

“What idea?” Harley Hudson asked sharply; the Secretary looked bland, and less puzzled.

“The idea to see you,” he replied calmly.

“But why should they want to see me?” the Vice President asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Howard Sheppard told him suavely, and Harley decided he was a good diplomat, after all. He decided his own course should be complete frankness.

“Are they afraid the President is going to die?” he said bluntly. The Secretary started to look shocked and then thought better of it.

“That is always a human possibility,” he said.

“My God, this town!” Harley Hudson said in a wondering tone. “The way an idea can travel, particularly if it’s something somebody thinks is bad news for somebody! What on earth do they have to base that on?”

“No more than you do,” the Secretary said.

“I haven’t got anything,” the Vice President said firmly.

“Not even a hunch?” the Secretary inquired dryly.

“Vice Presidents always have that hunch,” Harley Hudson said, deciding that intimacy had gone far enough; an old friend like Tom August was one thing, Howie Sheppard on his way out was another. “I wouldn’t be true to type if I didn’t. The last time I saw him he looked fine.”

“How long ago was that?” the Secretary asked.

“Last Wednesday,” the Vice President answered promptly, and it was the truth, for there had been a National Girl Scouts’ ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House, and the girls had invited him to attend. A quick mental photograph nicked through his mind, the erratic day shifting between cold rain and weak sun, the President’s thin hair whipping in the icy breeze, his look of genuine, fatherly pleasure, and just the faintest impression of—what? He could realize now why he had been vaguely worried ever since. It was nothing you could put your finger on; he just looked a little tireder than a President, even a busy President, ought to look. But that might be nothing at all that a vacation on the Keys couldn’t cure, and he decided he had better do his best to counteract this racing rumor before it got entirely out of hand.

“He looked tired,” he said, “and I imagine when you saw him last he looked tired too. He probably
is
tired. But he’s been tired before and snapped back in no time, and I’m sure he will again. I think what he needs to do is get to Key West again, and I’m going to suggest it to him. Why don’t you do the same, Howie, and maybe if we all do he’ll listen and take our advice. Because I think he needs it, don’t you?”

“I’ve told myself that was it,” the Secretary agreed, “and I will suggest it when I see him again. In the meantime, what about Tashikov and K.K.?”

“Next week sometime,” Harley Hudson said. “If we set it up too fast
they’ll think there’s something in it, and after all, Howie, we don’t really want them to, do we?”

The Secretary looked suddenly sober.

“No,” he said, “we don’t.”

“You fix it up,” the Vice President said. “Toward the end of the week sometime.”

“Very well. How is the nomination going?”

“Hearings in the subcommittee this morning,” Harley said. “Well know better by the end of the week.”

“I did my duty,” Howie remarked in a cold tone, “so I’m out of it, thank God.”

“The Administration appreciates that, Howie,” the Vice President assured him. “We’ll remember it.”

“Hmph,” the Secretary said, with no other comment, and rose to go.

“Don’t say much to those two,” he advised, and Harley Hudson smiled reassuringly as they shook hands.

“I’ll be as discreet as you are, Howie,” he said. The Secretary gave him a sharp look as he left which only increased the warmth of the Vice President’s smile.

But after Howie was gone and the door had closed and he was alone in the room, a stricken look came suddenly upon his face.

“Oh, my God,” he said in a helpless voice to nobody in particular. “Oh, my God.”

Standing to take the oath in the glare of the television lights, his back straight, his right hand held up with no more than a normal quiver to it, his eyes looking candidly into those of the chairman, the focus of all their troubles appeared outwardly to be his usual calm, unhurried, businesslike, self-possessed self. Seab had managed to draw first blood, it was true, but the director of the ODM had a very fast recovery time, and when he took the stand he had already regained any composure he might have lost in the Senator’s unexpected and pointedly challenging greeting. This lean-faced, dignified, graying, perceptive man exposed to his countrymen in the fateful moment when he moved to the ofttimes terrifying isolation of the congressional witness stand looked ready for anything. He also looked like what he was, a highly trained and highly competent public servant. It was easy in that moment to see why he held both the loyalty and the antagonism of so many, why so many were so passionately involved in his nomination, and why, among other reasons, the President of the United States had chosen him to be Secretary of State. He looked the part.

“Do you solemnly swear,” Senator Anderson inquired formally, “that the statements you give to this subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do,” Bob Leffingwell said firmly.

“Please be seated,” the chairman said, adding dryly, “If the photographers will kindly remove themselves to the sidelines now and leave the witness a clear channel, so he can see the subcommittee and vice versa, we will begin
....
The nominee’s record and background are in the record of the full committee on Saturday, which will be incorporated with this record, so there is no need to have them again here. If the witness has any preliminary statement he wishes to make, we will be glad to hear it, and then we can go into the regular alternating order of interrogation—with other Senators, I think, free to interject any inquiries that may occur to them as we go along.”

“Oh, oh,” the
Chicago Tribune
murmured. “A free-for-all, eh?” “I don’t quite get Brig’s game yet,” the
Newark
News
responded. “Distraction through diversity?” the
Washington Post
suggested. “Harmony through hullabaloo,” the
Washington Star
proposed.

“Mr. Leffingwell,” Brig said politely, “is there anything you wish to say before cross-examination begins?”

The nominee leaned forward and with a slow, thoughtful gaze looked from face to face, including that of the senior Senator from South Carolina, while the room became quiet. It was a gaze returned with equal interest by the six men before him, and when it was finished he folded one hand upon the other and began to speak in a grave, well-modulated voice.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said. “Senators: Senator Cooley: I have been thinking, since the word came to me last Thursday night of the President’s decision to nominate me for the great office of Secretary of State, how I might best express to you my awareness both of the honor and the profound responsibility which it entails. And the words that have come to me are poor indeed. I might say that I am honored, yet this one might say if he were nominated for any job; I might say that I am humbled, yet that too is standard talk. I have concluded that the words available in the English language are at once too mundane and too sense-worn to do the office justice. As for honor, it honors me, but far more must I honor it. On that, the way is clear: I shall honor it by what I do, or I shall honor it not at all.”

“Speaking of the English language—” The
Times
whispered. “He helped to write it,” the
Birmingham
News
whispered back.

“The responsibility?” Bob Leffingwell went smoothly on. “Greater, I think, than one man can adequately bear; which is why, Mr. Chairman, I shall make it my first duty to consult with your committee, and with its great sister committee in the House, on all broad aspects of policy and decision which may come before me. The constant aim of my predecessor, as it has been the constant aim of every farsighted Secretary of State, has been to work in the closest possible co-operation with the Congress; this will be my aim too. I shall not fail you in that, Mr. Chairman; on that you have my word.

“For the rest,” he said, “the times will guide me. We are embarked, it
seems to me, upon an era of great and far-reaching change throughout the world. To come to safe harbor in such an age requires all that mortal man can give, and beyond it, the guidance of Almighty God. That He will aid me in my labors I can only pray, and pray I will.” He paused and then resumed in a deeper, more earnest tone, while the press took hurried notes, the subcommittee listened attentively, and only the busy whirr of the television cameras broke the silence in the big marble room.

“No man charged, as I will be charged to some substantial degree, with the guidance of this dear land and her protection amid the dark controversies and fateful conflicts which flare all across the globe in these desperate days, could do otherwise. God my solace and my strength, I will do my best to help her safely home.”

And he leaned back slowly while the audience burst suddenly into loud and prolonged applause. Brigham Anderson let it run for a minute or two and then rapped sharply for order. When he got it he bowed slightly to the nominee and spoke in a tone of equal gravity.

“Those are sentiments which do you credit,” he said, “and we are pleased to have them. Were nominations a matter of principles enunciated and hopes expressed, were the word sufficient and the deed of lesser import, many and many a hearing such as this could end at just this point with some such sentiment as you have just expressed.”

“Brig knows English too,” AP noted. “Many people on this Hill do, when they’re pressed for it,” UPI replied.