Advise and Consent (56 page)

“You’ll see,” Senator Van Ackerman said coldly. “You’ll see. Yes, as I said, a strange and peculiar business, and I shall do what I can to expose it and bring the nomination of this great man to be Secretary of State to an early vote. There is something sinister and evil here, yes, sinister and evil.”

“I could name it,” the
Times
murmured behind his hand to the
Herald Trib
, and the
Trib
murmured back, “Strange and peculiar, too. Senator,” he said politely, “is that all?”

“No, it isn’t,” Fred Van Ackerman said. “I also want to announce that I have just heard from the national organizing committee of COMFORT in New York, and they have asked my assistance in arranging for a giant rally here this Saturday night in support of the nominee. I’ve checked the National Guard Armory and find that it is available, and it has been reserved for the rally. Starting time is 8 p.m.”

“Renting the Armory costs a small penny,” the
Denver
Post
remarked. “Who’s putting up the dough, Senator?”

“I told you, the national organizing committee,” Senator Van Ackerman said. “We expect to have cavalcades of cars converging here from as far away as Pittsburgh, Raleigh, and Cincinnati. It will be the biggest thing COMFORT’s ever done.”

“Why?” the
Washington Star
asked bluntly. Fred Van Ackerman looked as though any idiot would understand.

“Because we feel it is needed,” he said. “Because we feel that Bob Leffingwell needs our help. Because we feel the country wants him, and we’re going to see to it that the country gets him.”

“Will there be working space for the press?” AP asked practically, and Senator Van Ackerman smiled.

“We’ll take care of you,” he said. “You just come along out and see.”

“We’ll think about it, Senator,” the
Washington Post
said thoughtfully.

“Good,” Fred said. “Well, that’s all, unless you want to ask me some questions.”

“We get the picture, Fred,” the
Star
told him, and for a second he looked around in a strangely insecure fashion.

“Fine,” he said. Then his face hardened again as he turned to leave.

“You can be ready on Monday, Bob,” he said. “Just be ready. You too, Warren.”

“We’ll be ready,” the Majority Leader assured him as he left. “Now what do you suppose,” he asked the press in a wondering tone, “that all adds up to?”

“Trouble for you, I’d say,” AP suggested, and Senator Munson smiled.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said comfortably. “A vote he can’t win and a rally of crackpots? I don’t think so.”

“Don’t underestimate him, Bob,” UPI suggested. Senator Munson allowed himself to look a little impatient.

“I don’t underestimate him,” he said, “but for Christ’s sake, let’s all try to keep our sanity on this, shall we? We’re working it out with Brig, and I expect he’ll be seeing the President before the afternoon is over, and then everything will be all right—”

“May we quote you on that, Senator?” the
Trib
interrupted, and Bob Munson waved a generous hand.

“Sure,” he said. “Now run along.”

“Let’s get this straight,” UPI said carefully. “You expect Senator Anderson to go to the White House this afternoon and that a satisfactory solution will be worked out then. Can we expect an announcement later?”

“Check with me around four,” Bob Munson said, aware as he made the suggestion that there was something he was supposed to do at four, but it had slipped his mind for the moment, and anyway, it could probably be put off. “I think I’ll have something for you then.”

“Thank
you
, Mr. Senator!” the
Washington Post
said happily, and they rose in a body and took flight back to the elevator, up to the gallery, and to their typewriters where they began banging out their stories.

Left alone in the glittering gold room, the Minority Leader looked rather skeptically at the Majority Leader.

“That was going a little far just to top Fred Van Ackerman, wasn’t it?” he asked. “How do you know Brig will agree to see him this afternoon?”

“We’ll work it out,” Senator Munson said comfortably. “Orrin’s got Lafe working on him, and he’ll come around
....
Damn, now I remember.”

“Remember what?” Senator Strickland asked.

“I knew I had something at four,” Bob Munson said. “Tommy Davis wanted to come over and see me about Brig, too. Well, it should all be settled by then, so that won’t be any problem. He’ll be pleased to be in on the press conference when it’s announced.”

“You’re suddenly awfully confident of Brig,” Warren Strickland said thoughtfully, “when you were so doubtful before. Why this sudden switch all of a sudden? Have you anything to go on?”

“Just the caliber of his opposition,” Senator Munson said as they left the President’s Room and started to walk down the stairs to the restaurant. “He’s so far above what we’ve just seen that somehow I just feel in my bones that it will work out all right. He doesn’t have anything to worry about, really, and neither do we. Aside from Fred, we’re all reasonable men.”

But in this, as they came up with Bob Randall of New Jersey and Jack McLaughlin of Georgia in the hall and formed an impromptu foursome for lunch, he perhaps was not entirely correct; for shortly after Fred Van Ackerman got back to his office and shortly after the news stories had gone out over the wire, a call came from the White House. He just wanted to congratulate Fred, the President said casually, on his support of the nomination, and why didn’t he drop down sometime at his convenience and get better acquainted? Much flattered, the junior Senator from Wyoming promised that he would.

There was a clamor in the street, a stirring in the driveway, several cheerful honks on a rather loud horn, and in a clash and a clatter and a sleek red convertible with the top down the junior Senator from Iowa arrived with an air.

“Uncle Lafe!” Pidge cried, dropping the ball and trotting across the lawn as fast as she could go to leap into his outheld arms.

“How’s my girl?” he asked, giving her a big kiss and then promptly putting an arm around Mabel and giving her one, too. “I should say, how are my girls?”

“I swear,” Brig said with amusement, surveying this happy scene, “from one to ninety, you get ’em all, don’t you, pal? What is this fatal charm?”

“Good looks,” Senator Smith said modestly. “Native intelligence. Innate gentility. Animal magnetism. SEX. They all enter in. How are you, buddy? You look a little peaked.”

“I do?” Senator Anderson said in a tone of such concerned surprise that his colleague laughed.

“No, you don’t,” he said disarmingly. “You look fine for a man who’s holding the whole world on his shoulders like Atlas. Doesn’t he look fine, Mabel?”

“He always looks fine to me,” Mabel said in a tone that made the Senator from Iowa look at her more closely.

“Now, see here,” he said, tilting her chin and examining her eyes intently. “That’s no way to act on a beautiful day like this.”

“He has fatal charm, too,” she said, gesturing toward her husband and starting to get watery again. “Oh, damn!” she added, vigorously dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Damn, damn!”

“My goodness!” Lafe said with a startled laugh. “That’s strong language for you, lady. What’s been going on here, anyway?”

“Nothing that kindly, wise old Uncle Lafe can’t put to rights, I’m sure,” Senator Anderson said. “Anyway, it’s all over now.”

“That’s right,” Mabel said, continuing to wipe her eyes rapidly. “I was just worried, but I’m not anymore.”

“She was just worried, boo hoo, but she, boo hoo, isn’t, boo hoo, any more,” Lafe said mockingly. “Boo hoo.”

“Well, I can’t
help
it if I’m weepy,” Mabel protested, beginning to laugh, and in a second they were all laughing together, and blowing her nose vigorously and giving her eyes one last dab, she put the handkerchief away and seemed herself again.

“That’s better,” Lafe said. “You’ve got a hell of a nerve beating your wife, Senator. I guess it’s time I came and took you away.”

“I’ll go quietly, Senator,” Brig promised. “What did you have in mind?”

“
Women,
” Lafe said fervently, and in the midst of their renewed laughter Pidge spoke up in a clear, thoughtful tone.

“Mommy,” she said slowly, “Uncle Lafe’s funny, isn’t he?”

“I guess that tells you,” Senator Anderson said with a chuckle, and Senator Smith looked dignified.

“Your daughter knows entirely too much,” he said, suddenly raising her above his head, “for her age,” he concluded, depositing her in an ecstatically squealing heap in her mother’s arms. “How about Normandy Farms? I feel as though we were two-thirds of the way there already, you live so far out.”

“Spring Valley isn’t far,” Mable objected.

“And anyway, it’s fashionable,” her husband added. “As all get out.”

“You wanted to live here, too, because it was near the Knoxes,” his wife reminded him, and he laughed.

“Let’s get out of here before I start another family argument,” he suggested. “Take care of yourself, you two,” he said, kissing Mabel quickly and stooping to do the same to Pidge. “I expect I’ll go along to the office after lunch. You can tell Bob and Orrin and the President, but don’t tell anybody else.”

“I won’t,” Mabel said. “Have a good time.”

“We will,” he said, and for a moment his eyes held hers with some expression she could not understand, one of the many she could not, and never had been able to, understand. “Be of good cheer,” he quoted softly. “The troops are with me.”

And he turned away toward the car as Lafe too gave her a farewell kiss. Abruptly she reached out and took his arm tightly.

“I’m worried for him,” she said simply, like a little girl who can’t pretend. “I’m afraid of what they’ll do to him. Help him. He—he won’t let me.”

Lafe gave her a sharp look and frowned.

“Stop that,” he said quietly. “You’ve got yourself all worked up over nothing. We’ll take care of him. He has lots of things going for him, and not the least of them is you.”

“I wish I could believe it,” she said in a lonely voice, and he gave her hand a quick, impatient squeeze.

“Mabel,” he said. “Stop it. You know the pitfalls in that kind of talk, so stop it. We’re going to have a good lunch and get this thing all straightened out and he’ll be a hero again by tomorrow morning. You wait and see.” And he gave her hand another squeeze, more gently this time. “Now, relax,” he said. “Bye, Pigeon.” And he tousled Pidge’s hair and gave her a hug.

“Hey!” Brig called from the car. “Stop smooching my women and come along. I’m hungry.”

“Right,” Lafe said. “Just have to keep in practice, is all. Take care, gals. I’ll see you again soon.”

And he gave them a wave, leaped in, turned on the ignition and started to back out with a dramatic roar; remembered suddenly that this was a street where children lived, slowed his pace so abruptly it almost drove his passenger into the back of the seat, and inched carefully out in a cautious crawl.

For a time after they turned onto River Road and headed at a leisurely pace toward Normandy Farms restaurant fifteen miles out from the Capitol in the rolling green Maryland countryside filled with the sights and sounds of spring, they were silent. It was the Senator from Utah who finally spoke.

“I wish she didn’t take things so intensely,” he said, staring out at the green fields, the white barns and fences, the Black Angus cattle dotted here and there among the trees and emerald grasses. “It makes her so vulnerable. I don’t mean to hurt her, I try to do what seems best, but lately it always seems to be winding up in tears and trouble. Maybe you have the right idea, after all. Heart whole and fancy free, and so on. Maybe you’re right.”

“I don’t know,” his colleague said with a rather rueful grin. “I was thinking as I came through town on my way out, and do you know, it’s getting so I can’t travel ten blocks in Washington without passing three places where I’ve made love. It’s a hell of a depressing thing when a town gets all filled up with memories of your one-night stands. I think I’ll move out.”

“Sure, sure,” Brigham Anderson said skeptically. “I can see you moving out any time before the voters of Iowa ask you to. Well, then, maybe you don’t have the right idea. Maybe you should get married, even if I’m not such a good example at the moment.”

“You’re a good example,” Lafe said. “You’re a fine example. Sweet girl for a wife, sweet girl for a daughter. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Brig said, frowning at the gracious countryside going by. “Peace of mind and a heart at rest I guess. Is that too much to ask for?”

“No, of course not,” Lafe said soberly. “It’s what all men ask for. Most get reconciled eventually to not finding it though. Maybe that’s your trouble. You haven’t really accepted the bargain you made.”

“What bargain?” Senator Anderson asked, but he could see his companion meant nothing more by it than a casual comment.

“Getting married,” Lafe said. “Settling down. Being a pillar of society. Not catting around like me all the time.”

“Is that how you find peace of mind and a heart at rest?” Brig couldn’t resist asking, and his colleague smiled in a surprisingly bleak way.

“No, sir,” he said. “I don’t. That’s why I still think you have the right idea and the ideal set up, not me. After all, what’s sex, when you come right down to it? Right time, right place, right mood, right company, there’s nothing more wonderful; but how often does that ideal combination of factors come about? Not very damned often, it seems to me on the basis of rather thorough study. And I imagine that’s true even in marriage, right?”

“After a while,” Senator Anderson said. “Except that marriage has a way of renewing itself from time to time. So if it’s so all-fired stale for you what keeps you going?”

“Oh, you keep going through the motions,” Lafe said, “hoping. And
after all,” he added with a sudden grin, “the motions aren’t so unpleasant.”
Then he looked more serious. “But about you and Mabel—”

“Yes?” Brig asked.

“Are you sure it’s—” Lafe began and then paused in a rare moment of hesitation.

“What?” his colleague asked. “All her fault were you going to say?”