Advise and Consent (70 page)

“I don’t think I will, Seab,” he said finally. “No, I don’t think I will.”

“He’s a mighty strong man,” Seab pointed out thoughtfully. “Mighty fierce temper, he’s got. He might do you a lot of damage if you persist in it, you know. He’s broken other men, and he wouldn’t hesitate with you, of that I am quite sure. Yes, sir, quite sure.”

“I know it,” Brigham Anderson said. “I’m aware of all that, Seab.”

“And you’re not afraid,” Senator Cooley inquired gently. Senator Anderson stared again out the window and spoke in a remote voice that still held an unyielding iron in it

“I was last night,” he said. “Maybe I still am today. I don’t know, Seab. But I don’t care anymore. I know what I’ve got to do and I intend to do it. However,” he added, and his voice suddenly became more personal, “I may need help.”

“I think you can get it from me, Brigham,” Seab said softly. “Yes, sir, I really do think you can get it from me.”

“Is that a promise?” Brig asked. Senator Cooley shrugged.

“I’ve said it,” he noted. “What did he threaten you with last night, Brigham?”

“He didn’t,” Senator Anderson said. “I don’t even know directly that he’s involved in it. Some anonymous well-wisher called my wife.”

“That I would expect,” Senator Cooley said calmly. “There is no end to the duplicities of that man. But you think you can withstand it.”

“I think, with help, I can withstand it,” Brig said. “I may not be able to force him to withdraw the nomination, now, but I think I can beat it on the floor. If you are with me, and one or two others.”

“There will be one or two others,” Seab said softly. “Oh, yes, Brigham, there will be quite a few more than one or two others.”

“And you will help me, no matter what charges may be made against me, and no matter what they say?” Brigham Anderson asked earnestly.

“Will the charges be true?” Senator Cooley asked calmly, and with a look that disclosed to him just how near the ragged edge his young friend was, Brig said in a low voice,

“They may be, Seab. They aren’t nice, but they may be. After all,” he added with a bitter dryness, “even I was human once.”

“Do they have proof?” Seab asked. Senator Anderson stared down at his mail, and a sudden impulse for understanding, a sudden desire for friendship, prompted an answer more candid than he might otherwise have given.

“Not so far as I know now,” he said. “I don’t see how they could have. There’s only one person in the world”—he stopped and then forced himself to go on—“only one person in the world who could furnish proof, and I don’t think that—that person would. I don’t even know if—if that person is still alive.”

“Well, then,” Seab said reassuringly, “I don’t think you should worry, Brigham. I think you can weather it. I think we can all weather it together,
and I think we can beat that man. Yes, sir, I really do, I think we can beat him thoroughly, completely, and with finality.”

“I hope so, Seab,” Senator Anderson said. “I hope so.” He hesitated. “I want to say one thing more, though. If the—the charges are made, I shall of course deny them, and they’ll be exaggerated enough, if they are made, so you can be sure that most of them will be false. But if they produce proof of even—of even one per cent of them, I want you to feel entirely free to abandon me. Because then,” he said with a lonely desolation that touched and alarmed the Senator from South Carolina, “I won’t be worth saving, anyway.”

“Now, sir,” Seab said firmly. “Now, sir, you stop that kind of talk, Brigham. I don’t want to hear any more of it at all. No, sir, I do not. There isn’t anything I haven’t seen or heard about or known of, or maybe”—he gave a sleepy grin—“maybe, to hear what folks have said about me over all these years, done, and I am not about to be shocked or horrified or flabbergasted like some silly little stupid mincing schoolgirl. No, sir, I am not about to be any of those things. So you can count on me, Brigham. You can surely count on me. I mean it. I do mean it, now.”

“Well, thank you, Seab,” Brig said, and the Senator from South Carolina could see he was profoundly moved by it, and again he felt alarmed, for what attack could possibly have produced such depths of emotion in his normally steady young colleague? “You don’t know how much I appreciate it. You just don’t.”

“Well,” Seab said comfortably, turning to what he had come to say, “I want you to know I am very pleased that you are standing firm, Brigham, because it is exactly what I should expect of you. In fact,” he added gently, “I should have been extremely perturbed—ex-treme-ly per-turbed—indeed, if I thought you would back down. It wouldn’t be like you, Brigham. It would upset everything if you did. You have no idea how much it pleases me to have you insisting on standing firm.”

“What would you do to me if I didn’t, Seab?” Brig asked with a grim little smile, for he had not expected to get out of this conversation without some little quid pro quo. Senator Cooley smiled again.

“Oh, probably not much,” he said casually. “Probably nowhere near as much as the President will try to do to you for standing firm. About all I could do, would be to charge that the two of you all had joined together in a conspiracy to cover it all up. That’s really all. Of course,” he said gently, “I could do quite a bit of talking about that. Quite a little bit.”

“How could we have done that?” Senator Anderson asked curiously, and Seab chuckled.

“Well, sir,” he said lazily, “you all could have cooked up this plan to send James Morton out of the country.”

Brigham Anderson’s eyes widened, and in spite of his tiredness and worry a little expression of ironic appreciation crossed his face.

“So it was you,” he said, “I might have known. How did you ever hit on that?’

“Well, sir,” Senator Cooley said, not without satisfaction, “I have learned a thing or two in this Senate over the years, indeed I have. But more than that, it was instinct. It really was. It just came to me, with a little study. You develop instinct if you stay here long enough. You’ll have it eventually yourself, if you haven’t already. It just takes time.”

“If I stay here,” Brig said slowly, and Seab smiled.

“You will be here many years, Brigham,” he said confidently. “You’re the kind of Senator who stays. Don’t worry about that.” He rose slowly to his feet and shook his coat into shape like a ponderous old dog. “I’m mighty glad we agree, because I wouldn’t want to have to attack you. I would do it if I had to, but I wouldn’t like it, because I am a friend of yours, Brigham. I really am. I hope you regard me so.”

“I do, Seab,” he said, and he meant it. “I do.”

“Well, sir,” Seab said, “I think that’s mighty fine. We’re together, and I’m proud of it, Brigham. Proud of it.”

And with a smile and a nod and a firm, enveloping handshake, he went on his way, a friend and a supporter and also the one other man on Senator Anderson’s side of the issue who knew about James Morton. If he were to let it ride, he was sure Harley and Bob would never say a word, but Seab most assuredly would. And so, he realized with a certainty that was both wry and deeply troubled, he was in checkmate. If he moved one way, the President was waiting, and he had already been given a taste of what that could mean. If he moved the other, Seab was waiting, and for all his friendship, which was genuine enough, the old man would not hesitate to act as ruthlessly as he knew how if Brig crossed him. Brig had no intention of crossing him, but just the same the thought was not too comforting in his present state of mind. He decided, after a few more futile attempts to concentrate on his mail, that if he was to get through the day with any sort of reasonable efficiency, he had better go over to the New Office Building, take a swim, and go up to the solarium and lie in the sun for a while until he felt more rested.

Walking through the Saturday-emptied corridors, he was pleased to find that hardly anyone was about, for this spared him the necessity of being bright and sociable when he felt like the devil. The same applied to the pool, which was deserted save for one attendant. He stripped, took a shower, methodically swam twenty laps, and crawled out. The atmosphere of a gymnasium, redolent of steam, disinfectant, sweat, and nakedness, made him think of things he didn’t want to think of, in fact hadn’t really thought of at all during the past twenty-four hours, even though they were of course central to what he was going through. With a peculiar mixture of melancholy and distaste he dried himself quickly, slipped into a pair of trunks, and went on to the solarium. He was both annoyed and relieved to discover that he was not to be alone there, for recumbent in the sun he saw the lean and craggy frame of Clement Johnson of Delaware alongside the mahogany bulk of Bill Kanaho of Hawaii. They were talking as he arrived, and for a moment he stopped in the door to listen, though he soon wished he hadn’t.

“—why that was necessary, I can’t see,” Bill Kanaho was saying. “I suppose you’ve heard the gossip that’s going around.”

“About Brig?” Clement Johnson said with a nod. “Sounds damned sinister all right. Damned unspecific, too, it seems to me, the damned smear artists.”

“Exactly,” Senator Kanaho said with an air of contempt “Do you believe it?”

“If I can understand what they’re talking about,” Senator Johnson said, “no, I do not. Do you?”

“No, indeed,” Bill Kanaho said. “You can hear any damned thing about anybody in this town if you listen long enough. I’d give a lot to know where it started, though, and who started it. That would explain a good many things.”

“The Press Club bar last night I imagine,” Clement Johnson said, “and somebody from the White House, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Or was it Freddy Van Ackerman?” Senator Kanaho suggested. “He hangs around there a lot, it’s such a good place to start things going.”

“Yes,” Senator Johnson said. “Or was it both the White House
and
Freddy?” he added, and Brig came forward from the doorway.

“I think it was,” he said easily, as his two colleagues started guiltily; but they were friends of his and no friends of either Senator Van Ackerman or the White House, so he smiled candidly. “I think they’re both out to get me on this,” he said as he stretched out a towel and lay down beside Bill Kanaho. “What do you think?”

“I think,” the senior Senator from Hawaii said comfortably, “that I’m getting much too fat and flabby. The days when I was an Olympic swimmer and able to surfboard all day long off Waikiki and Kailua are gone forever, I’m afraid.” He squeezed a roll of fat on his stomach and looked at it with a comical distaste.

“Too much fish and poi,” Clement Johnson said.

“And a few other things, I’ll bet,” Brig said. Bill Kanaho grinned.

“That’s right,” he said. “You know how it is out there, don’t you? Didn’t you say you were in Honolulu during the war?”

“I don’t remember saying it,” Brig said with an outward calm.

“Oh,” Senator Kanaho said in a puzzled voice. “Well, I heard it someplace.”

“Probably the Press Club bar,” Brig said dryly, and stretched his arms with an air of elaborate unconcern in the sun, though he knew very well that was quite likely exactly where it had come from, and felt suddenly sick inside.

“Maybe,” Bill Kanaho said. “You can hear anything there. Well, tell us, Brig, what’s going to come of all this, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Brig said slowly. “What’s your guess? It’s probably as good as mine.”

“I hope he’s going to withdraw Leffingwell,” Senator Johnson said. “It would simplify things greatly for the Senate.”

“To say nothing of me,” Senator Anderson said with a grim smile. Clement Johnson nodded.

“Yes,” he agreed. A helicopter droned over against the bright blue sky, a white cloud drifted far above. Muffled by distance the noises of cars and buses arriving and leaving at the Capitol came faintly up. The wind had died and the sun was hot. Clement Johnson spoke again.

“What are you going to do if he doesn’t, Brig?” he asked quietly.

“I think I’m going to fight it,” Brig replied with equal quietness. Senator Kanaho grunted.

“May get hurt,” he observed.

“I’m hurt already,” Brig said. “My wife got an anonymous phone call last night.”

“The hell you say!” Bill exclaimed, and Clement Johnson said, “The bastards!” indignantly. Brig shrugged.

“There are penalties as well as rewards in public life,” he said with a savage irony. “Or so I tell my high-school lads when they come here.”

“What was it about?” Bill Kanaho asked. “Or don’t you want to say?”

“It was about the same thing you were talking about, I imagine,” Brig said bluntly. His colleagues looked embarrassed.

“Don’t pay any attention to that damned nonsense, boy,” Senator Kanaho said. “I hope your wife didn’t, for God’s sake.”

“It wasn’t clear enough for her to understand,” Brig said. “It got her very upset, however.”

“
We
know there’s nothing to it,” Clement Johnson said, meaning to be helpful but embarrassing himself all over again at the way it sounded.

“Thanks,” Brig said. “I know you feel that way and I appreciate it. But you’re friends of mine. My enemies may not be so charitable.”

“You haven’t very many enemies, Brig,” Senator Johnson said encouragingly. “Honest, you haven’t.”

“One is enough in this town,” Brig said tersely, “if he sits in the White House.” Senator Kanaho sighed.

“It’s a tough situation,” he admitted. “Speaking of your enemies, and I guess he is one, now I remember where I heard about you and Honolulu. What do you and Fred Van Ackerman have in common, anyway?”

“You know we have very damned little in common,” Senator Anderson said. “Why?”

“Damnedest thing,” Bill Kanaho said. “He called me about 3 a.m. last night—no, night before last—and wanted to know if Miller & Haslett was still operating. Must have been drunk I guess.”

“Oh?” Brig said, and from somewhere far back down the years he was conscious of the first dismaying stirrings of a long-buried memory. “What’s that?”

“One of our big photographic houses,” Senator Kanaho said. “Freddy said he had been there once during the war and had his picture taken. He said he thought you once said you had, too.”

“Not together, I hope,” Clement Johnson said with a laugh, and Brig laughed too, though it cost him quite a bit for now another piece of the puzzle was beginning to fall into place. There flashed into his mind his conversation with Mabel about throwing out his old uniforms; could the picture have rested forgotten in one of them all these years, when he had thought it long since destroyed? And if it had, then it must have been placed with his papers on the desk, and from there it must have gotten to—whom? Surely not—but he knew with a sickening suddenness that it must be. No wonder the Justice had avoided him the last two days; no wonder his manner had been constrained with the constraint of a terribly burdened conscience. And what a burden it was, and how utterly alone it left the Senator from Utah feeling, that someone he had always considered a friend could betray him so completely. What was this nomination, that it could make decent men do such things to their fellows? The shock of this realization disturbed him even more than the thought of the photograph, though that was bad enough. He could remember little about it, except that he was sure that standing alone it didn’t prove very much: a picture, a casual inscription, a couple of buddies in uniform who had decided to have their photograph taken together. But this was small comfort, for its very existence would lend substance to gossip; and it was only with a great effort that he made himself relax and continue the conversation as casually as he knew he must.