Advise and Consent (71 page)

“No,” he said, “I can’t really think Fred and I were together. And is the company still in business?” he asked Bill Kanaho. The senior Senator from Hawaii nodded.

“Gone downhill some in recent years, as I told Fred,” he said, “but it’s still there.” And for just a second he looked very quickly and shrewdly at his young colleague with the appraising, dispassionate curiosity of a thousand years of China and Japan and Malaysia and Polynesia that had come out of the far reaches of the Pacific to settle in the Islands and produce one day a Senator of the United States. “Can’t imagine what Fred had in mind,” he added comfortably as Brig shrugged and rolled over.

“I can’t either,” he said. “Too bad you didn’t ask.”

“Oh, why should I bother trying to find out what’s in that queer little mind?” Senator Kanaho asked impatiently. “All it’s good for is to make trouble.”

“That’s right,” Senator Anderson said grimly, “and it’s making quite a bit for me.”

And even though they both urged him heartily not to let it upset him, and promised again their full support in whatever he wanted to do, he could feel their speculative eyes upon him half an hour later when he picked up his towel and went down again; and he realized then the cruel shrewdness of his adversaries. It was not the battling on the floor, the fair fight in open contest in the national forum where he held membership that would wear him down; it was the gossip, the speculation, the be-hind-the-hand talk and the sidelong glances, the anonymous phone calls and the dirty letters, if they should come—all the sneaking cruelties of really brutal political in-fighting. There were men in Washington right now to whom this process had been applied, and although they walked around as though they were alive they were dead inside. It was not a fate he wanted for himself, nor could he contemplate the possibility of it without a shudder
....
He wondered as he went slowly in a brown study back to his office what would come next to add to the pressures he was under, and how he would face it; for his talk with Bill and Clement, with all its intimations of vicious personal gossip that he now knew was running through the town had quite effectively erased any relaxation he might have gotten from his swim. He was as tired and tense now as he had been before. He wondered desperately whether there was to be an end to it or whether it would just continue to wear him down until he broke under it. That, he gathered, was the intention.

In his office he was aware at once that something was out of the ordinary, for the two girls whose turn it was to take Saturday duty looked excited and upset as he came in.

“We didn’t know where to put him, Senator,” one of them told him hurriedly, “and we thought the press might come in and you wouldn’t want them to see him here, so we took him right on into your office.”

“That’s good,” he said automatically. “That was very smart. How long has he been here?”

“About fifteen minutes,” the girl said. “He looks just like his pictures,” she added earnestly.

“I should hope so,” Brig said with a smile as the humor of this cryptic conversation began to strike him. “He doesn’t have a gun, does he?”

The girl looked shocked.

“Oh my, no,” she said. “Oh no, sir!”

“Fine,” Brig said gravely. “I shall beard him single-handed.” He went on into his private office, expecting to meet at least a crooner or a movie star. He was quite unprepared for the man who rose to greet him, and he took occasion to gain time by closing the door slowly and carefully behind him before he spoke.

“Hi, Bob,” he said finally. “I’m sorry you had to wait I hope the girls made you at home.”

“They were very discreet,” the nominee said with a little smile. “They
hustled me right on in here as though I had just robbed the Riggs Bank. You have them very well trained.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” he said, “but it was wise under the circumstances. Sit down, Bob. We won’t be disturbed.”

“I don’t expect I’ll take long,” Bob Leffingwell said, “but I thought perhaps we should talk.”

Senator Anderson looked at him thoughtfully.

“I expect we should,” he agreed, “but there’s one thing I want an honest answer to first. Are you here because the President sent you?”

The nominee looked puzzled.

“I am not,” he said firmly. Brig continued to stare at him for a moment and then nodded.

“Very well,” he said, relaxing a little in his chair, “I believe you.”

“Why did you ask?” Bob Leffingwell inquired. “Or can’t I be told?”

“There’s been a pattern,” Brig said slowly, “and I thought you might be part of it. I’m sure you know about it, at any rate.”

“I know very little,” the nominee said, and the Senator could see he meant it. “You saw everything there was to see at the banquet; he hasn’t called me since, and I haven’t called him. I went straight to my office yesterday and stayed there all day, took no calls from the press, and saw nobody outside my immediate staff. I came here this morning straight from home. So you see I couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about.”

“I believe you,” Brig said again. He smiled for the first time, somewhat cautiously. “You’re being very discreet yourself,” he observed. Bob Leffingwell smiled too, offered him a cigarette, which he accepted, and lit one for himself.

“I decided the best thing for me to do was lie low,” he said. “After all, I don’t know what this is all about.”

“Is that why you came to see me?” Senator Anderson said. “To find out?”

“That was part of it,” Bob Leffingwell said. “And,” he added thoughtfully, “because we are two rational men who seem to have gotten involved in an unpleasant situation and I thought possibly if we could talk it over privately away from outside pressures we might work out a solution that would make sense to us both. Does that seem so unreasonable?”

Brigham Anderson sighed.

“If you and I are rational about this,” he said with a tired smile, “we’re the last two men in the world who are.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” the nominee said, “but I did want to talk to you. I gather that you must know something very bad about me. It is very disturbing to me, I won’t pretend it isn’t.” He frowned. “Disturbing to my wife too,” he added. “Some crank called last night and got very vituperative over the telephone. You know how these things are, they always bring that element out.”

“Oh yes,” Brig said bitterly. “I know how these things are. Somebody called my wife last night too, only it wasn’t just a crank. It was someone with a deliberate, calculated, cold-blooded plan to destroy me through her. That’s why I asked if the President sent you. I thought it might all be part of the same scheme.”

“No,” Bob Leffingwell said. “Well. I’m sorry to hear that.” He leaned forward curiously. “Tell me, Senator,” he said. “Why are you opposing me?”

Brigham Anderson looked at him, handsome, gray, and distinguished, appearing to be quite tired—had he too been wakeful in the night? Probably—and decided there was no point in anything but candor.

“Because I got a call from James Morton,” he said, not knowing what reaction this might produce in the self-possessed figure before him but feeling there was nothing to be gained from softening his words.

For whatever satisfaction it was to him, and in his strain and tiredness it wasn’t so very much, he could see that the impact had been almost as great as the one he had suffered last night. His visitor paled and sat slowly back in his chair, his hands gripping its arms so hard the knuckles showed white. It was several minutes before he spoke and when he did it was in a voice that had become deeply weary.

“So you know,” he said.

“Yes,” Brig said, “I know. Do you think it justifies me in opposing you or do you not?”

The nominee sighed and relaxed a little in his chair.

“I suppose,” he said, “looked at from your standpoint, it does.”

“I know how it is looked at from your standpoint,” Brig said dryly, and regretted it the moment he spoke, for he knew at once that it had cost him his advantage, but he was too tired to be careful and it just came out, “because the President explained it to me Thursday night.”

He was aware that the room was very still and that Bob Leffingwell was leaning forward again slowly.

“Let me get this straight,” he said carefully. “You told the President about this?”

“I felt he had a right to know,” Brig said, for there was no point in evasion now.

“And what did he do?” the nominee asked, still in the same careful fashion.

“He told me he would withdraw your name,” Senator Anderson said.

“In those words?” Bob Leffingwell said, and Brig knew his last chance of winning the battle was slipping fast away.

“Those were my words,” he admitted. “He agreed to them. Or,” he added bitterly, “I thought he did.”

“And that was Thursday night,” Bob Leffingwell said slowly. “Thursday night and this is Saturday afternoon.” A growing excitement began to enter his voice. “So that’s why he sent him abroad yesterday,” he said. “He’s going to stand by me. He wanted him out of the way because he’s going to stand by me.”

“How do you know,” Senator Anderson asked with a fair semblance of scorn, “when you haven’t heard from him?”

“He’s standing by me!” the nominee exclaimed triumphantly. “Of course he is! Then
why,
” he demanded, his voice turned vigorous and cold with a rising anger, “should I be afraid of you?”

At this all the tiredness and strain of the past forty-eight hours, his feeling of being harried and hounded and boxed-in, the growing knowledge he was very likely fighting in a lost cause, suddenly created a reckless anger in the Senator from Utah, and he spoke with a fury as cold as the nominee’s own.

“Because, by God,” he said, “I’m going to beat you if it’s the last thing I do. You’re a liar and a cheat and a double-dealing son of a bitch, and you aren’t fit to sweep up the Capitol, let alone be Secretary of State. I know what you are and I’m going to tell the whole wide world. Now get the hell out of my office. I’m sick of the sight of you.”

His visitor stood up, and it was quite apparent that he was holding himself under control only with the greatest difficulty.

“Very well,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’m going. I came here to try to reason this out, but you don’t want to be reasonable. If you think you can beat me, try and be damned to you. You can’t beat the President.”

“Go out that door right there,” Brig said coldly. “I wouldn’t want the girls in the front office to see you and decide we’d been having a row.”

“I will,” Bob Leffingwell said unevenly. A sudden hard gleam came into his eyes.

“Where is Senator Van Ackerman’s office?” he asked.

“There’s a list on that card hanging on the door,” Senator Anderson said shortly. “Look it up.”

“All right, I will,” the nominee said, his voice still uneven, and with a finger that trembled he traced down the list of names and suite numbers.

“Twelve thirty-one in the New Building,” he said after a moment, and Brigham Anderson nodded.

“I hope you find him in,” he said grimly.

“I hope I do,” said the nominee.

After the door closed the senior Senator from Utah remained for a long time standing by his desk. He felt dull and sick and savagely regretful. He shouldn’t have antagonized Bob Leffingwell when he had come to him voluntarily, he shouldn’t have been so stupid as to abandon his advantage, he shouldn’t have been so quick to anger, and no matter how tired and ill and unhappy he felt he shouldn’t have allowed the pressures he was under to provoke him to the point of unseemly and uncharacteristic invective. He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t. But he had, and if there had ever been any real hope that this unexpected confrontation might offer a way out, it was too late to salvage now. Presently he sat down again with a small, lonely sound of tiredness, pain, and frustration. He was beginning to feel strung tight as a wire. The tension was increasing, and there was no let-up in sight.

He sent one of the girls to the cafeteria for a couple of candy bars, ignoring her surprise that this was all he wanted for lunch, and got them down as best he could; knowing they weren’t enough, but unable to stomach more in his taut and uneasy condition. Then he returned to his correspondence, knowing with a grimly ironic certainty that before long he would get two phone calls. He guessed that Fred Van Ackerman’s would come in about half an hour and the President’s in about an hour after that. He was 15 minutes early on Fred, but otherwise it went just about as he had expected. Their conversation was brief and to the point and neither of them wasted any time on false courtesies.

“Leffingwell is here,” Fred said. “He says you won’t give in.”

“Does he?” Brig said, and added sardonically, “You’re sure he’s a trustworthy source.”

“Don’t get smart,” Fred said with a trace of anger. “This is too serious for that. Do you know what I have?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Senator Anderson said, trying to sound calm and aided by a cold distaste for his colleague.

“It doesn’t look good,” Senator Van Ackerman observed.

“Doesn’t it?” Brig asked.

“Oh, stop it,” Fred said impatiently. “You know damned well how it looks, because the way it looks is the truth.”

“Is it?” Brig said.

“Yes, God damn it,” Senator Van Ackerman said angrily. “I think you’d damn well better give in.”

“Who are you kidding?” Brig demanded with a scorn he didn’t feel, but contempt for Fred lent it substance.

“You don’t think that’s all I have, do you?” Fred inquired with the sort of phony menace he liked to throw into his questions when he faced a bothersome witness in committee.

“Why don’t you play cops and robbers with somebody else, Fred?” Senator Anderson asked. “I’m not interested.”

“God damn it,” Senator Van Ackerman said. “Are you crazy? I have it, God damn it. I’m warning you for the last time.”

“Warn away,” Brig said. “I wouldn’t deal with you if you were the most reliable man on earth, and nobody’s ever called you that.”

“I tell you what,” Fred said with a jeering friendliness. “Suppose you just listen to my speech to the COMFORT rally tonight. It’ll be interesting, Brig, boy. I’m going to tell them all about it.”