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Chapter 3

There were, of course, other perspectives on the night.

Not as simple as Walter’s, a portly man at a big desk overlooking the floodlit Washington Monument told himself ruefully as he put down his knife and fork and stared at the fluffy pink-and-white matron eating opposite from a TV tray, was the White House perspective.

For Harley M. Hudson, who actually had the responsibilities Walter and his world thought they did, life was never a simple matter of fears, slogans, and the arbitrary consignment of people and issues to categories labeled with automatic little words. For him life was real and not a shadow play of ego and ambition that led to standing tall in Georgetown. The President of the United States had to stand tall before his country, mankind, history, and his own conscience. He did not find the last particularly difficult, but the other three were sometimes not so easy.

He sighed, a little heavily, and Lucille Hudson gave him an appraising glance.

“Now what are you worrying about? Surely not about being President, again.”

“Am I worrying?” her husband said mildly. “I didn’t realize it.”

“Oh, of course you are. I can always tell. And really there’s no cause for it. If Walter Dobius makes a speech and nominates Ted Jason, what of it? Walter isn’t the convention.”

“Walter is part of it,” the President said. “A substantial part.”

“He can’t stop you,” Lucille said calmly. “You know that.”

“I know that,” the President agreed. “He can’t stop me because I’m not going to be in a position to be stopped, since I won’t be running—”

“Oh, stuff,” his wife interrupted. “Of course you’re going to be running.”

“I gave my solemn pledge to the Senate and the country when I moved in here that I was retiring at the end of the term. And I am.”

Lucille Hudson sniffed.

“Solemn words are all right for solemn occasions. But later one has to get down to what’s really practical.”

“Oh, one does, does one?” her husband inquired with a sudden humor. “You’re certainly getting to be a cold-blooded politician, I must say. Where did you learn all that?”

“Right here in this house,” she said. “It does that to one.”

“Yes,” he agreed, abruptly sobered. “It does. Nonetheless, I have given my word—”

“Harley Hudson,” she said, and her faced dissolved into the twinkling little smile which, combined with her rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, roly-poly figure, and infallibly sweet disposition, had long ago prompted Helen-Anne to bring forth her famous private description of the First Lady as “a meringue enigma wrapped in whipped cream inside a marshmallow sundae”—“Harley Hudson, I don’t care how many people you’ve given your word to, the facts are the facts and they’re going to produce exactly the situation I’ve always known they would. They’re going to force you to be a candidate for re-election.”

“I really don’t want the job, you know,” he said mildly. She chuckled.

“Look me straight in the eye and say that,” she commanded. He obliged. She chuckled again.

“I could almost believe you if I weren’t your wife. Ted and Orrin are going to eliminate each other and then there’s going to be you. There’s got to be. So I don’t really see why you don’t step in right at the beginning, right now, and say that events have forced you to reconsider and you’re going to run. It would save everybody so much wear and tear.”

“Can’t you hear Walter Dobius and his friends if I did?” the President inquired with a sudden grin. “Poor Walter would have a stroke, he’s so dead set on getting Ted in here. About as dead set,” he added, the grin deepening, “as you are to get me in here.”

“But you are here,” the First Lady said comfortably. “That’s the difference.”

“I really think,” he said with a smile, “that you think it’s just a picnic. Any normal wife would be worried about the wear and tear on me. She would want me to retire and take it easy. She wouldn’t want me to continue to knock myself out in the world’s most thankless job—”

“I know it isn’t a picnic,” she said. “I’m not a fool. It’s just that I believe in you and in what you are doing for the country. Furthermore, Harley Hudson,” she added indignantly, “ever since you went to Geneva and defied the Russians the country’s worshiped you and you know it. So don’t give me Poor Old Harley. You love it.”

His smile broadened.

“Some segments worship me, but I haven’t noticed too many hosannas from Walter and his friends. They’ve had to go along with the general mood, but you’ve noticed all the careful qualifications in the columns, broadcasts, and editorials. They don’t like anybody to get really tough with the Communists. It upsets them.”

“They’re worried about the bomb,” the First Lady said. He made a skeptical sound.

“And I’m not? My God, I eat, sleep, think, and dream the bomb twenty-four hours a day.”

“I know you do. You needn’t swear about it. That’s the only thing I regret about this office. You use more profanity than you used to.”

The President gave a delighted laugh.

“Lucy, you take the cake. I wish I could reduce everything to the fundamental level you do.”

“How could you?” she inquired with her sudden little twinkle. “You’re a man. Now: why don’t you announce at your press conference this week?”

“I don’t think I’ll have one. I think I’ll lie low this week and let Walter and Ted and Orrin produce the fireworks. Anyway, as I say, I have nothing—absolutely nothing—to announce.”

“You can’t sit still,” his wife said. “History won’t let you.” The buzzer on his phone sounded sharply in the big, cluttered room. “There’s history, now.”

“No it isn’t,” he said, reaching for the phone. “It’s Orrin. But I guess he’s history, too. Hello?”—he nodded across the desk with a confirming smile—“yes, put him on … Hi … Why, sure. I thought we had pretty well decided on policy in that area but if you’d like to come by and talk about it again, there’s nothing doing here tonight, as you know. We’re just having a quiet snack in the upstairs study. I don’t mind talking about problems some more, it’s all I—Oh, it’s you you want to talk about?” He chuckled. “My friend, I could never have guessed. O.K., come along. I’ll be here. Right. In fifteen minutes.... There, you see?” he said, turning back to his wife. “I don’t need to move. I can sit still. History comes to me in this house. I don’t have to go after it.”

“Harley Hudson,” she said, rising and preparing to depart for the family quarters, “if I hadn’t already bet with you, I’d bet with you again: come next January you will be right here, right where you are this minute, after being re-elected by a landslide. It’s inevitable.”

“Inevitable’s a big word.”

“If anything is,” she said, concluding a conversation she would recall many times later, “you are.”

“Well, don’t tell Walter,” he said with a grin. “He couldn’t stand it.”

She came around the desk and kissed him goodnight.

“I’ll let you tell Walter. He only listens to people on his own level. Don’t be too late, now.”

He nodded.

“I’ll try not to. But it depends on the Secretary of State.”

Alone in the room that held so much history, in the house where history lived, he sat for a moment after she had gone, staring out at the Monument where it rose imperious and shining into the snow-swept night. The storm was beginning to slacken a little, the savage gusts blowing out of Virginia and the west were dying, soon it would be over and the soft muffling silence of a cold white world would settle over Washington. It was a little late in the year for it, hopefully spring would come tomorrow, but tonight and probably for the rest of the week the capital was still in the grip of the weather, and the mood, of winter.

And not a very happy mood it was or had been, he thought with an uneasy grimness, still reflecting as it did the savage stresses and strains created by his successful confrontation with the Communists at Geneva a year ago and the many problems flowing from the crisis that had arisen six months after in both the United Nations and the United States over the visit of H.R.H. Terence Wolowo Ajkaje the M’Bulu of Mbuele.

When he had walked out on the Soviets at Geneva, in the most decisive action any American President of recent decades had taken with the Communists, the world had not known for some hours whether it would die or live. It had lived, but on different terms and on a different basis from those existing before the Chief Executive had reasserted his country’s integrity in the face of an outright ultimatum from its most implacable opponent.

When the M’Bulu, the Communists, and the more childlike and irresponsible of the Afro-Asian nations had almost succeeded in censuring and expelling the United States from the UN because of its racial problem which the M’Bulu had deliberately inflamed, the reaction within America had been violent and grave indeed. Walter Dobius and his world might argue with a suave desperation that the United States was undoubtedly to blame and therefore should stay in the UN in order to keep the Afro-Asians happy and well-financed while they went about their carefree business of destroying the fragile bonds of world order, but all their millions of words had not been sufficient to stem the tide of feeling in the country. The UN, as always, had been the UN’s worst enemy; and not all the bugaboos of possible disaster should the UN collapse, raised by Walter and his world, could conceal the organization’s built-in death-drive from a proud and impatient people increasingly convinced that the United States was always destined to get the short end of the stick and increasingly unable to accept the argument that the United States must always be cheerfully willing to.

Upon the President, however, there rested a higher obligation than the powerful carping of Walter’s world on the one side, a stronger imperative than the rising impatience of so many of his countrymen on the other. It was true that the UN was in sad disarray, that not all the Right Thinkers in the world could conceal the fatal irresponsibility of its new and inexperienced members, that its sickness infected all of international relations with a cancer second only to that of Communism itself. The argument could not stop there. Weak and wavering as the United States itself had been toward the organization over the years, sadly as its leaders had allowed themselves to be persuaded on a thousand occasions that they must not act with firmness because it might offend some little power that might not like them, still there was something to be gained by keeping the UN alive, and staying in it. Or at least there was something to be gained by an orderly termination, if history, brushing aside the dreams, pretensions, and fears of men, should find termination inescapable.

He was not ready to write the UN off yet, however, ragtag and bobtail hodgepodge of nations and non-nations though it had become. There was still some glimmering, feeble hope of reformation, some last faint possibility that its raucously brawling members would realize at the last moment that every time they weakened it or twisted its rules to satisfy their anti-colonialist hysteria they were only weakening themselves and making more certain the road to their own extermination. Without the UN, most of Africa and Asia would die under the new Communist imperialism, yet every day most of Africa and Asia did everything they could to make the UN die. They were fools, the President thought impatiently, history’s greatest fools, and saying that they were still just children was no excuse.

It was time, and past time, that they grew up.

This was perhaps the major headache that would face the next man to sit at this desk, that and of course the never-ending struggle with Communism itself. He had read in many a column by Walter Dobius, he had sat right here last Thursday night and heard him say it in person, that the old fears of Communism were now out of date, that a new era had dawned, that it was no longer wise or even, he gathered, fashionable, to be suspicious of the Russians, the Chinese, and all their vicious little hangers-on around the globe.

He could not in all honesty see how Walter got that way. He could remember these wildly welcomed “new looks” before, these oft-recurring and quick-dying “new eras,” the trade, the visits, the desperate attempts—by the West, not by the Communists—to pretend that the basic drive had changed; the determined and unending campaign by Walter and his world to make their countrymen believe that it was somehow stupid and unfair to continue to be suspicious of a system that was absolutely and irrevocably dedicated to the death of their country as a free nation and themselves as a free people.

He could remember all this, and he was not impressed.

These eagerly and repeatedly hailed softenings of Communism that were no softenings at all were the Potemkin villages of the Western mind, or at least that portion of it influenced by “Salubria” in Leesburg. Not one single item of hard fact in more than half a century gave corroboration, yet day in and day out, week after week, year after year, Walter and his friends reiterated their contention that Communism was changing, that it was becoming “mature and civilized,” that its practitioners were really human beings as kindly as could be and not human machines dedicated to the destruction of every decency in the world.

Well, he had not fallen for that standard weakness of Presidents which had led most of his predecessors to fancy that their own personal charm, devastating and infinite as it always was, would be sufficient to divert Communism from its irrevocable purpose. The naïve belief that a personal chat could solve everything had not been his. His own confrontation had come in the first week of his Presidency. The stars had been knocked out of his eyes at once and permanently. Thank God for that. It enabled him to read with the skepticism they deserved the suave exhortations to weakness put forth by Walter’s world.

Since he could not, aside from some few examples which were known or whispered about in Washington, believe that a majority of those who peddled this line were actually traitors to their country, the President could only conclude that their arguments sprang from a terrible and pitiable fear. They were actually, apparently, so afraid of the consequences of having their country stand up for what she believed in that they would go to any lengths to persuade her to abandon it and crawl away—crawl away, though they professed indignantly not to see it, straight into the darkness the Communists were readying for them.

Again, it seemed to him that a sizable portion of the society he had to deal with should grow up. He could not afford to be patient much longer with children who played so irresponsibly with the heritage of freedom they had been given.

Well: soon, at any rate, he might be able to lay down this burden and let someone else worry about it. If, that is, he could be sure that the hands into which it passed were suitably strong and suitably equipped, by experience and belief, to carry it.

And right here, he realized with a wry little smile as he looked about the private office where he had already faced so many crises and which had already become so familiar to him in the short space of a year, he was entering the realm of the Rationale of Presidents.

“Let’s face it,” he said aloud with a humorous air to the silent room, “nobody can handle this job better than I. I don’t want anybody to handle this job better than I. I don’t want anybody to handle this job but me. Period. Exclamation point. And twenty-five little stars and asterisks.”

That was the truth of it when you came right down to it, just as the First Lady knew, with her feminine logic that was so disinterested in the rationalizations of mere men. If he permitted himself to entertain the thought just a little longer, just a very little longer, he would run again because he had convinced himself that no one else was capable and he simply had to run again. It was as simple as that.

But I can’t do it, part of his mind objected, because I gave my word. But, another part objected, your word to preserve and protect the country that you swore when you took office is more important than any word you gave anyone else. And anyway, it added, how could Orrin or Ted or anybody do the job as well as you can with all your experience?

One year’s experience, the first part said scornfully.

But more than any other living soul has, the other part rejoined.

Very well, then, the first part said, what do we have to face now? We have Felix Labaiya hurrying home to Panama, which he thinks we don’t know—but the White House has unexpected ways of knowing things, and we do. And what does that mean? Certainly nothing pleasant for the United States, if Felix’s past performances are any indication.…

And we have Gorotoland, where Terrible Terry’s cousin is raising hell aided by the Russian and Chinese Communists, and where American missionaries at the All-Faiths Hospital near the capital of Molobangwe, and the new Standard Oil installation up-country, may both be seriously threatened at any moment.

And we have our formal warning, issued by me a week ago to Terry’s cousin, His Royal Highness Obifumatta Ajkaje (“Prince Obi” in Walter’s fatherly columns and the world’s headlines), telling him that his trumped-up “People’s Free Republic of Gorotoland” had better stay clear of American nationals and American property—and we have, as a result of that, fifty wild speeches in the General Assembly, a thousand condemnatory blasts from Walter and his world, and tomorrow’s Security Council meeting to consider “American imperialist aggression.…”

And we have the problem of maintaining the American installation on the moon which was established a year ago in the midst of the turmoil over Bob Leffingwell’s nomination to be Secretary of State. And the question of whether Clete O’Donnell and his “One Big Union,” which controls much of the work at the Cape, are going to permit a needed refueling and crew-replacement ship to go, or whether they are going to strike and hold up the government for some political purpose, which is how Clete likes to use his power.…

And the latest screaming by Indonesia at Australia in their running feud, a feud increasingly serious now that Djakarta has renewed its alliance with Peking.…

And the strong likelihood of a British election soon, which could mean new problems there.…

And such intriguing domestic mysteries as who will line up with whom, what coalitions will be formed, what concentrations of power be created or disbanded, in the shifting, whirling, clashing fandango of the coming campaign.…

And so, forever and always, inevitably and inescapably until it is settled, back to the question of who will sit in this house.

For a patient man, he told himself with a wry little smile, he certainly seemed to be impatient about a lot of things. But then, there were a lot of things to be impatient about. The ubiquitous buzzer sounded again. Lifting the phone, he was informed that one of the principal ones was on the way up in the elevator. He frowned for a moment, but when the Secretary of State entered he found the President propped back in his chair with his hands folded comfortably upon his ample stomach, regarding him with a kindly, welcoming smile.

The Secretary’s reaction, as Scab Cooley had once described it in the midst of one of their many legislative battles in the Senate, was Orrinesque.

“I must say that’s a happy picture,” he remarked with a certain amicable asperity. “How do you manage it?”

“By having a clear conscience and always doing right,” the President responded. “Don’t you think I always do right? Some people don’t think so, but I do.”

“Mmmhmm,” Orrin Knox said, dropping with accustomed ease into one of the big leather armchairs, draping a leg over one arm, facing his superior with a quizzical air, “I don’t think Walter Dobius thinks so.”

“Oh, good heavens,” the President said. “Haven’t we got better things to worry about tonight than Walter?” He sighed in mock concern. “But no, obviously you haven’t. But don’t let him get you down, Orrin. He’s just a columnist.”

“Yes,” the Secretary of State said dryly. “He’s going to try to take your convention right away from you in that speech Friday night unless you stop him.”

The President shook his head.

“Oh, come. You build him up too much. That’s how he’s achieved the position he has—just by claiming it and persuading otherwise level-headed people to go along with it.”

“There’s more to him than that,” Orrin Knox said. “And they are persuaded. That’s the problem.”

The President turned away for a moment to stare again, as Presidents are wont to do, at the Washington Monument—tribute to unassailable, unknowable, indispensable George, long since passed into legend, having served his time with honor and gone to glory undiminished, freed from all those torments his successors have to face.

“Yes,” he agreed thoughtfully, turning back, “that is a problem. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Make your own position clear,” the Secretary said bluntly. “Either come in or get out.”

For just a second the President started to look offended and then, remembering who he was talking to, looked amused instead.

“If I want straight talk and firm advice I don’t have to read Walter, do I? I just have to have a chat with my Secretary of State.… What would be the advantage in that?”

Orrin gave him a shrewd look and let him have it.

“You could resolve the whole thing once and for all. If you’re going to run, I’ll stop fretting and settle for a plaque on the cornerstone of that latest annex-to-the-annex-to-the-annex-to-the-Annex that my busy planners at the State Department want us to build. If you aren’t, then I’ll get moving instead of sitting around half-paralyzed waiting for you. As it is, I’m respectful enough to sit still but my opponent isn’t. As witness this business with Walter.”

“You’re respectful, all right,” the President said with a chuckle, “but only because you’re not sure of what I would do if you barged ahead without my permission. Right?”

The Secretary of State gave him a cheerful grin.

“Oh, that’s part of it. But not all—not all. Really, Harl—Mr. President—why do you do this to us? Do you like to see us squirm?”

The President’s expression sobered.

“No, I don’t like to see you squirm. At this moment, I honestly do not know what to do.”

“Well, if you don’t know,” Orrin said, “then that means you’re going to run. You didn’t have any doubts a year ago. Now you have doubts. Having doubts, you will resolve them in your favor. Presidents usually do, when the Constitution gives them a chance. Good Lord, you’ve only served a year in this office. You’re permitted to stay another eight. Who would want to give it up?”

The President smiled.

“There speaks a man who has never had it. The imagination runs rampant when it comes to this job. The power—the glory”—he began in a grandiloquent tone which changed to one of wry irony as he went along—“the problems—the headaches—”

“The chance to do what you want to do for the country, in your way, with the outcome depending on how skillful you are at getting your countrymen to go along with it and with you having the satisfaction when it works out,” the Secretary finished for him. “Yes, it’s a burden, all right. And you all get to love it in spite of its problems. Let’s face it,” he suggested with a grin. “Power corrupts—and absolute power is absolutely delightful.”

The President laughed in spite of himself.

“Not so absolute. Our friends on the Hill don’t allow it to be absolute. The Supreme Court doesn’t allow it to be absolute. The country doesn’t allow it to be absolute. Walter,” he said with a wry expression, “doesn’t allow it to be absolute. A thousand and one things don’t allow it to be absolute.”

“Absolute enough to satisfy any sane ego for as long as life remains.”

“All right,” the President said, leaning forward and leaning his elbows on the desk, clasping his hands and resting his chin upon them, staring straight at the volatile, impatient, powerful old friend who sat across from him. “Let me tell you how absolute it is. You know how absolute you are in your own department, where any little clerk with the wrong slant on things can throw you off with a carefully phrased position paper. Let me tell you how it is here.

“You see this fancy phone and these fancy gadgets—that all add up to that ‘button’ everybody’s worried about for so many years? What do I have to go on, if I should decide to press it? Well, I have an estimate by you and the Secretary of Defense, let’s say, on what a given situation actually is. And on what do you base your assessment of its political realities, and he his assessment of its military aspects? In each case, on somebody lower down, who gives you what he receives —from somebody lower down. And underneath that, there’s—somebody lower down. And underneath that—and finally, there we are, back at your little clerk, who may or may not be loyal and reliable.”

He frowned.

“Who can possibly have all the facts in a world as complex as this? Our society believes that the President has, because for the sake of its own sanity it has to believe it. But I don’t know—no mortal man can know, of his own knowledge—all the facts on which a President acts. The thing is too big. I can’t tell you—of my own knowledge—that if I push that button, so many ICBM’s will blast off for Russia or China or Indonesia. All I know is that somebody below has told me so—and somebody in turn has told him—and he in turn has gotten it from somebody else. I haven’t gone to see for myself, I couldn’t possibly. I act in the faith that I have been given a true account. The country follows me because it believes I know. But I don’t know. What single individual could?”

For a long moment there was a silence in the historic room in the quiet old house that served as the focus for so many hopes and fears in so many strange and varied lands. The Secretary of State spoke very softly when he finally spoke.

“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” the President said grimly, “it is terrifying. Are you big enough to face it? That’s what I have to know, before I can do anything about this election.”

The Secretary of State made an impatient gesture.

“Is he?”

“Don’t talk about him,” the President said sternly. “I’ll get to him. Are you?”

Again there was a silence. The President was aware as he searched the strong and determined face before him that the last sounds of wind had gone, the storm was over. He and his Secretary of State seemed adrift in time without reference to anyone or anything, though of course in their companionate responsibilities they were in reference to everyone and everything that lived and existed on the globe. The President could see that the face before him was thoughtful, but he was not surprised that it was not afraid.

“I think I am big enough,” Orrin said slowly. He too stared with a distant contemplation at the Monument. “Of course—who can say for sure, until he’s tested? Could you have said so a year ago when you came down here from the Senate that afternoon to take the oath? Certainly”—and he smiled a little at the thought of that now far-off, frightening moment for them all—“certainly not too many of us on the Hill thought you could. Could you have said when you went to Geneva? Again, few of us were sure. But you did, didn’t you, Harley? You could. The time came, the demand was rendered—and you could. So, I think, could I.” He turned from the Monument and looked directly into the honest eyes across from him, eyes that held now a much greater wisdom, certitude, courage, and sadness than they had a year ago. “Do you doubt it?”

Again there was a silence as the President returned his look with a thoughtful stillness that came from many things he had learned and experienced about men and their characters and dreams in the past twelve months.

“I don’t doubt your courage, Orrin,” he said finally. “The public record is full of that for the past twenty years. It goes deeper than courage. It goes to—acceptance, I think you might call it—of what this job is, and what it does to you, and what it can do to the country and to all of humankind. You can talk about it. But can you do it?”

“How can anyone do it except you,” the Secretary demanded with a sudden exasperation, “if you won’t get out of the way and give anyone a chance? Ted and I can’t kick you out, you know. You’re here ’til you want to leave, that’s for sure.”

The President started to laugh and then stopped abruptly, with a curious note of unhappiness and questioning and, in some strange way, almost of self-distaste, in his voice.

“I don’t know whether I want to stay or leave, Orrin,” he said quietly, “and that’s the God’s truth.”

The Secretary shrugged, though it cost him much to do it.

“You want to stay,” he said in a voice he succeeded in making indifferent. “So stay.”

Again the President uttered a curious half-humorous, half-skeptical, regretful sound.

“It isn’t that easy, and you know it.”

“I can’t help you,” Orrin said. “But,” he added quietly, “you can help me. If you so decide.”

The President sighed.

“Yes, I know that.… I want a little more time, Orrin. I haven’t quite got the feel of this yet, I need some sign. I don’t know what’s going to happen in Africa, or in Panama, or Southeast Asia. I don’t know what’s going to happen—”

“You’re looking for justifications,” the Secretary interrupted, aware that he might be running the risk of antagonizing Harley, but feeling also that the conversation had reached an impasse, there was no hope of resolving anything tonight even if time was rushing forward and Walter Dobius and his world were about to send the Jason bandwagon racing down the road. “Something is always happening somewhere that we can’t see the end of. Time has no stops these days. There are no clarifications in the world, only new confusions to displace the old and so give us some illusion that we are moving ahead instead of churning around, as we very probably are, in an ever-narrowing circle. You can wait forever, if you wait for that kind of answer.… Go ahead and run, Mr. President. I’ll support you in every way I can and serve you in any capacity you want afterward. Surely you have no doubts on that score.”

The President shook his head.

“Oh no, of course not. And of course I’d want you to stay right where you are. If, that is—” His voice trailed away and he looked down at the many papers on his desk in an odd way as though he had never seen them before.

“Well,” Orrin said with a sudden decision, starting to rise, “I’m sorry I took your time. I guess we’ll just have to ride out whatever Walter says Friday night and play the whole thing by ear.”

“I’d talk to him, if I were you,” the President suggested. The Secretary paused.

“That’s what Beth says,” he admitted.

“I don’t think it would hurt you. And it might slow him down a little.”

“Not if I haven’t got your support,” Orrin said, trying not to make his emphasis too annoyed.

“Don’t forget that I can help—or hinder—Ted, too. If he’s wise, he won’t encourage Walter to go too far.”

“If I know Ted,” Orrin said tartly, “he’s playing on Walter’s ego and hoping he’ll go as far as possible. There’s one risk you run, you know, Mr. President. You may be underestimating Ted. He may not be as inhibited about waiting for you as I am.”

“Well,” the President said with an equal bluntness, “I’d like to see him try to run if the President decides to! It would be the end of him politically.”

“That didn’t stop him in New Hampshire,” Orrin couldn’t resist pointing out.

The President, for him, looked quite pugnacious.

“And he got soundly licked, and you too, didn’t you?”

Orrin grinned and nodded.

“I still wouldn’t put it past him to try.... Tell me,” he said, changing the subject as he saw the thought beginning to sink into the President’s mind, easygoing and good-natured on most things but, like all Presidents’ minds, touchy and self-defensive when it came to the protection of his own position, “are there any last-minute instructions you want me to give Cullee and Lafe at the UN before tomorrow’s Security Council session? I’m planning to call them around nine tonight at the Waldorf. They’re attending a party Selena Jason Castleberry’s giving for Prince Obifumatta and the People’s Free Republic of Gorotoland.”

“Oh, dear,” the President said with a relieved, humorous expression, diverted from perhaps being forced into a political decision that might cause hurt to someone if it arrived too soon, “oh, my! So Selena’s stepping in, is she? If it isn’t the Jasons we have to worry about, it’s their cousins and their uncles and their aunts.”

“Selena’s doing her bit,” Orrin said. “I understand half the UN and half of New York are there.”

“Except His Royal Highness Prince Terry the M’Bulu of Mbuele,” the President said with a grim little smile.

“Terry is finding out what it means to be the darling of a certain segment of America,” the Secretary said. “It means you’re a darling today and damned tomorrow.”

“It couldn’t happen to a more deserving fellow,” the President said, remembering the high and mighty way Terry had acted on his visit six months ago which had stirred up so much trouble, and recalling also the talk he and Orrin had held with him in this very room, in the midst of it. “But,” he added as other implications came to mind, “still not a pleasant matter for us.”

“No, indeed,” the Secretary said. “He is the legitimate government, and we can’t let the Communists get in there. So there we are.”

“Give Cullee and Lafe my best,” the President said. “They know what I have in mind, if necessary.”

“They know,” Orrin said thoughtfully. “It would be a sensation, right enough. And not on a very major issue. But—” he shrugged. “It’s all major. There aren’t any minor issues these days. The world turns on every one, for all we know, so we have to proceed on that basis, since the Communists force us to.” He sighed. “I’ll call you if the boys have anything startlingly new to report.”

“I doubt if they will. Personally, I’m going to bed early. I’d suggest you do the same.”

“I’ll try,” Orrin said. He was unable to resist a parting shot. “I hope you have a good talk with Ted, whenever it happens, and manage to impress him with the gravities as well as the honors of the office.”

“I look forward to it,” the President said with what, for him, was a surprisingly mischievous little smile. “I may not make you squirm, Orrin, but I think it would be rather fun with Ted.”

“Yes,” the Secretary said dryly. “If what you’ve just done was not make me squirm, then I really feel sorry for Ted. And causing me to feel that, I might add, is quite an achievement.”

The President laughed.

“My love to Beth.”

“Always,” the Secretary said.

It was with an odd mixture of amusement, anger, frustration, and hopelessness that Orrin sat back against the cushions as the driver of his official department limousine guided it slowly over the hushed and slippery streets toward Spring Valley. Very few cars were out, there was only the occasional sound of chains slapping against fenders or the soft susurrus of snow tires creeping cautiously by in the ghostly avenues to break the white silence that held the city. It was one of those curiously deserted and exposed moments in Washington when the past for some reason seems very close, when the figures of complicated Tom Jefferson in his study, or Andy Jackson on a horse, or Abe Lincoln stalking thoughtfully along with his cape pulled tight against the cold, come easily to mind; in which it seems that anything—or everything—might happen.

Or nothing, the Secretary of State told himself wryly. Apparently, as far as the President was concerned, nothing. It had been a good many months since he had seen Harley Hudson so irresolute. This was almost the old Harley, the one who had been a timorous and worried Vice President until the sudden death of his vigorous predecessor had plunged him abruptly into the center of the world’s events. After that, Harley had not been irresolute—until now. The irresolution was understandable enough to other men of power. The President had power and he didn’t want to give it up: felt, morally, that he should; felt, intellectually, that he could not; knew, actually, that it was entirely up to him and that no one could force him one way or the other; and so was caught on the points of conscience and duty and dilemma in a way that probably made it quite literally impossible for him at this moment to do anything. He had said he wanted a sign, Orrin remembered wryly, while the car skidded slightly at 23rd and Massachusetts Avenue as it swung around Sheridan Circle, and then steadied itself and crept carefully up Embassy Row. Well, Orrin had tried to give him one—it couldn’t have been any clearer if he had walked up and down Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House gates carrying a sign that said FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE SOMEBODY ELSE A CHANCE. But the President, he knew, had to move in his own good time, though every day, seemingly, made it more difficult for him to move in the direction Orrin and Ted Jason wanted him to.

Actually there was every evidence that he wanted to run again. He had permitted his name to go into the New Hampshire primary and had soundly trounced both Orrin and Ted, each of whom had maintained that their backers had acted without their permission. Of course the President had maintained the same thing, and undoubtedly each of the three had been convinced that his own desire to remain aloof had been quite genuine. Nonetheless, there they all were in the contest, and the President had won by a landslide. Then he had again permitted his name to go into the Wisconsin primary—this time, by dint of vehement insistence and threats of all sorts of dire reprisals against their overeager lieutenants, both Orrin and Ted had managed to stay out and give him a clear field—and again he had won by a landslide.

Meanwhile at his press conferences he had played a game of half-answer and jocular sidestep worthy of his predecessor at his peak. Nobody had pinned him down yet, though many skilled people had tried. And always, for the record, he had firmly and without equivocation reiterated the statement he had made to the Senate the day after his succession a year ago: he would not be a candidate for re-election.

With this combination of noble purpose on the one hand and political flirtation on the other, he had successfully kept the matter in his own hands, and had, as Orrin told him, paralyzed the two potential contenders who were so anxious to succeed him. The Secretary of State, who was certainly not one to be let alone by Walter Dobius and his world in such a personally embarrassing situation, found himself subjected to a constant barrage of questioning whenever he exposed himself to the press, be it at formal press conference or in one of those hurried running interrogatories that always accompany the arrival and departure of a Secretary of State before the committees of the Congress.

This was an old game, and both he and his questioners played it with a certain humor; but the constant necessity to deny his own ambitions and maintain with a straight face that he saw no evidence of the President’s would sometimes bring him home to the rambling house in Spring Valley in little mood for jovial chitchat. This put an extra burden on Beth, but fortunately her long experience as an old campaigner’s wife usually came to the rescue in time.

The more he thought about it now, as the limousine crossed Wisconsin Avenue, passed Ward Circle, and made the final run into Spring Valley, the less patient and less tolerant he felt about the President. Harley was obviously about to be confronted by a major démarche on the part of the Jasons in this speech by Walter Dobius, a dramatic rallying behind Ted of all the psychological and actual forces Walter could command. The President could still act, but apparently he was unable to see that his area of action would inevitably be restricted to some degree as soon as all of Walter’s friends and supporters came out on Saturday with their columns and editorials, their news reports and their special television and radio playbacks that would, the Secretary knew, flood the country over the weekend. A massive barrage of public opinion, a heavy psychological climate, would immediately be formed in the wake of Walter’s speech. The longer the President waited the more difficult it would be for him to escape its oppressive and hampering confines.

As for his own position, the Secretary decided as the car drew up at his door and he bade the driver good night with wishes for a safe journey back downtown, it inevitably would have to be just what he had told Beth earlier in the day. He would have to announce his own candidacy, whether the President liked it or not, and he would have to plunge immediately into his campaign. He had a reasonably good organization in most of the states, party leaders who had supported him twice before in his unsuccessful tries for the nomination and had given active indication they would again. He had a modest amount of money and a few substantially moneyed backers. He had his name and his record. He had Beth. He had himself. He was not afraid of the future, but as he stamped the snow from his boots and removed them, then hung his coat in the hall closet and went along to the comfortable living room where he knew she would be reading in front of the fire, he could have wished that it were arriving a little more on his terms.

“Well,” she said, closing the book (New Myths and Old Realities, by one of Walter’s more outspoken competitors in the great seesaw of American opinion) and looking up with a smile, “how did it go?”

“He wants to run, but he wants someone to tell him to.”

“And did you?”

The Secretary made a quizzical sound. “I certainly did.”

“And is he?”

He shook his head in an impatient way.

“Oh, of course not. It will have to be done over and over, and all the while he’ll be inching closer and closer. Suddenly one day he’ll find himself in it.” He frowned. “Meanwhile, Walter will have made his speech and Ted will be running and I will be running. It will all end up in a very embarrassing tangle. But that’s what happens when you have conscience in the White House. The White House always wins, but conscience has to have its day.”

“I’m sure he has other motives than just ego,” Beth said, and the Secretary nodded quickly.

“Oh, certainly. I’m not denying Harley’s integrity or good heart. But—it puts me on the spot, right enough.”

“All right, then,” she said briskly, “when do we hit the road?” He gave her a humorously grateful smile and immediately looked more relaxed.

“Hank,” he said, “I think you’re more bloodthirsty about this than I am. When do you want to hit the road?”

“It would be a little premature before Walter’s speech, wouldn’t it? He called, by the way. He wants you to call him.”

“Oh?” Orrin Knox said. A definite interest came into his tone. “Where is he, Leesburg?”

“Out there in the snow,” Beth said with a smile, “spinning his little webs. Probably just putting the finishing touches on his speech for Ted. Why don’t you interrupt him?”

“Oh, I will,” her husband said. “I will. I just wonder what prompts this sudden contact, that’s all.”

“Go find out,” she suggested. “He won’t bite.”

He chuckled.

“Maybe I’ll bite him.”

She smiled.

“I’m sure. But try to find out what’s on his mind, at least.”

For the first few moments of their conversation, however, this remained a mystery to the Secretary. For his part, Walter Dobius was not in any hurry to enlighten. An intriguing thought had hit him in the midst of his writing, he had taken up the telephone and acted upon it at once. Beth Knox had been surprised and puzzled and had not made any attempt to sound particularly pleased, though he knew she must be at this show of interest from one whom the Knoxes, he was sure, regarded as an enemy. It pleased him to play the part of unsuspected friend now, particularly in the cause of so shrewd a jest. He had not believed Beth when she said the Secretary was out. He could imagine their fear of him, their puzzled concern, their worried discussion, their pleased conclusion that he must be leaning toward Orrin and so, finally, the Secretary’s decision to call back. It all lent an extra edge of confidence to his voice, the unctuously kindly and patronizing note that was, though he did not know it, among his most infuriating characteristics to those who were not quite as overawed by Walter Wonderful as Walter Wonderful sometimes supposed.

At first, however, the Secretary managed to conceal this. His own tone was politely interested and quite correct.

“It’s always good to hear from you, Walter. How’s the snow out your way? Pretty heavy?”

“About six or seven inches, I’d say. I’ll have a devil of a time getting in to catch my plane to New York tomorrow.”

“Oh, are you going?”

“Yes. I was planning to go up to the UN to see Prince Terry and his cousin—”

“Not together, I hope,” Orrin interrupted. Walter uttered a cordial, knowing little laugh.

“Hardly. Also, Vasily Tashikov called and invited me to lunch, and so all in all—I really hope I can get up there. It should be very interesting.”

“Yes, I suppose,” the Secretary said, thinking, I’ll be damned if I’ll invite you to fly up with me, no matter how you hint. “Are you going to cover the debate in the Security Council, too?”

“What’s going to happen in that debate, Orrin? Is there anything I should be looking for?”

Aware that his slightest change of tone was being listened to by an expert, the Secretary deliberately made his voice as noncommittal as possible.

“The usual thing, I suppose. A lot of words—some more mud-slinging at us—a postponement without a vote—a gradual frittering away later in the General Assembly.”

“Is that what you expect?” Walter asked in some surprise. “I’ve been hearing over in your department that there may be something much more dramatic than that in the wind.”

“Drama’s relative,” Orrin said, sounding as bored as possible. “But I imagine your talks with Terry and his cousin, and your lunch with Tashikov, will more than compensate for any official dullness. You seem to be rather partial to Terry’s cousin these days, I notice.”

“I regard Prince Obi as a remarkable young man,” Walter Dobius said.

“So are they both.”

“Yes, but Prince Obi, I think, rather more than Prince Terry. Particularly now that he seems to have a really genuine popular uprising behind him.”

“Oh, Walter, stop being ridiculous,” the Secretary said, provoked to annoyance despite his plans by this dutiful parroting of the line Walter himself had done so much to create in his columns and speeches. “You know that little freebooter has nothing behind him but Soviet and Chinese Communist money. He’s depending on mercenaries, Walter. I thought you established the principle in the Congo that nobody should like mercenaries.”

“I fail to see that the situations have anything in common,” Walter said stiffly. Orrin snorted.

“You don’t? Well, look hard. The resemblances are there.”

“Are they?” Walter demanded. “A vigorous and democratic young leader—an oppressed people—a spontaneous rebellion breaking out against centuries of oligarchical rule—”

“You said exactly the same thing six months ago about Terry. Now, didn’t you?”

“I thought at that time he deserved them,” Walter Dobius said sharply. “Now I do not believe he does.”

The Secretary grunted.

“Walter, have you ever been to Africa?”

“I was invited to speak a year ago to the Conference of Unaligned Nations in Accra, as you know perfectly well.”

“Yes, I remember,” the Secretary said. “You gave the United States quite a kicking around, as I recall. They were very pleased. Tell me, do you ever have a good word to say for your own country?”

“Now, that isn’t fair,” Walter said, a real anger in his voice. “That simply isn’t fair. You know perfectly well that I—”

The Secretary gave an impatient sigh.

“I know, I know. It wasn’t fair, and I apologize. We seem to be arguing again. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I wanted to ask you and Beth to come to lunch on Thursday. But I suppose we would only argue more.”

“Undoubtedly,” Orrin said, allowing a little more humor to come into his tone, “but I imagine Beth and I can make it. I’ve been wanting to have a real talk with you for some time. When do you want us?”

“Noon, I think,” Walter said, quite calm and correct again, the anger beginning to subside as he reflected who he was talking to, after all: just Orrin Knox. “If that suits your schedule.”

“I’ll make it fit,” the Secretary said.

“Very well, then. In the meantime, I assume I’ll see you at the UN tomorrow?”

“I think I’m probably going up,” Orrin said. “But it’s not entirely definite yet. I’m going to put in a call to Lafe and Cullee in a few minutes and see what they advise.” He remembered Walter’s luncheon date with Tashikov and decided abruptly that Walter might be a bridge between the two worlds, at that, if the situation in the Security Council got bad enough. “Where will you be staying?”

“I’ll be at the Waldorf-Astoria, but only overnight. I have to go on to Cleveland to make a speech on Wednesday.”

“We may have a lot to talk about at lunch Thursday. Beth will be pleased.”

“I, too,” Walter said, the pomposity returning, the conversation back on his own ground again, Orrin, difficult as he was, once more in the implicit role of supplicant, as they both understood. “I have some important decisions to make soon. I want to discuss things with you before I make them.”

“I appreciate your courtesy,” the Secretary said. His voice became wry. “I can’t say my views have changed much since the last time you disapproved of them, but it may be helpful for you to get a refresher.”

“The decisions to be made are important,” Walter repeated without humor, “and I feel I must weigh everything very carefully if I am to do the job the country expects of me.”

“So must we all,” Orrin agreed, trying not to sound ironic. “Until tomorrow, then, and Thursday.”

“I shall be looking forward to it,” Walter Dobius said, thinking as the Secretary hung up. Little do you know how much I will be looking forward to it.

“There’s a puzzler,” Orrin said as he returned to the living room and started to poke up the fire. “He wants us to come to lunch on Thursday.”

“Alone?” Beth inquired. He paused, the poker dangling from his hand, and gave her a surprised and thoughtful stare.

“He didn’t say. I assumed so, but—he didn’t say. Anyway, it’s what you and Harley have both told me to do today—go talk to Walter. So I am going to go and talk to Walter. Coming?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said with a smile. “Somebody has to keep you from chopping his head off in the first five minutes.”

“I’m afraid I already have,” he confessed with a rueful little chuckle, “He began giving me this Noble Young Leader routine on Obifumatta Ajkaje, and I’m afraid I got a little short with him. That’s one of the things I can’t stand about Walter and his crowd, their damned hypocrisy. They can moon all over a bright young good-for-nothing like Terry as long as he’s doing what they want him to—namely, kicking the United States in the teeth—and then the minute he stops that, they drop him and find somebody else to give the big buildup to. They tell the public such damned lies about these people. That’s what I can’t stand.”

“Well,” Beth said firmly, “I’d suggest you keep things like that to yourself, Mr. Secretary. You aren’t going to change them, and pointing out their hypocrisy is the surest way to make them hate you forever. And that we don’t want when you’re on the verge of running for President again. Right?”

“I suppose so,” he agreed with a grin, “but I must confess I like to twist Walter’s tail once in a while. Somebody ought to, or he’ll get even more insufferable than he is already.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure that Walter isn’t about to twist your tail,” she remarked thoughtfully. “In which case, lunch on Thursday should be great fun.”

“Well,” he said, “Thursday will have to be Thursday’s problem. Right now I’ve got to call Cullee and Lafe, who no doubt are having great fun themselves at Selena Jason Castleberry’s party for Free Gorotoland. They’re having fun, and Selena’s having fun, and Prince Obi’s having fun, and all of Obi’s friends and admirers in New York are having fun. What more felicity do you want in the world?”

She chuckled.

“The felicity of a cautious tongue, if you must know,”

He tossed her a cheerful grin as he started out of the room to make his call to New York.

“It wouldn’t be me. And think how dull that would be!”

“How will we ever know?” she called after. “It’s never going to be tried,”

But he didn’t answer, and after a moment she returned with a quizzical expression to her book, though not before deciding to put in a call a little later to someone who might know Walter’s plans, or at least would know enough of how his mind worked to come up with an educated guess about them.

“Darling,” cried the gaunt, diamond-drenched woman with the hacked-off gray hair and the gasping eyes—Mrs. Jason Castleberry that was, Mrs. Roger Castleberry that had been, Selena Jason that was, had been, and always would be—“I do want you to come over here and meet Prince Obifumatta Ajkaje. He’s a mad, mad character and so utterly delightful in his understanding of this whole mad situation in Africa.” She glanced quickly around the hectic, shouting, bulging living room of her modest little twenty-room hideaway on Sutton Place and lowered her voice to a hurried whisper. “Not at all like our Negroes, you know. In spite of the great danger he’s in personally because of this wonderful enterprise he’s leading, bringing freedom to his poor downtrodden people in Gorotoland, he has a sense of humor about it all, you know. It makes him so much easier to talk to. Now, then,” she cried triumphantly as she shoved forward her companion, the earnest little man from the Nation, “here he is! His Royal Highness Prince Obi—Prince Obifumatta, that is. Darling, where ever did you get such a delightful name?”

The tall young Negro who loomed above her in his gorgeous red and green robes smiled down with a beneficent gaze reminiscent of his cousin, Prince Terry, except that underlying Prince Obi’s smile there was, at present, a terrible tension that grinned like the smile of death through his outward cordiality. Neither his hostess nor her guests, most of them filled to slopover with liquor, love, and liberalism, seemed to notice this, though it did not escape the two Americans, one white and one black, who stood together at the side of the rocking room. Cullee Hamilton, Representative in Congress from the State of California, and Lafe Smith, junior Senator from the State of Iowa, members of the U.S. delegation to the UN, were under no more delusions about Prince Obi than they had been six months ago about his cousin. Only the emphasis had changed, as though a kaleidoscope had been given half a turn and everything had come up at right angles to where it used to be. It still meant trouble for them and their country.

“My name?” Prince Obifumatta repeated in the clipped, guttural Afro-British accent of his education and upbringing. “I made it up. I knew that someday I would be a famous man and I wanted a name that people could neither pronounce nor forget. So I chose Obifumatta.

“Actually,” he said, giving again the nervous thrust of his savage smile, “it’s been in my family for seven hundred years, give or take a few.”

“That’s what I mean, darling,” Selena Castleberry said, giving the arm of the Nation’s earnest little man an excited squeeze. “Such a sense of humor. Such a doll.”

“What is your reaction to this American attempt to suppress your battle to bring freedom and democracy to Gorotoland, Your Highness?” the Nation’s little man inquired earnestly. Prince Obifumatta thumped him so fiercely on the back that he staggered.

“Call me Obi!” he directed. “Everybody does. I really have no comment at all, you know I am happy with everyone. I am not annoyed with anyone. Life is wonderful, do you not agree?”

“I do,” the Nation’s little man assured him hastily, “but I was just wondering if you cared to express a comment—”

“Now, express a comment. Obi, dear,” Selena admonished him with a shriek of laughter. “That’s exactly why I’m giving this Aid-to-the-People’s-Republic-of-Free Gorotoland party you know, so that all these darling people of the press, television, and radio, all these molders of American opinion, can see you and find out what you think.” She gave a coy hoot. “It might make headlines, you know! It just might, now!”

“Headlines are nothing to me,” Prince Obifumatta said with a sober air. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Oh, doll!” Selena cried. “Isn’t he just a doll, now?” she demanded of the horned-rimmed glasses, the ivory cigarette-holders, the portentous martini glass, and the thoughtful, important pipes that swam before her in the dancing room. “He is a doll, a doll, a doll! And of course,” she added with an abrupt transition to complete solemnity, “one of the Truly Great Men Of Our Time.”

“We think so,” said the man from the New Yorker, somewhere behind her.

“We think so,” said the man from the Reporter, somewhere behind him.

“We think so,” said the man from the New Republic, somewhere behind him.

“We think so,” said the man from the In-Group Quarterly, trying to see around them.

“We think so,” said Newsweek, right out front and smiling up at Prince Obi with a fearfully concentrated gaze, horribly nearsighted but damn it, darling, I hate contact lenses and I will not wear glasses to a party.

“I’m damned if I think so,” Senator Smith murmured to his companion. Congressman Hamilton returned a grim little smile and nodded.

“Tell us what you think of the President’s defense of Standard Oil’s exploitation of your country,” the New Yorker demanded with a nervous little giggle, coming closer.

“Tell us what you think of this attempt by Washington to launch a new colonialism in Africa,” the Reporter suggested, lighting his pipe,

“Tell us what respect you think the United States can possibly hope to retain when it takes so backward and vicious an attitude toward its own great Negro people,” the New Republic proposed, elbowing one of their representatives absently aside as he grabbed another martini from a passing tray.

“Tell us anything,” breathed Newsweek, stabbing Prince Obi unexpectedly in the region of the belly-button with an eight-inch ivory cigarette holder picked up on a twenty-four-hour survey of Southeast Asia’s trouble spots last spring.

“Yes,” shrieked their hostess, “do tell us, doll!”

“It would hardly behoove me, as a visitor to your great country, to say anything critical about it at such a pleasant social occasion—” Prince Obifumatta began slowly.

“Yes, yes!” said the New Yorker eagerly.

“Yes, yes!” said the New Republic.

“Yes, yes!” said the Reporter and the man from the In-Group Quarterly.

“God, don’t keep us in suspense!” cried Newsweek. “Out with it. Obi, out with it!”

“But,” said Obifumatta, “it does seem to me that in these times of great challenge—”

“In which the United States is playing, at best, a shabby and equivocal part,” the New Yorker offered quickly.

“—when the eyes of the world are upon this country—”

“Whose people and leaders seem absolutely stupefied by their own lack of intelligence and imagination,” contributed the Reporter.

“—and when both abroad and at home her attitude toward the colored races of this earth is under such heavy fire—”

“Which of course is God damned well deserved!” cried the New Republic, gulping his martini with a feverish concentration.

“—then it does seem to me—”

“Oh, tell us!” cried the In-Group Quarterly.

“—that there is reasonable ground for criticism in recent events.”

“How well you put it!” exclaimed Newsweek, extricating the cigarette-holder from Prince Obi’s midriff and swinging it about into the eye of the earnest little man from the Nation. “Doesn’t he put it well, everybody? Doesn’t he?”

“He’s a doll!” Selena Castleberry assured them, her hacked-off hair a-frizzle, her staring eyes wide with excitement. “I told you all he was a doll. Now you know!”

“We’ve just signed him to do his autobiography for us,” murmured the vice president of The Most Right-Thinking Book Publishers, Inc. “We’re going to call it New Star Over Africa: My Struggle for Justice, by Prince Obi.”

(“Well make a bid of five hundred thousand dollars plus 30 percent of the gross,” offered the representative of The Most Daring Young Right-Thinking Hollywood Producer. “We’ll budget it for thirty million, shoot it in Spain, and hire the entire nation of Dahomey to be extras. It’ll be the greatest!”)

“Oh, God!” Selena cried with a sudden yelp of pleased surprise. “There come Poopy Rhinefetter and the Princess Saboko! Now the party’s complete. Poopy! Poopy, darling! Do bring your lovely bride and come meet the greatest leader of Africa. This man,” she explained to Prince Obifumatta in a confidential voice that carried clearly over the clutter, the clamor, the raucous, smoke-laden roar of the aching, shaking, quaking room, “is almost as famous as you are, darling. He’s worth absolutely untold millions and he’s always to be found supporting the most liberal causes, and just three weeks ago he married that lovely girl, there. The Princess Saboko—your fellow royalty, doll. It was all so romantic. He found her last month, singing native songs at some place down in the Village, and before you could say clip-my-coupons he had eloped with her to Connecticut. The family’s absolutely furious. Their picture was all set to be on the cover of Life this week until you came along, you naughty boy, and they decided to run yours instead. Poopy and the Princess! Poopy and the Princess! Come over here this minute, you delicious dolls, and meet this wonderful man!”

“Where did you say the Princess was from?” Obifumatta inquired.

“Some place in Ghana, I believe,” Selena Castleberry said. “Or is it Mali? Or maybe Nigeria? Oh, darling, who cares? She’s a princess, she’s lovely, and she’s Mrs. Poopy Rhinefetter. That’s all anybody needs to know. Poopy, this is His Royal Highness Prince Obifumatta, from Gorotoland. Your Royal Highness, this is Poopy Rhinefetter and Mrs. Poopy Rhinefetter, Her Royal Highness. From Ghana. I think. Those marks on her forehead are the marks of her royal birth, aren’t they, Saboko, darling?”

“Place dere bime roahll fadder,” the Princess Saboko said carefully, while her adoring husband swung at anchor off her left elbow.

“I am honored,” Prince Obi said gravely, sounding his most British. “Those are noteworthy marks, indeed. Are you from Ghana?”

“Dat my place,” said the Princess, and Poopy, apparently relaxed from some previous engagement, echoed happily, “Dat her place, everybody. Yassuh, boss, dat her place.”

“I see,” Obifumatta said in the same polite tone. “Whore of the earth,” he added pleasantly in Twe, “you are doing well in the white man’s world.”

“Anus of the universe,” the Princess responded cordially in the same language, “swallow your own excrement.”

“They like each other!” Selena cried ecstatically to the billowing room. “They speak the same language! These two great leaders of Africa are here with us. Oh, God, to think we are making such progress in world relations, right here in my humble flat! Oh, it’s wonderful!”

“It’s the greatest thrill of my life,” the New Yorker said soberly.

“The moment is really historic,” said the Reporter, relighting his pipe.

“I’m going to recommend a very strong editorial next week,” the New Republic announced.

“We shall run one next month,” sniffed the In-Group Quarterly.

“This sort of thing makes up for everything,” Newsweek said fervently. “Really for everything!”

“And now,” Prince Obifumatta said gracefully, “I really must be buzzing off. Tomorrow is a fateful day for Free Gorotoland in the Security Council, you know, and I must rest and prepare.” He enfolded his hostess’ hands in his enormous paws. “It has been delightful, dear lady. I commend to you the Princess Saboko, who will tell you much of our difficult life in Africa now that she is Mrs. Poopy Rhinefetter. My thanks and blessings to you all.”

He waved to the turbulent throng, bowed low, and departed on a burst of approving shouts and applause.

“He’s a dreamboat,” murmured the New Yorker fervently.

“One of the authentic greats of our time,” agreed the Reporter, sucking deep upon his pipe.

“How wonderful the spirit of unity that binds the great black continent together,” the New Republic said gravely.

“With people like that in the world,” asked the In-Group Quarterly, “how can humanity lose?”

“They are both so real,” agreed the Nation. “What an experience!” “And the wonderful thing about it, darling,” murmured Newsweek, “is that these people aren’t dull. They aren’t ordinary Negroes, like ours.”

“Is this actually fresh air we’re breathing out here?” the junior Senator from Iowa asked the Congressman from California as they stood on the stoop in Sutton Place half an hour later waiting for an official U.S. delegation car to work its way through the crush in the narrow street and take them back to the Waldorf-Astoria.

“I’ve about forgotten,” Cullee Hamilton said. He sniffed. “Guess it is—or about as close as New York gets when it isn’t breathing the kind they were breathing in there. What a crew!”

“Marvelously enlightened,” Lafe Smith agreed, nodding to the Ambassador of Chad and his ample lady, who had emerged beside them into the snowy night. “Prodigiously progressive. Lavishly liberal. A three-thousand-dollar party for a ten-cent cause. Now they can all go home feeling so much better. It’s comforting.”

“What phonies there are in this city,” Cullee said in a curious tone that combined wonder, irritation, and a sort of despairing hopelessness at the prospect of ever breaking through to reality in such an atmosphere. “Six months ago they were giving poor old Terry the buildup and now he’s out in the snow on his ass. Not that I mind,” he added with a grim little smile, “what they do to poor old Terry. But it’s the principle of the thing.”

“The principle is consistent enough,” Lafe said thoughtfully as their car arrived and they got in. “Tear down your own country and its aims, ideals, and purposes as often and loudly as you can. Support any international brigand who attacks it and attempts to defeat it in world affairs. Tell yourself you do these things out of an enlightened liberalism and a genuine patriotism. Have another drink, and congratulate yourselves on your contribution to the forward progress of humanity. Be gay. Be happy. Be smug. Be secure. In your heart you know you’re right! Have another drink.”

“You sound bitter,” Congressman Hamilton said with a chuckle, giving him a friendly slap on the knee as they settled back and the car began its slow crawl through the swirling whiteness that still held the city. The storm that had already died in Washington would linger a while in New York before it moved on out to dissipate somewhere over the lost and lonely reaches of the black Atlantic.

“I am bitter,” Senator Smith said. “All that fuss we went through six months ago over Terry, and now we have to go through all this with his cousin. I must confess the UN gives me a terrible sense of being caught forever in a revolving door.”

“We’ll be off the delegation soon, and after that it will be somebody else’s headache. Personally, I won’t be sorry. I’ve got people to see and things to do.”

“You’re going to run for Senator from California, aren’t you,” Lafe said, more a statement than a question. The handsome black face beside him looked genuinely troubled for a moment, the big ex-track star’s frame moved uneasily.

“I am damned,” Cullee Hamilton said heavily, “if I know, at this point. You see, of all the things that are going to get caught in the squeeze between Orrin Knox and Ted Jason, little Congressman Hamilton from California is one of the most obvious.”

“Surely you aren’t going to side with Ted,” Lafe said as their car crept carefully west on 66th Street in the blinding white. “Somehow I can’t see you in with that crowd.”

“Except that he’s the governor, of course, and it is rather nice to have the governor on your side when you run for the Senate. Not imperative, but nice.”

“Buddy, I think you’ve reached a point where it doesn’t matter whether he’s on your side or not. Ted needs you, you don’t need Ted.”

“Which means he’s in a mood to bargain,” Cullee said. “Which is another factor.”

“Which is another factor. And Orrin isn’t in a mood to bargain?”

Cullee shrugged.

“You know Orrin. He bargains when it suits his integrity, but he won’t otherwise. Which,” he said with a sudden sidelong glance and smile, “suits me just fine, because that’s when I bargain, too.”

“You’re a pair,” Senator Smith conceded with an answering smile, “which is why your problem is relatively simple, it seems to me. You know who you’ll back for President when the time comes—if,” he interjected dryly, “Harley ever lets it come—and that automatically solves the Senate problem. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble bucking the Jasons. The rest of the family’s like Selena, in varying degrees: they all telegraph their punches.”

“Sometimes yes and sometimes no,” Cullee said thoughtfully. “Don’t make the mistake of underestimating them, particularly Ted. He’s the trickiest of the lot. For the moment, I’d prefer to let things ride without forcing the issue, if I can.”

“I gather from what Orrin said on the phone just now that Patsy and Walter Dobius are going to force it for all of us. So now what?”

Cullee chuckled.

“He did sound a little annoyed about it, didn’t he? It seemed to be more on his mind than the Security Council debate on Gorotoland tomorrow.”

“He just wanted to alert you to what was being planned so you could be thinking—his way. And you are, so he achieved his purpose, right?”

“I guess time will tell,” Cullee said lightly. Their car crept into Lexington Avenue and turned south. “How are you making out these days with all your romantic projects?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Lafe said, “even to that one. I haven’t got time for projects these days. I’ve got responsibilities now, you know.” His normally open and sunny face darkened for a moment. “Hal Fry left me some.”

“Yes, I know,” Cullee Hamilton said softly, his own expression saddened by the reference to the late Senator from West Virginia, former chief American delegate to the UN, whose death from leukemia six months ago had been one of the major tragedies of the last session. “How is his son these days?”

“Healthy,” Senator Smith said, with a certain bitterness in his voice in spite of himself as he thought of the smiling, handsome youth sitting serenely in his closed-off world. “Always healthy. But no improvement at all”—he tapped his forehead—“up here. However,” he added firmly, “I am determined to bring that boy back if it is humanly possible to do so, and I will. He’s in a sanitarium up the Hudson, you know. I go up twice a week now and work with him. The people there say he’s beginning to expect me, but I can’t tell. He never got to expecting Hal, though he went there often enough, poor guy. But I’m working. It doesn’t leave much time for extracurricular activities. And you know?” he added with a curiously naïve air that touched his companion, “I find I don’t really mind it much, now that I have something important to think about instead of just me.”

“Maybe Hal accomplished something with his dying,” Cullee suggested gently. Lafe nodded.

“Hal accomplished a lot of things with his dying. Whether they know it in the UN or not.”

“Oh, they know it,” Cullee Hamilton said bitterly. “They remember his last speech, though they’d rather not. They’re dying themselves, and they know that, too, but they try to keep on pretending it isn’t so.…I won’t mind getting off the delegation. I’ve had about enough of watching them destroy the hopes of the world with their petty bickering and their insane drive to destroy every rule of civilized behavior that makes any attempt at strengthening world order.”

“You couldn’t tell Selena and her guests that the UN is dying. They’d scream bloody murder and call you a damned reactionary.”

Congressman Hamilton made a scornful sound.

“That crew,” he said. And again: “That crew.” They rode in silence for a little until Lafe broke it, more lightly.

“And what about your extracurricular activities? Seems to me I see you and Sarah Johnson at an awful lot of UN parties together lately. Is this true love or just relaxation?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think either of us has thought it through, yet.”

“She has, you can bet,” Senator Smith assured him. “They always do.…Where’s Sue-Dan these days? Are you getting a divorce?”

“Seems to me you’re getting awfully personal all of a sudden,” his companion said with a frown and a note of genuine annoyance in his voice. But on the strength of a good and genuine friendship, Lafe refused to be impressed.

“You know me,” he said with his engaging, boyish grin. “What fun is a world without gossip? I’m getting a divorce, for what it’s worth as an example to you.”

“Yes, but you don’t love her,” Cullee said, his voice so low Lafe could hardly hear it. “God help me, I still do.”

“You’d be better off,” Lafe said, though he knew he was risking a real explosion if he kept it up. “You know it.”

“I know it,” Cullee said, “But my heart and my guts and my—the rest of me, don’t know it.” He brought a powerful fist down upon his knee with a sudden heavy sigh. “Ah, damn it!”

“Where is she?” Lafe asked in a matter-of-fact tone. “Did she decide to go to work for LeGage Shelby in DEFY?”

“Yes, she’s jazzing around with that no-good, loudmouth sonny-boy I used to call a friend,” Congressman Hamilton said, a frown deepening on his handsome face at the thought of his clever, ambition-whipped ex-roommate and the Defenders of Equality for You that he had put together from the more irresponsible elements of the younger Negro community. “Both of them laughing and sneering at me all day long, I expect. Well,” he said darkly, “time takes care of the likes of that. You go down that road, you end up in a smash. Or so my Maudie tells me.”

“Who’s Maudie?” Lafe asked with a smile. “Another girl friend?”

“She’s my sixtyish girl friend. She keeps my house for me in Washington. She’s about the only company I’ve got down there, now Sue-Dan’s—gone away.…Anyway,” he added with a bitter little laugh, “I’ve got a good excuse not to get a divorce right now. You didn’t ever hear of a Senatorial candidate getting a divorce before election day. The voters don’t like that.”

“If she’s running with DEFY, you’d be better off getting one.”

“Maybe in Iowa,” Congressman Hamilton said, “but out in California DEFY and all the rest of the alphabet go over big, you know. It doesn’t hurt me to have a wife and an ex-campaign manager with DEFY. Politically, that is. Other ways, voters wouldn’t care about anyway.”

“Walter Dobius says DEFY is a sterling symbol of the noblest aspirations of the younger elements of the Negro race, constructive in purpose, democratic in procedure, forward-looking in thought, and profoundly a part of the American dream,” Senator Smith informed him solemnly. “Don’t you agree?”

Congressman Hamilton snorted.

“What Walter Dobius doesn’t know about the Negro race and its aspirations would fill even more books than he’s written. And be about equally intelligent, in my opinion.”

“That’s heresy. In the first degree. Walter thinks he’s going to make the whole world hop Friday night when he makes that speech for Ted.”

“Won’t make me hop,” Cullee said bluntly. “He never has and never will. I got Walter’s number about ten days after I arrived on the Hill. He came around to give me a few pointers on how to lead the Negro revolution from a back row seat in the House. It was kind of him, but it didn’t have much bearing on the realities in that great body.”

“Walter pretty well tells everybody how to do everything,” Lafe said thoughtfully. “Of all the sad cases of ego gigantea Washingtonia I know, I think he’s about the worst. The annoying thing about it is that he can write—and he’s a terrific reporter—and he really does do a conscientious job, according to his lights. It isn’t easy to dismiss him out of hand. He’s too damned good.”

“He and his pals can swing maybe five hundred thousand votes in California,” Congressman Hamilton said matter-of-factly. “That’s enough to be decisive.”

“But you aren’t going to let that influence you,” Lafe suggested with a humorous certainty.

“I’m not going to let that influence me.…What do you think of this business tomorrow in Security Council?”

The Senator from Iowa looked grave.

“I think Walter and his friends are going to scream to high heaven if it happens. I think it may very well be a decisive factor in the presidential election. I think it may beat Orrin, if he runs, and it may even beat the President, if he runs. Certainly it will if Walter and his world have anything to say about it. And we know they will.”

“You really think it’s as bad as that,” Cullee said thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right.”

Lafe stared grimly out at the driving snow as though all the world’s devils were in it, while the car crept slowly down toward the Waldorf.

“Just look at the consequences that can flow from it,” he said finally. “War could come from this, buddy. Don’t make any mistake about it.”

Cullee gave him a quizzical look.

“It wouldn’t if Harley would back down.”

“I have the feeling Harley thinks we’ve backed down long enough. What do you think?”

“Oh, I agree. I’ve always agreed. But if you think it will beat Orrin and Harley, then it will probably beat me. Because I certainly shan’t sidestep the issue, regardless of Jasons or anything else. Nor will you—you run, too, this year, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes. And Iowa, I’m very much afraid, is going to be inclined to agree with Walter Dobius—for different reasons, but with the same result for me. But”—he gave his charming grin—“I have a trick or two up my sleeve. Uncle Lafe isn’t beaten yet, by a long shot. I’ve talked Iowa around before, when the right’s been on my side. And I will this time, although”—his expression became somber—“it won’t be so easy.”

“Well,” Cullee said as the car came to a crunching halt in the drift in front of the Waldorf, “it may not be necessary. This may go entirely differently tomorrow.”

“Maybe. But don’t bet on it.…Want a nightcap before we turn in?”

Cullee nodded.

“Sure.…Oh, oh!” he added with a sudden humorous note as the warmth of the lobby enveloped them and he saw seated across the room a giant ebony figure, looking, though it was obviously trying not to, dejected and forlorn for all its gorgeous robes and haughty air. “Do you see who I see?”

Lafe chuckled.

“I do. Shall we spread a little cheer by inviting him to join us?”

“He sure needs it,” Cullee Hamilton said, not without a certain relish. “Boy, does he ever. However, if you don’t mind—”

“O.K.,” Lafe agreed. “We’ve had our fill of him, after all.…Tell me,” he said as they walked on by, not looking at Terry, carefully ignoring his sudden recognition, his eager starting to rise, his forlorn sinking down again as he realized they did not want to see him, “did you ever meet Mabel Anderson—Brigham Anderson’s wife?”

“No, I haven’t,” Cullee said as they entered the bar. Something in his companion’s expression caused him to smile. “Oh, that’s it, is it?”

“No,” Lafe said thoughtfully. “Not necessarily. I got a letter from her today, though. First I’ve heard from her since she left Washington after his death.…She’s a nice girl,” he added, as if to himself. Then he grinned. “I know what you’re thinking—too nice for Lover Lafe. But maybe Lover Lafe is ready to settle down. Who knows?”

“Write her back, by all means,” Cullee suggested with a smile. “At once.”

“I already have,” Senator Smith admitted, with an obvious satisfaction that made his friend laugh.

“We’d better drink to that,” Cullee said. “What’ll you have?”

“Something for that,” Lafe said, “and also something to wish luck to our friend in the lobby. He needs it.”

And, indeed, it was clear to any perceptive observer that His Royal Highness Terence Wolowo Ajkaje, 137th M’Bulu of Mbuele, ruler—as long as he could hang on—of turbulent Gorotoland, outstanding young leader—at least he had been, until just recently—of emerging Africa, did, indubitably, need all the cheer he could get.

Life was doing puzzling and unhappy things to the 137th M’Bulu, and he still was in something of a daze about it. His was a sad case. “Yesterday’s hero”—as the London Daily Mail had put it to the Daily Telegraph only this morning in the Delegates’ Lounge—“today’s bum.” It was a strange and unsettling experience for one possessed, but a few short weeks ago, of the unrestrained plaudits and unstinting assistance of all those elements, both in the United States and abroad, who now turned upon him stony and unfriendly faces as they went happily about the business of helping his cousinly rival hurl him from his throne. And all for no logical reason that he could see—except that his cousin, the hated Obifumatta, had managed to capture both the support of the Communists and the attention of all those legend-makers and seekers after truth—the right kind of truth, of course, and the proper kind of legend—who had so recently favored Terry himself with their fond and encouraging regard.

It was all very peculiar. Six months ago Terence Ajkaje—“Terrible Terry” to the jet-set and the world’s headlines—had descended upon the United States and the United Nations like an avenging black angel riding down a path of light to blast away the enemies of progress. (That was the way he had actually been portrayed, in fact, in a cartoon in the Washington Post. Alas, the contrast today! Now he appeared in the Post’s cartoons skulking out from under a manhole cover in the street across from the UN building, emitting from his mouth such fictitious and unfair comments as, “That ship can’t desert us sinking rats!” Sic transit gloria mundi, at least on some people’s editorial pages, and all in the sad short space of six little months.)

Half a year only separated him from his days of triumph. Those were the glorious days in which he had literally captured the attention of the world when he escorted a little colored girl to school in South Carolina and was stoned and egged for his deed. Those were the great days when, aided by the Communist bloc, most of his fellow Africans and Asians, and such enemies of the United States as Panama’s Ambassador Felix Labaiya-Sofra, he had roused the brawling United Nations to frenzy and come within a single vote of winning censure of the United States for its racial policies. Those were the times of triumph when Terrible Terry was on the cover of Time, Life, Look, Newsweek, the Saturday Evening Post, and Screen Gems; when the New York Times vied with the New York Post, the New York World Journal Tribune, and even the Christian Science Monitor in heaping praises on his head; when the English language—except for a few sourly skeptical editorials in the place where the English language began—hardly held enough glowing words to do him tribute. And then—suddenly—disaster. Collapse. Bursting bubbles. Popped balloons. A pained reaction every time he heard, “The Party’s Over” on the radio. Calumny. Criticism. Slander. Libel. Denunciation. The End.

Or almost The End. The End if it hadn’t been for the powers he had done so much to harass six months ago; The End without the United States and Great Britain.

And why? What had he done, except be the dutiful agent of all the enemies, both foreign and domestic, of those two peculiar countries? Hadn’t he appeared on all the right television programs, addressed all the right forums, attended all the right functions (including, he recalled with a special bitterness tonight, a party given by Selena Jason Castleberry “In Aid of Independent Gorotoland”), produced all the right answers to all the right questions put to him by all the right interviewers? He had denounced “imperialist aggression” as self-righteously as anyone, his caustic strictures on “neo-colonialist adventurism” had rung out with the best, no one had done more than he to thwart, besmirch, and demean the United States and the United Kingdom. Walter Dobius had written a total of ten columns supporting him, Walter’s friends and colleagues in both countries had given him the full treatment to speed success for his cause and disaster for their own governments. And now it was all gone. Where, and how, and why?

The process had begun, he could see now, with the weird little riot that had occurred in his capital city of Molobangwe just on the eve of his most triumphant moments at the UN. When Terry had left dusty Molobangwe to come to New York seeking immediate independence from Britain and the confusion of the United States on racial matters, he had appointed his mother, aging but still shrewd and ruthless, to serve as co-regent with his cousin Obifumatta. Prince Obi, scion of one of the royal family’s many cadet branches, had sworn blood oaths and fealty ten times over, and although Terry realized that he possessed an intelligence and ambition almost as great as his own, he had decided to take the chance of leaving him in command. He had been confident at the time that the Council of Elders who advised the throne would take stern and immediate action if Obifumatta attempted anything disloyal. He was also certain that if the Council failed in such a crisis, his mother would poison Obi at once. He therefore left home feeling quite serene. He had made just one little mistake: although he had secretly accepted Soviet and Chinese Communist aid, like many another ambitious African adventurer he had been sufficiently egotistical to think that he could somehow escape being presented with the bill for it.

The riot in Molobangwe had been the first indication that this was not so. It had been an odd little affair which had swept through the mud-and-wattle town like a vagrant wind one stifling afternoon. It was over in half a day, but not before Terry had turned in desperation to the British, who as always were ironically ready to help those who were in process of booting them out; and not before Obifumatta had seized the opportunity to harangue the crowd, swing it to his side, and emerge as the popular hero. The Council of Elders had not dared act against him then, nor had Terry’s mother, even though it was apparent that much more than an afternoon’s rioting and fun had been involved. The episode had been a warning to Terry, and when he arrived home from the UN—after a pleasant plane ride that he had shared with Senator Bob Munson of Michigan, the Senate Majority Leader, and his wife Dolly, on their way to a month in Britain and the Continent—the warning was spelled out in language so blunt as to temporarily shock and paralyze him.

It appeared that the Communists, who literally twenty-four hours before had been working with him in absolute singleness of purpose at the UN, were working for different purposes six thousand miles away in Africa. He was not the first African to make this sad discovery, but it struck him with the same dismay, both laughable and pathetic, with which it strikes others in the naïve continent as they harshly, inexorably, inevitably find it out.

The Soviet and Chinese attachés, his smiling friends when he left Molobangwe for New York, greeted him with different faces when he got back. There was a short, ugly conference in the ramshackle old palace that once had housed some of the Christian missionaries who had attempted, without much success, to bring their own brand of progress to Gorotoland. The present-day missionaries were tougher and more to the point. Terry was told that he must form at once a “coalition government” in which Obifumatta would have equal rank and in which Communist-trained officials (“progressive elements,” they were called by the world of Walter Dobius) would control the police, defense, and foreign policy ministries of Gorotoland’s embryonic government.

At first Terry refused point-blank to accede to these demands. He was reminded sarcastically that the United States and Britain were far away and not really, despite Britain’s dutiful gesture, very interested, whereas Communist forces were right here and very actively interested. In the final compromise—which all parties, though they hailed it dutifully, knew would be final no longer than it would take one side or the other to break it—Terry had yielded a co-equal command of the defense ministry and a small share of foreign policy to his cousin. Police control he kept for himself, and equal rank he would not concede, pointing out that it was a matter of blood and nothing he could do anything about. The headlines in the West were very encouraging: COALITION GOVERNMENT SOOTHS TROUBLED GOROTOLAND; and, COALITION LAUNCHES NEW PEACEFUL ERA FOR AFRICAN NATION; and, STRIFE-TORN GOROTOLAND EASED BY POPULAR-BASED GOVERNMENT. Walter Dobius and his world wrote and broadcast millions of encouraging words about it, and all those in the West who feared they might have to take a stand if things got sticky relaxed and took a drink instead.

The “coalition” lasted for just over four uneasy months, after which the Communists made their first attempt to overturn it and murder Terry. He escaped, brought the drifting, mindless street mobs to his side by the sheer impact of his powerful personality, and drove Obifumatta, the coalition “ministers,” and their Communist supporters back into the bush. Obifumatta at once appealed to Peking and Moscow for help, received loud pledges from each, and filed an appeal with the United Nations. To Terry’s shocked dismay, all those elements in the Western world whose views were symbolized and sometimes synthesized by Walter and his friends at once began to attack him and build up his cousin.

“A genuine popular uprising somewhere on the globe is sometimes one of the healthiest things that can happen to this confused old town,” Walter wrote. “Washington this week is faced with its newest problem, but, in a relieved sense, also with its newest hero. Tired to death of ‘Tiresome Terry,’ the brash and erratic young ruler of Gorotoland, influential leaders here are welcoming with some relief the attempt by his cousin, Prince Obifumatta, to establish a truly democratic regime in the difficult African country.”

Who these friendly American “leaders” were, neither Terry nor any disinterested observer could see, since President Hudson’s administration, far from embracing Obifumatta, had immediately pledged its support to Terry. But if Walter Dobius said so, a great many of his colleagues and countrymen were ready to believe that it must be true. Favorable reports on Obi at once began to flood the press and airwaves.

“BATTLE FOR FREEDOM,” CBS offered: “A NEW LEADER RISES IN AFRICA.” “SPECIAL REPORT,” NBC countered: “WILL DEMOCRACY WIN IN GOROTOLAND?” Pictures of Obifumatta speedily blossomed in all the places where Terry’s picture, so short a time before, had grinned upon the populace. The New York Times, moving swiftly to cover the emergency, transferred to Amsterdam the level-headed veteran who had been covering Central Africa and rushed to the scene its youthful expert-on-overthrowing-governments. A flood of dispatches favorable to Obifumatta and derogatory to Terry immediately began to appear.

When Obi’s mercenaries, either inadvertently or by design, broke into the All-Faiths Missionary Hospital at Molobangwe and carried off two white nurses into the bush, and when, two days later, one of the oil tanks at the new Standard Oil development in the highlands area of the country was mysteriously set afire in the night, the tempo increased. In Washington the President remarked, at first mildly in a press conference but then more firmly in a formal statement issued three hours later after consultation with the Secretary of State, that the United States would “not remain silent or idle” while American lives and property were under attack. Obifumatta immediately filed a new protest with the UN and the outcry doubled. Walter and his world now had exactly the sort of issue they loved—the brutal, overbearing United States threatening a helpless little noble, honest, Communist-riddled backward nation—and if what they said about it happened to coincide with the Communist line, well, that was just too bad. They were morally in the right, whatever the facts of it, and high and mighty was their indignation.

“Rarely,” Walter wrote sternly, “has the United States been in a less graceful or more suspect posture than it is today in Gorotoland. True, two American missionary nurses have been abducted and are, presumably, dead. True, a Standard Oil installation has been attacked. But what were they doing there in the first place? The world has seen too much of exploitation moving behind the cloak of mercy. The nurses may have thought they were there to help the natives of Gorotoland. Actually, they may well have been there as an innocent smoke screen for further adventures by the oil interests of the United States.”

“OIL: HOW MUCH DOES IT STILL DICTATE POLICY?” CBS obligingly offered two nights later, devoting roughly forty-five minutes of the hour to Obifumatta and his noble cause, fifteen to Terry and his probable shady tie-up with Standard. “OIL: NEW SWORD OF EMPIRE?” NBC riposted twenty-four hours later. “BEHIND GOROTOLAND’S CRISIS, THE SPECTER OF OIL,” the New York Times Sunday Magazine reported at week’s end in two thousand hastily written, characteristically objective words from its youthful expert-on-overthrowing-governments. “OIL,” said Life simply, with a thousand words of text, seven pictures, and three bright maps.

Caught in this kind of cross fire between the world of Walter Wonderful and the Government of the United States, the 137th M’Bulu of Mbuele, though it took him a little while to realize it, didn’t have a chance. Almost overnight, it seemed to him, all his support vanished. The friends who had hailed him so eagerly yesterday hailed him no more. In the sort of strange, fantastic, overnight about-face contortion that Walter and his world are all too frequently capable of, he who had been hero was instantly and forever villain. And the thing that staggered and appalled him more than anything else was that Walter and his world got away with it. Apparently their readers and viewers were not aware of the switch, or if aware, were too bored—or too exhausted by innumerable past duplications of the performance—to protest or be skeptical about it. Within a month any mention of Terry, almost anywhere in the American press, carried with it the automatic addition, “youthful adventurer who acquired the throne by strangely suspect methods …” or, “suspected friend and agent of the oil interests …” or, “leader of the anti-democratic forces striving to keep down the people of Gorotoland.…” or some other pack-cry honed and polished to do the most damage.

In all this sad disarray of his hopes and fortunes, Terence Ajkaje had only two things going for him; but they were, while they lasted, substantial. The British Government had immediately announced its support, and the Hudson administration in Washington, unlike some previous administrations, showed no inclination at all to be swayed by the propaganda barrage laid down by Walter and his friends. In fact, a week ago the President had reaffirmed his warning to the rebel forces, and to Obifumatta personally, that the United States would “take immediate and substantial action” if so much as one more American citizen or one more piece of American property were hurt. This was so unlike the decades-old pattern of the United States that for almost a day there was a stunned silence around the globe. Then Walter and his world, the Africans and Asians, the Communists, and indeed all Right Thinkers everywhere, let go with an outraged clamor that made their previous attacks sound like friendly greetings.

It was then that the President had called Walter in to ask his advice firsthand and incidentally let him know that it was not going to be taken no matter how furiously he wrote. It was then that the Security Council decided in a heated emergency session—in which the United States, Britain, and Nationalist China found themselves standing alone against France, Uganda, Ceylon, Chad, India, Dahomey, Yugoslavia, Chile, Cuba, the Soviet Union, Venezuela, and Panama, to take up Obifumatta’s appeals “at the earliest possible moment.” Only by dint of much behind-the-scenes maneuvering at the UN and in the capitals of the Council members had the United States and Britain been able to secure agreement that if Obi were invited to attend and testify, Terry should be, too.

And now here they were, though dismal and different indeed were their respective positions and prospects on this snowy night in Manhattan. Prince Obifumatta, just returned to his suite at the Carlyle (paid for by voluntary contributions from Selena Castleberry, Poopy Rhinefetter, and a host of others anxious to Do The Right Thing), was giving one more gracious interview to one more group of friendly and obsequious questioners from the metropolitan press. Prince Terry was huddled uncomfortably (if six-feet-seven could be said to huddle) in the lobby of the Waldorf, looking fiercely proud and abysmally lonely. Far away in Gorotoland Obi’s forces, coached by their Russian and Chinese advisers, were skirmishing halfheartedly in the highlands with Terry’s forces, coached by their American and British advisers. A temporary lull lay on the scene of battle as both sides awaited events in the UN; but it was, as the Indian Ambassador had remarked today to the French Ambassador when they met at the luncheon given by the delegation of Cameroon, “an interesting and fateful scene.”

“I think we have here the setting for quite a drama,” Krishna Khaleel had remarked with a hiss of concern, “though not, I think, a pleasant one, do you agree?”

Raoul Barre had responded with his sidelong, clever glance and skeptical smile.

“The principal players are ready, as always,” he remarked. “Someday they will be ready and will actually perform. This may be the time.”

“Oh, I hope not,” K.K. had responded with a horrified expression. “Think of the consequences.”

“The world has worried about consequences for decades,” Raoul replied. “It may be tired of worrying about consequences. If it is, consequences will come.”

Before the stormy night ended, consequences would indeed come, greatly increasing the tensions against which the Security Council would vote tomorrow, against which Walter Dobius would make his visit to the UN and, on Friday, his speech at the Jason Foundation dinner, greatly inflaming the angers and passions against which the presidential campaign would have to be played out. But for the moment, all that the participants, past and future, could see was what faced them right now.

Most immediately, in the lobby of the Waldorf, all that Terry could see, dolefully, was that he had received a royal snub from two people whose friendship he had every right to expect. It was true that he had been a little hard on their government six months ago, but after all, their government was backing him now, so why couldn’t they be more cordial? It was one of those things that left him baffled, depressed, and confused as he decided disconsolately that he might as well go up to his room and watch television.

Except that he knew what he would see if he did: hated Obifumatta, grinning forth from all those flattering programs and interviews, just as Terry himself had done six months ago when he, too, had been America’s enemy and the darling of America’s most powerful opinion-makers.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Beth said, “But just what is your ex up to with this luncheon invitation on Thursday?”

“I’m damned if I know,” Helen-Anne Carrew confessed. “He invited me, too, you know, which really indicates he wants to show off about something. I haven’t been to Leesburg in four years. Something great must be under way.”

“I’m glad you’re going to be there, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Oh, so am I. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It may well be the biggest story of the year.”

“I hope not,” Both said in some alarm. “Surely it’s going to be off the record.”

Helen-Anne snorted.

“Nothing is off the record in this town, as you very well know. It’s just a matter of timing as to when things go on the record. Some sooner, some later, but they always get there, in the end. Personally, I hope they have a terrible fight. Orrin might as well, he has nothing to lose in that quarter.”

“You really think so? I’ve been telling him he ought to let up on Walter for a while and maybe he’ll come around to supporting him, in time.”

Helen-Anne snorted again.

“My dear! That hard-nosed little—no, he’ll never give Orrin a kind word again, no matter what. Not even if Orrin gets the nomination. It’s impossible.”

“Why?” Beth asked thoughtfully. “Disagreement over past policies? Personality clash? Ambitions the Jasons can satisfy and we can’t? I’ve always wondered, really, why Walter had such a dislike for my husband. I know he isn’t perfect, but still—you’d think a little tolerance, now and then.”

“Knowing the two of them,” Helen-Anne said, “I’m quite sure that at some point very early in Orrin’s career here, he was advised by Mr. Wonderful on some subject or other, and being Orrin, he said, Go shove it—or”—she chuckled—“Orrin’s equivalent, because Orrin doesn’t say naughty things like that, only hard-bitten old newspaper bags like me do. In fact, I sometimes think that if Orrin would say things like that he’d generate less dislike than he does with that way he has of acting as though he doesn’t think you have two brains to rub together if you disagree with him.”

Beth laughed.

“At least he’s honest about it.”

“In a superior way which I suppose he doesn’t know and can’t help, which is what gripes. Anyway, despite what the other member of a once great journalistic marriage may do, I want you to know that I hope sincerely Orrin makes it. If there’s anything I can do for him, I will.”

“Why, thank you,” Beth said, trying not to sound too startled. “I’m touched. Really. And surprised, I may add.”

“I’ve been giving it some thought,” Helen-Anne Carrew said slowly. “The longer I stay in this town the more I become convinced that honesty of purpose is the basic necessity in a good President. It isn’t enough to qualify a man who hasn’t the other qualifications, but if he has them, as Orrin has, and then honesty is added to it, that’s the right combination, for my book. This isn’t the smart point of view according to Walter and his friends,” she added dryly, ‘But I like it.”

“I wonder,” Beth said cautiously, “how actively you would want to be associated with Orrin this year.”

There was a thoughtful silence and she thought she had probably gone too far too fast. But presently Helen-Anne answered with a characteristically direct candor.

“There are limits, of course. I can’t use my column the way Walter uses his. Although,” she conceded with a chuckle, “I do manage to get my licks in, now and then.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve felt a few of them.”

“Ouch. All right, dear, if you want me to be honest—do you really think I could do more good in a partisan position—if either the dear old Star, tolerant as it is, or the syndicate, would give me leave to do it, which I doubt—than I could do indirectly through the column? I wonder.”

“Frankly,” Beth said, more moved than she wanted to admit, “I’m quite overwhelmed that you think enough of him to consider the alternatives seriously. That’s a tribute we’ll remember, whatever happens—a hard-boiled old newspaper bag like you!”

Helen-Anne laughed.

“I have my moments.…What did you have in mind?”

“Why, I would think …” Beth said with a deliberate air of consideration, “press secretary during the campaign … to begin with.”

Helen-Anne gave her ribald hoot.

“You’re all alike, holding out one carrot and then topping it with another, for us poor old spavined hacks in the press. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, lovey: if I were to do that job, you can bet your bottom dollar it would be done, and done right. That’s for sure.”

“We know that. Why do you suppose it’s being offered?”

“Is it being offered, or is this just pleasant persiflage on a snowy night in the nation’s capital?”

Beth laughed.

“Let’s put it this way: it isn’t being offered after three martinis at Dolly’s, is it? We aren’t shouting at each other across a crowded room at Perle’s, are we? I mean, this is cold-sober stuff, isn’t it, girl? What more do you want?”

“Forgive me for being suspicious, but I’ve played around and stayed around this old town too long. I’m afraid it won’t be official until I hear from the man himself. Where is he, by the way?”

“Taking a shower. He was down talking to the President earlier, and—”

“Oh?” Helen-Anne said, instantly alert as Beth had intended her to be. “Any signs of a break in the logjam?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Beth said lightly, “but, no, there aren’t.”

“I can’t stand Harley’s wife for some reason,” Helen-Anne said, “but I love him. I’d like to set off an H-bomb under his chair and blast him out of there so our man can get moving.”

“‘Our man’? That’s a good sign. I think you’re softening.”

“Helen-Anne Carrew?” that lady said in a disbelieving tone. “Softening? You’re mad!”

“Think it over. It’s a firm offer and Orrin will confirm it Thursday if not before.”

“I’ll be waiting. Sorry I haven’t got the angle just yet on what the Leesburg Lion is up to, but maybe I’ll snatch it from some passing breeze in the next couple of days. I’ll let you know if I do.”

“Thanks, dear. You’re a real friend. As well as a press secretary.”

“We’ll have to see about that,” Helen-Anne said. “There are a lot of things to be considered before I—Hello!” she said in a startled voice. “What’s that? Is somebody trying to cut in?”

“That’s funny,” Beth said in a puzzled tone. “I wonder what—”

There was a definite clicking on the wire, a sudden urgent voice.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Knox,” the White House operator said, “but we can’t seem to reach the Secretary on the direct line.”

“I know,” Beth said, too taken aback to be entirely coherent. “He’s running the—the faucet thing in the shower. What is—can I—”

“Please tell him at once that the President is calling the National Security Council, the rest of the Cabinet and the Congressional leaders to the White House in half an hour and he wants the Secretary there.”

“Certainly,” Beth said. “Certainly.”

“Thank you,” the operator said, and went off the line.

“My God,” Helen-Anne said, “what’s that?”

“I don’t know,” Beth said hurriedly, “but I’ve got to get Orrin.”

“Call me back and tell me all you can!” Helen-Anne shouted, and Beth shouted back, “I will!” before she slammed down the receiver and hurried up the stairs to recall her soapily oblivious husband to the cold realities of a cold world.

So began, for all practical purposes—and several days before Walter Dobius had thought he would begin it with his speech—the presidential campaign, with all its fateful consequences for so many millions of people. As the news spread out through the night—first a FLASH on the news-wires to the effect that PRESIDENT CALLS SECURITY COUNCIL CABINET TOP CONGRESS IMMEDIATE WHITE HOUSE SESSION, and then bulletin after bulletin of speculation, rumor, gossip, and non-news generated by the crew of several hundred nervously talking newspapermen and women who began to converge on the White House press room from their homes and beds all over town—as it spread on to New York, where it found Terry surprised and delighted as he thought he could predict the consequences, Obifumatta excited and gratified as he thought he could do the same—as it reached all the twittering, clamoring, argumentative members of the UN in the great cold city and found them shocked, appalled, dismayed, and/or delighted according to whose side they were on—as the news swept forward over London and Paris and Moscow (where the corps of student rioters was told to prepare itself for another spontaneous attack on the American Embassy) and Rome and Tokyo and all the rest—as it came over the short-wave on the chartered jet carrying Felix Labaiya home to Panama, and instantly changed and accelerated certain plans of his—and finally as it reached Leesburg and took Walter hastily to the telephone for a futile and angry call—even as it did all these things, its import and impact began to change and shift the emphasis of events even though the event itself, as the nations knew, was only half-completed.

It would not be completed until a decision came out of that hastily called meeting at the White House. It would not be completed until action, or non-action, flowed out of that decision. It would not, in fact, be completed at all, but would simply take its place in the mysterious and fearful story that the years still had to tell, flowing into the ever-broadening stream of events carrying a world too reckless to a fate too harsh.

***

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Framed