He dialed 3071. A pleasant voice sang, “Office of the Secretary of State.”
“This is Horace Locke, in the Department. I must speak with the Secretary.”
“Is he expecting your call, Mr. Locke?”
“No. But it’s very important.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Locke, but I don’t seem to place you. What Division are you in?”
“I’m Adviser to the Diplomatic Monuments and Memorials Commission.” He tried to make it sound important, but he knew it didn’t.
“Well, may I suggest you send the Secretary a memo, Mr. Locke. You know he’s terribly busy. He’s never been busier.”
“This is really urgent, and really important,” Locke said.
The girl hesitated, and then said, “Well, in that case I suggest you dial one of the Secretary’s executive assistants. Their branch is 2881.”
“Very well,” said Horace Locke.
4
He dialed 2881. He didn’t know any of the assistants. They were all younger. But he knew their names. He asked for Mr. Partridge. He told Mr. Partridge he had to see the Secretary immediately, on a matter pressing and of vital importance.
“Couldn’t you come over and talk to me?” Partridge asked. “You know how it is, Mr. Locke. The Secretary is snowed under.”
“I’ll have to see the Secretary himself,” Locke insisted. “This is extremely serious, and extremely confidential.”
“Couldn’t you give me some idea what it’s about? After all, that’s all I do from seven in the morning until midnight—handle stuff that is serious and confidential.”
“Hold on a moment while I think it over,” Locke said. If he saw Partridge he’d have to start explaining from the very beginning. And when Partridge learned it concerned the cable asking for Baker’s resignation, Partridge would say it was strictly an administrative matter, and should be taken up with the Undersecretary. Partridge would conclude it was just another case of an old hand in the Department interceding for a young man who was in trouble. It was routine. Partridge would consign it to the Undersecretary, if he was convinced it should go anywhere at all. “No, Mr. Partridge,” Locke said, “I can’t tell you. It must go to the Secretary, and to him alone.”
“Well, I’m sorry that you feel that way, Mr. Locke. I can’t do anything for you. I suggest that you dictate a memo.”
Horace Locke put down the telephone. He chuckled. He couldn’t dictate memos. He didn’t even have a stenographer. He tried to think of a way to get to the Secretary. He was still thinking at lunch.
Early in the afternoon he looked out of the window. Across the street photographers were knotting at the entrance to the executive office of the White House. The President must be better. He saw a limousine swing through the White House grounds. It was a Rolls-Royce, and that would mean the British Ambassador. He watched other limousines stop at the executive wing. More ambassadors.
He should have remembered that this conference was today, but he now was so far removed from the center of diplomacy and politics that a conference of this kind had become of no more personal concern than if he worked in the Department of the Interior, or Agriculture. He could see the Secretary’s car at the West Executive Avenue entrance. He could make out the seal on the door, the same seal that was on the ceiling over his head.
He had to see the Secretary, if he was to help Baker.
There had been a time when he could have put on his hat and crossed the street and waited in the White House executive office until the Secretary came out of the conference. Those had been the happy, informal days when government had been personal and uncomplicated, when the Secretary of State was just another member of the Cabinet. In those days the Secretary could wander around Washington and attract only casual attention.
Now the United States Secretary of State was one of the most powerful men in the world. When he spoke the earth trembled. A sentence from his lips could stop a famine in India, start a riot in Berlin, uphold the Bank of England, or cast down a government. And when he moved he was surrounded by a phalanx of assistants and bodyguards and officials waiting to pounce upon one minute of unrationed time.
It was this matter of the Secretary’s time that worried Horace Locke. Would it not be presumptuous, and even rude of him, to force himself upon the Secretary? Did he have the right to decide that a number of the Secretary’s priceless minutes be devoted to this matter of Jeff Baker?
Was it not presumptuous of him to assume that the Secretary was not fully informed on this matter? Perhaps Matson had already consulted with the Secretary, and the Secretary knew the full story, and the cable represented his considered judgement. If this was the case, and he forced himself upon the Secretary, it would be most embarrassing. It would be so embarrassing that Horace Locke knew he would have to resign.
The conference across the street would last for perhaps another forty minutes. At the end of the conference the Secretary would return to his office. If he, Horace Locke, was seated in the Secretary’s outer office when the Secretary came back to New State, then he’d have a chance to say something.
He must reach a decision. He tried not to think of Jeff Baker, personally, or Nicholas Baker. He tried to eliminate the importance of what was going to happen to Jeff Baker from his thought. This was the proper, the orderly way to do it. He concentrated on consideration of the importance of the letters Jeff had sent him—the letters that told of this movement inside the Russian forces.
If these facts were not known by the Secretary—and if they were true facts—how would they compare in priority and importance to all the other affairs the Secretary must consider this day? He projected himself into the position of the Secretary of State. Strangely, it was not difficult for him to do. He reached his decision. He didn’t think that on this day anything could be more important than news of an anti-regime movement inside Russia.
Horace Locke put on his hat and coat and walked downstairs.
He walked through the door of the West Executive Avenue entrance. The guard nodded. He was an old guard who had always been at this entrance to Old State. “Nasty out, today, isn’t it, Mr. Locke?” he said.
“Yes. It’s foul.”
“This Washington cold goes right through me. I’ll never get used to it.”
“None of us ever will,” said Horace Locke.
“Now don’t get a chill,” the guard warned.
“Oh, don’t worry, Gordon, I won’t,” Locke said. He went outside into the drizzle, and felt in his inside coat pocket to be sure he had Baker’s letters. The Secretary’s car was still there. Horace Locke caught a cab on The Avenue, and directed the driver to New State.
5
In New State he walked confidently to the Secretary’s suite. Now that he had made up his mind, it would not be too difficult. In the outer office a receptionist asked his name, and he told her, and she asked whether he had an appointment. “No, bat the Secretary will want to see me,” he said.
She seemed puzzled by his answer. She said, “I’ll send in your name, and you can wait.” But she didn’t seem to do anything.
That was all he wanted, a chance to wait. He took a chair in the anteroom where he could watch the door through which the Secretary must pass through his suite, and into his private office.
After he had been waiting for half an hour he sensed, by the activity, that the Secretary would soon be back. But yet another thirty minutes passed, and the Secretary did not come in. Other people came in, and were shown into the Secretary’s office, and came out again.
Then Susan Pickett came in. She had a notebook and pencils in her hand. He saw her as soon as she walked in from the hallway and he lifted his head suddenly so that she noticed him and came over to him. She said, “Oh, you’ve got an appointment. That’s fine.”
He rose, and winced. The chill drizzle had loaded his joints with aches and stiffness. “No, I haven’t an appointment,” he whispered. “I’m just waiting for him to come back.”
“
Oh, he’s back!” the girl said. “He’s been back, Mr. Locke. He comes up on his private elevator on the other side of the building and goes directly into the inner office. He doesn’t use this entrance.”
Horace Locke realized suddenly how he had lost touch with what went on inside the Department. Everyone in the Department would know that the Secretary used a private elevator—everyone except himself. This was only the second time he had been in New State, and the first time he had been in the Secretary’s group of offices. He could feel his confidence ebbing. He said, “I suppose it was foolish of me, waiting for him here.”
“Golly, Mr. Locke, you could wait here all day and you’d never see him,” Susan said. He could see that she too was shaken, and worried. He knew that she had depended on him, that she had faith in his ability to help Jeff Baker, and now that faith was gone. It was gone simply because he had not known the mechanics of the Secretary’s entrance.
“I’m going in to see him in a minute,” Susan said. “I have to see him every day at this time. He dictates part of tomorrow’s agenda. I told everybody I felt better and was able to work. I don’t know why. I had to. I guess I can’t stand not knowing what’s going on. Would it do any good if I told him you were here?”
Horace Locke considered this. “I’m afraid not,” he said.
She said, “What would happen if you went in with me?” Her eyes, which had been so dull, now suddenly were alight.
“What do you mean?”
“I could take you in with me, just like I’d been sent out to get you. I go in and out so much nobody notices.”
Horace Locke knew he was going to perform what for him was a desperate act. In his whole life he had never entered an office, a drawing room, or any gathering where by any chance he might be unwelcome. He said, “I will go in with you.”
She caught her breath. “I don’t suppose the world will come to an end if we do,” she said. She smiled, and Horace Locke admired her. He had not known many women who were unorthodox and daring, but those he remembered were the most charming women he had known.
So together they walked into the Secretary’s office. They walked past the receptionist, and the uniformed guard at the double doors, and through the secretarial office inside, and into the Secretary’s presence. Everyone could see that Susan Pickett was escorting a friend of the Secretary into his office, and nobody thought it unusual.
6
The Secretary was alone. His shoulders were bowed over his desk and his glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose. His eyes, as always, were chained to the pile of red-tabbed papers before him. He looked up over his spectacles, started to speak to Susan, and saw Horace Locke. He did not seem disturbed, but he did seem puzzled.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary,” Horace Locke said. He was at ease again. His confidence had returned now. He could be rattled by picayune indignities, because he was not accustomed to them, and hopelessly entangled in the fresh crops of red tape that grew each new year in the Department, but when it came to a matter of discussion with a man on his own intellectual level, then he was at ease.
“Well, hello Locke—Horace,” the Secretary said. “Good to see you. Haven’t seen each other in some time, have we?”
“No, we haven’t,” said Horace Locke.
“How’ve you been?”
“Fine, thank you, Mr. Secretary.” He knew what would be passing through the Secretary’s head. The Secretary would be thinking he must have some appointment with Locke, and yet he would be quite certain he didn’t, and he wouldn’t want to be rude, and so he would wait and find out, from the conversation, what it was all about.
Horace Locke plunged. “Mr. Secretary, I don’t have any appointment, but I had to see you. I had to see you at once. First I want to apologize for the intrusion, but after we’ve talked I’m sure you’ll agree it was necessary.”
The Secretary took off his glasses and laid them on the desk. “Well, what is it, Horace? I assume it must be of surpassing importance. You know how unusual this is.”
“It is an affair of state, Mr. Secretary.” The words rolled out rounder and bigger in this office than if said anywhere else. For them both it had a special meaning. An affair of state was a matter of the national safety.
Now Susan thought she had to say something. For the first time since she had been employed in the Secretary’s office she felt like an eavesdropper. This affair of state was not for her impersonal. “Mr. Secretary,” she asked in a small voice, “do you want me to come back later?”
“No, Mrs. Pickett, I want you to stay and make notes. All right, Horace, go ahead.”
Horace Locke brought out Jeff’s letters. “Mr. Secretary,” he said, “I have received two letters safe hand from Budapest. They were sent to me out of channel by a Third Secretary who because of my long association with his family trusted me implicitly. It was the opinion of this Third Secretary, in which I concur, that the matter was of a nature so secret that the information could not pass through ordinary channels. The letters concern this Third Secretary’s liaison with a Russian officer who claims to be a leader of a revolutionary group which intends to fight, and if possible overthrow, the present Soviet regime.”
Horace Locke paused. It was best to present it factually and without involving personalities. If the Secretary already knew of this thing, and had discarded it as impossible or a fabrication, then the Secretary would tell him. He would apologize, then, and he would go home, and he would resign from the Department.
But he could see in the Secretary’s face that this was fresh intelligence. “Sit down, Horace,” the Secretary said, “and let me see those letters.”
Horace Locke sat down. He knew now that he had his chance. He decided it would be best to read the letters, because he knew that the Secretary’s eyes were always tired from too much reading, and he would grasp it more quickly, and perhaps more completely, if the letters were read. “I think we can save time if I read them,” Locke said.
“Yes, do. Go ahead,” the Secretary agreed. He turned to Susan, “You’ll take all this, please, Mrs. Pickett. Girl, why are you shaking?”
“Oh, I didn’t know I was shaking,” Susan said.
“You weren’t at the nine o’clock conference today, were you? Wasn’t there another girl there?”
“Yes, sir. I didn’t feel well. I’m all right now.”
“Are you sure you’re all right? If you’re not feeling well, Mrs. Pickett, I can buzz for another girl.”
“Oh, I’m absolutely all right!” Susan insisted.
The Secretary frowned. A young girl could be as peculiar and puzzling and impenetrable as Molotov. “All right, go ahead, Horace.”
Ten minutes later the Secretary touched a key on his interphone and said, “No more appointments until I let you know.”
7
When it was all finished the Secretary said, “I suppose, Horace, that you know I signed a cable last night asking that boy to resign?”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary. That’s why it was so urgent that I bring the matter to your attention.” Horace Locke hoped the Secretary wouldn’t ask how he knew Jeff Baker was being recalled because if the Secretary did ask he wasn’t going to tell him. But the Secretary would understand that his Department did not operate on a basis purely official. The Secretary would remind himself, as Horace Locke did so often, that the Department was not buildings and files and code machines and typewriters. The Department was people.
The Secretary must have thought of this, because he said, “I think you were perfectly correct, Horace.” He tapped a pen on his desk, as if rapping out points in his reasoning. “There is a very weak point in Baker’s story. There is no corroboration. There is no corroboration from anywhere in the world. Perhaps Baker himself can furnish that corroboration. We will see. He will have a hearing. I will talk to him.”
“Thank you, Mr. Secretary,” Horace Locke said. He glanced at Susan Pickett. She was containing herself beautifully now. She was a lady, in the
sense that a man was a gentleman. She was a diplomat.
The Secretary rose and held out his hand. “Thank you, Horace. I’ll take care of this now. I’m going to check with our people in Vienna, and with the British in Klagenfurt, and of course with Budapest. And I’m bringing Baker home.”
As Horace Locke left the office he heard the Secretary speak into the interphone. “Have Mr. Matson up here at once.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1
JEFF SLEPT LATE Wednesday morning, and when he awoke he smoked a cigarette in bed and considered what he must do next. He decided he must present his answer to the cable to Morgan Collingwood. That was correct protocol. Collingwood would take it in to the Admiral, and the Admiral would snort at it, and then order it transmitted to Washington.
After that it would be Washington’s move. His refusal to resign would go to the Balkan desk. Undoubtedly Matson would send another cable, ordering him home to face a Departmental trial. They probably wouldn’t bother to bring him home by air. They’d furnish the most inconvenient transportation available—jeep to Vienna, trains to Genoa, and then an Army transport or freighter to Newport News. It would take weeks.
When he got back to Washington—he didn’t like to think of it. He showered and dressed automatically while his mind retraced all the arguments of the day before, and reached the same conclusion. He had nothing else to do.
Madame Angell brought his hot water, and he was drinking his black coffee when the phone rang. It was Quincy Todd. “So you’re finally there,” Todd said. “I tried to get you all last night. What’s the matter with your phone?”
“I don’t know,” Jeff said. “I didn’t have lights last night either, so I guess wires were down somewhere. What’d you want?”
“Oh, I just wanted to offer liquid courage and consolation. Now it may be different. You just got another cable. My little mouse told me.”