The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [8]
“I’ve got no answer to that, Mr. Foley.”
Webster put a hand on Foley’s arm. “Sybille says dinner is ready,” he said.
Foley continued to stare into Christopher’s face. “What do you suggest we do out there?” he asked. “Nothing?”
“Sometimes,” Christopher answered, “that’s the best thing to do.”
“Well, buddy, that’s not the style any longer.”
Foley put his glass into Webster’s hand and strode into the dining room with Sybille and Peggy McKinney trailing after him.
5
At dinner, Foley’s mood improved. He entertained Sybille on his right and Peggy McKinney on his left with stories about the President.
“There are dogs and kids, great books and great paintings and good music all over the White House,” he said. “It’s human again, the way it must have been under Franklin Roosevelt. If I want to see the boss, I just go in. You know you’ll come out of there with a decision. The door is wide open on the world. He’s likely to pick up the phone and call some little twirt way down the ladder in the Labor Department. Imagine, you’re forty and gray-faced, wearing a suit from Robert Hall, and for fifteen years you haven’t even been able to get an office with a window. Then—ring and ‘Mr. Snodgrass, this is the President. What the hell are you doing about migrant workers today?’ It stirs up the tired blood.” Foley looked around the table at the smiles of his listeners.
“The bureaucracy can use a little of that, believe me,” said Peggy McKinney. “God, how we’ve needed to bring brains and style back into the government. The embassy just crackles with ideas and energy. De l’audace, et encore de l’audace,—that’s what the foreign policy of a great nation should be.”
“Christopher was just telling me the opposite,” Foley said.
“Oh? Well, so many of Tom’s friends have to be cautious.”
“What do you mean by that?” Sybille asked, with her elbow on the table and her wineglass held against her cheek.
“Oh, Sybille, come along now. We all know about Tom’s friends,” Peggy McKinney said. “Is it true,” she asked Foley, “that the President putts when he thinks? I mean, does he really get out his putter and knock golf balls around the Oval Office? I think that’s so lovely, do say it’s true. I just devour all this gossipy stuff. You really don’t have to humor me.”
“I don’t mind. I’ve just spent a week listening to Couve de Murville. Believe me, you’re a welcome change,” Foley said. “Yes, the boss putts occasionally. He’ll do it at the damnedest times. The other day a couple of us came in with a recommendation. It was serious stuff. A decision had to be made—the kind of decision that would drive me, for instance, into agony. But his mind is like crystal. He’s right on top of everything. He knew the situation—felt it, if you will, better than any of us. We gave him some new information. He absorbed it. We gave him the options. He didn’t say a word at first. He got up, grabbed his putter, lined up a shot, and tapped it across the rug. We all watched the ball roll. Somehow—this will sound corny, but it’s true—we all suddenly saw that golf ball as the symbol of the fate of a nation. Not a very big nation, not our nation, but a nation. The ball ran straight into the cup. ‘Okay,’ said the boss. ‘Go.’ There’s never been another like him.”
Sybille turned to Christopher. “Paul has just seen a president out in Vietnam,” she said. “A little president. Do tell, Paul.”
“Oh,” said Peggy. “Diem or Ziem, or whatever his name is. Horrid man.”
“I’m interested,” Foley said.
“There’s not much to tell,” Christopher said. “I stood by while he talked to somebody else. Or, rather, listened. The other man was an American.”
“Who’s that?” Foley asked.
“Carson Wendell. He’s a Republican from California.”
“I know about him,” Foley said. “What poison is he spreading?”
“I don’t think you want to hear it, Mr. Foley.”
“Now I do,” Foley