Robert Butler - The Hot Country

I hereby introduce you to James P. Trask, who is acting as my personal representative and who will speak to you on my behalf. I hope you will give the matters he will discuss and the favors he will request serious consideration. Your country calls you to a high service, Mr. Cobb.

Sincerely,

Woodrow Wilson

And there was his sharp-edged, forward-slanting signature. It was vividly black from a broad-nibbed pen. I’d been traveling for more than three days and all the while had to keep myself from considering why the biggest scoop of my career, the biggest scoop for this newspaper in many years, hadn’t been rushed into print. They were going to kill the story. That much was clear to me now. But in spite of all this, I was looking at a personal appeal from the president of my country, and though I was bucking and snorting inside at the thought of my story being spiked, I had a powerful urge to put a fingertip on the signature, to touch this barely dried ink which he himself put there to endorse his regard for me. To ask something important of me. As critical as I sometimes was of Woodrow Wilson, he was still the man who tried to watch over us all, look after our needs, tried to lead us all. We empowered him to do that. I needed to yield to my good reporter instincts now. I needed to hear what the President would say through his Mr. Trask, hear it without my intervening and influencing or obscuring the words. I had to listen.

Trask turned his body around in his chair to face Griswold as much as possible. “You have the thanks, Mr. Griswold, not only of the Secretary of State but of the President himself. Would you be so kind as to affirm that what I will ask of Mr. Cobb has been endorsed by you?”

“Yes, of course,” Griswold said. “I take it that letter is from the President?”

Trask looked over his shoulder at me. “Would you mind?”

I leaned forward and extended the letter in Griswold’s direction. He was used to having someone on hire to reach for things on his personal behalf, but it was clear Trask wasn’t going to intervene, and so Griswold collected himself and made the effort. He even lifted his butt off his chair to reach out and take the letter from me.

He sat and put on his wire-rim reading spectacles. He opened the letter and gave it a careful look, pushing that lower lip up as far as it would go. When he finished, his mouth loosened, and he looked at me and nodded. Here was another goddam old man whose approval gave me a little goddam lift. Now that I was in this goddam mood, I even retrospectively basked a bit in his praise for my story.

I had to remember who I was. I had to get back into character.

Griswold was lifting his butt again — twice in two minutes — to return my presidential letter. This time Trask played go-between, taking the letter and passing it on to me while Griswold said, “Of course. The Post-Express and all of Griswold Enterprises are prepared to answer the call of our country.”

“Thank you,” Trask said. He waited for Griswold to settle back down in his chair, and then he said, “Now if you two gentlemen don’t mind, I need to discuss some things with Mr. Cobb in private.” He paused a moment, let Griswold thrash a bit at being dismissed from the room. Griswold was showing evidence of the thrashing in jowl and mouth and eye. Then Trask said, “Per the President’s specific request.”

Griswold rose from his chair, harrumphing and of-coursing. I looked at Clyde, who was a good soldier and stoic in his dismissal. Once on his feet, he gave me a little nod of sympathy and he headed for the door and waited there for Griswold, who grumbled at him to go on, go on. The Boss wanted to assert himself over some situation here, even if it was simply who would be the last one out the door, which he closed behind him.

Trask reached into his inside coat pocket once again. “Smoke?” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

He withdrew a yellow pack with a veiled woman’s face in the center. Fatimas.

“You kept those next to the President’s letter,” I said.

Trask gave me that little conspiratorial smile again. “He’s fussy about not smoking.”

“So you’re saying ‘To hell with you’?”

“Now, would I say that to the President of the United States?” Again the little smile.

“Covertly.”

“Good word,” he said.

He wanted me to know we were private here. He wanted me to know he was operating in a world where he made the rules. This was an interesting man for the President to send.

He struck a safety match and lit his cigarette first and then mine.

“And your boss?” I asked. “He’s surely even fussier.”

“ He’s my boss,” Trask said, nodding at Wilson’s letter, which sat on the tabletop between us.

“I thought you worked for the Secretary of State.”

“Technically speaking. But in reality, the President doesn’t consult with Bryan on anything of importance. I work for the President.”

“You get a baseball card?” I asked, nodding at the pack, which he’d placed on the table before him.

“Fatima only puts them in the tins.”

“Too bad.”

“I buy the tins at home.”

We looked at each other for a few moments in silence, each of us blowing smoke. Then Trask said, “These aren’t the questions I expected, now that we’re alone.”

He was right. But I was taking a few moments to let him know I operated in my own world as well. I said, “You expect me to ask ‘What’s happening?’”

He shrugged an “of course.”

I said, “I figure you’ll tell me.”

“But first a little ‘To hell with you’?”

I gave him the same shrug. “You’re going to kill my story. Already have, in fact, judging from that thinly veiled exchange you had with Griswold. I’m not in a good mood.”

Trask gave me that small smile. But this time there was a different point to it. “I like you, Cobb,” he said. “I like the curves and fadeaways you’re throwing at me.”

“Who do you root for?”

“The Giants.”

“Oh brother,” I said.

“We can get past that.”

“So what’s happening?” I asked.

“The President — not lightly, you understand; on the contrary, quite reluctantly and gravely — is asking that you not run this story.”

“And Griswold, who will run, for the Senate this fall, is fine with banking some favors.”

Trask nodded. “We’re glad you work for a rare newspaper Democrat.”

“Grover Cleveland wing. He’ll need all the party favors he can collect. Especially from a new-breed Democrat.”

Trask squared his shoulders to me. We’d postured enough, the two of us. He was right. “Look, Cobb,” he said. “This is a major story you’ve uncovered. And it was news to the White House as well. Now, needless to say, we all want to thwart an invasion of America by a bunch of Mexican bandits. And you’re right. Germany’s right. There’s a chance Villa could pull all the bandits of Mexico together behind this and the Federals too, all the men in arms in that country. And that is a very large number. They might indeed find a common cause in this, especially at the present moment, with us in Vera Cruz and nobody thanking us for it. Backed by German arms? This could get very nasty. And protracted.”

“Banner headlines could stop that,” I said.

“You’re right,” Trask said. “You’re right. It could. Villa’s first strike would have to be a surprise and the spotlight of the free press would take that away. And you’re going to make him look like a puppet of the Germans if he tries anything. Okay. Let’s say he backs off. But how does it play out from there? Europe is working up to a war. We think it could happen any time. And if it does, it will be Germany on one side and Britain and France on the other. We think it can get out of hand. If you look at all the collateral alliances, it’s hard to imagine anyone in Europe staying out of that war, on one side or the other.”