Читать книгу An Affair of State - Harry Hart Frank - Страница 15

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After Jeff was gone, Dannenberg took his seat again. Because of the Secretary’s presence there was not the usual relaxation after the candidate left. “Well, Mr. Secretary,” Dannenberg said, “what did you think of him?”

“I’ll wait to hear your reactions,” the Secretary said.

“I think on the whole he’s a very promising candidate,” said Dannenberg. “He has enthusiasm, background, and he knows Europe much better than most men his age.”

“He doesn’t know Asia,” said Richards. “A man ought to be well rounded, as the world is rounded.”

Dannenberg tried to estimate the Secretary’s opinion, and decided to speak his mind. “On the other hand you can’t expect him to have encyclopedic knowledge at his age. What’s your opinion, Fred?”

Keller lit a cigarette, tilted his head upward, and slowly blew out the smoke, as if deliberating carefully on his reply. “He’s a bit visionary,” he said, “but I think he has the makings of a first-class man. I wouldn’t mind having him work for me.”

“When you said visionary you voiced my objection,” said Matson. “We need hard-headed, practical men in the Department today. After all, we’re engaged in a life-and-death struggle for our own way of life with a merciless enemy. Why take a chance on a do-gooder?”

“We took a chance on him before,” the Secretary said under his breath.

“What’s that, Mr. Secretary?” Matson asked.

“Nothing. I’d surmise that he probably was a platoon leader, or company commander. He got hurt.”

Dannenberg inspected the sheet of paper before him, headed REPORT ON FORM 57, BAKER, JEFFERSON WILSON. “There’s no record of his having been wounded,” he said.

“The way I look at it,” said Matson, “is like this. We need realists—tough-minded realists—in the Department today as we never needed them before. Now I know from his spot check that this boy isn’t a Communist, or a radical, or anything. But this is war. And the Foreign Service Officers we send abroad at this time are on the front line.” Matson held out his hands, gripping an imaginary rifle at the port position. “We don’t want woolly-headed dreamers out there. Not that I’ve got anything against ideals and ethics, you understand. They’re all right, at the proper time and place. But the men we send out to defend our system of free enterprise and our democratic way of life have got to be hard-headed realists.”

“I think I’ll take a chance on him,” said the Secretary. “How do you gentlemen vote?”

“As I said before, on the whole I think he’s a very promising candidate,” said Dannenberg.

“I’d like to have him,” said Keller. “I think he could be shaped and molded.”

“I’ve got reservations about giving him a post in the Orient at this time, but he might be all right for Europe,” said Richards.

“He is a very personable young man,” Matson said. “That I’ll admit. And as he grows older he’ll no doubt have some good, hard, common sense knocked into him. But right now he should be nursed along. There’s a post open in Tananarive, Madagascar, that we always have trouble filling. I think he’d be a good man for there.”

“No,” said the Secretary. “If he asks for a Southern or Central European job I think he should get it. That’s where he belongs.”

So that settled it.

As he rose from the table the Secretary said, as if it were an afterthought and of little consequence, “Mr. Matson, would you mind sending me the cables on the Bulgarian fishing boats?”