His life was so filled with telephone calls from so many varied persons, at all hours, on all subjects, with so many degrees of urgency, that it was surprising how one more call, no matter how unusual, could have possessed the devastating power of an earthquake.
All of this he would remember later.
It was five days since his return from Europe, and Douglass Dilman sat at the head of the mahogany dining table in the intimate Family Dining Room on the first floor of the White House, enjoying the informal luncheon with United Nations Ambassador Slater and key members of the American delegation. In spite of the necessary presence of Arthur Eaton, who had been disapproving and excessively formal with him since his veto of the Minorities Rehabilitation Bill, the friendliness of his United Nations colleagues made the meal pleasurable.
Dilman had reported upon every detail of his foreign policy talks with Premier Kasatkin. His listeners agreed that the air had been cleared, and peace was probable and wonderful, and that the President had achieved a real success. Basking in the unanimity of this favorable opinion, Dilman had the appetite for a second helping of the baked salmon loaf.
Then it was, with the luncheon almost over, that Sally Watson appeared, and came quickly to him. While Ambassador Slater politely shifted his discourse from the President to Eaton, Dilman leaned toward his social secretary as she bent close to his ear.
“A telephone call, Mr. President,” she whispered. “Miss Foster says that the party calling insists it is important.”
“Who is it?”
“Miss Foster didn’t say, except-”
“I’m sure it can wait, then.”
“-except it is personal, from someone with the Vaduz Exporters.”
Dilman’s immediate reaction of concern broke across his features. He was sure that Miss Watson was not unaware of his reaction. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I’d better take it.”
“Shall I transfer it in here, or-”
“No, no.” He pushed his chair back, made hasty apologies, and followed Sally Watson into the State Dining Room, and then into the Main Hall.
She was leading him to the Red Room. “Right in here,” she said. By the time he entered the nineteenth-century Empire parlor, he could see Miss Watson taking up the receiver from the marbletopped circular table. “Miss Foster,” she was saying, “I have the President. One moment-”
Dilman accepted the telephone. “Thank you. That’ll be all, Miss Watson. Please close the door when you leave.”
He waited. The moment that Sally Watson had gone, he turned away, receiver pressed to his mouth and ear, and said, “Miss Foster? You can put the call through.”
Again he waited.
The call had unsettled him. Not once before, in all his weeks in the White House, had Wanda Gibson telephoned him here. This was the first time. Of late, he had kept their tenuous relationship alive by trying to telephone her at least once a week, during evenings only, when the Spingers were home to answer the phone, and so avoid arousing any suspicion in the minds of operators or anyone else who might overhear him.
Now here was Wanda coming to him openly. He wondered. Of course, the message had not said that Miss Gibson was calling, but rather, someone from Vaduz Exporters. Perhaps Wanda had fallen ill, met with an accident, and someone in her office, or her employer, Franz Gar, was trying to notify him. But no, Wanda would have told no one in her firm that she was a friend of the President. He was baffled.
Suddenly, unmistakably, he heard Wanda’s voice in the earpiece. “Mr. President-is this President Dilman?”
He understood her hesitancy immediately. “One second, hold on,” he said. “Uh, Miss Foster-”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Personal call. You need not monitor this one. Thank you.”
He listened for the audible click of his secretary’s telephone, heard it, and was assured that Wanda and he were now alone. “All right, Wanda-”
“Are we private?”
“Absolutely.” The restrained tightness of her voice troubled him. “Wanda, what is it? Are you all right? Is there anything wrong?”
“I don’t know, Doug. I wanted to phone you all morning, but it was dangerous, so-”
“Dangerous?” What could be dangerous on a crisp, beautiful American morning? “Wanda, I don’t-”
“Wait, Doug, listen. I had to hold back until lunch, so I could get away without being obvious. I’m in a grocery store booth now. There’s so much that’s been-” She paused as if to organize her thoughts, and then her low modulated voice came through the telephone swiftly but clearly. “Our office was chaos this morning. Mr. Gar had summoned all the Vaduz associates from New York, Savannah, Galveston, San Francisco. There was so much pressure and haste, I think half the time they forgot I was there. Anyway, I was able to piece things together, and I could see how it might affect you, and thought you should know about it.” She caught her breath, then continued. “Doug, the agricultural equipment Vaduz Exporters has been sending out these last months to their home warehouses in Liechtenstein, it wasn’t entirely farm equipment, but weapons, small arms, machine guns, ammunition. My company was using Liechtenstein only as a cover-up. The weapons were actually being shipped on behind the Iron Curtain to Bulgaria and Albania, and from there to-to certain parts of Africa.”
“You mean Baraza? The Communists are shipping weapons to Baraza?”
“I heard Baraza mentioned once. I’m almost certain of it.”
Shaken, Dilman said, “And your company, Vaduz Exporters, they’re actually a Communist Front over here?”
“A trading corporation for the Soviet Union. I’m positive.”
“Wanda, did you ever have an inkling of this before?”
“Never, not once. Everything exploded early this morning. There were these people pouring in, rushing around like insane, and I was one of several ordered to burn duplicates of procurement orders that had gone out, duplicates of orders I had never seen, typed by someone else, kept by Gar in his office vault. I could read bits and pieces before the stuff went into the incinerator, and I could see Vaduz was shipping weapons and they were winding up eventually in Communist hands in African ports. But the main thing-”
“Wanda, what alerted them to destroy everything this morning?”
“I was just going to tell you, Doug. That’s the main thing. I heard CIA mentioned twice. I was all ears for everything by then, but I don’t think anyone realized I was listening. But Gar said their informant knew of a special CIA report that had gone to you about a Communist weapons buildup in or around Baraza, and by now Vaduz was probably under surveillance, and orders were-whose orders, I have no idea-orders were to take precautionary measures. This may all be unreliable, Doug, but something is going on. You probably know the entire story, and this is silly. You do see all the CIA reports, so-”
“I’m supposed to, Wanda, but I haven’t seen any CIA report like that one. I know nothing about a weapons buildup around Baraza. In fact, I was just having lunch with the United Nations delegates, telling them how the Russians promised me hands off.”
“Doug, maybe-” Wanda’s tone had become uncertain. “I’m sure I haven’t got any of this wrong, but maybe I’m reading wrong things into what I’ve heard and seen. It’s just that I’m so worried about you. Maybe you should-I mean, don’t depend too much on what I’ve said-but on your own, I think-”
“You did the right thing, Wanda, calling me. If there is nothing to it, fine, nothing lost. On the other hand, if what you’ve reported can be verified-” He was full of it now, his mind straining in every direction, until he realized that Wanda was still on the other end, in a telephone booth, worried, perhaps frightened. “Wanda-?”
“Yes-?”
“Thank you for this. I’ll look into it immediately. There’s one thing I want you to do for me. I want you to quit Vaduz, get out of there as fast as you can.”
“Yes, I had decided to do that myself, even if it’s a false alarm. I’m afraid of them, what might happen. Even if I’ve blown this up out of all proportion, the money isn’t worth the worry in staying on. I’ll give Mr. Gar notice tonight. Doug, I’d better run. No matter what, do be careful.”
“You be careful, Wanda. I’d give anything to see you. Well-I’ll call you, let you know at home-tonight, tomorrow night latest. Good-bye.”
After hanging up, Dilman remained very still. He suffered a curious sensation of loss, and then of inertia induced by helplessness. He tried to liken his reaction to that which he had known the evening he had vetoed the Minorities Rehabilitation Bill. On that occasion, after his act of rebellion and the bitter response to it, he had felt that he had cut himself adrift from his crew. He had been pervaded by, almost overwhelmed by, the awesome experience of loneliness. He had turned the ship of state into an open boat on a running sea, and he was not sure that he could navigate it, without help, to port. But the sense of aloneness then had not engulfed him. He had gone on. He had tried.
This was different. If the danger to which Wanda had alerted him had any reality-and she was not one to panic, to convert rumor into fact, to exaggerate-then he had not cut himself adrift from his crew by his own choice, but had been forced into the helpless isolation of an open boat by hostile mutineers. His own crew had conspired against him, to take over the ship of state and to let him sink.
For the first time, the full realization of what might be happening struck him: he was President in name only, while those around him, without his knowledge, were at the helm, performing the functions of high command.
If this was the case-and now his strength was revived by growing anger-he would not go down, and let the country go down, because other hands had tried to heave him overboard and themselves take control. He was still President of the United States, possessed of the total authority of the executive branch, and he still had enough of a crew at his beck and call to use this authority.
He lifted the telephone from the hook, identified himself to the White House operator, and asked for Edna Foster.
“Miss Foster? Two things. Confidential. Contact Bob Lombardi at the FBI. Notify him I want to see the complete files on every foreign subversive organization, and especially those under suspicion of being Communist Fronts, located in this immediate area. Do you have that?
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I want the information on my desk by two-thirty today. Second thing-” He thought about it. He had met the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency only three times, and never once in private. He wondered if he could trust him, or if the Director was in the conspiracy against him, if such there was, and then he decided that he had no choice of action. If he could not trust the CIA, he was lost anyway. “Get hold of Montgomery Scott at Central Intelligence. Tell him I want to see the original, unedited daily reports, for every day of the past month, on every one of the African Unity Pact countries, especially those on Baraza.”
“Mr. President, if I may say so, we do have a complete file of these CIA reports in our-”
“I know we have copies, Miss Foster. And I know the Secretary of State has copies. I need the originals. Tell Scott I want to see him personally, along with the original reports, in my office at three o’clock sharp.”
“I’ll have to rearrange your appointments. And I want to leave you time to rest up before tonight’s dinner-”
“Do whatever you have to. But Scott is top priority. Understand?”
He hung up, then recalled that he had left the United Nations delegation in Eaton’s hands. He was in no mood for the delegates now, especially when he was less certain about the durability of the worldwide peace he had achieved at Chantilly, but he must return to the table. At least they must be prompted to remember that he was President.
Quickly he crossed the Red Room, and as he reached out to open the door, he realized that it had not been entirely closed during his telephone conversation. He must remind Miss Watson to be less hasty and slipshod in the future. He would hate to have had the valet or the other servants overhear any of his conversation with Wanda, and then use it as fodder for their backstairs gossip.
He looked down the vast hall, and in the distance he could see a girl in a white blouse and blue skirt rushing to her work. Not until she had gone around the corner and out of sight did he remember that Sally Watson had worn a white blouse and blue skirt today. It was too late to call out to her and reprimand her. It was also unimportant, considering what was on his mind and what the afternoon ahead held for him.
Bemused, he started back to the Family Dining Room to take his place at the head of the table.
Edna Foster brushed the limp brown strands of hair from her eyes, left the President once more buried in the heap of files delivered to his desk by the FBI twenty minutes earlier, and unhappily returned to her own office to get the disagreeable task over with.
The instant that she returned, before she could prepare herself for him, Leroy Poole was out of his chair, forehead perspiring, swollen eyes moist, black porcine face beseeching her. She tried to escape behind the moat of her desk, but doggedly he trudged after her and hung over her electric typewriter.
“What did he say, Miss Foster?” Poole begged to know. “Did you tell the President that the Federal judge of that lousy U.S. District Court sentenced Jeff Hurley to death, to be executed in the lethal gas chamber?”
Edna Foster squirmed. “Yes, the President had heard the news from Mr. Lombardi.” She hated this scene, and tried to avert her gaze from Poole. It was evident that the grotesque little Negro had been crying all morning, and over the death sentence of a man, not even one of his family, a man crying over another man. It embarrassed her and made her slightly ill.
“Will he see me, or is he still sore at me?” Poole asked.
Edna summoned a vestige of dignity. “I really can’t say if the President is-is sore at you, as you put it-but he definitely cannot see you, even for a minute. This is honestly one of his busiest days. I can vouch for that.”
Leroy Poole seemed to sag into some emotional morass, nodding, nodding, and then whining, “What about my request that he commute the sentence? He has that power. I have new evidence, and we’ve filled out the application for executive clemency in the Justice Department. If I have to wait for all those investigations and recommendations from the pardon attorney and the Attorney General, Jeff Hurley will be dead and buried before my appeal gets to Dilman’s desk. Did you tell him that?”
“Everything, Mr. Poole.” She flipped a page of her shorthand pad. “I passed on to him everything you asked me to, and the President answered-I have it here word for word-‘Inform Mr. Poole to go through proper channels at the Department of Justice on his appeal for executive clemency in the case of Jefferson Hurley. For my part, I will personally contact Attorney General Kemmler and request that he cut the red tape and expedite the appeal. When I have the new evidence, and the Attorney General’s recommendation, I shall review the appeal and summon Mr. Poole to hear my final decision. I promise him this will be done before Mr. Hurley can go to the gas chamber.’ ” Edna looked up. “That’s all.”
A gust of air escaped Poole’s mouth, as from the neck of a balloon, yet his puffed features did not deflate. “Okay, fair enough,” Poole said. “I’ll go ahead. I’ll see the appeal is in order. You just see that I’m here to talk it over with the President and hear his pardon before Jeff Hurley is gone.”
“You have the President’s word, Mr. Poole.”
“Okay. Goddam them down there, legalizing murder of the best, most decent human being in the country. I won’t let them, and Dilman won’t either, once he reviews the facts and hears what I have to say… Okay, I know you’re busy, Miss Foster. Just remember to call me.”
Temporarily appeased, Leroy Poole shuffled across the office, out the door and out of her sight, and Edna Foster dropped into her hard swivel chair with a sigh of relief. She laid her notebook aside, and waited to see if the pinch behind her eyes was going to develop into another migraine headache. It was getting worse and worse, all this pressure, and all these people, like just now, a black man in here, a black man in there, and all their anger and self-pity.
Why had she fastened on Dilman’s color again? She tried to think. Was it the tension of the job, created by Dilman’s color, or simply, simply the discomfort of being secretary to a Negro? How far had she come since that first day when she had agreed to work for Dilman, just as she had so long ago for T. C.?
Intellectually, she supported all the right things for Negroes, their right to vote, to sit like anyone else in any school classroom, to be equal under God and the Constitution. All the right things she believed in, without equivocation, yes-yet in some mysterious way her emotions continued to dominate her intellect, and at such times she felt that those black people were a threatening and inferior people. Threatening because black was threatening, because black was evil, like blackmail, black arts, blacklist, black magic. Threatening because, no matter what common sense you had, when you walked in the street, in the dark, alone, and you saw a Negro man walking toward you, you felt unsafe, because black was African and black was night, meaning uncivilized, meaning oblivion. And, illogically, you considered them inferiors. When she was on a bus, and looked out the window to find a Negro at the wheel of a large new car that had drawn up to the light, she was always surprised if he was not a chauffeur, surprised and vaguely resentful. How could a lesser person have more than she, who was white, meaning good and decent, and educated and chaste? After such internal bouts, and with difficulty, brought on by shame, she would recall her popular readings on race: these were not inferior people, only different-appearing people. Desperately she would evoke the names of Booker T. Washington and Carver and Bunche, but it was no use.
Yet when those stupid Southern-born secretaries made their jokes, Edna was resentful of them, too, and felt superior because she was not so prejudiced as they. She would never stoop so low, she thought then, as to believe that Negroes, because of their color, made so by God’s choosing, were more criminal, more shiftless, more smelly than whites. Whenever she was thus intellectually reinforced, she had easier days with Dilman, treated him with more deference and regarded him with more respect, as if to make up for her fluctuating emotional prejudices and those of her friends. Yet she never wanted to defer too much to Dilman, because tolerance was a form of feeling superior, too. Then she tried to treat Dilman as she would George or Tim Flannery or any other white man. But then she couldn’t, not truly, because since he was black, his presence in the Oval Office meant threatening danger to him, to the country, to herself, and his inferiority made things a mess, and no matter what, she was sure he smelled different. Damnation. And then she blamed George. He was at fault for her miseries, her predicament.
Because of George, she was still on this horrible job. His proposal of marriage, true, had been the high spot of her whole life. Because of it she had not enjoyed her trip to France at all. When she had not been working, she was mooning and wanting to get back to George and marriage. She had not even taken the time to visit the Louvre. And after all that, when she had flown back so full of high hopes and expectations, George had not been waiting for her, which was really too much. There had been a note under her apartment door, nothing more. He was in New York City investigating a possible job. He’d be back in a day or two with good news. The day or two had frustratingly become almost a week, and his brief, enigmatic telephone calls gave her nothing more definite to expect from his trip.
Less than an hour ago she had received his daily call, the call for today. He was still in New York City, he said. He could not promise to be back tonight or tomorrow, but maybe tomorrow. For the first time she had not hidden her irritation. Was this the way to start a marriage, he in New York, she in Washington, not even seeing each other in ten or eleven days? To pacify her, he had stayed on the phone longer than usual, full of hints about a terrific job, a quick marriage, so on and so on. This had soothed her somewhat, but after he had hung up, the long distance operator had called her. There was an overcharge. The party had telephoned from a public booth and left without depositing the extra coins. Would she pay the overcharge? She would. Where should she send the one dollar and ten cents? To the telephone company in Trafford, New York, she was told. Not to New York City? No, to Trafford. Very well, Trafford.
What in the devil was going on with George Murdock, she wondered now. Why tell her that he was calling from New York City, and then have it turn out he was calling from Trafford? What could there be for him in Trafford? It was a one-street college town, Negro college town at that, and neither of them knew a soul there-except the President’s son, if that counted for anything.
So here was she, stewing, and there he was, somewhere,mysterious and behaving like anything but a bridegroom, and she was-all right, to use Leroy Poole’s word-she was sore as heck.
The buzzer at her elbow startled her.
She snatched at the telephone. “Yes, Mr. President?”
“Miss Foster, put a hold on all calls, and then come in. Bring your shorthand pad.”
She diverted incoming calls to Mr. Lucas, the engagements secretary, took up her notebook and pencils, and went to the door. Momentarily she hesitated, and then placed her right eye against the peephole.
There were two persons at the Buchanan desk, looking oddly magnified by the glass she peeked through. One was President Dilman, seated, features bunched in concentration as he licked a broad thumb and turned page after page of the pile of bound papers on the desk before him. The other was Montgomery Scott, standing over Dilman, watching and speaking, and when not speaking, dryly working his lips.
Edna had known Montgomery Scott since the day T. C. had appointed him Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. She had never been able to reconcile his appearance with his record. Scott’s silky brown hair was parted low and combed up and over his head to disguise a bald spot. Yet his Vandyke beard was full and pointed. In between, his pink, bland, ageless face, with little pulls and punctures for features, was innocent and noncommittal. His long frame, slouched, carried his familiar sports jacket and dark-gray slacks. His carved meerschaum, the gift of some Middle Eastern potentate, added to his sedentary, scholarly aspect. Yet, Edna remembered, Scott had once been an active cloak-and-dagger man for the OSS. Later, while with the CIA, he had been involved in the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala, the instigation of the U-2 espionage aircraft, the onetime invasion of Suez, the assassination of Trujillo. Except for the incisiveness of his speech, his incongruous braying laugh, the spade of a beard, there was nothing to indicate that Scott was unique, yet he was the Director of derring-do, with a half-billion dollars of funds (never publicly accounted for) and 15,000 employees (rarely publicly recognized) at his disposal in Langley, Virginia, and around the world. The reporters who admired him referred to him as “Great Scott,” and those who disliked him referred to him as “Great Scott!”
Edna Foster opened the door and entered the President’s Oval Office.
Not until she reached the desk did both men look up.
“Hello, Edna,” Montgomery Scott said to her. “Long time.”
“Yes, good to see you, Mr. Scott.”
Dilman pointed to the chair next to his desk. “Sit here, Miss Foster. I’m going to interrogate Mr. Scott. It’s important, so take down everything. Transcribe it and have it ready for me today. I may want to study it after dinner tonight.”
Edna sat, pulled down the hem of her skirt, pad and pencil waiting. “Any special security rating for this, Mr. President?”
“One copy, for me and no one else, stamped ‘Eyes Only’ and ‘Top Secret.’ ” Dilman indicated the chair on the other side of the desk. “Please sit down, Mr. Scott.”
“If you don’t mind, I will.” The CIA Director slumped into the chair and, propping himself in it like a fishhook, tugged at his short beard, then massaged the orange-stained meerschaum in his other hand.
“All right, Miss Foster,” Dilman said over his shoulder as his eyes remained upon Scott, and he finally swerved his leather chair to face him completely. “Mr. Scott, I’ll tell you why I wanted to see the original file of your daily reports, and why I wanted to see you. Shortly after one o’clock today, from a private source, I learned that the Vaduz Exporters, a Liechtenstein corporation with offices in Bethesda, is a Soviet Union Communist Front organization, operating illegally, shipping arms and ammunition through Liechtenstein to Iron Curtain countries, and from those countries to Africa. I have now found this confirmed in the FBI file on foreign subversive organizations in this area.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. President, we gave the FBI the lead on that two weeks ago, two weeks ago yesterday,” said Scott, with obvious satisfaction. “Unlike Amtorg, the Vaduz people are unregistered enemy agents. Lombardi told me they were already under surveillance, but what came in from our Barazan operative was the first concrete evidence of what was actually going on here. I think the FBI intends to crack down any day now.”
“Tomorrow,” said President Dilman. “The FBI is rounding them up and closing them tomorrow.”
Edna Foster’s mind, which had still been trapped by the mystery of George’s peculiar telephone call, now released itself to the new mystery she was recording in shorthand on the pad resting upon her knee. As her interest focused upon the two men in conversation before her, her pencil darted across the ruled lines, hooking, looping, scrawling.
“Excellent,” Montgomery Scott had said. Then he added, “Of course, that’s no longer strictly a CIA matter.”
President Dilman leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what is a CIA matter and a matter that seriously concerns me. How did you know that Vaduz weapons were pouring into Africa, the Baraza area, for native Communists?”
Scott sat straighter. “It’s in the special daily report I sent you-as I said, I remember the day-two weeks ago yesterday.”
“Mr. Scott, I received no such report from you,” said President Dilman grimly. “It’s not in my file here. Miss Foster brought my file in before you came, and I was able to see what I had overlooked before. One day’s report is missing from my file. As you said, the one dated two weeks ago yesterday. How is that possible?”
Montgomery Scott had shoved the meerschaum into one capacious pocket, and was entirely erect in his chair now. “I can’t imagine, Mr. President,” he said. Then he poked his forefinger at the second mound of sheets before Dilman. “In any case-”
“It should be in your original CIA file that you just brought in,” said President Dilman, finishing the Director’s sentence. “Well, sir, it isn’t. You saw me go through your original reports a few minutes ago. That one daily report is missing from there, too.” He leafed the sheets backward, and then said, “I find only a blue memorandum slip inserted, with the date, and the note, ‘Talley/Eaton to return.’ ” He looked up. “What does that mean?”
Scott, who had become increasingly disturbed, suddenly rapped the desk. “Of course. I remember. Following our usual procedure, that morning I sent out two copies from Langley, one to Governor Talley for you, and the other to Secretary of State Eaton. Later in the day Talley telephoned me that both you, Mr. President, and Secretary Eaton were concerned about the report, and wished our entire file, including the original from which the two copies had been made.”
“Wasn’t that unusual, Mr. Scott?” asked President Dilman.
Scott pulled at his Vandyke. “Why-yes-reconsidering it, I suppose it was. But I saw no reason not to comply. After all, President Truman established our Central Intelligence Agency primarily as a source to supply him, and future Chief Executives, with vital foreign data and information, unedited, unslanted, uninterpreted.” He bent forward, eyes narrowing. “Are you telling me, Mr. President, that although Governor Talley and Secretary Eaton sent for every scrap of that daily report on Baraza in your name, you saw neither our direct copy nor the original?”
“I saw nothing,” said President Dilman, “and until two hours ago I knew nothing. That is why I brought you here.”
“Well, I don’t understand,” said Scott, scratching his jaw through a portion of his beard. “Of course, I can’t become involved in politics, but speaking on a purely factual level, there can be a simple and quite understandable explanation of why your aide and the Secretary of State acted as they did.”
He appeared to be considering what he would say next. At last he spoke. “On occasion, a Secretary of State or some other Department head will withhold information from the President until it is fully confirmed or simply because, at that point, the Department head believes it to be unimportant.
“I can’t vouch for this, but I am told that during the Eisenhower administration the American Ambassador to Mexico learned that Fidel Castro had long been a Communist and had been trained to take over Cuba and convert it into a satellite of the Soviet Union. The top-secret report went to Washington. For some reason it was put aside, never shown to President Eisenhower. As a result, the President and his aides knew too little of Castro’s Red leanings. They blessed him as a democratic rebel, as did most Americans in those early days-only to learn later that he was, in truth, a puppet of the Soviet Union. The original warning report to Eisenhower? Who knows? Maybe somebody thought it was too idiotic and untruthworthy to be treated seriously.”
President Dilman held up his hand. “Mr. Scott, this missing report on Baraza, the one that has been kept from me-do you feel it was such as could be justifiably regarded as idiotic and untrustworthy, or not fully confirmed?”
The Director of the CIA was, in Edna Foster’s eyes, definitely uncomfortable. “Mr. President, I really feel I should not get involved. We are a fact-finding organization. We dredge up the facts, evaluate the source, and present them to you for consideration, and you decide what happens after that.”
“Very well,” said President Dilman, “then you dredge up the facts in that missing report on Baraza. You evaluate the source for me, and I shall do the judging. Since I prefer not to go to Talley or Eaton for the actual report just yet, I must depend upon someone else for the information it contained. Do you have that information in your head?”
“Yes, I have, Mr. President.”
“All right, shoot.”
“The information we received was precisely this: In the hills, on the entire northern frontier of Baraza, there is now taking place a buildup of a native Communist rebel army. Crates from the Vaduz Exporters have been coming in, along with Russian officers who are training these African Communists. The Soviet Embassy in Baraza City is paying for, and directing, the secret buildup. We do not know the size of this Communist force yet, or the extent to which it is being armed. So much for the information. Now, you want the source?”
“The source,” said Dilman.
“The first information came to our Embassy in Baraza City from a Communist defector, a native. To look into it further, our head CIA undercover agent there recruited an educated native, good clearance, who was, as we say, ‘in place,’ on the scene of the buildup. Our report, two weeks ago, was based on this source.”
“And your evaluation of the reliability of the source?” demanded President Dilman.
“As you know, Mr. President, we rate all incoming information on a scale that starts at 1-meaning positively reliable-and this scale grades downward to 6-meaning probably unreliable. Most of the reports that we give further attention to are those rated 2, 3 and 4. The Baraza report? I remember the rating exactly. It was rated between 3 and 4, meaning fairly reliable but requiring more investigation.”
“What have you done about it since?” asked President Dilman.
“We’ve ordered our field men to continue probing for information.”
“Not enough,” said President Dilman firmly. He stood up, stared at the windows behind him, then slowly turned back to Scott. “Whatever Talley or Eaton determined-whether they kept this information from me because they decided it was unimportant or because they refused to trust me-I am not yet ready to let them usurp my powers, the powers of this office, and make decisions for me. This can be serious, serious beyond belief. Mr. Scott, I persuaded President Amboko to relax his guard against Communism, give the Russians a freer hand in Baraza. Five days ago I received Premier Kasatkin’s assurance that this democratic freedom we had insisted upon in Baraza would not be misused by the Soviet Union. No matter how others in our country may feel about Baraza, I will not break faith with Amboko or with other African leaders who trust us and depend upon us. Nor will I let Russia deceive us, play us for fools, make us keep hands off while they are getting ready to take over the independent, underdeveloped nations of Africa through intimidation and terror. Mr. Scott-”
Montgomery Scott had come to his feet. “Yes, Mr. President?”
“We’re way behind, and Baraza may be in danger and we may be in danger. I want to make up for lost time. I want the number of undercover CIA agents in Baraza doubled, and redoubled, if necessary, and at once. I want the secret funds committed to this investigation doubled, tripled. Hereafter I want every CIA report on Baraza brought to me, by you in person. Let Talley and Eaton keep their heads in the sand. I cannot, and shall not. I want a final report on Baraza rated up to 1 or down to 6. Whatever it becomes, I want the truth, and I want it fast!”
By five minutes after ten o’clock that evening, Sally Watson, fortified by the three Bloody Marys before dinner, the two glasses of wine and one full-grain energizing pill during dinner, the second refill of champagne in her hand now after dinner, felt at last possessed of the daring to go through with her scheme.
Her bare shoulders backed against the striped satin wallpaper of the Blue Room, Sally Watson stood removed from the clutter of military guests some feet away. The informal reception and dinner for the Pentagon crowd, in the State Dining Room, had gone off smoothly. There had been no last-minute dropouts, no ostracizing of Dilman, since the military needed the President’s support in their next budget battle. Now the thirty-two guests, the beribboned, bemedaled men in their brown, blue, gray, green uniforms, and their wives in semiformal dress, were enjoying their after-dinner drinks, a choice of champagne or brandy.
Sally drank, and through the tipped curve of her champagne glass, somewhat distorted, she could make out President Dilman, surrounded by Secretary of Defense Steinbrenner (a clod), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Fortney (a lecher), Admiral Rivard (a bore), Air Force General Ormsby (a social climber). Undoubtedly, she guessed, they were discussing with the President the trip he would be leaving upon late tomorrow, a one-week swing around the nation to visit military installations and deliver three speeches: on his Chantilly accord with the Soviets, on defense spending, on the forthcoming culmination of Project Apollo with the three-man orbital flight and moon reconnaissance under the direction of that attractive young General Leo Jaskawich.
It was interesting, to Sally, to watch how the President made a pretense of attentiveness, when she could see how disinterested he really was-in fact, how self-absorbed and moody he was, as he had been throughout the evening. He’s bugged, absolutely neurotic, about that telephone call he received during lunch, she decided. She knew that she was right. It takes one to know one. For she was bugged too, absolutely psycho, about what she had overheard and had reported to Arthur Eaton, and about how Arthur had reacted and what she had promised him.
With quiet desperation, before she lost her courage, before she became undone again, she wished that the damn after-dinner drinking would cease, and that they would all go down to the projection room for that Air Force film and leave her alone. Instead they stood there, lapping up the free booze. She considered her own empty glass: not that she was one to protest.
She peered down at her sea-green chiffon cocktail gown and wished that she had worn something less provocative. The next thing, General Pitt Fortney would be leering over at her again, and trying to make her come down to the projection room as his partner so that he could put his hand on her knee in the dark. She had her speech all made up for Dilman. She did not want any Texas lunk-head spoiling it.
From the top brass in the drawing room, her thoughts careened to the golden Galahad splendor of her lover. Tonight she was putting it all on the line for Arthur Eaton. Not that she had not already put plenty on the line for him, but tonight would cinch it. After tonight he would know for sure that she was not only good in bed, but good for a wife, a perfect wife for an entire life. After all, where had that snotty Kay Varney, his wife in name only, been during this crisis in Arthur’s life? What had Kay ever given him but a bank account and a cold in bed? As for herself, Sally was giving him more-everything, in fact. She was giving him an excitement in loving that he had never known before-he had admitted it the last time-and now she was preparing to undergo any risk to protect and elevate him.
The issues at stake were cloudy to her. She had no mind, she was the first to admit, for politics. She knew only that what was going on was of life-and-death importance to her Arthur, and that if she saved him, he would save her. He would have to, whether he wanted to or not, and he would want to anyway. They were together in this. Besides, they were in love, not kid love, lifetime love.
In front of her, some jazzed-up darky was starting to splash more champagne into her glass, and she pulled it away and let the rest of the champagne pour on the rug. She did not want to be intoxicated. Too much at stake. What at stake? She relived the highlights of the hectic afternoon.
During lunch, after leading Dilman to his Miss Gibson on the telephone, after leaving him, Sally had deliberately left the door slightly ajar. Why? She did not know. Why not? She had heard what she had heard, not comprehending fully, knowing only that it was something terribly surprising to the President, terribly involved with foreign affairs, and that she must convey to Arthur what she had learned. Whew, it had been close, getting away just in the nick of time. She was certain that Dilman suspected nothing. He was a dimwit, nice but a dimwit, through and through.
The second that she was back in the privacy of her office, she had telephoned Arthur at the Department of State. She did not get far. Brusquely, he had cut her short, asking her not to tell him any more on the telephone, but to come over at once. Pleased to have struck a spark, she had made some excuse to Diane about an errand, and hastened downstairs to her sports car.
When she had arrived at the Department of State and entered Arthur’s marvelous office, she was dismayed. She and Arthur were not alone, as she had expected they would be. A third party, Wayne Talley, was also present. At once, Arthur, perceiving her embarrassment, considerately had placed an arm around her, assuring her that she could speak as freely before Talley as with him.
She had recounted everything that she could recall having “accidentally” overheard of the President’s conversation with Miss Wanda Gibson. When she had mentioned that the President had said he had not “seen any special CIA report like that one,” Arthur’s face darkened and there was a rapid exchange between Talley and himself.
Arthur had said, “Dilman knows. He’ll try to see that CIA report now.”
Talley had said, “There’s none to see.”
“You are certain of that?”
“Arthur, I am positive.”
“Good… I know we have acted in the right. T. C. would have commended us.”
“No question, Arthur. How could we let someone like Dilman have that information-and possibly misuse it? He’d not think of what was best for us, only what would be best for his African friends.”
Then Sally had resumed her story, and when she finished with the news that Dilman was meeting with Scott this afternoon, Arthur had turned to Talley once more.
“Wayne, I’m worried. This could be dynamite.”
“We’ve got the percussion cap.”
“I’m not so sure. Depends on what Scott tells him. I’d give anything to know.”
After promising to meet with Arthur again in the evening, Talley had departed. For Sally, being alone with Arthur was reward enough, but when he also embraced her and kissed her, it was almost too much to bear.
Before leaving, Sally had clung to Arthur briefly. “Honey,” she had whispered, “did you mean it, what you told Governor Talley, about giving anything to know what Dilman and Scott are going to discuss this afternoon?”
“It would be of inestimable importance to me, yes.”
“What if I could find out for you?”
“You find out? How?”
“Never mind-what if I could? That’s something your wife wouldn’t do for you, would she?”
“Kay?” He had smiled wanly. “If she saw a tree about to fall on me, she probably wouldn’t raise her voice.”
“There, then,” Sally had said triumphantly. “You can see I’m not Kay. To me, you’re the most precious person on earth-”
“Darling, I-”
“I mean it, Arthur. Anyway, let me go after this for you.”
“Sally, I wouldn’t want you attempting anything foolish or risky.”
“I wouldn’t be. I’m only saying, I can try to help you, I want to, because I love you.”
“I love you, too, darling.”
“If-if I find out anything, I’ll see you tonight.”
He did not stop her, she remembered. He had told her not to attempt anything risky. He had not told her that he preferred she do nothing at all. Therefore it was important to him, whatever she could learn-and therefore it was equally important to her to learn something for him, for both of them.
She looked up from her glass, and was glad to note, while she was still keyed up, that the after-dinner drinking was coming to an end. There was a spontaneous breaking up of groups, a realigning into couples, a general movement in her direction, toward the exit beside her. They were streaming out of the room now, going down to the East Wing projection room, with its front row of soft armchairs and seven rows of stiffer chairs behind, which they would not more than half fill.
The stocky figure of President Dilman, momentarily separated from General Fortney, drew nearer. He glanced at her, and she stared blearily at him.
“Coming, Miss Watson?” he inquired.
“ ’Fraid not,” she murmured beneath her breath, a trick of underplaying that usually brought her prey, unable to hear her, closer to her to find out what she had said. It worked.
Dilman was beside her. “I didn’t catch what-?”
“Mr. President, do you mind if I skip the movie? I-I’m embarrassed, but ’fraid I drank too much, an’ I feel a bit woozy. Maybe I’d better lie down somewhere, an’ come in for the end of it.”
“Not necessary, Miss Watson. If you don’t feel well, you go home, go to bed.”
“Thank you. Matter of fact, I’m not up to that either yet. Really, if you don’t mind, I’d just like to find a place to rest a few minutes, and then-”
His military aides were cluttering the doorway, and Dilman said absently, “Whatever you think best, Miss Watson. Come down and join us later, if you like. You did a fine job with the dinner. Thank you.”
He was gone. The others were gone. In seconds, the Blue Room was emptied of all but herself and two white-coated waiters retrieving the empty glasses. She waited a short interval, until there was no more sound in the Main Hall outside. Then, setting down her champagne glass, taking up her beaded evening purse, she started to leave the room. At the doorway one of her knees buckled, she staggered, but she quickly recovered, surprised to realize that she was really a trifle woozy after all.
She intended to climb the state staircase, go up the quiet red carpet to the second floor, but then remembered that the glass doors at the top were automatically locked on the inside to anyone approaching from below. Immediately she took the President’s private elevator and, seconds later, emerged into the upstairs foyer.
Cautiously she made her way into the West Hall. She expected to come upon the valet, Beecher, or the housekeeper, Mrs. Crail, and she had her professional excuses prepared. She was almost disappointed when neither one was in sight. She turned left, going past the Yellow Oval Room, going more briskly, ready for any Secret Service man who might accost her and then recognize her. In her brief passage up the corridor she neither saw, nor was seen by, any other person.
At the door of the Lincoln Bedroom, which Dilman had recently converted into his permanent night study as well as sleeping quarters, she paused. Lightly, she knocked, to learn if the valet was inside, readying the room for the night. There was no response. Satisfied, she looked up the corridor, then down it, to confirm once more that there were no witnesses to her adventure. There were none.
Swiftly, heartbeat quickening, she opened the door and stepped inside, shutting the door silently behind her.
The somber stillness of the chamber quelled her rising nervousness. The valet had been here and gone. The white trapunto coverlet had been removed from Lincoln’s rosewood bedstead, and the pillows were in place, with a corner of the blanket cover folded back diagonally. The President’s pajamas were laid out neatly across the foot of the bed, and below, on the rug, were his misshapen brown bedroom slippers. The room was shadowy, lit dimly by only the round glass-shaded lamps on either side of the bed, and by the one on the marble-topped circular table.
Holding her beaded purse tightly, she went slowly around the bedroom, examining the tops of the bureau and the Victorian table against the wall, the couch, the end tables, the slipper chairs for the object of her search. They offered her no help. Distress, yet positive that it must be in this room (if it existed at all), for she knew the President read and studied and made notes late into the night, Sally continued around the bedroom. Then, on the figured carpet, propped against the leg of the end table on the opposite side of the bed, she saw it.
With a tiny, audible gasp of elation, she ran to the stuffed leather briefcase. Kneeling, praying, she tugged at the heavy flap. It pulled up, the bag opening wide without resistance, and she wanted to cry with gratitude. The President had released the combination lock before leaving, probably intending to do some work while dressing for dinner.
Settling on the floor beside the enormous bed, lifting her skirts and tucking her legs sideways beneath her, she dipped one hand into the first partition of the briefcase. What she came up with were several green-covered pamphlets and booklets from the Department of Defense, on military weapons and equipment currently in use. With care she returned them to their slot, and then pulled a thick wad of papers out of the second partition. She skimmed the headings in haste, and saw that these consisted of the President’s speaking schedule around the country, with several rough drafts, marked with blunt pencil, of the addresses he would be delivering. Disappointed, she returned these to the briefcase too.
There was one partition remaining, and in it were more clipped sheets. She extracted them. The first two listed his tentative engagements for tomorrow. The next, bound in a light-blue folder, bore two block-lettered, ominous, rubber-stamped red-ink warnings upon it: EYES ONLY and TOP SECRET.
She opened the folder. The first page had the typewritten heading: “Following is a Transcript of the Conversation Between the President and Director Montgomery Scott, of CIA, from 3:15 p.m. to 4:22 p.m. Today. (Q means Question by the President; A means Answer by Mr. Scott.) Transcribed by E. F.”
A thrill of intrigue and accomplishment shot down Sally Watson’s bare and shaking arms, into her fingers holding the valuable document. How proud Arthur would be of her, she thought, how proud and pleased, as pleased as he had been after their first night of fulfilled love not many weeks ago.
She turned the pages one by one, counting them. There were seven in all, single-spaced, but with generous skips. Even though her shorthand was rudimentary-she had never had the patience to acquire such a menial skill-she had concocted a homemade shorthand of her own, employing mostly abbreviations and silly symbols that she understood. Unfortunately, her system, efficient as it was, would take considerable time, perhaps too much time to enable her to copy the entire document.
She squinted at the diminutive dial of her wristwatch, finally making out the minute and hour hands. Almost fifteen minutes had passed since the President had led his guests to the ground-floor projection room. They were watching a movie. If it wasn’t a spectacle, merely an ordinary movie, it would take an hour and a half. Then, when it was over, there would be some discussion of it, and there would be more time consumed bidding good night to the officers and their wives. At the least, based on past experience, this should take Dilman another half hour. So she had two hours, minus fifteen minutes, leaving one hour and forty-five minutes. But, assuming there was no lingering after the film had been shown, assuming the President was anxious to return to his homework, she had better shave off a half hour as a margin of safety for herself. That left one hour and fifteen minutes of assured privacy.
She weighed the folder and its precious pages. No, the time left to her might not be enough to copy everything, considering the amount to be done, the pressure, and, she had to admit, her some-what groggy condition. She decided upon a course of action: even if she did not completely understand the contents of these pages, she would copy out fully whatever looked important or factual, or concerned foreign affairs, especially whatever Scott had told Dilman. Then, if there was still time left, she would go back and fill in the rest, or what she could of it.
She came to her feet, folder in one hand, purse in the other, wobbled on her high-heeled pumps, then went hastily to the marble-opped circular table in the center of the room. Pulling up one of the velvet-covered chairs, she laid the folder on its face, snapped open her purse, and brought out her two dozen blank index cards and her gold pencil. Putting her purse aside, she turned over the bound transcript, flipped a page, and read:
Q. Mr. Scott, I’ll tell you why I wanted to see the original file of your daily reports and why I wanted to see you. Shortly after one o’clock today, from a private source, I learned that Vaduz Exporters, a Liechtenstein corporation with offices in Bethesda, is a Soviet Union Communist Front organization, operating illegally, shipping arms and ammunition through Liechtenstein to Iron Curtain countries, and from those countries to Africa. I have just now found this confirmed in the FBI file on foreign subversive organizations in this area.
A. Oh yes, Mr. President, we gave the FBI the lead on that two weeks ago, two weeks ago yesterday. Unlike Amtorg, the Vaduz people are unregistered enemy agents. Lombardi told me they were already under surveillance, but what came in from our Barazan operative was the first concrete evidence of what was actually going on here. I think the FBI intends to crack down any day now.
Q. Tomorrow. The FBI is rounding them up and closing them tomorrow.
A. Excellent. Of course, that’s no longer strictly a CIA matter.
Q. I’ll tell you what is a CIA matter, and a matter that seriously concerns me. How did you know that Vaduz weapons were pouring into Africa, the Baraza area, for native Communists?
A. It’s in the special daily report I sent you two weeks ago yesterday.
Q. Mr. Scott, I received no such report from you. It is not in my file here. Miss Foster brought my file in before you came-
Sally caught herself. She had become so absorbed in reading, she was forgetting to copy. Of course, most of this she had already relayed to Arthur, it being similar to what she had overheard in Dilman’s conversation with Miss Gibson, but nevertheless, Arthur would want the essence of it.
She slid the first of her small rectangular index cards next to the transcript, took up her gold pencil, and began to write clearly: “Q-Mr. Scott, I’ll tell you why I wanted to see the original file of your daily reports…”
She wrote on. The first part was tiresome, for she had read it and there were no surprises, but then, after she reached the new dialogue, it was more interesting and more sport, and her cramped writing hand hurt less and the time went more swiftly.
Once, as her filled index cards began to form an exhilarating pile-like a square slice of wedding cake-she glanced at the time. More than forty-five minutes of her allotted one hour and fifteen minutes had passed. She had, she realized, covered less than half the transcript, and there were fewer than thirty minutes remaining. What she had put down, she hoped, would be useful to Arthur, but she was being too meticulous, writing everything out in full, and much of what she had written out suddenly did not seem vital. With a pang, she wished that she possessed Miss Foster’s stenographic skill, and her knowledge of what was usable and what was chaff. But then, Arthur would not have been interested in a girl whose talents were so circumscribed.
She determined to resort to her own brand of shorthand, and hoped she would be able to decipher it later tonight. She also determined to skip ahead, setting down only what seemed to touch upon Arthur’s life and interests.
She resumed reading, copying nothing for a few minutes, then realized that Scott was orally filling in for the President what had been in some kind of missing report, and this she duplicated on her cards in detail. Then she skipped more, and then Arthur’s name leaped out at her in the transcription of the President’s words, and the words were threatening to Arthur, and she knew that she must capture them for his eyes. She reread the passage:
Q. What have you done about it since?
A. We’ve ordered our field men to continue probing for information.
Q. Not enough. Whatever Talley or Eaton determined-whether they kept this information from me because they decided it was unimportant, or because they refused to trust me, I am not yet ready to let them usurp my powers, the powers of this office, and make decisions for me. This can be serious, serious beyond belief.
The words blurred to her eyes, and the champagne’s bitter aftertaste was in her throat, and her writing hand was painful from spasms of cramp, but she knew that she must write this down too, and fully. She suspected it would be more important to Arthur than anything else. When one had knowledge of what other people thought of them, were planning against them, one was forewarned and as strong as one’s self and one’s opponent combined. How much she herself would want such a transcript of Arthur’s private conversations by long distance with his impossible wife. Armed with that, she would know how to behave to perfection. But then, she supposed, such information was superfluous. Every time Arthur lay in her embrace, peacefully asleep, his beautiful repose told her what he thought of Kay, what he thought of Sally, and what she herself could depend upon in the future.
She shook off the lassitude of drink, pulled a fresh index card before her, and began copying again.
Her wavering pencil had neared the bottom of the card, when abruptly it stopped, and hung there as if impaled.
There had been a sound outside the door.
Her head went up, her back arched, her heart thumped.
She listened.
Then there was a voice, and another voice, both muffled, barely audible, but as strident as fanfares against her ears, amplified and amplified again by her mortal terror.
Beyond the closed door, the voices seemed to converge upon her until they were recognizable, one that of Douglass Dilman, the other that of Beecher, his valet.
A cold sweat bathed her, and her clammy fingers tightened about the pencil as panic gripped her heart and head.
Impossible, was all that she could tell herself. But, simultaneously, the shock of fear cleared her head. She remembered for the first time since she had stood drinking her champagne after dinner: it was not an ordinary feature-length film they had seen, but two Signal Corps short subjects (running time, twenty-eight minutes) and one Air Force documentary (running time, seventeen minutes). No wonder it was over. No wonder the President was outside the door.
She was trapped, she and Arthur trapped, because of her stupid miscalculation, caught red-handed without prepared explanation or lie.
The voices, indistinct outside the door, rose and fell. Desperately her numb fingers sought help from her numbed brain. She threw the pencil into her purse, shoved the index cards together and jammed them haphazardly into the purse; then, holding the purse, she grabbed up the folder and stumbled out of the chair. Blindly, choking, she darted to the side of the bed. Casting the purse on the bed, she knelt, tore open the briefcase, and stuffed the folder into it.
She leaped to her feet, wildly searching the bedroom. Across the bed, past the towering headboard and Lincoln portrait on the wall, was another white door, the one leading into the adjoining Lincoln Sitting Room. It was her escape hatch, her only hope. If she could only get out before he came in. She went swiftly around the endless bed, half running, reached the door to safety, was about to open it, when she realized that she was empty-handed.
She spun back into the room, and then wanted to scream with anguish. There it was, the sonofabitching purse, the indicting purse fat with her notes for Arthur. There it was, glittering and mocking her, lying on the far side of the bed.
She bounded to the bed, reached over it for the purse, lost her balance, and fell across the blanket cover. She had snatched the purse and rolled over to regain her feet when she heard the creak, like the report of a firing squad, outside the corridor door. On an elbow, hypnotized, she watched the doorknob turn. She was lost.
In that living instant of horror, a flash of recollection was illuminated out of her past: she had got into José’s dingy flat in Greenwich Village, while he was playing with the band uptown, to rummage through his effects and find out if he had left a wife down in Puerto Rico. She was still on marijuana, and insanely jealous, and would not have an affair or marriage with a bigamist, and she would not take his word. She had heard his footsteps on the wooden boards outside, the key rattling in the unlocked door, and she had been trapped. She had thrown herself on his mattress, sprawled and in disarray, and pretended sleep. Thus he had found her, the first time in his room, and had accepted the fact that she had got drunk in the saloon downstairs waiting for him, and come up to sleep it off. It had deceived him completely, poor bewildered primitive, and she had blotted out his suspicions by giving herself to him. They had eloped the next day, the silly annulled episode, but the point was, he had not found out why she had been there, because of her cleverness. Had he found out, he would have cut her throat. He had been a nut, like herself in those sick days, and he would consent to any degradation except question of his word, his only wealth of pride.
The memory passed through her mind with the speed of enlightenment.
Her gaze remained riveted to the doorknob. It had turned once, yet the door had not opened. She heard Dilman’s voice call out something to his valet. Still the door did not open, as she heard the distant reply from Beecher.
Could she lift herself off the bed, retrieve her now fallen evening shoe, reach the second door, get through it and close it, before the President came inside? Maybe. She started to sit up, then saw the door beginning to open, and more clearly heard Dilman wearily relate the last of some instruction for the morning to his valet.
Too late.
Breath locked in her lungs, she kicked off her other pump, lifted her legs high, and rolled to the middle of the bed. Her hair was mussed, which was all right, and one of the thin straps that held up her green bodice had slipped loosely down her arm, and the skirt of her cocktail dress, a part of it, she knew, had caught to the blanket in her falling back and rolling, so that her garters and a portion of one thigh were exposed. She did not know which to cover first, her thigh or her lace brassiere, but then she covered neither, for the door was opening and she must pretend sleep, pretend to have passed out, and this way she would look it. Besides, in this privacy, he wasn’t a President or politician or any big shot at all, but just a poor, lonesome colored man who’d had no attractive woman around for weeks, and she was the best-looking female in the White House. Let him know, let him know. José had been diverted. The colored man would be diverted, too, diverted and flustered, and would not bother to reason and concern himself with why she was there. She’d make it, she was sure, confident now, if only the champagne didn’t make her nauseated. She released her taut muscles, threw one arm out limply, so that her bodice dropped even farther and one spidery cup of the white brassière was almost fully revealed.
The door opened.
Her eyes closed tightly, and she tried to contain her breathing to the natural shallow breathing of sleep.
She waited for the exclamation from him, astonishment or harsh annoyance. Neither came. There were only the soft sounds of shoes rubbing on the carpet, of human movement, of a stifled yawn.
She eased one lid open to form a slit of vision. He filled the thin, long frame: his broad back was to her, his dinner jacket already removed, his white suspenders and dress shirt sharply contrasting with his thick growth of kinky inky hair. His stubby black hands were unfastening the white bow tie. He undid it, dropped it on the table, opened his collar. He began to turn, and knowing middle-aged men, she guessed what was next. He would make his way to the bed to sit, remove his shoes and socks, and stick his feet into comfortable bedroom slippers before settling down to read.
He had come around quickly, before she had closed her eye. For a second, she had the record of his petrified expression at discovering her: at once startled, at once confounded, at once agitated.
Her eyelid covered the slit. She feigned deep sleep, inhaling and exhaling through her mouth. She sensed, not heard, his advance toward her.
“Miss Watson-Miss Watson-”
She must seem to be too drunkenly unconscious to hear him. She breathed on, squirming slightly to her side in his direction.
“Miss Watson?”
Her bare arm felt the light touch of his blunt fingers, and involuntarily the nerves beneath the skin jumped, but she remained inert. His fingers pressed into her arm, and then pulled at her arm, shaking her. The pretense was over. She must do what must be done well and speedily.
She opened her eyes slowly, dazed eyes, closed them, then suddenly opened them wide in a double take, and instinctively hunched her shoulders in a position of self-protection. Her hand went to her mouth. “What-what are you doing here? What-where am I?” She tried to make her voice disoriented, distraught.
He remained standing over her. “I’m afraid, Miss Watson, you fell fast asleep on my bed. You said before that you felt you’d had too much to drink, and you wanted to lie down. I don’t know how you found your way up here, but-”
“Oh, heavens, did I? What an awful thing. I-I guess I wanted to find some out-of-the-way corner-I meant to lie down on the bed in the Rose Guest Room, but I-oh, I remember-I couldn’t make it, that’s it. I was going past here, and I felt suddenly ill, and your bathroom was the nearest, and after that I simply collapsed on the first thing I saw. I’m afraid I’ve made a spectacle of myself. I’m sorry.”
“Not a bit. It happens sometime or other to everyone. It’s just that-” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and he smiled weakly. “If I had come in with someone, it could have been embarrassing for both of us. Of course, it’s ridiculous-”
She had not moved, lying there, her eyes on his Adam’s apple and his nervous fingers. She could see his gaze go helplessly from her naked thigh between the bunched hemline and the upper sheath of her silk stocking, to fix once more on the protrusion of her brassière cup. “I don’t know what to say,” she found herself saying. “What you must think of me. I’m ashamed. I hope you won’t hold this against me, I mean, against my keeping the job.”
He swallowed, and tried to chuckle. “Hardly,” he said. “What I should do is offer you a drink, or something, to get you on your feet. But I think you’ve had quite enough. What I will do is send you right home in a White House car, Miss Watson.”
“Thank you, Mr. President, thank you so much. You’re very kind.” She came up on an elbow, and then groaned, even as she forced a smile, groaned and touched her brow, to give validity to her having passed out. “Ouch. I have a cage of buzzards in my head.”
He was instantly solicitous. “If you don’t think you can make it, I’ll have Mrs. Crail find you a room on the third floor.”
“Oh no, not that, Mr. President. Mrs. Crail? She’d have me branded Hester Prynne-S for scarlet sinner-in ten seconds flat. I can make it under my own steam. I’m grateful to you.”
She began to sit up, and as she did, Dilman started to turn away. “I’ll step out while you fix yourself.”
“Oh,” she gasped, pretending to see for the first time her dropped bodice and revealed thigh. “Heavens, what a sight. Don’t leave-I’ll be out in a second.”
In a rapid motion, knowing she had survived the ordeal, eager to escape, she swung off the bed. As she did so, her hip struck the bulging evening purse on the edge of the bed, and the purse hurtled to the floor, hit hard, burst open, and spilled its contents widely over the figured rug.
She was momentarily horrified by what lay strewn about the rug, not her lipstick and compact, not her handkerchief and keys, but the bent index cards filled mainly with her clear writing, everywhere. She wanted to throw herself across them, hide them, gather them, but it was too late.
Out of automatic gallantry, Dilman had crouched, gone down to one knee, retrieving her beaded purse, returning to it the lipstick and compact, the handkerchief and keys, and now he began to pick up the scattered index cards.
“I-I’ll-please let me-don’t bother-” she cried out, yet she was unable to move from her sitting position on the bed.
He had gathered some of the cards, but the frantic pitch in her voice made him glance at her with surprise, and then, almost as a reflex, down at the uppermost card in his hand.
“It’s nothing-” she gasped out.
He stared down at the index card, ignoring her, while his free hand groped for the rest of the cards on the floor. He placed these on the others, and stared at the new top card, which was also crammed with writing. He rose silently, leaving the purse on the floor, blinking at the cards in his hand.
She could not see his full face; it was averted from her, lowered over the cards. She crossed her arms, dug her nails into her flesh to make the trembling cease. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to go, no way to brazen it out. She wanted to die, but could only wait for the first blow.
His voice, issuing from the lips and face not fully visible to her, was surprisingly controlled, level, though chillingly soft and restrained. “You have embarrassed both of us, Miss Watson-you have.”
“Don’t believe-it doesn’t mean what you-”
“It’s my own fault, of course.” His Negro modulation, the slurred vowels, had become more pronounced. “I should have known there is no one to be trusted. I should not have breached security by leaving my briefcase unlocked. Yet, I suppose I felt that my bedroom was-my own.”
The blood and drinks had coursed to her head, and the room rocked, and she felt palsied by insane desperation and recklessness. “Believe what you want-but try to believe me-I swear it on the Bible-I was drunk-I came in here to-to use the bathroom, and then lie down-I bumped into your briefcase-and something was sticking out-I figured it couldn’t be important if it was sticking out-so I took it to read, to help me nap-I read only a few pages-then I started copying a few things because-because-you want the truth? I want to write a book about you one day, about being your social secretary, and I wanted these notes as inside stuff to put in my diary, to remember years from now when there’d be no security involved-I swear-it was just something that-that happened on the spur of the moment-believe me-”
He turned toward her at last. She expected his features to be hardened into anger. She resented that they were only pitying, like those of a father listening to his daughter recount an improbable fib. “I see, Miss Watson. Do you mean to say that you’re in the habit of always packing note cards in your evening purse?”
“No-no, of course not. I was taking those home from my office. I’d picked them up just before dinner, to use before coming to work in the morning.”
He had moved closer to her, and was staring down at her now. “Or did Arthur Eaton put them in your purse, Miss Watson? Was that why you came here? For him?”
She tried to summon up indignation. “Eaton? What ever has he got to do with it? Why would I come here for him?”
“It’s all over Washington, Miss Watson. I don’t listen to gossip, but everyone seems to know about you and Eaton.”
“Filthy troublemakers!” She was truly angry at last. “Filthy, dirty tongues. How dare they!” She was panting, but tried to be as controlled as he. “What would I have to do with that old man? I have my own crowd. Besides-how can you? He’s married, he has a wife. I know him only socially, because he’s an old-time friend of Daddy’s, and-”
Dilman’s expression remained placid. “And he would like my job. In fact, as you now know, he has been trying to do my job, just as you have been trying to do Mrs. Eaton’s job. Very well. Now you can go to him and tell him I know.” He stepped forward to hand her the index cards, and his knee touched hers, and the contact, the proximity of him, his lack of anger, gave her a last mad surge of hope.
“No,” she said, refusing the cards, “I wouldn’t do that to you. I think too much of you.”
He lowered the cards to drop them into her lap, eyes avoiding her eyes and the exposed brassière. With a sob, Sally clutched both his arms, not allowing him to turn away and leave her.
Dilman made no resistance. “Let go of me, Miss Watson.”
“No,” she sobbed. “Listen-all right-I’ll tell you the truth-all right, you’re forcing me to-it’s terrible-but I’ll tell you. I-I didn’t come here to lie down, or for anyone else, but just for you, to be with you awhile alone and talk to you. I deliberately came here to wait, and became lonesome, and poked around-looking at your work-it has moved me, the way you work so hard, and nobody understands you except a few of us, like myself-and the cards, the notes, I did take them to keep busy, for my diary, honestly-that’s what it was. I’m not ashamed, I wanted to be alone with you, to tell you I understand what you go through, that you have a friend in me who-”
Forcibly, he removed his arms from her grasp. “Miss Watson, I suggest you leave here at once.”
“No, listen-” She believed it now. Who had known Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton as well as Mrs. Maria Reynolds? President Cleveland as well as Mrs. Maria Halpin? President Harding as well as Miss Nan Britton? She believed those stories as much as she believed in herself, now and here, and in what was possible. If she were to lose Arthur because of her failure, she might still have more than any woman on earth. Casting the index cards aside, she leaped to her feet, and the room went topsy-turvy, and she almost collapsed, grabbing Dilman’s arms, holding herself erect. She knew she was drunk, but she knew what she wanted. “-listen-I do care for you. I want to help you. Don’t you-don’t you want to know me better?”
She had pulled close to him confidently, knowing the offer of her flesh had never failed her before. She waited for his concession to the inevitable, his embrace, and their friendship.
“Miss Watson, get out of here.”
Her hands released him, and she recoiled, looking at him with disbelief. For the first time, his face was set in pure black anger.
There was one thing left. She’d had her elementary school in Negroes. She knew them too well. “You’re afraid of me, that’s all,” she heard herself say. “You’re afraid of getting in trouble because I’m white, Southern white, and somebody, and you’re colored. Don’t-don’t be that way. I’ve known plenty of Negro men. I consider them to be like-like anybody else-and when they get to know me, they appreciate me. Now you know, so-”
She halted, frightened by the way his red-rimmed eyes protruded and blazed at her.
“You’re a drunken, silly, sick young lady,” he said. “You get out of here, and you stay out of here, and never show your face in this house again.”
As her self-assurance faded, her face became contorted by humiliation and rage. “You-you throwing me out-?”
He turned his back to her, picked up her purse, took the index cards from the bed, fitted them into the purse, and placed the bag in her hand. “I’m throwing you out, Miss Watson. I’m sure Mr. Eaton will take you in.”
She glared at him, reeled past him to the door, held the knob, and over her shoulder considered him contemptuously. “You hypocritical pig,” she cried shrilly. “You-with that nigger girl you’ve got stashed away-I know-I’m not forgetting-no low nigger is going to insult me. You’re damn right I’m going to Arthur Eaton. He won’t be forgetting either… Enjoy this house while you can, because, mister, your lease is running out, and from now on we want only gentlemen on the premises, nothing lower-you hear? No more of your indecent kind, only two-legged beings, you hypocrite!”
Reluctantly Arthur Eaton reopened the concealed wall bar of his Tudor living room and took down the bottles and glasses. He prepared a Jack Daniel’s, with water, for Senator Bruce Hankins, and poured a generous amount of sweet liqueur from the Grand Marnier decanter for Representative Zeke Miller. Behind him, he knew that the elderly Hankins had settled on the sofa across from Wayne Talley, while Miller remained on his feet, spread-legged, in the pose of a public speaker impatient to begin a harangue. Talley, Eaton had observed, still had two-thirds of his Seagram’s whisky, and required no refill.
About to take the two drinks to his recently arrived guests, Eaton, who had not been drinking, reconsidered his own need. The sight of the newcomers definitely left him with a bad taste in his mouth. To remove this taste, a counter-potion was required. Eaton studied the two rows of bottles on the shelves of his bar, brought down the Remy Martin cognac and an amber-tinted snifter that Kay had long ago purchased in Vienna, and he covered the bottom of the glass with the cognac.
His eye caught the Roman numerals of the early English lantern clock on the mantelpiece of the fireplace. It was twenty-three minutes after eleven, too late for this, and too late for Sally Watson. When Talley had come over, after dinner, they had quietly reviewed the entire Baraza situation, from start to the present, as well as the withholding of the single CIA warning from Dilman. They had justified their act, one to the other, and Talley had been reassuring about the safety of their position. Sally’s precious news that Dilman had found out, or at least suspected what they had done, had been useful in alerting them to possible trouble. However, more important would be the degree to which Dilman could confirm, through the Director of CIA, exactly what they had withheld. If Scott was uncooperative or vague, Dilman would have no evidence with which to endanger the peace of the country. (If new evidence came-better, worse-the problem could then be handled by them openly.) On the other hand, if Scott had been informative and explicit this afternoon, Dilman might be foolhardy enough to act both against Talley and himself, and against the Russians, and the rift in foreign policy would have to be taken to the public-T. C.’s public still, he trusted.
Eaton had hinted to Talley that Miss Watson had indicated she had means of learning what had transpired between the President and Montgomery Scott. Also, she had indicated that she might have the information for them this evening. Fortunately, Talley, who was anything but well-bred, had accepted this with delicacy. He had not questioned why Miss Watson should trouble to help Eaton, or, indeed, what her relationship was with Eaton. Of course, Eaton guessed, Talley knew about Sally Watson and himself. Eaton was never one to indulge in self-deception. There were few personal secrets anywhere between Foggy Bottom and the Hill. Yet, to Talley’s credit, he had behaved like a gentleman, an unnatural behavior no doubt induced by Talley’s realization that his own future was insecure and entirely linked with Eaton’s future.
Without discussing it further, they had waited, both of them, for Sally Watson’s telephone call. At eleven o’clock, when they were discouraged and had talked themselves out, the telephone had finally rung. Hopefully, Eaton had answered it, only to find that the caller was not Sally but Representative Zeke Miller. If Eaton had not known of Miller’s temperance, he would have thought him intoxicated, so excited and unrestrained had been his outpouring.
“Remember, Arthur, how I was telling you, after that there Nigra vetoed the minorities bill, that we were setting out to put him in a kennel where he belongs? Well, Arthur, we were dibble-dabbling here and there, digging up a case or two, when tonight we cracked it wide open. Yayss sir, my friend, cracked it open with a Jim Crowbar.” Miller had cackled with glee over the telephone. “We were having a caucus, five or six of us on the Hill, me and Bruce Hankins presiding, when this certain information about our Nigra President fell plumb in our laps, came right to us, dropped down in our laps like manna from the sky. Yayss sir. This is it, Arthur, and me and Bruce are scooting right over to Georgetown to share our intelligence with you in person.”
Eaton had meant to protest that he was expecting someone else, but then he decided that Sally would not be heard from tonight. Still, he was in no humor for Miller’s white-supremacy pipe dreams. “Zeke, I appreciate this, but it is terribly late. If this is some idea or plan of yours, can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Yet, considering the precariousness of his own position with Dilman, he had been unable not to leave the door slightly open to a possibly ally. “Of course, Zeke, if you are not being carried away by wishful thinking, if you have some information that is vital-”
“Vital and factual!” Miller had shouted. “Important enough to make our Nigra tender his resignation, and to make you, as next in line, the President of the United States.”
Eaton had winced at the bluntness of the last. Nevertheless, it had been useless to resist further. “Very well. You and the Senator come right over. I have Governor Talley with me.”
“All the better. See you in a jiffy.”
And now they were here in his living room, awaiting his full attention. Wondering what was so “vital and factual,” Arthur Eaton carried the lacquer tray of drinks to the sofa. He held the tray out to Senator Hankins, and followed the elderly lawmaker’s horny hand as it took the Jack Daniel’s and brought it up to his pickerel face. Eaton did not know Hankins intimately, but only as a thirty-year public legend on the Hill who had been at once a thorn in T. C.’s side in matters of domestic legislation and an asset to T. C. and Eaton himself in matters of foreign policy.
Hankins wore a wavy gray toupee, so cheap that the hairpiece appeared pasted on with schoolboy’s glue. His ancient sad eyes, moist nostrils, flaccid puckered lips were surrounded by curlicues of deep wrinkles. The broad black silk ribbon to which his pince-nez was attached dangled from under his high starched collar. Unlike the younger Zeke Miller, he was not vocal. He was a senior citizen given to long silences and grave nods, which had conferred upon him the mistaken reputation of having wisdom. Since he had a son and grandson serving the government abroad, and because he enjoyed Congressional junkets to London, Madrid, Tokyo, he had come to consider himself a specialist on international affairs. He led foreign-aid programs and treaty agreements and was pleased to read often that he was a progressive Southerner. Where he was not progressive, however, was in his attitude toward the Negroes in his state and in the Black Belt beneath the Mason-Dixon line.
For Senator Hankins, the elevation of Douglass Dilman to the nation’s highest seat had been a trauma that would have been comparable only to seeing General William Tecumseh Sherman ascending to the Presidency of the Confederacy. To Hankins, the nigger President was beneath human contempt, an abomination and eyesore on once-beautiful America.
Yet, until now, he had not led his colleagues in the fight against Dilman. It was as if he would not dignify Dilman’s position by voicing his disgust. He permitted the yeasty young Miller to lead the Christian forces, letting it be known that he was in his palace, ready, available to come down into the field to administer the final coup.
“Well, Mr. Secretary,” he said now to Eaton, after gingerly tasting, then relishing, his Jack Daniel’s, “looks like you been to Tennessee to oversee the proper distilling of this celebrating libation.”
“You feel we have something to celebrate, Senator?” Eaton asked, as he took the tray to Zeke Miller.
Senator Hankins nodded. “As I was relating to Governor Talley, I’m a mighty cautious old coot, Mr. Secretary. These eyes of mine and ears of mine have seen and heard too much fable to be unwary of those bearing good tidings. But what I witnessed and heard a few hours back gives me hope we will be able soon to see the last of our nigger tenant on Pennsylvania Avenue, and restore prideful Christian government to this land of the Founding Fathers. Zeke there, he’ll tell you what is in our possession, and like ourselves, you will sleep easier tonight… Tell the Secretary, Zeke. Tell him and the Governor.”
“Well, goldarnit, Senator Bruce,” Miller said, “I’ve only been waiting for Secretary Eaton’s undivided attention, like not wanting to open a Christmas present till everyone’s all assembled round the tree.”
Miller had taken the liqueur glass, and without tasting it had immediately put it down on the coffee table. His lipless mouth curled apologetically at Eaton as he slicked his bald spot. His wiry frame appeared to dance with eagerness and restlessness, although he remained stationary on his spread legs.
Dismayed by this unattractive pair, yet increasingly curious as to what they had learned, Eaton set the tray down, retaining his cognac, and then sank into the sofa beside Talley, opposite Hankins.
“I am quite ready for you now, Zeke,” said Eaton.
Talley bent forward and pleaded, “Make it good, Zeke. For the country’s sake, we need something to control our-our President.”
Zeke Miller’s thin nostrils jumped, and he grinned, baring his yellow teeth. “This is no lasso we found, to tie our Nigra down. This here is a regular blowtorch we got, to singe his black behind and send him high-tailing back where he come from.”
“Tell them, tell them,” Senator Hankins grunted, “before my kidneys give out. This isn’t the House Chamber, Zeke. Make it short and sweet and factual.”
Zeke Miller moved a few feet nearer to Eaton. “While I deplored, much as you, that assassination attempt, it gave us a clear mandate to proceed against Dilman. It showed us he not only has no white support-South, North, East, West, except for a handful of liberal-Commie punks and bleeding hearts-but he’s got none of his brethren Nigras behind him neither. So Senator Bruce here and I, and the party leaders both sides of the aisles, been yakking around, casting about, then meeting to see what we’d come up with. Till tonight, not much. We had some information he might be locked into the Crispus Society, giving his pal Spinger and those law-spouting darkies certain advantages over the rest of us. I’ve had my legal beagle, Casper Wine, looking back into some of Dilman’s old court cases for possibilities of unethical practices, and checking back into his campaigns and elections to find out if there’s anything that smells fishy-like. Sooner or later, I figured we’d come up with something concrete to hold over his head, and make him resign like he should. Then, the way Senator Bruce says, tonight the facts fell right plunk in our lap.”
“God sake, boy, quit being garrulous,” said Senator Hankins testily. “Tell them, boy, tell them.”
Irritated at the prodding, Miller snapped, “I’ll tell them in my way.” He yanked out his maroon handkerchief, honked into it, returned the handkerchief to his hip pocket, and looked squarely at Eaton and Talley. “Ever hear of a lad named George Murdock, gentlemen?”
Talley said, “The reporter? Yeh, he’s Miss Foster’s boy friend.”
“Right and o,” said Miller. “And who is Miss Foster but Dilman’s private and confidential white secretary, yes? Okay. So one night not so far back, the two of them are dating, real cozy, and Murdock proposes marriage, and Miss Foster, who’s an old maid, like comes apart, gets plastered with booze in her joy, and begins to spill the goods on our Black Mose in the White House. Hold your hats, Arthur, Governor, but here’s the goods.” He paused dramatically, grinning. “Fact one. Dilman’s got a daughter in New York passing for white-hear that?-the President’s daughter deceiving, subterfuging, passing for pure Aryan white, and she with blood black as ink in her veins. Fact two. Dilman’s got that scrawny son up at the Nigra school in Trafford-and you know what?-the President’s son was and is a bona fide, one hundred and one per cent, all-out, scummy underground member of the Commie Turnerite Group. Fact three. Dilman’s wife died of booze, and he was an alcoholic with her, and spent time drying out once in a drunk tank of a sanitarium with her, and there’s evidence he’s a boozer now, which can best explain some of his behavior since-”
Eaton’s original astonishment on hearing these charges was now replaced by doubt. The accusations that Zeke Miller was announcing sounded as intemperate as the conduct of the one who conveyed them. Eaton came out of his slouched posture, sitting erect as he interrupted the Congressman. “One second, Zeke. That is almost too much to believe. No one, I am sure, has a spotless background or life, not you, not I, and quite possibly Dilman has his shortcomings and made some errors in the past. But until now, if he had nothing else, Dilman, at least when he was a senator, had a reputation for sobriety and commonplace decency. Now you would have us believe-”
“Let me finish,” Miller interrupted.
“Wait, you allow me to finish,” Eaton said. “Suddenly, overnight, you are painting him as a secret drunkard, as a bad family man and a discredit to his race, as a Negro in public life who would permit his daughter-if there is a daughter-to pretend that she is white, condone her deception and disavowal of him and of her heritage, as a father who would let his son, utterly dependent economically on his favor, be a secret terrorist. Zeke, I-”
“You’re doggone right his son’s a terrorist,” said Miller indignantly. “Why else do you think Dilman thwarted the Attorney General, stalled on banning the Turnerites, until one of them murdered a good and decent helpless judge? Dilman’s more responsible for Judge Gage’s murder than that ape Hurley-and the public will say so, too, once the facts are out.”
“My God, these facts could change-” Talley had begun.
Eaton’s hand silenced Talley. Eaton fixed his gaze on Miller. “Facts,” he said. “Facts depend on sources. What are your sources, besides some unknown reporter who is used to contriving stories for his keep, and a foolish secretary full of liquor? You’ll have to do better than that, Zeke.”
“I can do better than that!” Miller said angrily. “Give me a chance and you won’t be questioning me no more. The source for all these facts is Douglass Dilman himself, in person, no other. Miss Foster monitors most of his calls, as she did with T. C. Once, or a couple of times, Dilman forgot to tell her not to monitor, and she listened in to him talking to his son. That’s how she found out about that daughter, Mindy, passing for white, and about his wife and him being in that Springfield sanitarium for drunks. Miss Foster’s no maker-upper. She’s even got it all set down in black and white in a diary, believe it or not. Drunk or sober, it’s there in writing for us to demand, if we need it.”
Eaton continued to frown. “And what about that Turnerite nonsense?”
Miller’s wiry frame danced again. His veiny nostrils quivered. “Okay, now the rest of it… Look, Arthur, I’m not ready to give credence to just any old defamation or garbage that comes my way. I want proof, good proof, too. When Reb Blaser brought this Murdock kid to me tonight, and said, ‘Congressman, this is the reporter fellow you wanted me to keep an eye on, and now he’s come up with a zinger of a story he wants to sell you,’ I heard Murdock out, and was about as downright skeptical as you and maybe the Governor are now. But when he finished the whole thing, and then backed it up for me, I was ready to buy. I said to Murdock, ‘Okay, kid, what’s your price?’ He said, ‘A permanent editorial job on your Washington paper, starting $200 a week, and going up, with a contract for five years.’ Know what, Arthur? I said, ‘Murdock, you’re too smart not to be in our camp. You’re hired. We sign and seal the deal on Monday.’ That’s what I think of his evidence.”
Senator Hankins had a fit of coughing, hacking and wheezing, and Miller quickly moved to help him with his drink. When Hankins recovered, he sputtered, “Thanks, boy, but damnations, tell them the whole of it.”
Eaton waited, sipping his cognac, trying to assess the possible accuracy of what he had already heard, and the value of these revelations to all of them if the evidence could be proved. He heard Miller blowing his nose, and he looked up. “Is there more?” he demanded.
“When this George Murdock got this information from Miss Foster, who got it from Dilman himself, he kept his head. That’s what impressed me about the lad. He didn’t come to me or anyone else half-cocked. If he had, we’d probably have thrown him out. No. Smart kid. He went out on his own, to verify what his girl friend told him. He went to New York last week and just came back today. Know what he did in New York? Listen. He’d remembered the two names Dilman’s daughter had-her real nigger name, and her phony white name. Her nigger name is Mindy Dilman, and her white name is Linda Dawson-how do you like that? Linda Dawson, ever hear anything whiter? So Murdock looked her up, and went calling on her, and right off rocked her back on her heels, greeting her with ‘Hi there, Mindy.’ That nigger-white girl sure let him in fast. I won’t go into details now, except Murdock said she was practically white, sure enough, and a looker, a good-looker, but sarcastic and mean, and twisting and squirming away from what he knew. But, tough as she was, she finally caved in and confessed it. Then she started fussing and weeping. If Murdock let it out, she kept saying, her life was ruined. Said she’d been white since being grown up. Said she had a white boy friend who was with a brokerage house in Wall Street, and they were almost engaged, and all her friends were white, and this was the end of everything. Said why did anyone pick on her, when she only wanted to be lost and did no harm to anyone, least not like her brother Julian, with his rotten Nigra friends and his Turnerite hoodlums. Well, now, Arthur, you bet our Mr. Murdock pricked up his ear high as a radar beacon.”
Eaton contemplated the cognac, warming in his palm, and the terrible scene provoked by that unsavory Murdock in a New York apartment, a scene he found unbearable and which Zeke Miller apparently relished. Eaton said, “You mean that girl informed on her brother?”
“You’re goldarn right she did,” said Miller, “because she hates him like she hates her father, our biggety Nigra President. Anyway, Murdock wanted to know if she could prove her brother was a Turnerite. She said sure she could, and she would, but only if she had to. She told Murdock if he wanted to know more, go and talk to Julian personally. So Murdock rode out to Trafford, cornered our President’s son, and accused him of the Turnerite membership. Julian got sullen, then downright nasty, and said it was a lie to hurt his father, and he was never a Turnerite in his life, and Murdock couldn’t prove it, and his sister couldn’t prove it, and besides she was a psychopathic liar, and so forth. So our kid reporter, Murdock, he hotfooted it back to New York and got to Mindy again, and said she was a liar, because Julian said so and had denied everything. Mindy was pretty keyed up that day, I mean on some kind of pills or something, and she got pretty hysterical against her brother. She went and dug out some letters, and held them while Murdock read them. They were from Julian, and the first one, with the oldest date, was full of resentment about being stuck in the Nigra school, and his father being too yellow to act for the Nigra race, and Mindy turning her back on her people, but he was going to be different, the one in the family who wasn’t yellow, because he was planning to join up secretly with a new outfit called the Turnerites who were going to give all Nigras equality. Well, there it was. In the other letters, written later, when he was involved with Hurley and learned his membership was supposed to be secret, I guess, he wrote his sister he’d been kidding, and denied ever joining, but he wasn’t kidding. There it was in writing. Is that proof, Arthur, or is it not?”
Eaton put down his empty cognac glass. “Can you get that first letter?” he asked.
Miller grinned. “I got it, my friend.”
“You have? How?”
“Mindy agreed to turn it over to Murdock for his written and signed pledge that he would never disclose her identity, that he would leave her alone, leave her keep passing, so’s she can give some poor white Christian young fellow her nigger blood in a coon baby. Murdock gave me the letter, and all his statements are to be made into affidavits tomorrow, on the condition that Mindy’s passing not be exposed and his fiancée, Miss Foster, and her diary with the facts, not be dragged into this in any way.” Miller paused, and added solemnly, “I gave the lad my word, and I gave him the job. And now we got the goods on our biggety Nigra President.”
Senator Hankins coughed and wheezed. “Mighty powerful case, gentlemen.”
Talley echoed, “Mighty powerful case.”
“For what?” asked Arthur Eaton. He stood up, and went to find a cigarette. Not bothering about his holder, he lifted a silver table lighter before him as he said to Miller, “What do you intend to do with all that-that research?”
Zeke Miller opened his hands and raised his shoulders. “Simple. I intend to go-or have you and the Governor go-straight to our beloved President Dilman and say, Mister, you’re here ruining the country, and we’re here with our minds made up to save the country. The way for you to help us save the country, Mr. President, is for you to become incapacitated and be forced to resign because of ill health-maybe you been pretty sick since that assassin almost got you-maybe you got a heart condition and it’s been kept hushed, but now your family physicians say you can’t go on-so you resign because of disability, for the sake of the country, and the Party, and your health, and let the next in line, namely, our able Secretary of State and close friend of T. C., Mr. Arthur Eaton, become President for the rest of this term. If you won’t resign, Mr. President, we got to tell the country the truth about your son being a Commie Turnerite, and you condoning it and giving those subversives aid and comfort, and we got to tell about your wife’s death, and your past, your unreliability because you’re a drinking tosspot of a Nigra, and we got to tell your own people how you’re so ashamed of being a nigger you encouraged your daughter to pass deceitfully for a white girl. Now, what’ll that do for you and your family, Mr. President, all that coming out? So for reasons of your health, you better resign.”
“Impressive,” said Eaton with irony.
“You betcha,” said Miller, pleased.
Suddenly Eaton ground out his cigarette and said, “And what if Dilman refuses to quit?”
“Aw, Arthur, cripes, you know he’ll shrink up and have to.”
“American Presidents don’t resign,” said Eaton flatly. “Not a single one ever has, not even Woodrow Wilson when he was bed-ridden by a stroke. They die. They are killed. They become ill, even incapacitated, but they do not resign. And Vice-Presidents, they’re the same. Only one ever resigned, Jackson’s Vice-President, John C. Calhoun, and that was with only two months to go and he had already been elected to the Senate, and that was as far back as 1832.” Eaton shook his head. “No, I’m afraid President Dilman might not fold up and quit. He might prefer to have you expose him, suffer his family to go down the drain, rather than give in to your pressure. Have you allowed for that?”
Before Miller could reply, Senator Hankins snorted and trembled on the sofa, as he raised his hand. “I allowed for it, Mr. Secretary. Actually, so did Zeke. We talked about it with our friends before coming here. We decided this. If that nigger won’t leave the White House on his two feet, then we’ll carry him out.”
Eaton contracted his brow. “Carry him out?”
“Remove him, sir, remove him by force,” said Senator Hankins. “Your Constitution, young man-never forget your Constitution. Article II, Section 4. ‘The President… of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.’ The law of the Founding Fathers, young man.”
Arthur Eaton tried to maintain his poise, but he was deeply shaken. He stood still, eyes averted, staring at the carpet. He had never before, not until this moment, heard the monstrous word impeachment used in this way by men elected to high offices of responsibility. He had heard it employed in gossip, he had read it in the columns of the lurid tabloid press, but he had not heard it used by members of the United States Congress. It was as impossible an American word to him as secession or revolution or assassination. All of his background and breeding-his intelligence, his faith in orderly settlement of any crisis, his belief in the give and take of gentlemanly compromise-was offended by this word.
“That’s right,” he heard Miller saying, “if Dilman won’t get out, we’ll evict him out under due process of law.”
“Gentlemen,” Eaton said, “I find even consideration of such a solution repugnant. I think such a solution could do the country as much injury, in these times, as Dilman’s own bumbling. Even if I stand to gain by the outcome, I’m afraid I could not support you in such a drastic act.”
“But the Constitution-” Miller said.
“The Founding Fathers, riding to their meetings in horse-drawn carriages, creating the Constitution with their quill pens, could not have anticipated what every article of it would mean in a nuclear age, with Communists in front of us, with racial strife behind us,” said Eaton. “No, impeachment would be dangerous. Jefferson said it was merely a ‘scarecrow’ in the Constitution, presumably not to be used except as a scarecrow. But Jefferson aside, and given real cause to use impeachment powers, and even if it could be managed quickly and safely, I do not believe that Dilman would merit removal, at least not on the evidence you have at hand. What you possess is criticism of the character of a man in high office, what you have is scandal, but that is not evidence of treason, bribery, or high crimes against his country.”
Miller pounced forward, confronting Eaton. “It can all be made to add up to treason and unfitness for office,” he insisted.
“I have strong doubts,” said Eaton.
“Anyway, we don’t have to prove that much,” said Miller. He turned to Hankins. “Senator Bruce, you got that-”
“Got it right here handy,” said Hankins, holding up the photocopy of a book page. He adjusted his pince-nez, studied the photocopy briefly, then looked up at Eaton. “There’s no precise exact definition of impeachment crimes, Mr. Secretary. Fact is, it’s a pretty wide umbrella, and our evidence fits under a fair amount of it. Example, this little definition of impeachment I have here. George T. Curtis, the historian-attorney, made it back in 1889. He said”-Hankins read from the photocopy-“ ‘A cause for removal from office may exist where no offense against positive law has been committed, as where the individual has, from immorality, or imbecility, or maladministration, become unfit to exercise the office.’ ”
“See!” Zeke Miller exclaimed triumphantly to Eaton. “Like it’s tailor-made for Dilman.”
“Nevertheless, I have my doubts,” said Eaton.
“Well,” Talley called out, “I think we’re barking up the wrong tree, and wasting our breath. It’ll never come to anything so serious. Arthur, I’m inclined to side with Zeke and the Senator on what’ll really happen. If they pull together what authentic findings they already have, and hit Dilman smack between the eyes with them, I think he’s got to back off. I think he’ll run up the white flag and call it quits.”
Eaton bit his lip. “I wish I could be as confident as the three of you. I can’t be. I believe you have enough evidence right now to hold over the President’s head, and make him reconsider any further rash and self-serving behavior. I believe you can slow him down, and force him to listen to our advice. I think you can manage that, and more power to you. But, I reiterate, I do not believe you have enough evidence to impeach, and, I repeat, I doubt that you even have enough to frighten him out of office.” Eaton shrugged. “This is my opinion. You do what you will. I feel it only fair to say that if you take more drastic steps, based on what you have, I cannot let myself go along with you.” He saw their unsmiling faces, and he said, as lightly as possible, “But I will go along with you for one more drink, before we-”
The doorbell chimes melodiously interrupted him. Puzzled, he looked at the clock over the fireplace. It showed ten minutes before midnight. The chimes played again, followed by the metallic hammering of the brass door knocker.
“Who can it be?” Talley wondered.
“I’ll see,” said Eaton. “Excuse me, gentlemen. The Governor will pour you one for the road.”
He left the living room, went into the high-ceilinged entry hall, and pulled open the door.
Sally Watson stood there, one hand clutching the doorframe. Eaton had never before seen her this way, in this condition, and for a moment he was taken aback.
“That’s right,” she said thickly, “it’s me, or whatever’s left of me, believe it or not.”
“My God, Sally, come in.”
He reached out and drew her into the hall, examining her with disbelief. Her blond hair was in disarray, and strands of it hung down over her eyes. Her mascara had run, and there were tear streaks along her cheeks. The bodice of her green cocktail gown was half on, half off, one strap torn loose, the front of the dress ripped, so that part of her brassière was in view.
She covered her bosom with the coat on her arm, and looked up at him. “Quit staring, Arthur. It’s not my fault. Blame him. He did it to me, the sonofabitch, blame him.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think?” she said angrily. She had worked the index cards out of her purse. “Here’s what you wanted. I promised you I’d get it, and I got it. I did that anyway. Lemme get cleaned up and I’ll tell you plenty, that filthy bastard.”
She started toward the living room, lurched off balance, and Eaton quickly grabbed her elbow. Then, taking the coat from her, he led her swiftly into the living room. With her appearance, Zeke Miller, who had just sat down, immediately leaped back on his feet, and Bruce Hankins rose with a grunt. They greeted her with courteous surprise, but Sally did not reply, only stared at them as she wobbled past.
“Miss Watson’s been in some trouble,” Eaton explained. “I want her to lie down. Be right with you.”
Talley had wheeled around at the bar, and his eyes followed Sally with incredulity. “What the devil happened?” he wanted to know.
“Your goddam drunk President,” she said viciously. “He did it-he thought I was like all the rest of his chippies!”
Eaton’s expression was pained. “Please, Sally.” He shoved the index cards at Talley. “Here. The notes on Dilman’s CIA meeting with Scott. Better read them.” He hustled Sally out of the living room, but not before he heard Zeke Miller shout, “Hey! Wait a sec-what was that she was saying?”
With difficulty, trying to steady her, Eaton hurried Sally through the corridor. He knew that she could not make the stairway to the upper bedrooms. Instead, he guided her into the book-lined library, one hand supporting her, the other slamming the door behind him.
“There’s the bathroom,” he said.
“I changed my mind,” she said.
He studied her face and could see she was not only intoxicated but on the verge of hysteria. He forced her to the sofa. “Then lie down for a moment.”
She sat on the sofa, and dropped her face into her hands. “I don’t want to lie down. I want to kill that bastard.”
“I think you need something to settle your nerves,” said Eaton anxiously. He rushed into the bathroom, turned on the light, and hunted for Kay’s tranquilizers. He found the container, spilled out two, prepared a glass of water, and returned to Sally. “Take both of them.”
She obeyed him.
“Good,” he said, “now the water.”
She took one swallow, made a show of distaste, and pushed the tumbler back at him. “I’ve had enough to drink.”
Eaton set the glass aside, knelt before her, and considered her. “Do you think you need a doctor?”
“What can a doctor do for me? It’s all inside, what he did, humiliating me like one of his whores. If anybody knew-” She beat her fist helplessly on the sofa cushion.
Eaton rose and sat on the corner of the coffee table. “When you-you feel ready to speak of this, Sally, I’d like to hear what-”
“I’m ready now.”
“Whenever you say.”
“I was trying to figure out how to help you,” she said excitedly, “and then I got the chance, because he invited me to his bedroom again-”
“Who? Dilman?”
“Not Calvin Coolidge, you bet. Of course, Dilman.”
“What do you mean-he invited you again?”
“Jesus, Arthur, I can’t always bring myself to tell you everything. He’s had a lech for me, and at least three times before he’s invited me to his bedroom in the evening, to go over social affairs, so he says-ha, social affairs. I always got out of it. But tonight, when he whispered it again, to meet him about some plans after the guests had gone, I saw a chance to help you, and I agreed. I went to his bedroom a little early, and the transcript of the meeting he had with Scott today was lying open, so I just read it, you know. Made those exact notes on the cards. You’re lucky to have it-”
He found her hands. “Sally, darling, I am grateful, but I’m worried-”
She withdrew her hands, and brushed the hair from her eyes. “Well, about ten he came in-everyone had gone-and I could see he was plastered, drunk as a lord. I wanted to leave, but he insisted on business talk, and hell, you can’t insult the President, I mean-how? He kept insisting I drink with him. What could I do? He must’ve poured me a triple, and himself, too, because I got real tipsy, and him, you should have seen him.”
She kept shaking her head angrily, and Eaton said, “What does that mean, Sally?”
“I can’t give you the details, it’s too embarrassing, considering his position. But I guess those politicians are only human, like Harding and Nan Britton in the White House closet, but who’d expect this from a weaseling, hymn-singing black nigger who’s lucky he’s alive, let alone President? Sure, he came after me, and I fought him, weak as I was, and he even got me on the bed, desecrated that bed, tried to rip off my dress-look at it-but I got away-oh, we had a scene, what a scene-”
“Sally-Sally-wait a minute. Are you saying Dilman got you drunk and then-”
“You’re damn right that’s what I’m saying.”
“But-Sally-there was a dinner party there tonight. Surely you had something to drink on your own first?”
She was silent for a moment, staring at him warily. “Suppose I did? Who doesn’t have one or two before dinner?”
“Did you have any more after dinner?”
“What do you mean, Arthur?” she said. “I told you-with him-he forced me-”
“Yes, of course. I meant, after you got away from him. If you saw him at ten-and let’s say you left him an hour later-that still leaves almost an hour unaccounted for and I was wondering-”
She had become rigid. “I went to my office for my coat. If there’d been a gun there, I’d have shot him. I went downstairs. I was too agitated to drive my car. I walked up Pennsylvania Avenue. Then I decided to call you to pick me up. I went into the first place I came to, a bar. I was too upset even to call. So I decided to have a drink or two to steady my nerves, until I could get hold of myself. Then I took a cab-” Abruptly, she stopped, mouth compressed. “I don’t like your expression. You think I’m lying. What are you, a prosecutor or something-?”
“Please, Sally. I’m simply questioning you because this is serious, and-”
“You’re telling me I’m lying. I don’t have to take that from you-you, of all people-the hell with that.” She jumped to her feet, almost pitched forward, caught the coffee table, and straightened. “If you’re not going to stand beside me, I know some people in the next room who will!”
Head held high, the rest of her tottering, she groped her way to the library door.
“Sally, come back here, don’t be foolish-”
Without turning, only tossing her shoulders, she pulled the door open and left him.
Eaton was on his feet now, but he did not follow her. Her tawdry adventure was so bizarre-and improbable-that he needed a few minutes of solitude to turn it over in his mind.
He lit a cigarette, then paced the room thoughtfully. What weighed against the story was Sally herself, for he knew her character thoroughly. She drank. She drugged herself. She was unstable, given to exaggeration and flights of fancy. She had drawn a picture of Dilman that bore no resemblance to the stodgy, frightened Negro politician that he and everyone else knew. Yet, to balance the scale in his quest for the truth, what possible motivation could Sally have for making up in its entirety such a farfetched story? He could think of none, not one advantage to her in this, unless there was some semblance of truth in it and she wanted Dilman punished. Moreover, she was sexually attractive to men, as he well knew, and Dilman was alone, and just a few minutes earlier Miller had spoken of some evidence about Dilman’s secret drinking.
Still, dammit, Eaton found the whole thing inconceivable. Whatever idiotic rumors of infidelity and adultery and lechery, fanned by political partisanship and the instinctive desire of all common people to bring the high-ups down low to their own level, whatever rumors surrounded the Presidency-and hardly any President in decades had escaped such malice-there was not one clear-cut shred of evidence that a single Chief Executive, while in office, had ever behaved as Sally had just accused President Dilman of behaving. No matter what the former habits of its chief tenant, the White House was simply not a seraglio, never had been, never would be, because it had glass walls. Or, perhaps, because its grandeur seemed to convert its chief resident from mere mortal into abstract symbol. This was true not only of the President, but of his Cabinet members and-and then, suddenly, with astonishment, Eaton realized that the wall of invincible virtue he was building around the Chief Executive and his Cabinet members was made of cards, and had collapsed.
What about himself? He was the Secretary of State of the United States, mentor of America’s international destiny, next in line to the Presidency-and still, in the camouflage of night, he was mere mortal. How many times had he lain naked beside this beautiful young girl, who had been naked, too, and was not his wife?
Anything was possible.
There were no symbols for men, no matter how august and exposed their offices. There were only the men themselves.
He peered down at his wristwatch. Nearly ten minutes had gone by since Sally’s angry departure from the library. He had best join her, and the others-Good Lord, the others!-and hear out the rest of her adventure, and do what he could to sift proven fact from alcoholic and neurotic invention.
He left the library, and when he entered his living room, a not unexpected tableau presented itself to him.
Sally, her back to him, sat lurched forward on the nearest couch, with Senator Hankins beside her on the same couch, and Wayne Talley perched on a chair he had drawn up alongside, intently listening, and Zeke Miller squatting upon a footstool directly in front of her, his countenance redly twisted with outrage.
Moving into the room, Eaton could hear Sally saying, “And then, and then I pushed and punched at him, and started to scream, until he backed up, and then I got away-no, first-I remember-before going I told him what I thought of him-”
“Pardon me, Miss Watson, if I may interrupt,” said Zeke Miller, “but I want to get this clear-I want to get this crystal-clear-because I have never been so roused and angered-never heard such degradation-but do I understand you to be saying-this Nigra buck, this Dilman, he made-forgive my language, you being a lady well brought up, the daughter of an esteemed colleague-but are you saying that this Dilman made improper advances to you tonight, improper advances against your express will and desire?”
“Improper advances?” she cried out. “That animal tried to rape me-practically-I can prove it. You want me to prove it?” She became aware of Eaton, standing behind Talley, and she shouted, “You can see for yourself, Arthur. Now you’ll know I’m not prevaricating one word.”
Suddenly she reached down, grasped the hem of her skirt, and yanked the dress up over her knees, and then higher, until both her full thighs, and part of her garter belt, and the lace fringe of her panties were revealed. She half fell on her side, to show her right thigh and buttocks more fully, and drew her finger along her flesh. “Look at this. I’m not ashamed. Look for yourselves, see what he did.”
Eaton wanted to shut his eyes, but he did not. He could see the deep nail scratches, ugly crimson, several blood-encrusted, across Sally’s perfect white flesh. He could see Miller’s gray eyes widen, fastened to the sight, and Hankins’ old eyes narrowing.
“You’ve seen enough?” Sally said, straightening, and throwing her skirt down over her knees. “I’ll show you more. Look.”
She held up the torn shoulder strap of her gown, dropped it, pushed down one side of her bodice until the protruding webbed brassière cup was entirely unveiled. Eaton wanted to halt her, to tell her no more exhibits were necessary, but before he should speak out, she had loosened one brassière strap. Quickly, she pulled the freed cup down the smooth mound of her round breast, baring it to an inch from the point. She did not have to draw attention to what could be seen by all of them. The nail marks were even more stark here, and the bluish welts, too.
Eaton could contain himself no longer. “That’s enough, Sally.”
She glared up at him, covered her breast, and then pulled her bodice over the brassière, and said to Miller, “That’s from my resisting, and don’t think anybody could have done it but that nigger. I was alone with him tonight, in his room, and Governor Talley is holding the proof of it in those cards, some things I copied from Dilman’s papers in his room.”
A rumbling came from deep in Senator Hankins’ throat. “Young lady, in all my years in public service, I never heard of a more dastardly indignity perpetrated on helpless young womanhood. I pledge you-” He slapped his hip. “I pledge my last resources to drive the culprit responsible for this from our capital city.”
Sally seemed momentarily mesmerized by Hankins’ gallantry. “Thank you, Senator. I-I only want justice done.”
Zeke Miller was in a fury. “Justice is too good for that drunken lechering Nigra, Miss Sally,” he shouted. “Lynching is what he deserves. Your word is enough for us to-”
“It’s not me alone,” said Sally. “It’s not as if this were an isolated example of his immorality.”
“Meaning what?” Miller demanded. “Be free to tell us everything you know.”
Sally looked at the men around her. “You mean you don’t know about his mistress?”
Miller’s exhalation of amazement and pleasure became a whistle. “You know this for sure?” he bayed.
“Of course!” Sally exclaimed heatedly. “When I was leaving him tonight, I told him to his face I wasn’t going to become another Wanda Gibson-being kept by him in some back street-well, you should have seen him. It stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t know anyone but the Spingers knew about it, but I know, and I’m positive Edna Foster knows.”
Senator Hankins stirred erect, some confusion on his wrinkled face. “What was the lady’s name again?”
“Wanda Gibson,” said Sally. “She’s a young nigger woman. Dilman had her living upstairs in his brownstone when he was-before he became President. She’s still there, and he went over there the night after he moved into the White House. In fact, he tried to bring her into the White House, invited her to the State Dinner for Amboko-I know, because I sent the invitation-but I guess she was afraid to show up. Anyway, this Wanda Gibson, she’s the one who called him today-she works for the Vaduz Exporters in a highly confidential job-she called him today to say they’d been found out-meaning the FBI found out her boss and company were a Communist Russian Front, and to warn him-”
Eaton stepped forward. “No need going into that now, Sally.”
“Hey, now, Arthur, one minute, now. Goldarn, this sounds like something big,” said Miller. He touched Sally’s knee. “Are you saying that the President of the United States, Nigra or not, the President of America has been living clandestinely with a Nigra female who’s working for the Soviet Russians?”
“That’s right.”
Miller had become transformed into a quivering hunting dog. “Hey, now, if those are the facts-”
“They are the facts,” said Sally fervently. She pointed to Talley. “He’s holding some more of the evidence on those cards, copied directly from a meeting Dilman had this afternoon with Mr. Scott. It’s all there.”
Miller turned to Talley, eyes gleaming. “True, Governor?”
Talley fanned the cards nervously. “Well-uh-in so far as Vaduz Exporters being a Red Front-yes-it’s been uncovered that they’ve been shipping arms to-to Soviet countries, who dispose of them mainly in Africa. And the President evidently has a woman friend who has been working in that firm, Miss Gibson-yes-but, of course, I’d have no knowledge about their relationship.”
Miller held his palms apart and then smacked them together vigorously. “Open-and-shut!” he announced. “You want treason, bribery, and high crimes, Arthur? Okay, what’s this? The President of this country consorting regularly with a lady friend who works for the Communists, talking bedroom talk, letting out secrets on purpose or inadvertently, on purpose to help his fellow niggers in Africa or inadvertently because he’s trading secrets for sex. If that’s not treason, what is? The President delaying prosecution of nigger extremists like the Turnerites in return for them not squealing about his son being a member, and then a pure white judge getting killed as a result. If that’s not bribery by blackmail, what is? High crimes and misdemeanors? Meaning loose morals, maladministration, intemperate habits? If the President’s fornicating with a mistress, trying to seduce his helpless white social secretary, added on to his record for drunkenness, if that doesn’t qualify him, what does? Arthur, it’s open-and-shut. The Nigra goes out, and you come in.”
For Eaton, it was rolling too fast now. He wanted time to think. “We’ll see,” he said quietly, “we’ll have to see.”
Talley stood up. “I’m afraid Dilman won’t give us much time, Arthur.” He indicated the index cards in his hand. “Miss Watson recorded most of the private meeting with Scott. Dilman knows everything. He knows for certain we withheld the report from CIA on Baraza. He knows what was in that report, because Scott was able to tell him. Dilman was apparently angry as hell, and ordered more agents and funds to be allotted to investigate the situation in Baraza. He told Scott to bypass us from now on and come straight to him. He said from now on he’s running the government, not letting us do it for him.” Talley massaged his jowls worriedly. “I tell you, Arthur, we’re in for trouble from that man.”
“What kind of trouble can he give us?” said Eaton testily. “Be realistic. What has he got on us now-considering what we’ve got on him? After tonight, that incident with Sally, he knows what he’s in for. He won’t lift his voice to us. He won’t dare say a word.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Talley.
“I know I’m right,” said Eaton.
He could see that Miller and Sally had been holding a whispered conversation, and that now Sally was trying to rise and Miller was assisting her. Eaton hastened to them, and took Sally’s other arm.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked solicitously.
“Arthur, Arthur,” she said, “I’m suddenly so sleepy. Did you give me something? I forget. Did you give me pills?”
“Yes, I wanted you to rest. I’ll take you into the library-”
Zeke Miller blocked them from leaving. “Only one thing, Arthur, and I’ve asked Miss Sally and she’s agreed, fully agreed. I’m notifying Casper Wine and his boys to come on the double right over here. I want to dictate everything Sally told us as it came straight from her lips. He’ll type it up as a legal affidavit, and then Miss Sally said we could waken her and she’d sign. She’s cooperating to the limit.”
“Whatever she wishes is agreeable to me,” said Eaton.
Sally was leaning heavily on his shoulder now, and Eaton’s arm encircled her as he began to lead her from the room.
He heard the telephone ringing-strange, at this improbable hour-and he waved at Talley to take it. Then he waited, propping Sally up, watching Talley on the telephone, unable to hear him. The call lasted no more than twenty seconds, and then Talley slowly hung up.
Eaton’s gaze stayed on Talley as he came from the telephone and approached them. Talley’s face was drawn and grave, a portrait of apprehension.
“Arthur,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “that was Edna Foster, from the White House. She’s just left the President. He ordered her to call you, to wake you if necessary. Dilman wants you in his office at nine o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. He wants to talk to you about an important and personal matter. She hit the personal matter. She hit the personal matter pretty hard.”
“I see.”
“I think this is it, Arthur. The fat’s in the fire. I think this is the showdown. He’s got the gun now.”
“So have we-now,” said Eaton grimly. “Only what we possess is not a gun but a howitzer.” He freed himself from Sally Watson, who was half asleep, and offered her limp arm to Talley. “Here, Wayne, you take her to the library, and see that she is comfortable. Treat her with care. She may be worth her weight in ammunition.”
He remained immobilized, deep in thought, until Talley had led Sally Watson out of the living room. Then Eaton turned and walked slowly to the couch, where both Zeke Miller and Bruce Hankins were busily scratching notes, one in an address book, the other on the back of an envelope.
Eaton stood over them until first Miller, then Senator Hankins, looked up inquiringly.
“Gentlemen,” Eaton said, “I have changed my mind. I don’t believe that I can stand by idly, as a neutral, any longer, and allow you and the Party to fight this man alone. I’m with you tonight, and all the way.”
Miller beamed, and his hand tugged at Hankins, who was also smiling happily. “By God!” Miller exclaimed. “I knew you’d see it right!”
“However, there is one thing I want both of you to understand,” Eaton went on. “If I fight Dilman, join with you in forcing his resignation, it is not because he is a Negro but because he is a fool.”
At one minute past nine o’clock the following morning, President Douglass Dilman stared through the rear windows of his Oval Office at the barren trees scattered across the south lawn, and at the cloudy, overcast November sky. He tried to equate his inner spleen with the threatening turbulence of the new day.
At last he swung his swivel chair back to the telephones, lifted one, and buzzed.
“All right, Miss Foster,” he said, “send him in.”
He girded himself, and waited.
The door opened, closed, and Secretary of State Arthur Eaton entered, solemnly greeted him, and carefully arranged his topcoat and homburg across the back of the sofa. Dilman, who had not spoken yet, was satisfied that Eaton’s features were as severe as his own. But there, he suspected, their similarity of mood, as reflected in their countenances and carriage, ended. If Eaton was concerned, then the emotion was camouflaged by the pale, bloodless pallor of his aristocratic negotiator’s mask and his easy, elegant Saville Row attire. Dilman felt that his own emotion, that of persistent displeasure, showed in the rigid lines along his tired eyes and bitter mouth. After Sally Watson’s disgusting behavior last night, after his rereading of the Scott interview and his realization of what must be done, he had slept fitfully.
“You can sit there,” he said, pointing to the Revels chair across from the corner of his desk. “I won’t keep you long.”
Eaton took his seat, crossing his legs, extracting his silver cigarette case and silver holder. He offered the open case to Dilman, who ignored it, and then Eaton fixed his cigarette and lighted it. After exhaling the first puff, he said easily, “Since your message stated that you wished to see me on a personal matter, I did not bother to bring any of my papers.”
Dilman pulled himself closer to his desk and to the one so imperturbable before him.
“Eaton,” he said, “I want your resignation from my Cabinet and from the Department of State.”
To Eaton’s credit, Dilman observed, there was no surprise, no reaction whatsoever, in his expression. Not one muscle moved beneath his patrician visage. He considered the President coolly, then he considered the smoke curling from his cigarette, and then, at last, a thin smile appeared. “A rather inhospitable beginning for so early a morning,” he said. “Are you serious?”
“I want your resignation today,” Dilman repeated.
Eaton remained outwardly unruffled. “Don’t you think you owe me at least an explanation for this extraordinary request?”
The Princetonian’s aloof insolence goaded Dilman’s anger. “I didn’t think an explanation would be necessary,” he said. “I was sure your spy, and whatever else she is to you, I was sure Miss Watson gave you ample reason last night to know I was on to you and Talley. I will not suffer the continuing presence of a Secretary of State who is trying to usurp my office and its constitutional functions. Nor will I suffer the company of any man who sends, or permits, or uses a member of my White House staff to pry among my confidential papers. I hold ambitious disloyalty next to treason. I suggest that I will be better off, and the nation will be better off, if I remove you and your antagonism. That is my explanation, which I thought unnecessary.”
Eaton had made no effort to interrupt and refute what the President was saying. His poise had not wavered. He betrayed no hidden concern, beyond the evidence of his inhaling and exhaling of smoke, which came faster now.
“There can be two versions of the truth to every matter,” Eaton said at last. “I find that, for whatever real reasons you may have, you have chosen to believe a warped version of the truth, and have not been judicious enough to wait for my version. Shall I go on? I think I should. No one spied upon you, at least on my behalf, last night, or ever. If Miss Watson took it upon herself to prove to me, as an old friend concerned about your-your questionable behavior, that you were my enemy, it is not my offense or concern-any more than is my knowledge of your private behavior with female members of your staff and your unseemly activity and habits after hours.”
Dilman stiffened. “What in the devil does that mean?”
“It means, Mr. President, in matters not affecting the welfare of the state, I have no right to interfere with your personal life. However, I, too, carry a public trust, and in matters concerning the life or death of my country, where I feel you have performed or may perform to the national detriment, I believe that I have the right to pass judgment on you, and interfere patriotically to correct you. I will not deny that Governor Talley and I temporarily withheld a Central Intelligence document concerning Baraza. We did so, for the time being, because of our knowledge of your temperament and-if I may say so-prejudiced judgment. We evaluated the rumor of a Communist buildup around Baraza as being ill-founded, and of minor consequence. Yet we foresaw that, because of your affection for Amboko, your understandable affinity for the struggling tribal people of your own color in the new African nations, you might have overreacted and committed the United States to a course of action from which there could have been no retreat. You displayed your favoritism, with dire results, in ignoring our advice to disband the Turnerite Group immediately. You displayed your arrogance and rashness in ignoring the majority will, the interests of the country at large and the pledges of your Party, by vetoing the Minorities Rehabilitation Program. I could not stop these disasters that you perpetrated in domestic affairs. But when I saw that you might perform as improperly in foreign affairs, which are my primary responsibility, I felt it my duty to guide you, whether you wished it or not. My motive was not to usurp your powers, but to preserve the peace.”
Throughout the last, delivered as if by a prep-school headmaster to a gauche poor boy in on a scholarship, Douglass Dilman’s wrath had been leavened by wonder. How unbelievable, he had thought finally, that this man could really justify his actions to himself by this self-hypnosis, this distorted rationale that he alone knew what was best for America and what was not. Could Eaton not see that he was doing no more than asserting his feeling of superiority, ergo: no second-class black citizen was able to possess the same wisdom and objectivity toward other peoples that an expensively educated, well-bred, white Protestant possessed by birthright.
Dilman had not meant to debate with Eaton, only to be rid of him. Yet the Secretary of State’s last remarks could not go unchallenged before their interview ended.
“Mr. Eaton, did it ever occur to you that by your act of withholding information from me, in effect taking it upon yourself to bury a grave warning to the government, you might be endangering the country you want to protect? What if I had not found out what was going on, and no one else in the executive branch had? What if the Soviet buildup of native Communists about Baraza proved to be true, and continued while we slept, what do you think would happen then? There would be an overnight takeover of the Barazan government by the Soviets. Then we would be forced to honor the African Unity Pact under the worst of circumstances, to try to save an ally, many allies, even a continent, where circumstances would put us at a military disadvantage. Can’t you see that preventive treatment is less costly than desperation surgery?”
Eaton shook his head, smiling disagreeably. “Mr. President, forgive me, but you are more naïve about foreign affairs than I even suspected. Do you honestly believe that T. C. or Congress or the Department of State or the Joint Chiefs of Staff ever intended, from the start, to honor the African Unity Pact to the letter? Yes, we ratified it to bolster the strength of our democratic friends in Africa-but only on paper, for diplomatic propaganda. No one, not ourselves, not the African states, not Soviet Russia, ever believed we would commit our armed forces to uphold that pact.” He shook his head more vigorously. “No, my good man. Only an unsophisticated and overemotional Afro-American-and I put this in the kindest way-could so misunderstand the intent and purpose of our foreign policy. Do you believe any of us, who have experience in these affairs, would ever risk a nuclear war with the Soviet Union over Baraza? It grieves me that you have to learn the facts of life and politics this late in the game. But better now than never. In any event, all this conversation is pointless, as you will shortly learn. In fact, your wish to see me on a personal matter this morning coincided with our Party’s wish that I see you on a personal matter, also. I’m afraid I am on a painful mission. If you are prepared to listen to-”
Dilman’s disgust, his loathing for this diplomat’s crawling sophistries, was now complete. “Mr. Eaton, I have nothing more to discuss with you. Consider this interview our final meeting, and consider it now terminated.” He placed his palms against the edge of his desk and rolled back his chair, and then, hands on his knees, he said, “I shall expect your resignation within an hour. Good day, sir.”
To his utter surprise, Arthur Eaton did not move, but remained complacently settled in the Revels chair, casually ejecting his cigarette butt into the standing tray. Without bothering to look at the President, Eaton said, “Your bravado is admirable, Dilman. But do you honestly feel you are in a position, this minute, to ask anyone in your government to resign?”
Dilman, about to rise, held to the arms of his chair. “Do I feel I’m in a position to-?” He paused, then said slowly, “I feel I’m in a position to do whatever I believe to be right.”
As he absently examined his silver cigarette holder, the Secretary of State spoke. “I have been assigned to tell you-I find it painful, but no less my duty-that you are the one who is no longer wanted in our government. For many hours now, all through last night, the leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate and your Party have been meeting to weigh the evidence they have uncovered about you. They have agreed, unanimously, that you are dangerously incompetent, and consequently unsuited for the high office accidentally thrust upon you, and that your continuing services are a detriment to the future of the United States.”
Eaton stared at Dilman.
“They desire to impeach you for high crimes and misdemeanors in office. Because I feel that such a method of publicly disgracing you and removing you from the Presidency is abhorrent, I have prevailed upon them-it was not easy, but I prevailed upon them-to accept a more moderate means of disposing of you. They would prefer, and I would prefer, that you do what is necessary to be done as a gentleman would, do what you so childishly requested of me earlier, and that is, tender your resignation immediately, for reasons of disability brought on by ill health. However, I was able to foresee that even such a natural solution might antagonize you, and understandably-that is, embarrass you and make you lose face before your own people. As a consequence, I was able to convince Miller, Hankins, Selander, Wickland, Noyes, all of them, that there was yet a third course. They do not like its moderation, any more than I like the extremism of their course of impeachment. Yet they will go along with me, if you are tractable.”
He paused, then continued. “The plan is that in the next few weeks, you fall ill, become more and more confined to your White House bedroom, and as the months pass, your disability becomes permanent. As you recover from this disability, perhaps a severe coronary, to which we can arrange that a committee of physicians attests, those of us who have been your assistants will continue to conduct the business of the executive branch in your name. You will remain President in name only, of course, as were Woodrow Wilson and Eisenhower when they were invalided. You may sign the documents that require your signature, but you will leave the actual performance of your duties to your committee of successors in the Cabinet. I find this solution simple, orderly, completely sensible-and in the best interests of the country. In return, of course, you have our pledge that the Articles of Impeachment in our possession will never be made public against you. Well, now, Dilman, there you have it.”
Douglass Dilman had listened to this plan unfold as if helplessly caught up in a mad nightmare. And emerging from it now, finding himself face to face with an actual human being who had spoken these fantastic words as if they were ordinary words, he was for seconds too stunned by the reality to speak.
But then the full impact of what had occurred hit him, and he felt the blood rushing through him and felt the pounding beneath his chest and temples. The effrontery of the proposition, the degrading insult of it, at last transformed his shock into rage.
He stared at his black hands knotted together on the Buchanan desk, watched with fascination their trembling. Never in his entire life had he suffered such a monstrous attempt to humiliate him. As a Negro, he was a scarred veteran of white men’s jeers and ridicule, blasphemy and vilification. Yet now he could conjure up no agonized instance out of his past, from childhood to manhood, not even that revolting occasion on his honeymoon with Aldora, when he had been treated so inhumanly.
As his fury rose, and his head pulsated, he wanted to grab the heavy inkwell from his desk and fling it at Eaton’s face. Or strangle him, strangle him until he admitted indecency and confessed shame.
But then, seeking an ally to justify his right to violence, he remembered Nat Abrahams, and knew that Nat would restrain him, remind him that knocking someone down solved nothing except the question of which was the more muscular, and justice would not be served. What had this monster Eaton and his so-called cabal, what had they threatened him with-yes, impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors, unless he crept into an invalid’s bed with a feigned disability for the rest of the term and allowed them as palace conspirators to run the country their way. How had that Sally put it last night? Two-legged beings, yes, that’s what they wanted on the premises. And anything lower than that they wanted kept in its place leashed and muzzled, like a bothersome house pet, tucked into the doghouse where its bark could not be heard, while two-legged men kept the house clean and in order. They wanted Eaton, and Eaton wanted Eaton, to run a comfortable white country, and comfortable white world, for privileged, superior white people, cynically bribing with Federal charities the susceptible minorities at home, cynically betraying through lies and peace-bartering the helpless small nations abroad.
That they felt they could accomplish this, that they believed he would readily and gratefully acquiesce to their offer, was what astounded and infuriated him. Desperately he tried to think with Nat’s mind. Obviously, they were confident because they believed they had a club over him. If he would not accede without resistance, they would employ legal force. Nat’s mind inquired: What legal force do they possess, Doug? What case can they build against you? Either they have something or they have nothing, and if you know they have nothing, then they are bluffing you, trying to intimidate you, scare you out. Nat’s mind instructed: Call their bluff, Doug, call it, and then decide.
It required his last powers of restraint to exercise this control. All right, Nat, I’ll try.
He saw Eaton placidly waiting for his reply.
Dilman said, “Eaton, I don’t know where, not even in stories about Central American politics, I ever heard a more bizarre or outlandish proposition. You have it all figured out, have you? I’m put away, and you play President. I’m to cooperate with you in this-this palace revolution, and if I refuse, you indict me for high crimes and misdemeanors, and then you try me and then you convict and remove me. But first, you kindly offer me the choice of abdication and self-exile.”
“If you prefer to put it that way, that’s right,” said Eaton agreeably.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Eaton-I think you’re bluffing. I don’t think you or your ambitious crowd have a single shred of evidence against me, not one thing, that would stand up and convince a majority of the 448 sworn members of the House of Representatives to send Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. Unless you can-”
“One moment, Dilman.” Eaton uncrossed his legs and sat straight. “If it requires this to make you realize that we are dead serious, that your situation is hopeless, then you should see it.”
He extracted three folded sheets of yellow foolscap from his inside coat pocket, elaborately unfolded them, patted them straight, half rose, and dropped them on the desk in front of Dilman. He fell back into the Revels chair. From beneath hooded eyelids, he kept his gaze on the President.
Douglass Dilman looked down at the topmost yellow sheet, filled with typewritten paragraphs, resting on the desk blotter between his elbows. At last he unclasped his hands, picked up the three pages, spun his chair away from the Secretary of State, and read the heading, and then the first paragraph of each numbered section. He read:
INTRODUCING PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOR THE IMPEACHMENT OF DOUGLASS DILMAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
Upon the evidence collected by the Committee on Judiciary, which is herewith presented, and in virtue of the powers with which they have been invested by the House of Representatives, they are of the opinion that Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, should be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors. They therefore recommend to the House the adoption of the accompanying resolution.
Zeke Miller, Chairman.
Harvey Wickland
John T. Hightower
Resolved, That Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors in office.
Articles of evidence for the House of Representatives of the United States against Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, in maintenance and support of the resolution of impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors in office.
That said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, at Washington, in the District of Columbia, unmindful of the high duties of his office, of his oath of office, and of the requirement of the Constitution that he should preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, did unlawfully and in violation of his oath of office, commit treason against the United States by conveying, with knowledge beforehand or through gross indiscretion, national secrets concerning internal security into the hands of the U.S.S.R. and its allies through his hitherto covert friendship with one Wanda Gibson, an executive secretary of the Vaduz Exporters, Limited, of Bethesda, Maryland, said corporation having been indicted by the Department of Justice as a Communist Front organization conspiring with the U.S.S.R. to overthrow democratic institutions wherever…
That said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, unmindful of the high duties of his office and of his oath of office, in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, at Washington, in the District of Columbia, did unlawfully hinder the Department of Justice in its prosecution of the Turnerite Group, a subversive organization, and thus cause the loss of one life and internal unrest, because of unlawful and covert conspiracy with the Turnerite Group in an effort to protect from public knowledge the membership in this subversive organization of a relative and offspring, Julian Dilman…
That said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, unmindful of the high duties of his office, and the dignities and proprieties thereof, did disgrace and bring into contempt the Executive Branch of the United States government, and show himself unfit to perform the duties of his office, through certain intemperate and scandalous behavior involving loose morals, intoxication, partisanship, and maladministration.
Specification first.-At Washington, in the District of Columbia, in a private chamber of the Executive Mansion, said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, while under the influence of intoxicants, made improper advances upon the person of a member of the Executive staff, namely Sally Watson, White House social secretary, and did attempt to seduce said Sally Watson, and did commit bodily harm to said Sally Watson when she resisted.
Specification second.-At Washington, in the District of Columbia, for five years including the time of his ascension to the Presidency, said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, widower, conducted covertly an extra-marital liaison with the aforesaid Wanda Gibson, unmarried, in a house owned by said Douglass Dilman, on whose premises Wanda Gibson dwelt. In the same house there dwelt also the Reverend Paul Spinger, National Director of the Crispus Society, an organization of Negro Americans, and his spouse, Rose Spinger, who were treated to certain special favors by said Douglass Dilman, in return for aiding and abetting his liaison with Wanda Gibson and keeping it secret.
Specification third.-At Washington, in the District of Columbia, said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, did attempt to bring into contempt and reproach the Congress of the United States, and impair the powers of Congress, by obstructing its legislative activity through veto of the Minorities Rehabilitation Program Bill, because of intemperate habits, partisanship, and inefficiency, to the detriment of the national welfare. Without study of the aforesaid legislative bill, while under the influence of intoxicants and Negro extremists, said Douglass Dilman…
Specification fourth.-In his various residences at Washington, in the District of Columbia, in Chicago, in the State of Illinois, in Springfield, in the State of Illinois, where he was a registered patient in a sanitarium for alcoholics, and in his residences in the States of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, was habitually addicted to…
Dilman came around in his swivel chair, and with great deliberation he held out the three yellow sheets until Eaton took them. Dilman was pleased to see that his own hands no longer shook, because there was no fear in him. One felt fear when there was something real that threatened, a person, a charge, that might subject one to physical injury or mental harm. This preposterous document, its grotesque half-truths and whole lies couched in the false dignity of Congressional legal verbiage, was too ridiculous to be treated seriously.
He considered Eaton with new confidence. “Is this all of your blackmail, Eaton?”
Carefully Eaton folded the three yellow sheets of paper. At last he looked up.
“These are, without the supporting affidavits and testimony of witnesses, the Articles of Impeachment against you that will ultimately be sent to the Senate, after the House of Representatives has voted to indict you. This evidence will first be presented to the House not as formal articles, but as a series of charges, written in similar language, supporting a resolution for impeachment. This is the case against you which I have managed so far to prevent from being introduced on the floor of the House.”
“I see… Well, I’m sorry for you, Eaton. If you want to become President of the United States, as you do, you are going to have to work and sweat for it, gain it the hard way, and not by trying to frighten me out of this chair with three pages of poppycock. Yes, I’m going to make you work for it in a way that will revolt your fastidious self, by making you live and sleep and hold hands and cast your lot with that gang of inhuman bullies and ignorant rednecks on the Hill. You are welcome to them, and to this trumped-up pack of lies, a nigger indictment wrapped in a package of Constitutional parchment. It’ll get you nowhere.”
Eaton appeared incredulous. “Are you telling me, in the face of those irrefutable facts, you will not step aside?”
“I’m telling you more,” said Dilman, standing up. “I am telling you I will no longer give you the right to the dignity of resigning, because you do not deserve it. As of here and now, Mr. Eaton, you are fired!”
Eaton leaped to his feet and moved to the front of the President’s desk. “Dilman, I think you are too distraught to realize what you are doing.”
“I know exactly what I am doing. I am removing you from office and from my Cabinet.”
“I won’t let you commit suicide, Dilman. You’ve taken leave of your senses. There is a law-the New Succession Act-that prevents you from removing any Cabinet officer without the consent of the Senate. Have you forgotten? You can no more fire me than President Andrew Johnson could defy the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 by trying to fire Secretary of War Stanton without consent of the Senate.”
“Andrew Johnson did it, and I am doing it.”
“Dilman, for heaven’s sake, he was impeached for exactly this.”
Dilman nodded. “Yes, and he was acquitted.”
Eaton planted his knuckles on the desk, and bent forward. “Listen to me, Dilman. You won’t be that lucky. If you fire me, you won’t have me standing between you and your bitterest enemies. Nothing will hold them back. And now they’ll have their strongest ammunition against you, a new article of indictment, and the most powerful one: a charge that you flagrantly violated the law of the United States, that you ignored the rights of the Senate. They’ll be all over you like a pack of angry wolves, and they’ll have teeth for their final attack. Dilman, for once, for one last time while you still can, show good judgment, at least the good judgment of self-preservation. Step aside, as I have suggested. Don’t force us to parade all your friends, your misconduct, before the nation and the world. Don’t force us to drive you from this room in disgrace.”
Dilman had waited patiently for the finish. When he saw that Eaton was done, winded, his chalky cheeks flushed with color, he knew the time had come.
“Eaton, I have no more to say to you, except what I said to your lady friend last night-get out of this room, or I shall have you thrown out. And clear out your office in the Department of State, or I’ll have the United States Marshal dump your effects in the street.”
For silent seconds, as if the firing had come with bullets, Eaton hung suspended before Dilman, riddled with disbelief. Finally he shook his head, turned on his heel, and crossed the room to his hat and coat. When he had picked them up, he shook his head once more.
“Dilman,” he said, regretful as an executioner, “I’m sorry for you, I really am, but you have given us no choice.” He paused, and then concluded, “As of twelve o’clock noon today, the resolution recommending your impeachment goes before the House of Representatives. I would wish you luck, but you don’t deserve it, and besides-it wouldn’t help you anyway.”
With that, Arthur Eaton, former Secretary of State, quickly left the Oval Office.
Holding the telephone receiver in one hand as he waited for Miss Foster to put through his call to the Mayflower Hotel, Douglass Dilman noted the time. Two hours had passed since he had fired Eaton and since he had learned that an effort would be made to impeach him.
It was now a quarter to twelve. He could visualize the scene on the Hill. Right now, bells were ringing throughout the Capitol corridors, buzzers were sounding in the offices of the representatives and in their committee rooms, announcing that the formal session of the House was about to begin.
Soon the corridors and elevators would be filled, and soon the House Chamber, too. At exactly noon, the mace would be placed on its marble column, and the acting Speaker would be announcing, “The House will be in order. Please rise while prayer is offered by the chaplain.”
Immediately after, the Speaker would receive the copy of the urgent resolution that Representative Zeke Miller had deposited in the hopper at the desk of the clerk. He would permit Miller, as author of the top-priority measure, to read out to his assembled colleagues and the gallery, “Resolved, that Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors in office.” Then there would be instantaneous pandemonium in the press gallery, among the visitors-in fact, among much of the House itself-and then, at last, all the world would know what was taking place.
By two o’clock the Speaker would have referred the impeachment resolution to Miller’s committee, a formality, since the committee had already secretly completed its investigation and voted its recommendation. By tomorrow, the resolution’s position on the House calendar would be waived, Miller’s committee would have given its recommendation, and the membership of the House would have resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, a maneuver that allowed it to act on important legislation with a quorum of one hundred members, instead of more than twice that number which it normally required. Then the limited debate on the charges in the resolution for impeachment would begin, the debate preceding the vote on whether the President should or should not stand trial before the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors. But that would be tomorrow, and the day after. For today, it was business enough to let the nation and the world know, for the first time, the scandalous and delinquent conduct of the President of the United States.
But right now, that was fifteen minutes to one hour and fifteen minutes away. The creation of the indictment, the speeding of it into the hopper, and out of it into committee, and out of committee onto the floor-this procedure accomplishing in hours what often required days and weeks-was still anticipated by only a relative handful of persons. On the Hill, the leaders and most influential legislators of both parties, and a few of their favorite newspapermen, already knew of it. In the White House, only Governor Talley and himself, and in the past hour Edna Foster and Tim Flannery, knew of it. On everyone else in Washington, in the United States, in the world, it would fall as a thunderclap.
Dilman was glad that he would not be present in the city for the sordid debate, for the vile lies and disgraceful calumny, for the charges and countercharges. Outside, on the south White House lawn, he was aware that the huge, blunt-nosed Marine helicopter was standing on its steel pad in readiness to lift him into the sky and spin him to Andrews Air Force Base, where the scarlet-and-silver jet airplane, with its Presidential emblem still on the door, would take him on his five-day inspection and speaking tour of the nation.
Eager as he was to escape the maelstrom of impending scandal, he had been made to reconsider his flight one hour ago. A distressed Tim Flannery had felt that leaving the scene of the impeachment fight at this time might be a tactical error. Since the debate would not be a trial, but the airing and consideration of an indictment, Flannery felt that the President would have no place to respond to the charges against him except in the press. From the Oval Office he might best, and most effectively, ridicule and refute the resolution for impeachment. From a distance his voice might be heard less distinctly.
Giving short shrift to his press secretary’s plea, Dilman had determined to adhere to his schedule. Once the impeachment effort was official, he would issue a single statement, perhaps from St. Louis or Cleveland, and after that, dignify the effort no further. He was confident, he had reassured his press secretary, no more would be required from him. The charges were so oversensational and so lacking in solid proof as to collapse readily from lack of factual foundation.
Yet there was one act that he must perform before his departure, and that was to speak to Nat Abrahams. He wondered why he had not told Nat Abrahams what was in the wind, and why he was not going to reveal it to him now. Then he knew. The two things he had in mind to discuss with Nat must not be discussed in the emotional atmosphere of his personal needs. It would not be fair to Nat, who had his own life to live.
And then, through the telephone at his ear, he heard his friend’s voice at last.
“Hello, Nat.”
“Doug, I’ll be damned. I thought you were already airborne.”
“Oh, I will be in ten minutes. I wanted my Dramamine to have a head start. How are Sue and the children?”
“Sue’s right here with me. She arrived this morning. She’s got everything under control back home. The kids are with the family. We didn’t want to pull them out of school until the beginning of February when the semester ends. I think we’ll go back for the Christmas holidays, though.”
“What about your Eagles Industries contract, Nat? Signed yet?”
“In four or five days. About the time you finish your tour. We’ll have to have a drink on it, although I’m not sure if it should be champagne or cyanide… What about you, Doug? Anything special?”
“Nat, every day is special, it’s one endless crisis here.”
“Hey, that reminds me, Doug. What’s that in the morning paper about the FBI clamping down on the Vaduz Exporters? Isn’t that the outfit your-the firm that Wanda Gibson’s been working for?”
“Yes. That’s really why I’m calling you, Nat.”
“Is she in trouble?”
“No, no, nothing like that. She’s no more Communist than you and I are. She was, after all, just another employee there. She didn’t have the faintest idea that her boss was a Red agent or the company a Communist Front until yesterday morning. When she told me, I told her to get out. Anyway, what worries me is that she may be served a subpoena or something while I’m gone-”
“Doug, they have nothing on her, so why should anyone bother her?”
“We-ll, they might. You know our overzealous bloodhounds on Capitol Hill. And-and the case may have other ramifications-and there may be a lot of questions. I wouldn’t want Wanda feeling abandoned and scared, and without legal counsel. Now, I know you are up to your ears-”
“Doug, I’m doing nothing except waiting to affix my autograph to a contract. Of course, I’ll pitch in.”
“I’d be grateful. It would be a load off my mind. Maybe you can kind of look in on her-say, in a day or two.”
“Absolutely, Doug. In fact, I’ll nose around Justice a bit, and the Hill, to learn what’s going on. Then I’ll drive over and see Wanda.”
“Thank you, Nat. You’re the one person I can depend upon. Too bad I’m losing you to Avery Emmich. Maybe it’s not too late. Have you ever thought of coming into government? The pay is lousy, but the cocktail parties are free, and you get a lot of press clippings.”
“Me in government? Of course you’re kidding, Doug. Can’t you see me trying to conform to the Party? And compromise with the Attorney General? I’d last a fast eight hours in any Federal job. Of course, I can’t say it would be worse than what I am about to do. But in Eagles, at least they pay top wages for sin. I’ll come out only slightly sullied, and at least with cash and the farm to keep me warm… You were just kidding me, weren’t you, Doug? I mean-”
“Yes, I was only kidding. You belong in government about as much as I do, except you’d be good at it… Well, I can hear the helicopter’s choppers beating out there. I’d better be off. Good luck with your contract. Kiss Sue. And-and thanks again for keeping an eye on Wanda.”
Gently Dilman returned the telephone receiver to its cradle.
Well, he told himself, as expected: yes on Wanda, no dice on the other. He would have to go it alone, not that it had been different with Talley and Eaton as part of his administration.
He stared down at the last-minute papers waiting to be signed. He reached for his pen. He signed the note to Admiral Oates requesting that the foremost civilian orthopedic surgeons be brought in to try to save Otto Beggs’s leg. He signed the memorandum to Attorney General Kemmler, reminding him that Leroy Poole’s appeal for executive clemency must be expedited, now that the date of Hurley’s execution was drawing nearer. He signed the order for the Federal Marshal to barricade Arthur Eaton’s office in the Department of State, if necessary, to keep him out. He signed his own curt acceptance of Governor Wayne Talley’s resignation from his staff, as well as that of Talley’s friend and his own military aide, General Robert Faber. And finally, he reread the electric news announcement, prepared by Flannery, stating that he had removed Arthur Eaton from the position of Secretary of State because of their irreconcilable differences over foreign policy, and then he signed that too.
He called Miss Foster, to let her know what he had done, and to remind her to take care of the letters, and especially the news announcement, at once.
He pushed himself to his feet, gathered together the copies of the speeches he was to deliver, the briefing notes on the military installations he was to visit, the memorandum he had written to himself on what he could remember of the House’s impeachment charges, and he stuffed them into his already overcrowded briefcase. Once he had secured the lock of the briefcase, he found his hat and took down his heavy overcoat.
Thus laden, he went outside where the Secret Service men and Tim Flannery were waiting on the dry grass of the Rose Garden lawn. He fell in step with them, and headed for the noisy, vibrating bulk of the helicopter.
The weather was good, he noted, the sky over the Potomac clear. He wondered how long it would stay that way, and if, when he returned, he would be under a cloud at last.
Nat Abrahams’ shoe pressed down on the brake, and he brought the rented Ford to a standstill at the red traffic light on Sixteenth Street. Once more he gave his attention to the half-open newspaper, purchased when he had left the Mayflower Hotel, with the double-banner headline reading:
PRESIDENT DILMAN IMPEACHMENT!
SCANDAL DEBATE OPENS IN HOUSE!
It amazed him that only yesterday, little more than twenty-four hours ago, Doug Dilman had telephoned him before leaving the city, and talked without giving a single hint or reference to this monstrous attack on his integrity. Dilman, he reasoned, must have known at that very time about the impeachment charges being mounted against him; yet, except for his concern over Wanda Gibson’s future, he had omitted discussing anything connected with them. He had pretended that his concern over Wanda was merely to see that she was protected from harassment by Congressional Red-baiters. Now, it was evident, he wanted her protected from the charge of having collaborated with the President in committing a treasonable act.
How typical of Doug Dilman, Abrahams thought, to seek no advance advice or help about the impeachment as a whole. Dilman had always been secretive about his personal family relationships. But this impeachment attempt was another matter. Yesterday Dilman had been at the brink of facing public infamy, and yet he had kept his silence. How difficult it must have been for him, privately knowing that he had discharged three of his inner circle, had left himself alone to fight against his slanderers, to refuse to seek the aid of his closest friend. His damnable pride, Abrahams thought, pride, which Defoe had once defined as “the first peer and president of Hell.” Yet, knowing Doug Dilman as he did, Abrahams could see that his reluctance to spill out his troubles might have been otherwise motivated. It might have been his Negro sensitivity that had so muted him, the feeling that he did not wish to overdraw his friendship balance with a white man, that he had no right to do so. On the other hand, perhaps he had sought Abrahams’ assistance after all. Hadn’t he said something to the effect that he was sorry to lose Abrahams to Avery Emmich’s corporation, that maybe it wasn’t too late to bring him into government? Had that been Dilman’s tentative feeling out of his friend, privately aware as he was of what lay ahead? Had Dilman wanted to sound out Abrahams on the possibility of his replacing Talley? Probably not, Abrahams decided, for if Dilman had desired him for so responsible a job, he would not have been afraid to mention it openly.
A car honked behind him. Nat Abrahams realized that the red light had turned green. He shifted his shoe from the brake to the gas pedal, and continued up Sixteenth Street. He remembered his upset yesterday, in midafternoon, when he had been half dozing over an out-of-print history of the early days of Congress, and Sue had awakened him with the flash bulletin she had just heard on the radio. After that, neither the radio nor television in their Mayflower suite had been still. With his intimate knowledge of Dilman, the personal charges made by Zeke Miller yesterday had been preposterous. Yet there had been enough validity in each, just enough, to force Sue and himself to discuss them compulsively all afternoon, through dinner, and into the night.
As he drove now, gradually guiding his car into the right-hand lane, watching for his turnoff, Abrahams’ mind centered particularly on the sections that related Doug Dilman to Wanda Gibson. It was difficult for Abrahams to conjure up a sharply defined image of Wanda Gibson. He and Sue had met her once, about a year and a half or two years ago, and Doug had mentioned her a number of times in letters he had written. Nat could recollect only that she had been a rather mature and striking woman, well educated and well mannered, and with a lovely tan complexion that appeared lighter when contrasted with Dilman’s own color. She was, Nat remembered, a mulatto.
He recalled, too, the frank discussion he had had with Dilman, the first night Dilman had moved into the White House. His friend had not concealed the fact that he was close to Wanda, in love with her, hoping to marry her one day if he possessed the courage. But there had been no indication of anything more. Trying to match what he knew of his friend and of Wanda to Zeke Miller’s lurid picture of them was impossible. Doug Dilman, that sedentary, bemused, middle-aged, frightened Negro, suddenly a Casanova with a mistress? Miller’s accusation would be hilarious if it were not so serious. Doug Dilman, a reeling drunk in a love nest spilling Presidential secrets to a mulatto Mata Hari who was employed by Soviet Russia? Dilman seduced into performing treason? An insane fantasy.
Yet Nat Abrahams’ legal mind permitted the House charges in its resolution for impeachment to revolve in his brain, as he examined their many sides. In three decades he had not seen Doug drink more than Bordeaux wine, perhaps an occasional highball or sherry nightcap-still, still, there might have been more. Since he had not known much of Dilman’s family life, he had been dumbfounded by Miller’s revelation that both Dilman and Aldora had once spent time in a Springfield sanitarium for alcoholics. If that was true, if Miller and his cohorts could prove it, there might also be proof, or some circumstantial evidence, that Dilman had been conducting a love affair with Wanda and had unwittingly betrayed a government secret. But Abrahams had his strong doubts, derived not merely from loyalty to his friend, but from knowledge of his accusers. Their charge of treason, based on intemperate habits, partly disguised their true reason for impeachment: they would no longer countenance a colored man sitting as their leader. They refused to forgive him not only his blackness, but the effrontery of his veto of the Minorities Rehabilitation Program. No Nigra-wasn’t that what Miller called Doug?-was going to be permitted to chastise the majority white legislative branch. It was time for an object lesson to all Nigras who were getting out of hand. This would put them in their places, send them back to carrying hats for their genetic superiors.
Driving more slowly, Nat Abrahams caught the street sign that read “Van Buren N.W.” He flipped his turn indicator up, and wheeled into the residential thoroughfare.
Nearing his destination, he remembered that he had awakened early this morning filled with righteous indignation and legal curiosity. He had telephoned one of Attorney General Kemmler’s assistants about Wanda, and then he had telephoned and personally visited with Robert Lombardi at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the forbidding Justice Department building. After that, he had returned to the hotel and telephoned Wanda Gibson herself. She had responded with recognition to his name, and had been formal, but his persistence in addressing her as Wanda and not Miss Gibson had finally forced down her defenses to accepting him as Nat-and as friend. At first she had not wanted to see him, vaguely speaking of other appointments. She had sounded more shy than troubled. When Nat had invoked Doug Dilman, Doug’s desire that Nat as attorney if not friend look into her predicament, the vague appointments had evaporated, and she had capitulated entirely. Abrahams had told her that he would visit her after lunch, around one-thirty or so.
Cruising slowly along Van Buren Street, keenly conscious of the upper-class Negro women on the sidewalks with their shopping bags, Nat Abrahams sought the residence. Midway up the block, his gaze rested on the two-story brownstone row house, and he knew it immediately. He slid the Ford up to the curb, parked, and pocketed the keys.
Before his reunion with Wanda Gibson, he decided to review the evidence supporting the resolution for impeachment one more time. He unfolded the newspaper, propping it against the steering wheel, and absently packed tobacco into the crusted bowl of his straight-stemmed pipe and lighted it. The lead story reported Zeke Miller’s dramatic introduction of the impeachment resolution, then went on to say that although it had been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, almost all necessary evidence against Dilman had been gathered from witnesses and documents, and therefore Miller promised that the committee, after meeting through the night, would present its recommendation to the House of Representatives at noon today. Majority Leader Harvey Wickland was quoted as stating that he expected the committee to recommend impeachment unanimously, and that he expected the full contents of the charges embodied in the resolution for impeachment to be read and put to limited debate by early afternoon.
Nat Abrahams’ attention was drawn from this story to the impressive black-bordered box in the upper center of the front page reproducing four Articles of Impeachment in boldface type superimposed over a faint photograph of Doug Dilman’s portrait, a not too flattering portrait at that.
Beneath the photograph there ran a lengthy caption. Abrahams studied it:
“The Articles of Impeachment reproduced above-this newspaper has been informed by a reliable Congressional source-may be the form the House of Representatives charges will take when presented to the Senate, presuming the House does indict the President of high crimes and misdemeanors. These charges, in less stately language, are a part of the resolution of impeachment that will be debated today in the House of Representatives. If a majority of House members vote to impeach the President, the charges will be turned over to a special appointed committee, drawn from the House Judiciary Committee, which will formalize them as Articles of Impeachment, and return them to the House for routine approval, before sending them on to the Senate for final judgment. But the raging question today is-will the House of Representatives vote yes or no on the grave matter of converting its resolution for impeachment into actual Articles of Impeachment upon which the Chief Executive would have to stand trial?”
Scowling, Abrahams began to read the evidence that had been prepared against Doug Dilman. He skimmed the contents of the first three articles, more notable for their questionable sensationalism than their proof of high crimes and misdemeanors (although the first charge of treason, if substantiated, might be grave), until he reached the last article. The fact of this one, of course, could not be disputed. Nat reread it carefully:
That said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, at Washington, in the District of Columbia, unmindful of the high duties of his office, of the oath of office, and in violation of the Constitution of the United States, and contrary to the provisions of an act entitled “The New Succession Act Regulating the Line of Succession to the Presidency and the Tenure of Certain Civil Offices,” without the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States, said Senate then and there being in session, and without authority of law, did, with intent to violate the Constitution of the United States, and the act aforesaid, remove from office as Secretary of State the Honorable Arthur Eaton. Then and there being no vacancy in said office of Secretary of State, whereby said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, did then and there commit and was guilty of a high misdemeanor in office, not only for his disregard of the law and his contempt of said Senate, but for his malicious desire to sustain himself in office by illegal removal of the next in line to his succession, whose popularity with the electorate he resented and feared.
This charge, Nat Abrahams could see, would be the most difficult to refute, the one Doug Dilman would find the most menacing and formidable to contest. Whereas his opposition might be challenged on their proof of his commission of treason, through Wanda, with the Vaduz Exporters and Soviet Russia, there was no denying the fact that Doug had broken a law (no matter how unconstitutional it might be) by firing a Cabinet member without the consent of his onetime colleagues in the Senate. Of course, a sound case might be made on Doug’s behalf in the House debate today, but Nat was not sure there was anyone prepared to make that case.
Abrahams’ eyes left the box of articles, and moved to the farthest left-hand column. There was another dismaying headline, and beneath it a dateline from Cleveland. Doug had spoken before a convention of war veterans, of which he was one, and his speech had been met with continuous boos, hisses, and catcalls-the epithets were shocking (“Traitor!… Commie!… Whoremonger!”), and although the police had evicted two dozen hecklers from the auditorium, the disturbance had not ceased. The speech had been an utter disaster. Abrahams’ heart went out to his friend. He was tempted to telephone him, and beg him to return to Washington, but that made no sense either.
As he was about to fold the newspaper, one more story caught Abrahams’ attention. The Secret Service agent who had saved Dilman’s life, Otto Beggs, had successfully come through his latest surgery, had not lost his shattered leg, but his use of it would be considerably impaired. Even this was related to the impeachment. Miller’s investigators, eager to question the President’s personal bodyguard for evidence of what he might have seen or overheard, had been rudely turned away by Admiral Oates.
It pleased Abrahams that someone had shown a shred of decency, but it distressed him to know to what lengths the House investigators were going, to build their case against the President. Apparently they felt that even if they already were in possession of enough evidence to indict the President, there was always use for more, and again more, if he should go on trial.
Abrahams’ vest-pocket watch told him it was twenty minutes to two, and that he had been sitting outside the brownstone for over five minutes. He pulled down the rearview mirror, to see if he was entirely presentable for Wanda Gibson. A tuft of his chestnut hair stood up in back, and no amount of water had been able to slick it down. The extraordinary amount of sleep and relaxation he had enjoyed in Washington, while awaiting the last draft of his contract and while casually acquainting himself with his future duties for Eagles Industries, had not eliminated the lines in his gaunt features or made his deep-set eyes appear more rested. Nevertheless, he felt energetic and revived, all senses alert and questing, as if resurrected from fat lethargy by his antagonism toward Doug’s prosecutors.
He swung his long legs out of the car, slammed the door, and strode to the brownstone. Emptying his pipe against the heel of his hand, he told himself that if he could not help his friend in the House of Representatives, at least he could be of some use to Wanda. It was little enough, but in a time like this it might mean much to Doug. And anyway, it was good to be active.
Inside, he took the stairs two at a time. When he reached the upper landing, he was pleased that he was not winded, and knew that his physician would be pleased too. Approaching the door, he could hear the sounds of television behind it. He knocked firmly. Almost immediately the door opened, and he was inside the parlor, face to face with Wanda Gibson.
He was delighted to find that she was as attractive as he had remembered her. Her glossy dark hair was caught back in a ribbon, and her tawny smooth face was devoid of any makeup except at the lips. Her dark eyes tried to smile, and failed. She wore an apricot-colored cotton blouse, and wide navy-blue leather belt, and a simple tailored blue skirt. Her countenance and her figure were classic, and Nat Abrahams silently congratulated Doug Dilman for his good taste.
Taking his overcoat, she told him that she remembered both him and his wife very well, and she inquired about Sue and the children. As they walked to the couch, she waved a disdainful hand at the television set. The screen showed a panoramic shot of the overflowing galleries in the House, and then moved down to a cluster of representatives gathered before the Speaker’s rostrum.
“Look at it,” Wanda said. “It’s like watching a motion-picture revival of some old spectacle about the Roman Colosseum, with the caged lions rumbling, waiting to be released to rend apart and chew up one poor Ethiopian martyr. Have you been watching, at all?”
“No, I haven’t had the opportunity-or the inclination.”
“A television first,” said Wanda bitterly, finding a cigarette on the coffee table and allowing Nat to light it for her. “A special public service, the network said. Produced by the Marquis de Sade, directed and written by the Spanish Inquisition, they didn’t bother to say. I tell you, I don’t know what we’re coming to. All the sham and pretense. That little monster, Miller, jumping up and announcing the House committee recommends impeachment. Then all kinds of parliamentary business. Then, just now, Wickland-I thought at least, as a Far Westerner, the Majority Leader, he’d be something more-but no, there he was droning out those awful blasphemous four charges as evidence to back their resolution for impeachment. Now there’s a point of order, then Miller is going to elaborate on the charges in detail, before the debate begins later.” She stopped, looking sorrowfully at Abrahams. “It’s terrible. Poor Doug, getting it here-and as a result, look what’s happening to him on the road. Who is there to contest these libelous lies?”
“There’ll be someone when the debate begins, Wanda. At least a dozen congressmen, white and colored, have come out against this.”
“Where are they?”
“They’ll be heard, believe me.”
She nodded uncertainly. “I have some coffee ready-”
“It’s not necessary.”
“I have it ready,” she said. “I’m sorry the apartment is a mess. The Spingers are in New York on this business. They’re meeting with Crispus lawyers on the charges against the Reverend as well as those against Doug… Excuse me a minute.”
After she had gone, Nat Abrahams filled his pipe, settled into the chair between the couch and television set, and smoked as he watched the screen. There was a close shot of Representative Zeke Miller rising from his bench, notes in his hand, grinning, waving a greeting to someone, then addressing the chairman and the House.
“My honorable colleagues,” Miller was saying, “we on the Judiciary Committee who have recommended this distressing action are not unconscious of our responsibility to our constituents, and to our traditions of justice. We are fully aware that this is only the second occasion in two centuries that it has been found necessary to bring such all-fired powerful proceedings against a Chief Executive of the United States. It is for us a distasteful undertaking. Yet we must have the courage to face our duties and back up our convictions. We must accept the shocking facts as they have come to us, and we must elevate our patriotic concern for our beloved America’s future above any sentimental concern over a single weak and dangerous-yes, downright dangerous, for the tyranny of the weak is the worst tyranny of all-individual. Aware as we are that we may face the opprobrium of the squeamish, as well as the protests of Communist appeasers, misguided and devious liberals, sanctimonious and professional minority lovers, we must suffer their slings and arrows to perform the greater good. We beg you not to let your intelligence be hamstrung by the propagandists, but to permit cool reason to accept and weigh the incontrovertible facts in this case.”
The camera revealed a close-up of Zeke Miller, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief, gulping water from a glass, and then it held tightly on him as he continued.
“In speaking of the one who was the object of another Presidential impeachment in another time, namely, Andrew Johnson, two of our predecessors in this very chamber, both from the great state of Illinois, remarked that the object of the impeachment was ‘as mendacious as he is malignant,’ that ‘this nation has been too long disgraced by this man, this accidental President. Let him be removed.’ I say, let that wise American injunction guide us in our deliberations today.”
On the television screen, Miller consulted his notes, and then looked up. “Allow me to elaborate on the four major points in our resolution for impeachment, one by one in their order, and offer to you the evidence of how President Douglass Dilman has degraded himself and debauched our democratic government, through reptilian cunning and unsavory habits. Let us begin with our first charge, the astounding and appalling conduct of this accidental President of the United States in his relationship with the mulatto female, an employee of the Soviet Union, known as Miss Wanda Gibson, and the serious consequences of this allegedly illicit relationship. First of all-”
With a start, Nat Abrahams became aware of Wanda’s presence behind him. She was standing stock-still, holding the tray of coffee, cream, sugar, her hurt eyes trained on the television screen.
Every instinct of decency impelled Nat Abrahams to rise swiftly, putting himself between Wanda and Miller. He reached to the set, found the right knob, and turned it off. Miller’s harangue was interrupted in mid-sentence, his image blotted from view.
Wanda closed her eyes briefly, then said, “Thank you, Nat.” As he pulled his chair to the coffee table, she inquired, “Cream and sugar?”
“Sugar. I need it.”
He laid his pipe in the ashtray and began to drink the coffee.
Wanda Gibson circled the coffee table. “Doug telephoned me from Cleveland last night, after the speech,” she said. “He didn’t want to talk about that though, only to find out if I’d read Reb Blaser’s column in the Miller paper. He’d read it. Apparently it appears in Cleveland too. Have you seen it?”
“I don’t read Blaser’s column,” Abrahams said.
“You should, because lots of others do, and they’re people too, and they have as much to say as we do.” She plucked the folded newspaper off an end table. “You want to hear the column? Well, the first paragraph, anyway. The heading says, ‘The Red and The Black.’ Then it goes on, ‘Now then, good citizens, if our illustrious President has done nothing else during his short term in office, he has revived an interest in the classics, especially in Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. The difference is that Douglass Dilman has rewritten the sordid and immoral French yarn, and given it a peculiarly modern twist. The Red, in the new version, is the infamous Soviet undercover agent, Franz Gar, and the Black is his executive office assistant, Wanda Gibson, the comely Negro paramour of the President of the United States.’ ” She lifted her eyes. “Enough?”
“Too much, considering the source,” said Abrahams. He hesitated, frowning, and then he said, because he felt she was one that he could tell the truth to, “Wanda, you’ve got to steel yourself for more of the same. This could be only the beginning.”
“Oh, I know.” She sat down, one hand massaging the other. “I’ve turned away two dozen photographers and reporters today.”
Abrahams put down his coffee cup, and took up his pipe. “Mind?”
“Please-”
He passed a lighted match over the tobacco. “I’m here to help you, if you require help, not only because Doug wants it, but because I want it.”
“That’s kind of you, but-”
“Wanda,” he went on, “I’m not interested in newspaper dirt, any more than you or Doug should be. I’m interested in seeing that you are treated fairly under the law. I’ve already been to the Department of Justice. I’ve been assured that there is absolutely no evidence in their files that would enable them to charge you with being a Communist. As of today, Justice has no plan to prosecute you in any way. Yet, inevitably, you will be questioned, and I wanted to see you before that begins.”
“Too late,” she said calmly. “It’s already begun.”
“Who?”
“The legal counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, a Mr. Wine. He was here at the crack of dawn today, with aides, to hand me a subpoena. Either I had to appear before the subcommittee, or testify before him and sign my statement. That’s what I did, the last.”
“What did he want to know?” Abrahams demanded hastily.
“Everything. Where I was born, educated, how I lived, jobs, family, everything. Most of it was about Doug and myself, when and where we met, how often we saw one another when he was a senator, after he became President, how frequently we talked on the telephone, how-”
“How many times did you see Doug after he became President?”
“Only once, I’m sorry to say, once and no more. He came here to offer me a job in the White House. I turned it down. Of course, we had a number of telephone conversations.”
“What else were you asked?”
“Exactly what our conversations were about. That Mr. Wine was so obvious and embarrassing, all those suggestive questions. Did Doug tell me about what went on in the Oval Office, at Cabinet meetings, the National Security Council meetings, and so forth? Did I discuss Doug with my employer?”
“What did you tell him, Wanda?”
“The truth. What else was there to tell? I have heard no secrets, so I had none to pass on. I doubt if Franz Gar even knew Doug was a friend of mine. Then-then all kinds of nasty stuff about my having lived here when Doug did-both of us under the same roof-the illicit love routine.”
“I hope you told him to-”
“To drop dead? No. I’m a straightforward person, a defect of mine, but it makes sleep easier. I said the President and I never had an affair. We have known each other nearly five years, and he has never done anything more aggressive than kiss me, embrace me, hold me, hold my hand, and that yes, we have always been fully clothed in one another’s company. Good Lord, you know Doug as well as I do. To him, all women are Vestal Virgins, unless sanctioned by the church and state to procreate. That’s why I almost laughed at their other charge of immorality-Doug, the libertine, trying to rape that daughter of Senator Watson. Can you imagine them swallowing that?” She halted and looked hard at Abrahams. “No one will believe that, or the things about me, will they?”
Abrahams shifted uneasily. He could never lie to this woman. “People believe what they want to believe, Wanda.”
She was immediately disturbed. “Then you think he might be impeached? He doesn’t think it is possible.”
“Anything is possible, but he is most likely correct in his estimate of it. This may amount to no more than a means of public censure. I did some superficial browsing on the subject this morning. Impeachments by the House of Representatives are few and far between, Since 1797, the House of Representatives has considered innumerable impeachment charges, yet voted to send Articles of Impeachment to the Senate only twelve times in history.”
“Only twelve times,” repeated Wanda, aghast. “I thought only once-Andrew Johnson.”
“No. He was the one President ever impeached. But the House has the right to consider impeachment of other civil officers, too. Besides President Johnson, impeachments were voted against an associate justice of the Supreme Court, a secretary of war, a senator, and eight Federal judges.”
“What happened to the twelve who were impeached? Was that the end of them?”
“God, no, Wanda. Impeachment by the House is not a trial but a hearing. If the majority of the House votes against the evidence, the whole matter is dropped for the time, although the House brought impeachment proceedings against Andrew Johnson three times before it got a favorable vote. If the majority votes in favor of impeachment, that is but the first step. It means the person facing impeachment has been indicted for high crimes, and then, and only then, does his case go before the whole Senate, which is converted into a High Court, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding if the President is being tried. Then the person being impeached can have a defense, can retain a staff of attorneys-managers, they are called-to combat the charges of the House managers. Of the twelve men who have gone on trial before the Senate since 1797, eight were acquitted, and four were found guilty, all the guilty were judges, and none was punished beyond removal from office.”
“And eternal disgrace.”
“Yes, I suppose you might say that. The legislator who was impeached, Senator Blount, was not actually tried but was expelled from the Senate, because it was determined that a congressman was not strictly a civil officer.”
“To go back to one point you made, Nat. You said that many impeachment cases have been put before the House, like Doug’s today. Only twelve were sent to the Senate, you said. What happened to the rest?”
“The indictments did not gain a majority vote. They were not passed. Most of the time, however, civil officers whose names are introduced by the House for impeachment don’t let it come to a vote. For example, fifty-five Federal judges have been investigated for impeachment. Eight were impeached, eight were merely censured, twenty-two were acquitted, and seventeen simply resigned their offices and put an end to the proceedings.”
“Nat,” Wanda said quietly, “Doug told me that he was given a chance to resign yesterday-yesterday morning.”
Abrahams felt his hand tighten on the warm bowl of his pipe. “He was? I didn’t know that.”
“Arthur Eaton came to him on behalf of the others. Eaton told him to step aside or quit, on some health pretext, or-or be prepared for what’s going on today.” Wanda fiddled with the buttons of her blouse, eyes downcast. “Nat, you can do something for me, and for Doug. Make him resign. Please do it for both of us.”
Abrahams studied her unhappy profile. “Why, Wanda?” he asked.
She lifted her head, and her eyes had filled. “Because I-I love him-love him too much to see him stripped and tarred and feathered and lynched in front of the whole world. It’ll destroy him, and any happiness he-both of us-might have had. Please make him quit.”
Abrahams felt helpless. “If Eaton couldn’t make him resign, what makes you think I can, even if I believed it was for the best?”
“I know Doug, his sensitivity. Coming from Eaton, it was an insult, got his hackles up. Coming from you, his closest friend, he would listen, knowing you want the best for him.”
Abrahams sucked at his empty pipe, and thought about it. Finally he met her anguished gaze. He shook his head slowly. “Wanda, I truthfully don’t know what is best for him. If he sees this through, he has two chances to survive, to win, to prove he deserves to be President. If he quits now, he loses, he has no more career in public service, he admits incompetence and worse.”
“He’ll be alive!” she exclaimed fiercely. “Everyone on earth will know the professional haters forced him out because he is colored; everyone will know. He might conceivably be popular again, have supporters, come back. And if he didn’t, he could go into private law practice, and we could make a life for-”
“Wanda, you can’t decide this for Doug, and neither can I. Please believe me. Even if he has been goaded beyond common sense, no one can make such a pivotal decision for him. He must make it for himself. That’s all I can say to you.”
“Yes,” she said wearily.
Nat Abrahams wanted to comfort her, but further words would be useless. He rose, and went to the coat tree. As he pulled on his overcoat, he said, “I’ll be on my way. I’m at the Mayflower. I want you to promise me, if any more of the House investigators come snooping, you’ll pick up that telephone and summon me. No more answers to questions without legal counsel at your side. Will you promise?”
She said nothing.
“Wanda, it’s for Doug’s sake as well as your own,” he said sternly.
“I promise,” she said.
“Fine. Now, no more television, either. Keep yourself occupied. Not all of our congressmen are witch hunters. Let’s trust there is a majority who still cling to sensibility and decency. If there is, this will be as forgotten as a bad dream. I’ll see you soon, Wanda.”
“Thanks for everything.”
Not until he had fully emerged into the cold afternoon, and gone down the walk to his car, did he realize how relieved he was to escape Wanda’s problems and Doug Dilman’s problems and the whole impossible situation. Closing himself into his sedan, he felt momentarily insulated from all constricting, suffocating evil, and grateful that he was the lucky person he was, free of torture and punishment, free to return to his untroubled and loving mate, to a new career that promised him wealth and security, to a life unfettered by savage scandal and constant cruelty. Never had he been more grateful than now for being who he was, with so snug and tidy a niche in so seething and blazing a world.
Then, as he turned the ignition key and heard the engine whine and catch, heard its power idling, his conscience was awakened by the smooth mechanical purr.
Before the bar of his conscience, the blood went to his cheeks, and he felt the heat of shame. For he knew that he had allowed himself the vain corruptions of superiority and safety, and in his heart he knew that he possessed neither. He and Douglass Dilman were both men on this earth, with minds and hearts and limbs like one another and every man. His own position in life was high, but no higher than Doug’s position, and he was no more secure on high than his friend. If Doug was vulnerable today, and could be brought down, then so could he. He possessed nothing that Douglass Dilman did not possess. And his shame now came from the vanity of his one safe possession that Douglass Dilman did not have and could never own-the thin sheath of his conforming white epidermis.
Nat Abrahams shifted gears, and the car leaped forward. He was satisfied to know, at last, what he fervently prayed that the honorable members of the House of Representatives would know in due time-that any impeachment of Douglass Dilman, because of his difference, would also become an indictment of themselves, and of half-civilized men everywhere, for all of history.
On the fourth day after his departure from Washington, President Douglass Dilman stood hatless and coatless in the wind and the sun of Cape Kennedy, near Cocoa Beach on the east coast of Florida. He stood flanked by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the nation’s most famous astronaut, by several members of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, posing for pictures being taken by the dense swarm of press photographers around him.
Following the wintry weather (and receptions) endured elsewhere on the trip, the Florida sun now baking down on his bare head and the Atlantic breeze now gently nipping at his brown suit represented an agreeable change. Yet Douglass Dilman was uncomfortable.
Staring back at the clicking shutters being manipulated by the crouching, kneeling, shouting photographers, Dilman experienced the sinking sensation of one who suddenly realizes that he is having his picture taken for some nefarious purpose. Under different circumstances, the excessive photography might have been innocent and natural: news shots heralding the Commander in Chief on his first inspection of his country’s foremost missile test center. Under today’s circumstances, the excessive photography was suspicious: news shots recording for posterity and editorial morgues the nation’s leader on his last outing as President of the United States.
The darker side of Dilman’s mind wondered what the caption would be on each still shot, as it was transmitted to New York and from there around the world. Then he knew that there would not be one caption to every photograph, but two, and with cynical amusement he wrote the alternate captions in his head: (A) “The grim and embittered President, shown minutes before learning he was impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors by a majority of the House”; (B) “The determined and courageous Chief Executive at Cape Kennedy minutes before hearing of his vindication by a majority of the House, who voted down the charges against him.”
In an effort to supply appropriate art for the happier caption, Dilman tried to reset his face, tried to look determined and courageous, but he knew that he was not succeeding. He still looked grim, because his innards were poisoned with disappointment and bitterness.
The swing around the country had been an unremitting disaster. Everywhere, he had been preceded by the one-sided, unrefuted charges introduced into the House of Representatives, the charges of his treasonable conduct, his immorality, his intemperance, his contempt of the people’s own elected Congress, all trumpeted into every municipality and hamlet, into every ear, via newspapers, radio, and television. Everywhere, the seeds of hatred had been sown, and everywhere, he had reaped the harvest of malice and malevolence.
There seemed no color line that divided the nation in its united aversion to his presence. The white folks screamed at him as if he were a dangerous orangutan on the loose. The colored folks condemned him as if he were a black Quisling who had sold his people back into slavery. If the demonstration against him in Cleveland had been a horror, his violent reception in the Shrine Auditorium of Los Angeles (where his life had been briefly imperiled by young hotheads who rushed the stage) had been worse, equaled only by his reception in Seattle, where not one word of his fifteen-minute talk had been heard.
The hurried visits to widespread military installations, under the reluctant guidance of General Pitt Fortney, had been no less distressing. At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at general headquarters of the Strategic Air Command outside Omaha, Nebraska, at the ICBM site near Cheyenne, Wyoming, at Fort Bliss, Texas, Dilman had been maddened by an entirely different kind of contempt.
At the military installations, the Commander in Chief could not be met by placards and fists and curses. Instead, disdain and low opinion were implied subtly, through mock formality, extravagant courtesy, lack of social warmth. On every inspection and tour, he had found his hosts, his guides, his companions, his servants, to be low-ranking Negro officers or Negro enlisted men. Wherever he had appeared, television sets and radios had been flicked off, newspapers had been hidden, and nowhere had mention been made, reasonably or unreasonably, encouragingly or discouragingly, of his impeachment being debated in the House of Representatives-and throughout the nation. From the seething rage and turmoil of the big cities, he had been dropped by jet airplane into the chilly, soundless atmosphere of ostracism by silence. He had been kept at arm’s length (and a salute), as if he were a leper forced in among them, a leper who would soon, by the vote of his betters, be removed to some political Molokai.
When his jet aircraft had put him down at Patrick Air Force Base, south of Cape Kennedy, this morning, he had known what to expect. With dread he had entered the motorcade, expecting vocal censure from the citizenry and silent rejection from the military once more, and in both instances he had been surprised. While there had often been a hundred thousand persons lining the route to cheer every successful astronaut from John H. Glenn to Leo Jaskawich, and, by Flannery’s estimate, there had been no more than ten thousand along the route to receive him, Dilman had been anything but dismayed. If there had been no cheers, there had also been, for the first time, no catcalls, no shouts of disapprobation, no visible hatred. The onlookers watching him ride past had proved orderly, and their sunburned faces had reflected only interest and curiosity.
Even after his entry through the main gate of Cape Kennedy, acknowledging the saluting security guards and uniformed staff and workers, he had found the atmosphere more courteous than hostile. His short speech to the assembled personnel and the press, promising full support of the administration to the Apollo program, to its forthcoming three-man reconnaissance of the moon, had been received without snickers or protest, with full attention and respect.
Yet, after visiting the sprawling Central Control Building, with its four intricate IBM electronic computers, after arriving at the Gemini launching pad to pose for the photographers, Dilman’s sense of anxiety had been revived. The session of picture taking, much of it by cameramen who had trailed him constantly from the White House to this site, had reminded him of the whole disastrous trip and of what was taking place on the floor of the House of Representatives this moment.
Leaving the Control Building, Tim Flannery had whispered to him that the members of the House had reconvened, and that the summations had been concluded, and that there had been heartening support of Dilman from several Western representatives, notably Collins of Montana, who had warned his colleagues that their evidence for impeachment was “built on quicksand” and “if they indicted a President for his personal habits and his friends and his opinions,” they were opening the way for future Congresses to control the executive branch completely, and “punish Presidents for the cut of their clothes or the behavior of their wives or the score of their intelligence quotients.”
Nevertheless, the knowledge that the debate had come to an end, and that the final vote on impeachment was about to begin, had filled Dilman with oppressive concern. If the House, which more closely reflected the feelings of the voters than did the Senate, felt the same hatred for him that he had recently witnessed around the nation, he was doomed.
Still he could not believe it would happen. His firm belief was that the House members, having enjoyed the catharsis of vituperation, would now realize the historic gravity of the decision they faced. They would realize that an impeachment in modern times was unthinkable, that the legal instrument of reproof and discipline in the Constitution had become obsolete. In fact, just the other night, unable to sleep, Dilman had come across the words of an eminent political scientist who had once characterized impeachment as a “rusted blunderbuss, that will probably never be taken in hand again.” Surely, the more judicious of the House members would see that, would think twice before signifying aye or nay. In the end, these members would not give their vote to Zeke Miller, whose own political motives were more questionable than those he had attributed to Dilman. There could be no question about it. When the vote came shortly, cooler heads would prevail.
Dilman heard General Fortney’s Texas-accented voice drawl forth, “All righty, you fellows, you’ve had enough of your picture taking for now!” Fortney turned to General Leo Jaskawich. “What next? Want to put us into orbit?”
Jaskawich offered the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a restrained official smile, then he said to Dilman, “Mr. President, I hope you’ll allow me to ride you up to the top of the pad. There is a wonderful view from there.”
“I’d certainly like to see it,” said Dilman.
Dilman stepped into the elevator, followed by Fortney, Jaskawich, and the Operations Director. Slowly they ascended alongside the upper portion of the Titan rocket until they rattled to a halt 100 feet above the concrete pad.
Emerging onto the platform between the rocket’s nose and the steel tower overheard, Dilman found it windier and cooler. He followed Jaskawich’s arm and hand, straight as a signpost, as the astronaut pointed out the blockhouses, the Test Annex, the workstands, the service towers, the other launch rings, the moonport on Merritt Island. For the most, Dilman was inattentive, absently gazing out at the indigo-blue ocean to the east, the ocean that led to Washington.
Suddenly he became conscious of the fact that Jaskawich was looking at him, and that they were alone. Fortney and the Operations Director had moved to another section of the platform.
Jaskawich offered an understanding smile. “I can’t blame you for not listening, Mr. President,” he said. “I’m sure your thoughts today are more concerned with what’s happening on the ground than with what’s happened in outer space.”
The young man’s directness and quick perception nudged Dilman’s interest in him. He attempted to smile back. “As a matter of fact, you are quite right, General.”
“I-while I can speak to you like this-there is something I wanted to say to you, sir. I’ve been reading about your trip around the United States. I’ve been following the debate in the House of Representatives on television. I’ve never been more ashamed of my fellow Americans, or their representatives, and I wanted you to know. I want you to know also, there are many of us who feel this has been rigged, blown up out of all proportion, and that you are being judged solely because of prejudice against your color. Maybe I’m out of line, but I had to tell you.”
Not in days had Dilman been so genuinely moved by the friendliness of another human being. His eyes moistened, and he averted his head. “I thank you,” he said, almost inaudibly. “I sincerely appreciate your understanding. I-in fact, I was impressed from the moment I arrived here-by the courtesy, an air of decency, such as I have not seen in four days.”
Jaskawich’s frank, open face had become intensely serious. “We are another breed here at Cape Kennedy-not everyone, but certainly the men who have finally gone up, and the handful most closely involved with them. We’re trained to be cast closer to heaven and its planets. And when you leave the earth for orbit in space, as I have three times, you can see how small our little mudball of a world is in true godly perspective. When a one-and-a-half-million-pound thrust puts you up there, alone in the Mercury capsule, or with one other in the Gemini capsule, and you swing around the earth for several days, you come to have some spiritual knowledge of what the Maker meant when he packed our patty-cake together, and populated it with living beings, and gave this mudball a semblance of order and its men a modicum of intelligence. Believe me, Mr. President, you lose all petty poisons that corrupt men and spoil life. You lose all that in outer space. You come to understand how lucky man is even to exist, how fortunate he is to survive, and you come to speculate on why he lacks appreciation of his lot, and why he destroys so much of his own pleasure and the enjoyment of those around him with incredible pettiness of mind and action. One period, when I was up there, I thought-I know this will sound odd-but I thought, if only men like Caligula, Attila, Torquemada, Hitler, the jurors of Socrates, the witch burners of Salem, the bombers of Birmingham, the ravagers of reason and decency had been made to don our twenty-pound pressurized space suits and been hurtled into orbit, to look above and look below, and then had fired their retrorockets to descend to earth once more, they would come down like resurrected saints. That’s what can happen, Mr. President. No matter how many or few your failings, when you return from there to here, you are never the same again. You’ve left prejudice, hatred, destructiveness, lying, cheating in the reaches of outer space. You look upon your fellow men with the eyes of eternity, as your equals on the earth, and you want to live and let live. That’s why so many of us here-”
He stopped in mid-sentence. General Fortney and the Operations Director had walked back to join them again.
Fortney said to Dilman, “Had enough of this?”
Dilman smiled. “I find I like it up here. But I guess it’s time to get down to earth.”
In the elevator he studied General Leo Jaskawich with new interest. During an era already becoming jaded from continuous space exploits and achievements, Jaskawich was a special hero. He was the only astronaut to have been in orbit three times, once alone and then twice in the two-man Gemini capsule for six days. His physical aspect was deceptively average, in no proportion matching his legend. Dilman judged the astronaut to be perhaps five feet ten inches in height, and weighing around 160 pounds. His hair was short-cropped and sunblanched, his eyes quick and kind, his nose the most prominent feature on his swarthy Lithuanian face. He wore his uniform not as a martinet would, but with the confidence of one who had earned it through calculated and accepted risk. Not since Dilman had first met Nat Abrahams, and later The Judge and Tim Flannery, had he so quickly allowed himself to like and trust another being.
After that, for the remainder of their ground tour about the heart of Cape Kennedy, Dilman was entirely attentive to Leo Jaskawich. Especially in Hangar R, where rested the enormous Apollo spacecraft, with its two outer bays for equipment, that would hold three astronauts and bring them within 40,000 feet of the surface of the moon, did Dilman appreciate Jaskawich’s eloquence and become infected by the astronaut’s enthusiasm over the approaching lunar exploration.
The last stop before riding out to the beach was the horseshoe-shaped, one-story dormitory where the new astronauts, twelve in number, now training for the next Apollo flight, were supposed to reside while on the base.
As they examined the neat, furnished rooms, Jaskawich stated, “Ten of them live here, while their families live in Cocoa Beach.”
Some inconsistency joggled inside Dilman’s head. “Ten live here? I thought you said there were twelve in training.”
Before Jaskawich could reply, General Fortney brusquely intervened. “A couple of them preferred to stay in the old barracks. It’s the same as this. They’re doing special work that keeps them up later. Let’s move on.”
As he started away with the directors and public relations officers, Dilman held Jaskawich back. “Those other two, who are they? Why are they living separately?”
For the first time, Jaskawich appeared uneasy. “They are Negroes, sir,” he said.
“But I thought this place was-”
“I know, Mr. President,” Jaskawich said sadly. “When I spoke of a new breed of men that had grown out of this program, I meant the ones who had experienced orbital flight or been thoroughly indoctrinated for it. The new trainees are just groundlings, and while they are superior in some respects, they still carry the infection of groundling education and prejudices. Officially, like all military installations since 1951, this is a desegregated base, entirely so. But if two newcomers are made to feel-well-different, and know they’ll have more peace of mind for concentrating on their training if they can remove themselves from social abrasion, they do so, they volunteer. I don’t think our two colored astronauts give a damn. They’re too devoted to the work. That’s all that counts. Eventually, I promise you, the others will be inviting them back to this building.” He hesitated, and then added, “Even when done on a so-called voluntary basis, I didn’t back this segregation. I’m not running the show, but I stepped out of channels long enough to buck a note up to Fortney at the Pentagon. I never had a reply. Maybe Fortney never saw it.”
“Maybe he did,” said Dilman. “He knows what is going on here.”
“Dammit, I’m sorry, Mr. President.”
“You’ve done your best. Now I’ll do mine. You see that I have a memorandum waiting for me at the White House, reminding me to order that all the astronaut trainees on the Cape henceforth, whatever their wish or anyone else’s, live in the same quarters, receive the same food and teaching, without discrimination or favoritism. You can bet I’ll act on it.”
Jaskawich’s eyes were bright. “You’ll have that memo. Thank you, Mr. President.”
“To everyone else I may be a groundling, but you and I know, General, I’ve been up there and returned.” Dilman started to go, then had an afterthought and stopped. “Tell me, General Jaskawich, are you permanently assigned to Cape Kennedy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you do here?”
“I’m supposed to teach,” he said, and then he grinned. “I don’t really. There are a hundred men who can handle that better than I can. I’m not a teacher, I’m a doer type. I was supposed to direct the Apollo operation, but that was just publicity. I’m really based here to guide eminent visitors around, like congressmen, especially the ones on appropriation committees, or columnists, who can give us the right public image. I’m reduced to the profession of being an animated monument or showpiece. I make commencement addresses, too. Very good ones, I might add.”
“Are you going to be sent up again?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. President. I’m past my thirty-fourth birthday, and the limit for men going into space is now thirty-five.”
Dilman took out a cigar and busied himself with it, and then remembered to offer Jaskawich an Upmann. “Allowed to smoke?”
“Absolutely,” said Jaskawich. “But no, thanks, that cigar is too much for me. Mind if I have one of my own?”
“Go ahead.”
Jaskawich took out a slender cheroot and his crested lighter, hastily lit the President’s cigar first and then his own cheroot. He inhaled. “Good,” he said.
“Tell me,” Dilman said, “do you like Washington?”
“I like any place where there’s action and challenge, and I guess that describes Washington.”
“It certainly does,” said Dilman. He resumed walking, with Jaskawich keeping in stride beside him. “I was thinking,” Dilman went on, “how much we could use-in the Pentagon, maybe even in the White House-the judgment of a person who has been a little closer to heaven than any of us are ever likely to be.” He cast the astronaut a speculative glance. “Think you’d be interested?”
“Mr. President,” said Jaskawich fervently, “you signal retrofire-and Washington’s where I’ll land.”
“All right,” said Dilman, “you stand by, and when I-”
Dilman came to a jarring halt, teetering for a moment, waiting, as he stared straight ahead. He could see Tim Flannery rushing up the dormitory corridor toward him. At once, discerning the upset expression twisted across the press secretary’s usually pleasant countenance, Dilman’s heart began to hammer. Gone were his cheer and high hopes of the past minutes.
“Mr. President, I wanted to catch you before you went outside,” Flannery said breathlessly. “The reporters and photographers are piling up out there, waiting for you. I had Fortney order guards to hold them in line a few minutes. It’s just happened, Mr. President-goddamit-” The redhead’s freckled face became contorted, and Flannery looked as if he might weep. “The vote in the House, it’s over-” he said brokenly.
Curiously, Dilman suffered no pang of fear, and no hurt. He said quietly, not as a question, as a flat statement of fact, “I’ve been impeached.”
“Yes-goddamit, it’s terrible-I don’t know what-”
Dilman’s hand touched Flannery’s shoulder. “Easy, Tim. Details are unimportant, but-was it close?”
“The vote was 287 for impeachment, 161 against it.”
Dilman nodded. “I see. The voice of the people.”
“The voice of bigotry!” Jaskawich exclaimed fiercely.
Dilman licked his lips, and was embarrassed by his uncontrollable Adam’s apple. “Well,” he said, with a slight shrug. His eyes moved from Jaskawich to Flannery. “What next, Tim?”
“According to the radio, an announcement just came from the Senate Office Building-no wonder they call it SOB-it came from Senator Hankins. He said the Senate will be convened as a High Court, and be ready to try you a week from now. Mr. President, about those newshounds yelping outside the door-”
Dilman’s knuckles crept to his forehead. He felt dizzy and displaced. “I-I can’t see them yet, Tim. Get me out of it.”
“What can I do?” Flannery said wretchedly. “They’re fifty feet deep outside the front door and even in back. There’s no-”
Jaskawich clutched Dilman’s arm. “I can help you. There’s a fire exit at the side of this building-no one’ll know-we can slip out of there-give you a two-or three-minute jump on them before-”
Immediately Jaskawich started off, with the President and press secretary following him.
Five minutes later, dusty and panting, Dilman reached the Cadillac limousine behind Jaskawich and Flannery, as the surprised Secret Service agents and Cape security guards closed in from either side.
Quickly Dilman shook hands with Jaskawich. “Thanks for everything, General. Too bad, but I don’t expect I’ll have the authority, very soon, to send for you. You’d have liked Washington.”
“I don’t like it now,” said Jaskawich angrily. “That’s why maybe I’ll show up whether you send for me or not. You’ve still got a big chance-”
“I don’t know,” said Dilman. “I just don’t know.”
As Dilman settled heavily into the back seat, then made room for Flannery, he could observe, through the curving surface of the car’s bubble top, the herd of reporters and photographers on the run in the distance, hurrying to assault him again.
“Patrick Air Force Base,” Dilman ordered the chauffeur, as two Secret Service agents slammed into the limousine. Up ahead, the motorcycles were forming a protective wedge. The Cadillac moved, wheeled right, and pointed toward the exit gate.
“Mr. President, I was just thinking,” Flannery began earnestly, “when you make your last speech in St. Louis tomorrow, you’ll have a chance to answer the impeachment. The minute we get to St. Louis tonight, we can sit down and revise-”
Dilman had been immersed in thought. While the car sped through the gate, leaving the Cape Kennedy missile site, he suddenly said, “Tim, there’s going to be no St. Louis. No St. Louis. Do me a favor, do you mind?” His limp hand indicated the radiotelephone beside Flannery. “Ring the airport for me, and notify the crew we’re changing our flight plans. Have them get clearance to take me straight to Sioux City, Iowa. Then locate Noyes in Washington and have him cancel the St. Louis speech, the whole visit. Tell him to make any excuse. Tell him I’m sick. I am sick.” He alleviated the press secretary’s instant concern with the faintest smile. “Not the way you think, Tim.”
Dilman pointed to the mobile telephone unit again. “Book me into a Sioux City hotel for overnight. No engagements, not that anyone except the reporters would want to see me. I’ve got no patronage to hand out now. I’m nothing more than a politician under criminal indictment, and that’s like being a typhoid carrier. I think we’ll have our privacy in Sioux City.”
Flannery had heard this out with unconcealed anguish. “Mr. President, please reconsider the St. Louis speech. You’ve still-”
“No. I need time to think, and I know what must be done first. After you’ve finished the other calls, get The Judge for me. He lives outside Sioux City somewhere-”
“Fairview Farm.”
“Yes, that’s right. Tell him I’d like to drive out and have breakfast with him tomorrow morning, ham and eggs and a little talk, the two of us, an ex-President and one about to join his club, and nobody else. Tell him I won’t need much of his time, maybe an hour, before I head back to Washington.”
For quiet seconds Douglass Dilman listlessly watched the business section, the stores and offices and nightclubs of Cocoa Beach, flash by. Then, still staring outside the window, he said, “Funny how, the moment everything collapsed around me ten minutes ago, my mind went back to my father. Funny, because I never really knew my old man, except from some pictures and what my mother used to tell me. He died when I was just a child. My mind went to him, I guess, because I felt like a helpless kid they’re after, and I wanted someone old enough and strong enough to stand in front of me, between them and me. But then, I knew I had no father. So I had to adopt one, someone who was tough and sure and unafraid, someone who was-was old enough for me to respect and talk to. So automatically, in my head, I kind of adopted The Judge. Crazy, because he hardly knows me and I hardly know him either. But he’s as irascible and durable as an Assyrian goat. You know, Tim, my first morning as President he called me from his farm, and after he finished lecturing me, he said, ‘Young fellow, you listen and remember, if you ever need my advice or a helping hand, both of which are untaxable and both of which we got plenty of, you come out here and visit the Missus and me, and we’ll have a good farm breakfast and set you straight.’ That’s what he said, Tim.”
Dilman turned away from the window and met Flannery’s eyes. “I’d have no way of knowing, but I guess that’s the way a father would talk… Now, what in the devil’s keeping you, Tim? We haven’t got all day. Get on the phone there and start making those long-distance calls, charged to the White House, while I can still spend the government’s money.”
It was a luminous, pure, autumn-crisp Iowa morning.
Overhead, the disc of sun was too fresh to the new day to have yet warmed the air or the soil, so that the air still livened the flesh and entered the lungs with the bracing coolness of a natural spring, and the patches of grass and springy earth underfoot were damp with the night dew. There was a strange, tangy, life-giving smell all around, a mingling of rural odors of livestock and poultry, of corn and wheat, of red barn paint and crackling skillet.
They made their way back from their hike, in step, without haste, strolling leisurely, the President of the United States and the ex-President of the United States, both holding to their own ruminations as they crossed the barnyard toward the sprawling gray-and-red farm house.
The Judge held his gnarled Irish shillelagh aloft, to greet the arriving farmhand clad in patched blue overalls, and then he brandished the walking stick at an indignant rooster. “Guess you’ve got yourself an appetite at last, eh, young man?” he said to Dilman.
“Yes, Judge, I’m about ready.”
Dilman had been too impatient for a hike when it had begun, and had gone along only out of courtesy to his aged host. Now he was grateful for the tonic of the walk, and his respect for the ex-President’s instinctive folk wisdom was reinforced.
Upon his arrival at Fairview Farm, ten miles outside Sioux City, Dilman had been abashed by The Judge’s unceremonious welcome as they shook hands on the wooden porch.
The Judge had snorted, expectorated, and rasped out, “So, they crucified you up on the Hill yesterday, eh, my friend? Hell and tarnations, I’ve known them for muddleheads and blockheads half my life, and firsthand, but I sure didn’t expect them to take leave of their senses, insulting our office of President, making our Party into a white demagogue’s party, slapping the Negro vote in the face. Couldn’t have done better if they wore white hoods when they indicted you, the blasted fools.”
“I’m glad we’re of one mind,” Dilman had said, his hand still gripped in The Judge’s hand, as they remained in sight of Flannery, the Secret Service agents, the state police.
The Judge had let go of the handshake. “Young man, I hold a strictly zoological view of our legislative branch. Taken as a whole, Congress reminds me of nothing more than a dinosaur-the Stegosaurus, to be specific-a giant body with a peewee head and a collective brain the size of a walnut. Taken individually, the members are either dodoes or dingoes-understand?-the dodo bird pretending to be a bird, yet unable to fly, and heading for extinction because of self-importance, pretension, unadaptability-the dingo dog of Australia, half domestic pet, faithful and serving, other half wild beast, roving in packs and killing sheep. Congress!” He had glared off. “Who in the hell is invading our serenity?”
Three sedans, crammed to overflowing, had come bumping up the rutted main road into Fairview Farm.
“The press,” Dilman had said.
“Let them stew,” The Judge had growled. He had considered Dilman, eyes narrowing. “Young man, you’re not fit to enjoy our food, not yet. Come on, let’s you and me take a brisk half hour’s hike over the farm-show you how the middle of America lives-you’ll find it good for your juices-cleanse out all the spite from your gut before breakfast.”
They had fled from the press into the inner hall and parlor, and emerged through the back door, and gone on their hike. The Judge, entwining a knitted scarf around shoulders and neck, taking up his walking stick, had led Dilman to the towering silo, where green corn and feed were already stored and ripening for the winter, and past the windmill, and through the sheds where the gleaming four-row cultivators, plows, harvesters were parked. They had paused at the hogpen, where the pigs lined the troughs, jostling, squealing, eating their swill.
They had gone inside the vast red barn to watch the milking machines attached to the udders of cows, and to observe the buckets of milk being taken to cream separators. The Judge had pointed out the haymow on the upper floor of the barn, proudly announcing that he labored up there three times a week, pitching hay down to the mangers.
They had rested briefly before a second farmhouse, smaller and newer than The Judge’s own, where his niece and her young son and daughter lived. “Kids are in school now, or I’d show the tykes off to you,” The Judge had said with pleasure. “Smartest ones you ever seen. Good having them all here with me, makes me young again, but too bad it had to be. She was married to my younger brother’s boy, and he got himself sniped at and killed some years ago in Vietnam. So I took them in. She does my typing, letter answering, editing of my books for her board and keep.” Then he growled, “ ’Course, if she knew the truth, I’d pay her just to have those young ones around.”
After that, they had cut across a soft field, freshly plowed and planted with winter wheat, and then entered a wooded area, stopping only when they had arrived at the gurgling, swift-running creek. “Better than the Potomac,” The Judge had said. “I spend every hour of the summer I can spare just lazing on the bank over there, fishing with live bait, chewing my cud, and catching stray memories. I don’t know a better way of living. Too bad it’s going out of our giddyup life.” He had dug his stick into the soil in several places near the creek. “Sometimes you can kick up an old Indian arrowhead. Can you imagine that? Let’s head back to the chow line before the Missus has my scalp for starving a guest.”
As they returned to the main house, The Judge spoke several times, in his nasal fashion, of his book reading. He had pride, like most largely self-educated persons, in his thorough knowledge of several subjects. His collection of volumes on American history, one of the most extensive private collections in the nation, now reposed in the Presidential Library that bore his name. He could quote at length from almost any book in that library. He had read deeply, if not selectively, in the works of philosophers, and he would remember an anecdote about Diogenes as readily as a passage from Thoreau. Once, encompassing all of his feudal domain with a swing of his stick, he said, “I love this because it inspires meditation. ‘Life is a ticklish business. I have resolved to spend it in reflecting upon it.’ Know who said that? Dutchman named Arthur Schopenhauer. Don’t subscribe to some of his ideas, but like that one. Trouble with a job like the Presidency is it’s a job where you should do more thinking than anyone in the world, and yet you have less time to think than a shoe clerk.”
Twice, approaching the large farm house, Dilman had opportunities to inspect carefully his famous, cantankerous host. The Judge was short, overweight, certainly eighty years old, but he was confident in his opinion, lean-minded, jaunty. His chapped globe-face with its pimple triangle of a nose resembled, except for the myopic eyes, nothing so much as a squashed pumpkin left outdoors long after Halloween. Above all, he was earthy, common, colorful, and knew it, and promoted the image. In their walk, he had characterized Representative Zeke Miller as “a kind of adolescent who likes to step on flowers,” and he had dusted off Senator Bruce Hankins as “ineffectual because rigor mortis set in on him two decades ago.” As to Arthur Eaton, he had hooted at the name, remarking that “he wants to be President more than any man in this country, yet he thinks it’s bad table manners to admit it, but take my word, you could fit all his supporters in a telephone booth.” Best of all, The Judge had said wryly, he preferred to discuss more dependable and trustworthy animals, such as the livestock on his farm.
When they entered the homey parlor, Dilman realized to what extent the hike and the fresh air had fatigued him. And for the first time there was the hollow need for food in his belly. He was about to flop into the widest armchair when the Missus came in, scolding her husband for his tardiness and warmly taking Dilman’s hand.
Seeing her this way, in her inexpensive cotton print house-dress and white apron, Dilman was reminded of how impossible it was to believe that she had once been the First Lady of the land and the hostess in the State Dining Room. Her thinning blue-gray hair was set neatly above a smooth, plump face, broken only by the bifocal spectacles perched low on the bridge of her potato nose. She was dumpy and grandmotherly, like senior models shown in advertisements for pancake mixes or hot cereals, and although she would brook no nonsense from The Judge, she was adoring of him, and sweet and concerned about everyone else in the world.
She had been, early in the century, a county librarian, Dilman remembered, and her choice of language was less erratic and more refined than that of her husband.
“Right now I want to apologize for The Judge’s behavior,” she said to Dilman, “treating you like some delegate from the 4-H clubs rather than President. He and his farm! And walking you nearly to death. Why did I have to marry the world’s number-one pedestrian? Now, you come right in and eat, Mr. President. You look famished. And as for you, Judge, take off that abominable scarf, and wash your hands, and don’t keep us waiting.”
After they had gone into the dining room and settled themselves around the circular colonial table, The Judge tucked the corner of his napkin into his shirt, bowed his head, muttered grace, then smacked his lips and poked his spoon into the steaming porridge. As Dilman finished his own porridge, and consumed the rest of the generous breakfast-the waffles, the browned ham and scrambled eggs, the oven-hot biscuits, the still-warm, creamy glass of milk-his mood perversely altered from mindless well-being to vague depression.
He had made this visit outside Sioux City to seek advice-or confirmation-of a political and personal decision that had possessed all his thoughts from the second that he had learned of his impeachment. For more than a half hour he had been diverted from unhappy reality by the outdoor interlude with the ex-President. Briefly his healthy exhaustion and hunger had distracted his mind. But now, with breakfast almost ended, with his stomach filled and his calves strong, he was no longer diverted. The truth of his painful situation permeated his thinking. No rural sight-seeing, no return to nature, no amount of fresh air or delicious food, could anesthetize him longer.
He was about to speak what was uppermost in his mind when the Missus rose from the table. “I’ll leave the dishes and let you gentlemen talk,” she said. “I can’t stand having those poor men and women out front starving, while we stuff ourselves in here. I’m going to see they at least get coffee and biscuits in the shed… As for you, Judge, don’t go smelling up this room and getting soot on my curtains with that foul corncob.”
The Judge, who was already lighting his brown-yellow corncob pipe, grunted, “You go attend your chickens, Missus.” As Dilman peeled the wrapper from his cigar, The Judge said, “Now we can talk peaceably.” He puffed with contentment. “I know you got lots on your mind, Douglass, or you wouldn’t be out in this godforsaken place. I wasn’t unconscious of your problems when I ran you ragged out there and peppered you with all my fool talk about harvesting and horses. I did it on purpose, to try to settle you down.”
“I appreciate that,” said Dilman. “Matter of fact, while we were walking, I kept envying you-not only you but a friend of mine, Nathan Abrahams, the lawyer-”
“The Chicago fellow? Good man, good man. Followed his handling of tough civil rights cases for years.”
“I envied you both because, when your work was done, you had someplace to go. You did your service, Judge, and then you came back to the farm. Nat Abrahams has served in his way, and when he’s earned a few more dollars, he, too, has a farm outside Wheaton waiting for him. It must be gratifying to know you’ve undertaken the tasks on this earth you were born for, have finished them as best you could, and now deserve and can enjoy a reward beyond that of a career alone.”
“No reason you can’t do the same one day.”
“Not a chance,” said Dilman, “not any more. I haven’t earned my peace. Not that it will be my fault, but that’s the way it is working out. I’ve been impeached-that’s an awful thing-the second President ever to be impeached for crimes, existent or nonexistent. Already I’m burdened by a half disgrace. Now I’ve got to go on trial, like the worst kind of felon, in the biggest, most public courtroom in the world, and hear lies told about my supposed immorality and incompetence and lawbreaking, see these lies become a permanent part of my record and biography, and of American history. They’ll convict me, Judge, no matter what their lack of evidence or my rebuttal, because they have one piece of criminal evidence against me I can’t refute-and that’s that I’m black. I’ll be thrown out, the first President in history, and my half disgrace will become full disgrace. My work will be undone. I’ll spend the rest of my life, I suppose, like some persecuted fanatic, buttonholing people to convince them I was innocent, to justify my few months in office. I can’t seek a farm, a reward, a pension, for a job well done, because I will have been fired. That is why I feel such despair, and why I so much envy you and my friend Nat.”
“Sounds to me, young man, like you’re beginning the self-pity and buttonholing a mite prematurely,” said The Judge owlishly. He sniffed at the bowl of his corncob. “You’re impeached. You’re not tried yet. You had your years as an attorney. Did you ever give up a client before he went into court?”
“Maybe I practically did, once or twice, when my client was black and his jury was white, and outside the courtroom the papers and the public clamored against him.”
The Judge sat straight. “Hell and tarnations, fellow, then you were dead wrong. This is still these United States of America, and not just white America, and you’re still innocent until proved guilty. Do you think you’re guilty of any one of those loaded Articles of Impeachment they’re sending over to the Senate?”
“I’m not guilty of a single one, not even the fourth one, because I contend I had the executive right to remove a Cabinet member, since there’s Presidential precedence, and the kangaroo law restraining me was vindictive, prejudicial, and unconstitutional.”
“Then you’re innocent. Go in there and show them.”
“Show whom?” said Dilman bitterly. “Those House advocates-managers-who prosecute me? The full Senate that sits as a jury on me? They’re not experienced and uncommitted magistrates. They’re elected representatives of the people, mostly voted in for their popularity rather than for having common sense, and so they’re the mass public’s alter ego. They hear the voice of the people, and they echo that voice. If they don’t, they’re out on their behinds come next election. I tell you, it boils down to the emotional, unthinking public in the final analysis. Remember, I’ve been out on the hustings, tramping through the grass roots, these last four days-five days, counting this morning when my hotel in Sioux City was picketed for giving shelter to a Communist traitor-”
The Judge gave a nasal trumpet of disgust and waved his hand in dismissal. “Forget those provincial farmers. Any stranger who comes around these parts, who’s been to Paris twice and Moscow once, he’s an international scoundrel and Soviet spy. I know my Middle Western brethren. Except for some of our fringe progressive movements, these boneheads are traditional, conservative, close-minded, all hoarding, saving, clinging to one-hoss-shay ideas in their silo heads. But they’re not all bad either, only slow. Give them time, a warm stove to sit around, a chance to reason in a language they understand, and they come around, they come around. A section of the country that nurtured Battling Bob La Follette, John Peter Altgeld, Eugene Debs, even produced nuts like Ignatius Donnelly, can’t be written off. There’s hope for it, and hope for you.”
“Too little hope too late, Judge,” persisted Dilman. “Let me finish. My fate is in the hands of the voting public right now, and for four days I’ve seen that public up close, cheek by jowl, and I don’t know if any President ever endured such unanimous vilification and hatred. The voice of the people wants me out, and that voice will call the Guilty’s in the Senate.”
The Judge touched a match to his corncob and said, “I declare, Douglass-and this I didn’t altogether expect from you-you’re becoming what the Missus’ fancy books call a paranoid, meaning you’re down on yourself because you’ve built up a case for believing the whole world’s against you, and you won’t allow nothing to bring you up.”
“I’m facing the harsh facts, Judge-what I’ve seen firsthand.”
“Bah,” said The Judge. “You’re so beat-up inside, you can’t handle a fact when one comes along. Here’s a few real facts, the way I see them. I read about your speeches in Cleveland, Los Angeles-where else?-Seattle. You got rough-handled, for sure, but there were lots of people, lots, who weren’t booing and stomping their boots against you. There were some clapping for you, I read, not many, but some, and there were lots who were silent, listening, giving you a chance, withholding judgment. There’s that part of the public you can’t ignore. Then there’s that impeachment vote in the House yesterday. Sure, the majority voted against you. But there were plenty who spoke up on your behalf, and out of 448 members there were 161-no small number-who voted for you. They’re the people’s voice, too. Now, we got the Senate next week. What were most of the senators before they were elected? Most were attorneys-at-law; the Senate’s top-heavy with lawyers. That means you’ll have more educated men than in the House hearing your trial. Then, also to be considered is the fact that the House is pretty much overturned every two years and a lot of new members are elected, so the old members have to parrot their constituents word for word if they want to avoid being replaced come next election time, true? Those senators, though, they’re in for six years, and they don’t have to parrot, knowing in six years their constituents won’t remember much or will maybe have mellowed. So you got a body that has its share of donkeys from the North, and linen suits and Panama hats from the Confederate South, but you got a body of judges apt to be more independent of public hysteria. Young fellow, you remember this: old Andrew Johnson got impeached by the House, but there was no twothirds against him in the Senate, and contradicting the asinine House, the Senate set Andrew Johnson free.”
Dilman shook his head. “No comparison, Judge. Andrew Johnson had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him, and he barely squeaked by. Me, I’ve got everything and the kitchen sink thrown at me-because, Judge, cards on the table, President Johnson wasn’t black, and I am. The electorate and the Congress simply won’t have a Negro running their affairs in Washington. They never have and they won’t allow it today.”
“The hell they never have, Douglass.” The corncob in The Judge’s hand now went up and down like a schoolteacher’s ruler. “Don’t tangle with me on matters of history, young fellow. There were fourteen colored congressmen in the House of Representatives between 1869 and 1876, and there are eleven in the House this year. There were two Negroes in the Senate between 1870 and 1881, and there are three in the Senate today. Maybe the public crawls along the way, but each decade it gets a bit closer to the State House in Philadelphia where the Constitution was drafted, signed, and sealed. Americans let some Negroes run their affairs far back as the 1870s and-”
“And what happened right after?” Dilman said. “You’re telling half the story. I’ll tell you the rest. For sure, no one lived happily ever after. The unreconstructed Southern Democrats powered Hayes into the Presidency, and he paid them back by pulling Federal troops out of the South, troops who’d been protecting Negro voters, and then came the Klan and segregation and the Negroes were niggers again.”
“Today it’s different,” insisted The Judge, “because today Negroes are gaining their rights by using the ballot, not by relying on the force of Federal troops. I don’t say you’ve gotten enough fast enough. What’s the old mammy spiritual of yours?-yes-you ‘keep inchin’ along.’ The public’s more prepared to allow a Negro to govern than ever before. Maybe not this morning, because they’ve been whipped into a frenzy against you. But maybe two weeks from this morning, when your side of the case is aired for the first time, maybe then their temper will change and their intelligence be restored. Maybe it’s a long shot. I say it’s at least a shot. You’ve still got a good chance.”
Dilman had listened thoughtfully, and now he pushed his chair back, hardly aware of the act, and stood up and went to the window. “All right, Judge,” he said. “It’s no use beating around the bush any longer. I’ll tell you what compelled me to come here. But before that, I’d better fill you in on how this impeachment came about.”
Quietly, half facing the pondering ex-President, Dilman recounted the entire story, beginning with the CIA report on Baraza that had been withheld from him by Secretary of State Eaton and Governor Talley, and including Miss Watson’s effort to help Eaton by her bizarre espionage in the Lincoln Bedroom. Then he told of how he had summoned Eaton to his office to ask him to quit his Cabinet post, and described what had followed-Eaton’s refusal to quit, Eaton’s demand that, instead, Dilman either resign from the Presidency outright or back off because of a pretended disability and turn the reins of government over to T. C.’s crowd, or prepare himself to face impeachment and trial.
Dilman took a few steps toward The Judge. “At first I braved it through, Judge, because I couldn’t believe the House would even consider their phony case. Now I see how wrong I was. I misunderstood their consuming need to believe the charges against me, I miscalculated the degree of their hatred of me, and the public’s hatred. I was stubbornly optimistic, and the vote yesterday proved me a fool. Since yesterday I’ve been faced with one last decision-”
The Judge tugged his chair around, directly toward Dilman. His eyes were hard. “What decision?” he demanded.
“Whether or not to undergo this excruciating trial before the Senate and the world, to go through the personal agony of it, permit my poor dead wife’s miserable history of alcoholism to be paraded before all eyes, permit my one son, with all his emotional problems, to be tortured for his alleged and fictional affiliation with anti-white terrorists, to let the one woman I love in the world, a decent, innocent woman, be marked for life as no better than a prostitute-to decide if it is right and humane to undergo all of this myself, to let all of this happen to the ones I hold dear, out of selfish anger and vanity, knowing all the while that inevitably I’ll be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and thrown out of the White House and into the street. I’ve got to decide whether to do that or accept the one alternative that Eaton and Miller and their gang offered me, and that is to give in, meekly quit my post, resign, save myself the indignity of defeat, spare those dear to me the scandal, protect my country from a trial that can only, ultimately, intensify racial hatred. Shall I turn the Presidency back to the white majority who want it for their exclusive club? That’s the decision I must make today.”
The Judge filled his corncob with a practiced hand. His eyes stayed on Dilman. “Okay. How say you?”
“Judge,” said Dilman, “I intend to resign from the Presidency.”
The Judge’s pipe was halfway to his mouth, but now it hung in midair. “Resign?” he said. “You’re going to quit?”
“I have no choice.”
“The hell you haven’t!” the old man roared. His corncob clattered to the table, and so quickly and vehemently did he jump to his feet that Dilman backed against the wall. The Judge was upon him like an angry, pecking rooster, waving his finger under Dilman’s nose. “You resign, you slink out of that greatest office in the world, you give up the best opportunity a President and a minority citizen ever had to improve this country, and I swear-Dilman-I swear on the Missus, and on my niece and her kids, you’ll never set foot in my presence again. I’ll receive and respect any race of man on earth-black, white, yellow, purple-but I won’t receive and respect a puling, wailing coward.”
“Wait a minute-”
“You shut up!” shouted The Judge, vibrating from head to toe. He glared at Dilman, hands on his hips. “You came here for advice, and goddamit to hell, you’re going to get it, like it or not. I’m through coddling your self-pity. I’m through exchanging intellectual statistics with you. What you need is a good boot in the behind, and I got seniority in that Oval Office, so I got the right to give it. Young fellow, you hear me out. I don’t care if they were putting you before a firing squad tomorrow unless you resigned, you still couldn’t resign. No President of the United States who’s marched into that Oval Office either by popular acclaim or by accident ever quit under pressure. You’re not going to degrade the office, be derelict in your duty, thumb your nose at the Constitution, by being the first. No sir, young fellow, no sir! Resigning from the Presidency is the real high crime, not being tried for a pack of partisan lies. Resigning from your opportunity to show a Negro can lead would be the real crime, not being found guilty of adultery and incompetence. If you quit because you’re a Negro President who’s scared stiff, if you go down that way, it’s not only your race that loses, it’s the Missus and me and every decent white person in this democracy that loses, because it shows us and the world we got a country where a Negro is afraid to perform as a man, act as a man, live as a man, because he’s scared we won’t let him do it. Well, goddamit, Dilman, if you know it or not, in the eyes of the Lord and our Saviour and the Constitution, you are a man, not a Negro, not a Baptist, not a Rotarian, not a war veteran, but a human mammal who is a man under God in heaven before he is anything else. You can be a bald man, or a long-nosed man, or a crippled man, or a colored man, or a dago man, or a kike man, but first,last, and always, you are a oneheaded, two-legged man, whose complexion happens to be black and whose Social Security file says he is President of the United States.”
The Judge was livid, gasping for breath, punching the air with his right hand. Frightened, Dilman held to the wall, watching him advance, nostrils dilated, nose quivering with indignation.
“For a half minute there, while you were working in the White House,” the ex-President went on in his nasal rasp, “I thought, ‘Maybe that fellow’s going to find out what he is.’ That was when you had the guts to veto that foul-smelling Minorities Rehabilitation Program Bill. I thought you were standing up for your principles as a man equal to any other man, and more, as a leader who wanted good for his people. Now I see I was bamboozled. You vetoed it as a single act of spite, and out of vanity, to show the ones kicking you around that they better let up once in a while, just once in a while. But that was all it meant, ’cause now I see you’re so afraid of being kicked around some more, and kicked out, that you’re ready to get down on all fours and crawl away voluntarily. Hell and tarnations, fellow, stop crawling. Stand up on your two hind legs like a man, and when somebody kicks you, boot them right back in the ass. You believe in the Republic. You’ve got ideas for this country. You’ve got the most important desk in the nation, full up with unfinished business. Don’t let any man force you to walk out because you think he is a man and you know he thinks you’re not. You’ve got too much to do. Like President Lyndon Johnson said back a time, ‘Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skin, Emancipation will be a Proclamation but not a fact.’ That’s one piece of your unfinished business, Dilman-to make it a fact, and to make it a fact not as a Negro who is President but as an American man who is President. And that’s only the beginning of what you’ve got to do. Don’t tell me they won’t let you, won’t give you a chance. If they obstruct you, you knock them aside. If they charge you with crime and misdemeanor, you answer them and you charge them with ignorance and medievalism, and you battle them as their equal, knowing you’re a human being, and as their superior, knowing you’re still the legal holder of the highest-ranking office in the land. The way President Kennedy wrote in that fine book of his on courage-it’s the most admirable of human virtues, courage is-he knew, ’cause he owned enough of it for ten men-and the way he said-compromise is okay in its place, but only compromising on issues, not your principles-but nowhere did I read in that book of his any praise or defense of quitting, turning tail and running, under any circumstances. You came for my advice and-”
The Judge suddenly stopped, bent his head sideways, listening. The front doorbell was ringing insistently.
The Judge cursed under his breath, glared once more at Dilman, and said curtly, “A grown man’s got to decide for himself.”
He strode from the dining room into the parlor, and Dilman slowly followed him. The Judge had opened the door, and the Missus appeared. “You locked me out,” she said crossly, then peered over his shoulder at Dilman. “Mr. President, there’s somebody important to see you, and Mr. Flannery says you have to see him.”
Dilman had come forward. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know-somebody just flown in from Washington.” She had turned around to beckon to the person. “Right in here, sir, the President will see you.”
He came through the open doorway, a diffident, embarrassed, well-built gentleman in his late forties, his fingers playing nervously across the brim of the hat he held in his hand. “Mr.-Mr. President,” he said, “I don’t know if you remember me-Harold L. Greene from-”
That moment, Dilman recognized him. “Of course, Mr. Greene, I couldn’t make you out for a minute-so far from the Hill. You’re the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate.”
“Yes, sir.” He wriggled in his ill-fitting overcoat. “I was sent here by plane from Washington on official Senate business. I’m supposed to serve you with this”-he reached inside his bulky coat and pulled out a document that resembled a folded legal brief-“summons. It’s an order for you to stand trial, sir, a week from today, before the Senate constituted as a court of impeachment. It’s all in here, sir. I’m sorry to have to do this, but-” He shrugged unhappily and held out the summons.
Dilman stepped forward, reached out and accepted the summons. “Thank you, Mr. Greene, for going to this trouble. I suppose I shouldn’t send you back to Washington empty-handed.”
The Sergeant at Arms appeared as puzzled as The Judge, who stood beside him.
“You can take this message back with you,” said Dilman. While he faced the Sergeant at Arms, his gaze had shifted to The Judge. “Tell the Senate of the United States that the President of the United States looks forward-looks forward to seeing them in court!”
The second that the Sergeant at Arms had gone, The Judge let out a whoop. Beaming from ear to ear, he descended upon Dilman and gave him a wrestling hug. “Mr. President, spoken like a man!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “I knew you wouldn’t quit, knew you’d fight, felt it in my bones.”
Smiling, Dilman pocketed the summons. “I guess I came here, Judge, knowing that too. Only I needed somebody wiser and tougher than I am to give me a kick in the pants, so I’d get mad enough to remember I was right, and do some kicking myself.”
The Judge pounded Dilman’s back affectionately, then held him off. “Mr. President, no matter what comes of this, when you come to be my age, you’ll look back and won’t regret it, never for a minute.”
Dilman nodded gravely. “I hope so,” he said softly, “because I’m going to take an awful licking.”
“No matter what,” said The Judge. “Ever hear of an ancient Roman philosopher by name of Seneca? Ever read what he wrote about a company of Romans trapped and decimated in an ambush? He wrote, ‘The three hundred Fabiae were not defeated, they were only killed.’ Remember that when it gets real bad. It’s enough to make it worth while. Now go, and God bless you.”
Dilman returned The Judge’s powerful handshake, and then he was surprised to find the Missus, holding his coat and hat on her pudgy arm, waiting at the door. Dilman allowed her to assist him with his overcoat. When he took his hat, and began to thank her, he could see that her eyes were brimming. Impulsively she went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Be brave, Douglass,” she said. “There’s lots of us who need you.”
Too choked by emotion to reply, Dilman fumbled for the door-knob. As he opened the door, he heard the immediate chorus of shouts from the photographers beyond the porch, but louder than the rest was The Judge’s admonition behind him.
“Braveness is good,” The Judge had called out, “but a smart lawyer is better. Get one, and get one fast, the best there is, Mr. President!”
From over his shoulder, Dilman forced himself to smile at The Judge. “I’ll try,” he said. “I know the best attorney there is-but he wants to be a farmer like yourself, so it’s hard to say if he’ll be able to take time off from his harvesting. I’ll try, you bet. That’s all a man can do.”
Behind the closed doors of their bedroom on the sixth floor of the Mayflower Hotel, Nat Abrahams finally hung up the telephone receiver and remained standing over the instrument, lost in thought.
At last, mechanical as an automaton, he wandered past the double bed to the window. He stared down into darkened Connecticut Avenue, his mind still on the call he had taken, hardly aware of the early evening foot and vehicular dinner traffic in the street below.
The glow from a neon light across the way caught the glaze of the window, and its angled illumination intensified the reflection of himself in the glass. He realized then that he was attired in his best suit, dressed for a festive night out, and with a start he remembered that Gorden Oliver and Sue were still waiting for him in the living room of the suite. His activity in the ten or fifteen minutes before the telephone had interrupted him was instantly revived.
Gorden Oliver, professionally hale and hearty, his ruddy New England features aglow, his brandy cane in one hand, an impressive manila envelope in the other, had arrived precisely on time. With the air of one Caesar conferring a laurel wreath upon another Caesar, he had handed the long-delayed final draft of the Eagles Industries employment contract to Abrahams. While Sue, bubbling and pretty in her rose sheath dress, had mixed the high-balls, Abrahams had sunk into a corner of the sofa to review one last time the legal language of a contract he had almost committed to memory during these past months.
As he read on, Nat Abrahams had tried to shut his ears to the cheery conversation between Sue and Oliver, to the lobbyist’s political gossip and anecdotes and Sue’s merry, appreciative responses. Only once, when he had covered the paragraphs announcing his astronomical salary, bonuses, deferments, stock options, had he been forced to look up. Oliver had been patting his narrow-shouldered, tight-fitting, tailor-made suit coat importantly, and telling Sue that nothing was too good for the spouse of Eagles Industries’ soon-to-be-number-one barrister, and therefore it was only befitting to cap the occasion with a regal dinner at Billy Martin’s Carriage House in Georgetown, the swank restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue so renowned for its cuisine. Sue Abrahams had squealed with delight, and Nat had enjoyed seeing her so happy, and then returned to the contract.
That had been his only distraction until he had finished his reading of the contract and raised his head to Gorden Oliver. “Okay,” he had said to the lobbyist, “this is it. Now you want my John Hancock?”
“Sure do!” exclaimed Oliver, uncapping his gold fountain pen. He had handed the pen to Abrahams. “Historic occasion. Sign all copies where they’re x’d and initial in margins where stamped.”
As Abrahams spread the numerous copies on the coffee table before him, and, with pen in hand, bent over the original, the second distraction of the evening had occurred.
The telephone had started to ring.
Sue had leaped to her feet. “I’ll take it,” she had said to her husband. “You go on and get that over with.”
Yet Abrahams had held the pen poised over the contract, not touching the point to the sheet, waiting to hear whom the call was from.
Sue had cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “Nat,” she had said, “it’s the White House for you.”
Abrahams had placed the pen on the table and quickly stood up. “I’ll take it in the bedroom,” he had said.
And then, going into the bedroom, before shutting the door behind him he had heard Gorden Oliver cheerily call out, “Well, that’s the only other corporation I’ll give equal time to-even though Eagles is more solvent.”
The call had lasted no more than three or four minutes, and Abrahams had mostly listened in the quiet room, his festival mood gradually receding and being replaced by one of serious concern.
Now, as he stood at the hotel window, the call had become the dominant prodder of his judgment and conscience, and it was difficult to ignore it and resume the business awaiting him on the coffee table in the living room. Yet his wife was there, his new career partner was there, his future was there. With reluctance he left the solitude of the bedroom.
He could see Sue’s wondering eyes, their gravity contradicting the curved smile of her lips, following him to the sofa.
He sat on the sofa, fingers interlocked between his long legs, chewing the corner of a lip, looking past the pen and contracts.
“Well, Nat,” said Gorden Oliver with hearty cheerfulness, “let’s get the formalities over with-and let me have the honor of taking one of the richest attorneys in America out on the town!”
Abrahams hardly heard him. His gaze had gone to Sue and fixed upon her. He said, “That was the President on the phone.”
“Doug Dilman?” she said with surprise. “I thought he was still off in-?”
“He just flew back,” Abrahams said. “He’s decided to fight them. He’s decided to go on trial in the Senate and defend himself.”
“Oh, no,” said Sue with a groan. “After that terrible impeachment? He hasn’t a chance, Nat. I hope you didn’t encourage him. I can’t understand it. Why, the rumor around town was that he’d resign rather than-”
Abrahams’ eyes stayed fixed on his wife. “He’s not quitting, he’s fighting.” He hesitated, inhaled, and then he said, “Sue, he has asked me to take over his legal defense before the United States Senate.”
“You?” Her hand had gone to her mouth. The fun and frivolity had disappeared from her eyes. “But, Nat, how-? What did you tell him?”
“He wouldn’t let me give him a yes or no right off. You know Doug. You know how sensitive he is, how reluctant he is to make demands on anyone, or ask a favor, or impose on anyone. It took him all the way from Sioux City to here, and then a couple of hours more, to get up the nerve to-to lift the phone to tell me he would stand trial, and explain his problem. Even then he didn’t ask me right out. He said he desperately needed the best attorney in the country-preferably me, but if it couldn’t be me, then anyone I might suggest. I suspect he must have been awfully scared and-and lonely-after making his decision-to call me at all… No, he wouldn’t let me give him an answer. He asked me to give it some thought, and call him soon as I could, and if my answer was no, he’d understand, because he knows how tied up I’m going to be. So I said I’d get back to him later this evening. That’s the gist of it, Sue. That’s it.”
Abrahams became conscious of the third person in the living room. The New England lobbyist’s expression had lost its bluff cheerfulness and had become intent.
Abrahams decided to bring Oliver into it. “Of course, Gorden, if I did this for the President, I’d need a short leave of absence to-”
“If you did this?” interrupted Oliver, his face a portrait of incredulity. “You’re kidding me, Nat, aren’t you?”
“I’m not kidding you or anyone,” said Abrahams. “I’m thinking out loud. I said if I represented the President in this impeachement trial, I’d-”
“Nat, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute.” Gorden Oliver held the arms of his side chair and crouched forward. “You can’t be serious about giving Dilman’s request two seconds’ serious consideration?” He searched Abrahams’ face, then said, “Because-if you are-you’ll have to realize there’s only one answer you can give him, no matter who he is, no matter what your relationship with him has been. There’s only one answer, and that is no-no, you can’t do it, you wish you could for a friend, but first things first, and so sorry, old chap, no.”
Abrahams felt his back arch, but he controlled himself. “I think you’re a little out of line there, Gorden. I hadn’t said either that I would defend the President or that I would not. In fact, I haven’t made up my mind yet. But frankly, Gorden, I don’t feel anyone has the right to make up my mind for me.”
“Under the circumstances, maybe I can claim the right,” said Oliver. “Considering your situation-your obligations-I don’t think it’s proper for you even to entertain the idea of going before the Senate and the whole country on behalf of a politician whose behavior leaves much wanting and who is under criminal indictment. Chrissakes, Nat, of all things-I don’t want to quarrel with you-with anyone in Eagles-we’ve gotten along so perfectly up to now. Look, I can understand how this can be upsetting to you-the fact that he’s been your friend, throwing himself on your mercy, the fact that he’s an underdog, a Negro besides-but that’s all by the way. Life goes on. You’ve got to think of yourself first, and your first responsibility is to-to us-to Eagles.”
Abrahams knotted his fists more tightly in his lap. He measured his every word. “Maybe I don’t know all the facets of the position I’m to have with your corporation. Maybe there is more I should know, and right now. My responsibility to you in this matter-what is it, Gorden? You’d better-”
“Please, Nat,” Sue called out frantically, “don’t get so-”
“Come on, Gorden,” Abrahams persisted, “let’s have it. Lay it out on the table right beside those contracts. Tell me about the clauses that haven’t been written in.”
It fascinated Abrahams then to see Oliver’s face take on a look he had never seen there before. The winning charm, the howdy-hi geniality, had disappeared, and what remained was the granite rock bed beneath.
“We’re not keeping any secrets from you, Nat. By now, you should know all there is to know of what Avery Emmich expects of you. If you don’t, I’ll be only too glad to make it clearer.”
“Do just that,” said Abrahams. “Make it clearer why you won’t let me defend Doug Dilman, if I choose to do so.”
“All right, then, if you’re putting me on the spot, if you refuse to understand, if you want it the hard way, all right, there’s no time like the present.” Oliver glanced at Sue, with no smile, then pointed the unyielding face back to Abrahams. “Nat,” he said, “when I say I or we, I mean Emmich and Eagles, right? Okay. We contributed heavily to T. C.’s campaign and election, because we knew he was our friend. We paid for four years of his friendship, and we’ve received only two-thirds of our investment back. To put it crudely, we paid for a blue-chip stock, and then at the end it turned black, and, for our purposes, worthless. Dismayed as we were with the succession of Dilman to President, we were assured by Governor Talley that he was sensible and tractable and would stay in line. Then he double-crossed us. Talley said it would never happen, but it did. We wanted that Minorities Rehabilitation Bill passed into law. It was Emmich’s pet, important to all of us with Eagles. Instead, your Mr. Dilman wrecked it. We knew what we had on our hands then, someone we couldn’t trust or depend upon. Still, we figured that Congress would pass the bill a second time, over his veto, and we’d salvage something. We didn’t figure those labor unions would swing enough weight to force the bill back into committee for a rewrite, but they did, and there it’s bogged down, all because of Mr. Dilman. Well, look, Nat, I’ll tell you straight out, there’s nobody in the United States big enough, powerful enough, to cross Avery Emmich or work against the best interests of this country he loves. Emmich swore that if it was the last act he could perform as a patriotic citizen, he would get rid of Dilman and get the country back on the road to peace and prosperity. Well, I guess other equally patriotic citizens had the same feeling, because Emmich didn’t have to lift a finger. Our friends in Congress took matters into their own hands. The House impeached your bumbling friend, and the Senate will convict him. And we’ll be rid of him.”
Abrahams had listened, hand massaging his chest as if to keep the heavy beat inside from his wife’s ears.
“You seem pretty sure Emmich will have his way,” Abrahams said.
Gorden Oliver’s smile was frosty. “I am positive Emmich will have his way.”
The whole thing was clear to Abrahams now. It would have been clear to a child. The powerful head of one of America’s largest corporations had pitted himself against a weak head of state. The president of Eagles had more allies in the Senate than the President of the United States possessed. The president of Eagles could dispense more patronage than the President of the United States. The president of Eagles had secret weapons and the President of the United States had none. For Nat Abrahams there was one mystery: how was it done? What masks did bribery wear? Was the disguise a future campaign contribution? A gift of bonds and stocks to a grandson? The annuity of an apartment building investment? A year of prepaid call girls? A silent partnership in an oil lease? A lifetime membership in an exclusive golf club? A high-paying, permanent job for a brother-in-law? Or simply the gentlemanly request for a favor in return for an IOU to be cashed in on some distant, needier day?
Still, Abrahams told himself, if he did not know how it was done, here was one more clear implication that it was being done. The largess of the lobbyists was there, no question now. Were there takers in the Senate? Of this Abrahams was less positive. When you counted one hundred men, you could expect that most of them were decent men, else the penitentiaries of the land would have standing room only. Abrahams was satisfied with his textbook view of history. No Senate could be bought. Only some senators. And Oliver was wrong. Emmich was big and Eagles was big, but neither was bigger than the Presidency and the United States itself. Still, the armies of Eagles were on the move, and Dilman was the object of their assault, and now Oliver’s dismay was understandable. Abrahams had pledged his allegiance to the armies of Eagles, and yet had dared request a leave of absence to help build the defenses of their enemy. But then, in fairness to himself, he had not realized until this moment the extent to which Eagles was dedicated to liquidating Dilman. Now he knew.
“I didn’t know,” he heard himself say to Oliver, “how set you were on opposing Dilman.”
“Now you know,” said Oliver flatly. “Now you can understand how flabbergasted I was that you even considered siding with that man.” Oliver softened slightly. “Look, Nat, I don’t want to be impossible, to go against the grain. We’re not asking you to join in our active opposition to Dilman during the trial. What the devil, you’re a friend of his. All we’re asking is that you don’t oppose us, take our money with one hand and expect us to let you punch us in the nose with the other. We just want you neutral in this matter.”
“There is no neutral, Gorden. Either I help the President or I don’t. If I do, yes, I’ll be in opposition to you with every ounce of my strength. If I don’t, I’ll be depriving the President of the counsel he needs to help save him, and in that way aiding you, actively aiding you.”
“Nat, my God, he can obtain a hundred other counselors, black or white. They’ll welcome the chance for the headlines. Look, I’m not saying you’re not better than the others available. If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be hiring you. I’m saying in a special trial like that, he can get all the help he wants.”
“True enough, except for one thing,” said Abrahams. “He wants me.” He considered that a moment, and then added, “I don’t think it’s because he believes I’m more skilled than the others. I think it’s because I’m one of the few human beings on earth he trusts completely.”
Oliver’s brow had contracted ominously, and he said, “You mean, after what I’ve said, you’re still seriously considering going over to that man?”
“I’m considering it.”
Oliver rose, started to speak, then agitatedly circled the room. He came to a halt beside Sue.
“All right, Nat, consider it,” he said. “But then I think I’ve got to tell you-I hate telling you this, but I’m speaking for the company now and not myself, I’ve got to level with you-if you go to the mat for Dilman, you can consider yourself out of Emmich’s camp, for now and forever. If you agree to defend the President, I will be able to see no other course than to withdraw our offer to you.” He waited. “Does that help you make up your mind?”
“I’ll make up my mind when I’m ready to do so, Gorden, and not a minute before.”
“Okay,” said Oliver, “you give me no choice but to pick up my marbles and go home, and wait to see if you’re ready to play the game by the rules.”
He went to the coffee table, retrieved the copies of the contract and the pen, then slipped the contracts back into the manila envelope. He looked at Sue. “Under the circumstances, I don’t imagine any of us has too much of an appetite. Maybe we’ll have cause to-to hold our celebration tomorrow.”
He found his coat and hat, as Sue ran to the door to see him out. At the open door he offered Sue a courtly bow. “Thank you, Sue. Do your lobbying best.” He considered Abrahams. “We’ll wait for you to call us, Nat. I hope you think straight. At this stage in your life, you owe nothing to anyone on earth except yourself and your family.” He held up the manila envelope. “This would be an awful lot of boodle to throw away-like throwing away ten years of life. Good night.”
Abrahams did not move from the sofa. He watched his wife shut the door, then saw her sag and lean against it, her cheek pressed to the panel.
When she came away toward him, her face was drawn and pale, and he knew that she was fighting tears.
He averted his eyes as she came nearer and stood over him, but he could avoid her no longer. “All right, Sue, you’ve heard Oliver and you’ve heard me. What do you say?”
“What do I say? Do you care for one second what I say?” she said, voice rising. “Gorden Oliver said everything for me.”
“Even after hearing that rotten stuff about Emmich and Eagles?”
“You wouldn’t have to be mixed up in that. He promised you. I heard him.”
“You want me to sit by, up there in the Senate gallery, as an employee of Eagles, watching my fellow hatchet men go to work on the body, and tell myself I’m not their accomplice, I’m only an innocent bystander? That’s not like you, Sue.”
“What is like me? Do you know? Do you bother to try to understand? You’ve spent your life, and your health, in musty back halls and dirty courtrooms giving everything you have for people who’ve had nothing to give you-or us. You’ve spent years putting every underdog who whined for help ahead of Roger and David and Deborah and me-yes, me. I didn’t complain. I didn’t obstruct you. In fact, I encouraged you, because I was proud of your love for others and because I loved you for that and for yourself. But I was glad when this Eagles offer came up. I never forced it on you, but I was glad, because I felt at last you were getting what you deserved, and you’d have your health, and we’d have a better life together for years ahead, and live it normally like other people. And now, suddenly, when we’ve got it, you turn your back-you want to think-now, suddenly, Eagles is dirty-what isn’t dirty as well as clean, what business, what profession?-and now, suddenly, Doug Dilman is lost without you, and you’ll throw over everything, your future, your wife, your sons and daughter, to help him-to help a lost cause-when you know and I know that he hasn’t the chance of a snowball in hell, and if he has, as Gorden said, there are dozens of attorneys who can defend him as well as you. You want to know how I feel? That’s how I feel!”
He waited for her hysteria to subside, and then he said, “Sue, while I often take a dim view of myself, I know my virtues and my capabilities. I feel I can do more for Doug than any other attorney on earth. Maybe you’re right, and no one can save him, but if anyone can, I have a feeling I might. He is my friend-”
“And I’m your wife, and I’m the mother of your children! What about us? Do we have to put on blackface to get your help?”
“Sue!”
“Oh, dammit to hell for everything coming apart.” She covered her eyes with her hand.
“Nothing’s come apart,” he said sternly. “I truly haven’t made up my mind yet. I’m just nagged by the lousy feeling that the meaning of our whole lives is being put up on the block for inspection at last-that everything that came before, our paper liberalism, our talk liberalism, our real fiber as two decent people-is being challenged for real, for the very first time. Now it’s not contributions to Crispus or CORE. Now it’s not having a Negro friend to dinner, knowing he’ll go home afterward. Now it’s as-as if a Negro family has moved into the neighborhood, really moved in, and every penny we have in the house, in the world, is being threatened-and-how do we act? Turn our backs, move on?”
“It’s not the same at all!” Sue exclaimed indignantly. “Don’t twist things up with your lawyer sophistries. Nat, how can you? What are you trying to make me out, a heel? You know me, you know I love Doug as much as you do, but I don’t love him or anyone as much as you and the children.” She was pleading now. “Can’t you see that? Won’t you think of us first? Doug will survive or sink without you. But we can’t survive, not without you.”
Abrahams shook his head. “Darling, it’s not all this or that, one thing or another. If I gave up Emmich for Dilman, the world wouldn’t come to an end. Remember that-”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?”
“I’m only trying to-”
“To hell with you, then. Do whatever you damn well want to do. I’ve said all I’ve got to say to you!”
He was startled to see her spin away and dash into the bedroom, slamming the door. He considered following her, but then, instead, he went to the tray of drinks near the suite entrance. He poured himself a whisky-and-water, and was stirring it with a martini mixer, thinking, thinking, when he heard her noisily emerge from the bedroom.
He turned as she brushed past him. She had changed from the dinner sheath and pumps to a woolen blouse and skirt and flat-heeled shoes, and now was taking her heavy corduroy coat out of the closet.
“Sue-where in the devil do you think you’re going?”
“I don’t know, I don’t care. Maybe I’ll look for a truck to walk in front of. What difference does it make to you? I just want to be by myself, not that I haven’t been since Oliver left!”
She was gone, the door resounding behind her, and he was alone with his drink.
After that, he walked the carpet, pacing back and forth, weighing his neatly planned future on some unseen scale against his need to become involved with Doug Dilman and what Doug Dilman represented.
Crazily his mind careened backward to that time, late in the last century, when Father Damien, the Belgian who had worked among lepers on a lonely Pacific island, had been viciously attacked by a Reverend Hyde for having been “coarse, dirty, head-strong.” It had been Robert Louis Stevenson, risking all of his earthly possessions against a libel suit, who had defended Father Damien, counterattacking his traducer as one who was suffering conscience pangs for his own inertia. “But, sir,” Stevenson had written to the Reverend Hyde and the world, “when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into battle, under the eyes of God, and… dies upon the field of honour-the battle cannot be retrieved… We are not all expected to be Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he may love his comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him for that. But-”
But.
Abrahams reflected, meditated, and finally saw that it must be settled tonight. Well, then, he would settle it. He would think a lot and drink a little, or better yet, drink a lot and think a little, and when it was clearer, when he was certain, he would telephone the White House.
And so he began to think a lot and drink a lot…
There was a pressure on his right shoulder, gentle, but it was there and real, and he opened his eyes.
To his growing surprise, as he oriented himself to his surroundings, he found that he was seated at the bedroom dressing table, his head nestled in his folded arms. The travel clock behind the telephone told him he had drowsed off and slept over two hours.
There was the pressure on his right shoulder again, and then he could see it was Sue’s hand, and Sue herself above him, and except for her eyes, red from weeping, and the tear stains on her cheeks, her expression was softer than he had ever remembered it.
“Nat, are you all right?”
He sat up, wagged his head like a shaggy dog, rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his rumpled hair. “I guess I’m a one-drink man,” he said. “Tonight I had three.” Then, badly, it all came back to him, and he was fully awake. “Where have you been all this time, Sue?”
“Walking,” she said, “walking endlessly, prowling through Washington. It was nice and cold, and it-it did things for me. Know where I wound up? I went all around and back, and there I was on Pennsylvania Avenue, standing there like a goon, like I’d never been there before, in front of the black iron fence, looking at the White House in the nighttime. It looked so different tonight, Nat, like an abandoned fort on a lonely island, and I kept picturing him alone in there, alone in those empty rooms, lost, trapped, no one to turn to. And then a young couple came along, young marrieds, out-of-towners, the Midwest, I suppose, feeling good after dinner and walking it off, and she said she heard there was a White House tour every day and she wanted to take it, and he said sure thing but not this time, but next time, on the way back from wherever, because by then they’d have gotten rid of the tenant and fumigated the place and redecorated it right proper. And you know what, Nat, she laughed, she thought he was clever, so clever and right, and she was pleased with him, and they both laughed, and I was left there by myself staring through the iron fence and thinking about Doug in there, and you, and the children, and all of us. I couldn’t get back to you fast enough.”
He had taken her hands. “Sue-”
“Nat, forgive me for everything I said before. I don’t know what got into me. I wouldn’t want you with Eagles. I mean it. I couldn’t live off that kind of money, and raise the children on it. And if I were to know that you could have-have helped Doug-and didn’t-I couldn’t look at myself again, or you. I’m not worried about us, I’m really not. You have your practice. We can save. I’ll show you what I can do. And we’ll be together, that’s all that matters. And if we save, maybe one day we can get ourselves a farm, not that one, but another, even if it’s smaller.” He had tried to draw her to him, but she resisted. “Nat, call the White House and tell him.”
He came to his feet, smiling. “I’ve already done it, Sue. I called him an hour ago and told him he had his attorney. I told him we were in this together, sink or swim, from tonight on. I thought he’d-he’d cry.” He encircled her with an arm. “Well, it’s done. I don’t know if I can help him, but one thing I do know. I didn’t do it for him alone, Sue, I did it for us.”
She kissed him, and she whispered, “I love you so.” And when he released her, he could see that her face had never been more alive with excitement. “Nat, let’s call the children, and then let’s celebrate with dinner up here, and then-then let’s love each other, tonight and forever, and never stop.”
He reached for her again, but she laughed and slipped away and went to change into her robe. Only at the bathroom door did she hesitate and half turn to him, her sweet face grave and troubled. “Nat, can you save him? You must. I want this to be the kind of country we’d like to leave for our children to grow up in, one where they can live unafraid, one they’ll be proud of. That would be the best thing we could leave them-not a farm, not a hundred farms or a million dollars-but a country like that.”