As the time for combat drew closer, Douglass Dilman had taken to rising earlier each morning. He was living, he found, two wholly separate lives: in one, he continued to perform the endless exacting duties of the Presidency; in the other, he strenuously prepared for the criminal trial that would determine if he was fit or unfit to perform those duties.
He sought and found extra hours he had not previously known existed. Sometimes it astonished him how many there were of these, stolen from sleep, from daydreaming, from inconsequential engagements. Amazingly, these hours he subtracted from himself, for himself, seemed to cost him little loss of energy or hope. It was as if he had discovered, and tapped, a new reservoir of stamina. His single-minded determination to fight back gave him a vigor he had never before enjoyed. His ceaseless activity left him no time to brood about the prosecution that awaited him or to anticipate its likely results.
This morning-because it was the morning of one of the most crucial days in his life-had begun earlier than any other.
Beecher had entered the Lincoln Bedroom at six-thirty, awakened him, opened the drapes to the dark, ominous sky, and then had drawn his bath. After that, attired in the blue terry-cloth robe that Wanda had given him one Christmas, Dilman had padded through the West Hall to the sitting room of the private apartments so many other Presidents had used, and where he had only this week begun to eat his breakfast.
Eight newspapers, among them the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, the Washington Star, were piled high beside his place mat. He took pride in the fact that one of the eight was Zeke Miller’s scurrilous Washington Citizen-American, and that his ego was sufficiently reinforced by the knowledge of injustice being done to him to read it, and he was prouder still that one week ago he had again subscribed to the Washington Afro-American. Beneath the pile, he knew, like an intelligence report on the enemy camp less than two miles away, lay the Congressional Record.
This morning, he had been too preoccupied with ideas for the forthcoming and final meeting with his legal defense staff, and then too devoted to the folder with the label “Application for Executive Clemency re Jefferson Hurley, Petitioned by Mrs. Gladys Hurley (Mother) and Mr. Leroy Poole (Friend)” to open a newspaper.
After breakfast, having gathered the newspapers under one arm, still reading the petition for commuting Hurley’s sentence from death to life imprisonment, he had gone up the corridor, meaning to change into his clothes. But then he had wandered into the Monroe Room, next to his bedroom, and dumping his newspapers on the pedestal table, he had sat in a Victorian chair and read on through the folder submitted by the Department of Justice.
It was there that Nat Abrahams and Nat’s associates had found Douglass Dilman at seven forty-five, his petition laid aside, his newspapers strewn about him on the carpet, still in his terry-cloth bathrobe, absorbed in the fantasies of the Congressional Record.
Dilman had read that the House of Representatives had named five of its most forensically able members to the task of trying him, with Representative Zeke Miller the chief prosecutor. He had read that the Senate, after the formality of converting itself from a legislative body into a high tribunal of justice, had voted upon sixteen rules of parliamentary procedure to govern its behavior as a court of impeachment. He had started to read about other arrangements being made for the Roman holiday scheduled to commence at one o’clock sharp this afternoon, when Nat Abrahams, pipe streaming smoke, had arrived, followed by Felix Hart, Walter T. Tuttle, and Joel Booker Priest.
Dilman gestured toward the chairs around the table, and apologized for his bathrobe. Then, as they unstrapped and unlatched their briefcases, Dilman became conscious of the chamber in which they were about to confer.
“Isn’t it strange I wound up in this room?” he said. “I wonder what compelled me to come into the-into this room-the Treaty or Monroe Room, it’s called. I’ve never used it for a meeting before.”
“What’s so strange about it?” Felix Hart, Abrahams’ young Chicago partner, inquired.
“Look at the inscription over the fireplace,” Dilman said.
Felix Hart scurried over to the white fireplace and, bending slightly, read the mantel inscription aloud. “ ‘This Room Was First Used for Meetings of the Cabinet During the Administration of President Johnson.’ “He looked up, awed. “I assume that means Andrew Johnson, not Lyndon.”
“It does,” Dilman said. “Maybe this is a good omen. I hope I get off as lucky as he did in his trial.”
Without glancing up from the sorting of his notes, Nat Abrahams said. “That was a one-vote acquittal, Mr. President.” Dilman was once again disconcerted by his friend’s formality. Ever since his legal associates had been brought in, Abrahams had taken to addressing him as Mr. President, instead of Doug. Then Abrahams added, “We’ve simply got to do better than that… Ready, gentlemen? We don’t have much time. Let’s review the whole business again, before heading up to the Hill.”
Promptly, they plunged into the last-minute summary of Dilman’s defense. For Dilman, the discussion was comforting. These were attorneys, and he was an attorney, and their language had the mathematical precision of Law School and his legal practice of long ago, so dear to his memory. The talk was rooted in tradition and precedent, and great names of the American bar, some heroes, some rascals, all geniuses in their fashion, were evoked. Dilman listened to the names of Webster, Choate, Stanbery, Darrow, Steuer, and many more.
Dilman gave his complete attention to his four managers-even the title “managers,” as applied to attorneys in a Senate impeachment trial, had a comforting ring, as if these were men who not only defended, but controlled, guided, administered, directed their respondent, who might otherwise be helpless. Dilman heeded every exchange, as they examined the Articles of Impeachment point by point, sentence by sentence, and even word by word. They were trying to anticipate the course that Zeke Miller’s prosecution might take, and foresee what damaging evidence the House’s witnesses, signed affidavits, submitted exhibits, might present.
Then they reviewed one more time how the House’s case could best be refuted.
In replying to Article I, they appeared to be confident they could show that Wanda Gibson had never been privy to any government top secrets that she could have passed on to her Communist employers. They had other former Vaduz employees standing by to swear that Miss Gibson’s connection with Franz Gar was no more than that of secretary to employer, and that she had never been heard speaking to him about matters that were not concerned with her immediate job.
Dilman’s managers displayed little concern about Article II. Their interrogation of Julian Dilman had convinced them that he had never been a member of the Turnerite Group, and that even if he had been, there could be no proof that the President had conspired with his son and the subversive Negro organization to obstruct the Department of Justice.
However, Dilman was surprised at the massive dossier his managers had assembled in an effort to knock the underpinnings out from under Article III, an omnibus of scandalous accusations. They had put such extra effort into their rebuttal of this charge not because they believed the charge had legal substance, but because they saw that it might have effective propaganda value for the prosecution. First, they had investigated Sally Watson’s entire erratic history, but apparently Senator Hoyt Watson’s long influential arm had thwarted them at every turn.
As to answering Miller’s allegation of the President’s extramarital affair with Miss Gibson, the success or failure of the defense would depend entirely on how Miss Gibson conducted herself testifying and under cross-examination on the witness stand. In replying to the House charges of Congressional contempt, Negro favoritism, alcoholism by Dilman, once more the defense managers were ready to rest their case entirely on the impression made by their own eye-witnesses and expert deponents.
It was Article IV, Dilman observed, that continued to disturb his managers the most. This would resolve itself into a battle over the constitutionality of the New Succession Bill, and the degree to which Congress might ever be permitted to limit the powers of the executive branch.
To reinforce his rebuttal of Article IV, Nat Abrahams had, the morning after accepting Dilman’s defense, insisted that the President make a new appointment to the office of Secretary of State, thus replacing Eaton. After hours of indecision, Dilman had finally settled upon Jed Stover, the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, as the career diplomat best qualified to succeed Eaton. Happily, Stover had been enthusiastic about permitting his name to be used in this token gesture. Not unexpectedly, the Senate, without seriously considering Stover’s appointment while in committee, had rejected the replacement with a heavy vote. Then, to put their rebuke of the President indelibly on the record, the Senate had again declared Dilman’s removal of Arthur Eaton illegal, and had sustained Eaton as Secretary of State (and next in line to the Presidency) until the disagreement could be resolved during the trial of impeachment. As a gesture, Abrahams had submitted the issue of the unconstitutionality of the New Succession Bill to the Supreme Court, aware that it could not be considered before the impeachment trial ended.
Fort forty minutes, Dilman heard out the give-and-take on these points among his managers, offering only an occasional comment himself. Now, glancing at the marble-encased clock, with its time-piece, calendar, barometer, a clock that went back to the time of Ulysses S. Grant, Dilman could see that it was almost a quarter after eight.
As the morning’s vital strategy session approached its conclusion, Dilman studied the men whose clever minds, vast legal experience, honest interest in justice would represent him before the bar.
Dominating the four, of course, was Nat Abrahams himself, chestnut hair rumpled, seamed profile drawn, long frame slouched into the heart-backed Victorian chair, as he chewed the hard rubber stem of his briar pipe and listened. His trusted junior partner, a brilliant graduate of the University of Chicago School of Law, was animatedly speaking. Felix Hart was deceptively callow-looking, cherubic, ebullient, imitative of Nat’s careless manner of dress-deceptively, because his easy outer aspect hid a pertinacious, clawlike, investigative brain. It was he who had supervised and directed the dredging up of all of Dilman’s earlier life in the Midwest, trying to pinpoint what might be harmful to their case and at the same time watch for what might be useful.
Listening, also, was the elder statesman of the quartet, the renowned Walter T. Tuttle, a onetime Attorney General during The Judge’s administration, whom The Judge had rousted out of recent retirement to join the defense team. A courtly old-school gentleman in his late seventies, Tuttle had a countenance as American as any that had been sculptured on Mount Rushmore. The opaque eyes screened a slow but direct mentality. The tone of his utterances was dry, yet often tart. Tuttle’s affectation was not that he was a country squire, which he was, but that he was a farmer in citified clothes, which he was not. He had been widely quoted for a remark made during his service in The Judge’s Cabinet, that he “always avoided any dinner where there were three forks beside the plate.” His specialty was constitutional law, and as a youngster he had sat behind his father, an eminent attorney turned congressman, when his father had been one of the House managers trying Judge Halsted L. Ritter before the Senate during the Seventy-fourth Congress, in 1936. Judge Ritter had been impeached, like Dilman, on four articles. Acquitted on all but one charge, which was that of “misbehavior” in office, he had been found guilty by the Senate and removed from office.
Speaking now was the fourth of Dilman’s managers, a slight, pensive attorney still in his thirties named Joel Booker Priest. Conservative and immaculate, Priest had attended every meeting with his slick, shiny hair smoothly in place, his person exuding a pine-scented cologne, and his body always garmented in one of his costly single-breasted suits. Joel Booker Priest was a Negro, of dark tan complexion, who now and then had handled special cases for Spinger and the Crispus Society. His law firm was in Washington, and quietly, but with the eager persistence of a bird dog, he had retraced Dilman’s life in the capital city and had attempted to ferret out what Miller, Wickland, and the other opposition managers were planning to present to the Senate.
Observing Joel Priest this minute, as he tried to surmise the House’s case in support of Article IV, and as the others hung on his every word, Douglass Dilman was incredulous at how much he himself had changed in short days. Not long ago, the very thought of a Negro defending him in any action would have been frightening. It was Spinger who had suggested Priest’s services to Abrahams, and Abrahams who had then studied the Negro lawyer’s career and met him. And when Abrahams had recommended him, surprisingly, Dilman had asked only one question, “Why do you want him, Nat, because you think it might look good to have someone of my own color on the team?” Nat had snorted, “I want him because he’s good.” And Dilman had replied, without reservation or hesitancy, “He’s hired.”
Suddenly Dilman was aware that the others were pushing back their chairs and standing.
“Well, that’s it, gentlemen,” Nat Abrahams said. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be. Remember, we’ve been assigned the Vice-President’s formal office next to the Senate Reception Room for our private headquarters. They’re turning over two of the late Vice-President Porter’s other offices for our stenographers and researchers, but the formal office will be the brain center. You can unpack there. I’ll catch up with you about eleven, and we can have a quiet lunch together, and then be ready for the fireworks at one o’clock. Oh, there’s another thing, Mr. Tuttle-” Abrahams turned to Dilman. “Mr. President, I’d better walk with them to the elevator. Then I’d like to come back and have a few more words with you alone. Can you spare ten minutes?”
Dilman nodded. “Certainly, Nat. I think I’d better get dressed first. I’ll only be a short time. I’ll meet you in here.”
He preceded his managers into the second-floor hall, then thanking them warmly and wishing them luck, he parted company with the four. As Abrahams went left down the hall, deeply engrossed in conversation with his associates on the way to the private elevator, Dilman turned right and entered the Lincoln Bedroom.
After throwing aside the terry-cloth bathrobe, he dressed slowly. As he was getting into his shirt, pulling on his trousers, his thoughts dwelt on the impeachment, and then, as if by a force of will, wishing a respite from the suspense of it, he temporarily shoved it to the back of his mind. He reviewed the week of days that had brought him from the Iowa farmhouse, and his resolve to fight for his life rather than quit, to this forbidding morning in the Andrew Johnson Cabinet room of the White House, and the last meeting before his actual trial would begin.
Most of that week gone by had been given over to building his actual defense against impeachment, to the seemingly endless meetings with Nat Abrahams and the other managers, and yet there had been other persons who had populated his world in the last seven days.
In many respects, since the impending Senate trial cast a shadow over his every activity, it had been a mean and arduous week. The language of law used this last hour permeated his thinking, and when he recalled the week he had lived through, he considered it in concise legal terms.
Specification one: the said Douglass Dilman and Wanda Gibson. He had telephoned her at the Spingers’ the midnight after his return from the Midwest. He had told her of his decision to fight, and she had broken into tears, and contained them, and been only slightly heartened after he had added the news that Nat Abrahams had thought enough of his chances to undertake the defense. She had dreaded his impending Calvary, the vilification to which he would be subjected, the disgrace that would probably be his, but in the end she had accepted his decision fatalistically. He had telephoned her twice more, once learning that the House had served her with a subpoena to appear as a witness (this had made him miserable and apologetic, and he had blamed himself for her suffering so much over a relationship from which she had derived so little fulfillment), the second time learning that she had decided, after working it all out in her mind, that she was proud that he was going to stand up to his traducers. Wanda’s devotion to him had been unreserved, yet now he could not be positive that it was the product of love rather than pity.
Specification two: the said Douglass Dilman and Julian Dilman, relative. The second evening, he had brought his son down to Washington for a last talk before the trial. Julian had sworn to Joel Priest that he had no connection with the Turnerite Group, and since Priest had a complete account of this denial, there was no more need for Dilman to go into it further. Rather, Dilman and Julian had dined together as father and son. Dilman had learned that because of the impeachment, there had been some sentiment among the Negro undergraduates of Trafford University which had turned in his favor, even though the greater proportion of the student body still resented him for the discredit his alleged conduct had visited upon the Negro population. It was clear to Dilman that his son was undergoing an unspoken trial of his own on the campus, and that he was torn between emotional sympathy for his father and intellectual sympathy for his fellow students, who felt that his father’s weakness had led to the scandalous court action. With gravity, so that there would be no question in his son’s mind, Dilman had explained to Julian the answers that his managers were preparing against the widely publicized indictments. Once only had Mindy’s name been mentioned, and then by Dilman. He had wondered what she, unfettered and free in her white world, must think of all of this. Julian had offered no comment. They had said good night awkwardly, and not until the next morning had Dilman learned that Julian had received his subpoena from the House while boarding the train that would take him back to New York City, and then on to Trafford.
Specification three: the said Douglass Dilman and Sally Watson. He had not seen his former social secretary since the night that he had dismissed her. Yet he had not been able to avoid her sick vengefulness. At least three interviews that she had volunteered to the press had made national headlines, the latest and most sensational having appeared in the middle of the week under the joint by-lines of Reb Blaser and George Murdock. In print she had been quoted as remarking, “President Dilman likes to pretend he’s a celibate deacon, but I can tell you, and his impeachers have photographs of my cuts and bruises to prove it, he’s no better than some illiterate oversexed buck Negro who’s gotten tired of his ‘cullud gals’ and wants to make time with the whites.” In the same libelous story, too, Senator Hoyt Watson had stated, “I don’t intend to demean myself by contesting with the President, more rightfully His Royal Accidency, in the public press. I shall wait to hear the legal evidence. But if the House charges are supported, then his personal conduct, the degradation he has visited upon our most exalted office, will be uppermost in my mind, in the minds of my fellow senators, when we sit as his judges.” The story had concluded with the sidelight that Miss Watson had placed her subpoena to appear as a witness for the prosecution in a gold frame on her mantelpiece.
Specification four: the said Douglass Dilman and Edna Foster. Upon his return from the Midwest, it had surprised him to find his Negro Senate secretary, Diane Fuller, making a shambles of his affairs in Miss Foster’s office. It appeared that Miss Foster had fallen ill of a kidney ailment, and would be both indisposed and incommunicado for several weeks, at a time when he needed her most. Then, two days ago, from Tim Flannery, he had received some inkling of the true nature of Miss Foster’s illness. She had been served with a subpoena to be a prosecution witness against the President. Dilman had been disturbed and confused by the information that his confidential secretary would appear as a witness for the prosecution. Until now, he had considered her a loyal and tight-lipped assistant. Unless she was collaborating with the enemy against her will, her defection was inexplicable. Besides, Dilman had wondered, of what value could Edna Foster be to his opposition?
Specification five: the said Douglass Dilman and Montgomery Scott, CIA. He had spoken with Scott three times in the past four days. Scott had reported that by now the CIA had a network of native agents, working hand in hand with Kwame Amboko’s own security force, throughout the back hills and frontiers of Baraza. Scott had expected definitive intelligence information on the Russian buildup any day. Then, last night, he had requested a meeting with the President for this afternoon, and had hinted that it might be wise for the President to arrange a conference with his military advisers immediately afterward. Dilman had taken the hint. After seeing Scott this afternoon, he would meet with Secretary of Defense Steinbrenner and General Fortney. Normally, he would not have looked forward to the conference with these formidable Pentagon chiefs. He suspected that most of the military had contempt for him, hoped for his conviction in the Senate, regarding him as no better than another “big-shot boogie getting too large for his breeches,” a phrase attributed to General Fortney. One new mitigating factor, however, made this confrontation with his Pentagon advisers seem less disagreeable. It would be the first meeting that Brigadier General Leo Jaskawich would attend as the President’s newly appointed military aide. For, once Dilman had returned to Washington, he realized that he would require not only a replacement for his former military aide, but for Governor Talley as well. Immediately, his mind had gone back to Jaskawich, and their talk atop the launching pad at Cape Kennedy and their conversation afterward. Then Dilman had known that what he desperately needed as much as an adviser was another human being on his team he could trust. He had telephoned Jaskawich in Florida, offered him the position, and quickly reminded him that it could be both short-lived and detrimental to his career. If Dilman were convicted, as he likely would be, Dilman had said, Jaskawich’s Washington job would be ended in a matter of weeks. Worse, Dilman had warned him, was the danger of guilt by association. Jaskawich was an authentic American hero. If he wore his spotless armor in the wrong cause, the cause of one soon to be purged for high crimes and misdemeanors, the astronaut’s own image would be irreparably tarnished. It would be absolutely understandable to him, and he would think no less of Jaskawich, Dilman had said, if the astronaut turned down the position being offered. Jaskawich had replied simply, “Have armor, will travel. See you in twenty-four hours.”
From somewhere, musical chimes interrupted Dilman’s specifications of activity past and future. What remained was the immediate present. The hands pointing to the Roman numerals on the Empire clock told him it was eight-thirty. The south windows, on either side of the clock, were spattered with rain. For several seconds Dilman listened to the downpour outside. Often, in the past, he had found that a rainy day had a comforting effect upon him. It confined one’s activities. It heightened one’s appreciation of shelter. It made one feel, if one was indoors, apart from the uncontrolled nature of the universe, safe and apart from it, and in complete repose. Perhaps the pleasure was primitive, harking back to the dry Paleolithic man, snug near the fire in his cave, as the tempest raged outside. Yet, this morning, the rain disappointed Dilman. It seemed the enemy’s rain, imprisoning him, daring him, adding portentous urgency to the need for survival. His was an unquiet cave.
Quickly, Dilman knotted his tie, buttoned his suit coat, slipped a handful of cigars into one pocket and hastily made his way back to the Monroe Room for his last exchange, this first judgment day, with the one who had sacrificed so much in an attempt to save him.
Nat Abrahams was there, scanning and discarding the newspapers that Dilman had left behind.
“Quite a splash you’re making, Doug,” he said. He held up the front page of the newspaper in his hands. The banner headline announced:
MOST DRAMATIC TRIAL IN HISTORY BEGINS TODAY.
Beneath the headline, side by side, were two photographs. One was a picture of Dilman being hustled off the platform at Trafford University while eggs erupted around him. The other was a shot of members of the Senate at their desks in the Chamber. The bold caption read:
IN THIS CORNER THE PRESIDENT
IN THIS CORNER THE SENATE-
ONE MAN AGAINST ONE HUNDRED-ARE THOSE THE RINGSIDE ODDS AGAINST DILMAN?
“Yes,” said Dilman. “Did you see the lead? Read it.”
Abrahams brought the newspaper into his line of vision. He read aloud:
“ ‘At precisely one o’clock this afternoon, in the hallowed Chamber of the United States Senate, there will unfold what promises to be one of the most memorable trials in the history of the Western Hemisphere-rivaling in drama and importance the great trials of our civilization-those of Socrates, Jeanne d’Arc, Galileo, King Charles I, Mary Queen of Scots, Lord Warren Hastings, President Andrew Johnson-and matching in raw sensationalism and fevered public interest the lesser trials of our time-those of Aaron Burr, the Tichborne claimant, the cadet Archer-Shee, John Brown, Sacco and Vanzetti, John T. Scopes, Bruno Hauptmann. For the second time in the history of the United States, a Chief Executive of the land will go before the tribunal of the people’s Senate to be judged guilty or not guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors-’ ” Abrahams suddenly crumpled the newspaper and cast it aside. “Bunk,” he said. “Thank God the people will be able to see it for themselves on television. I think that’s an advantage, don’t you, Doug?”
“I don’t know,” said Dilman.
“I think so. If we didn’t have television, we’d have, in effect, a closed chamber hearing, sort of a secret kangaroo court, with the senators less responsive to their constituents’ wishes. The news of the pros and cons would be funneled out by maybe twenty-five regulars of the White House press and maybe one thousand other correspondents, and everything could be angled for reader interest rather than truth. As it stands now, the people will be able to see for themselves what goes on and make up their own minds, not get the story second or third hand through other minds. For the first time in history, an impeachment will be judged not only by the senators and press, but by the voters concerned. You’ll have 230 million judges, Doug, not merely 100.”
“Is that necessarily good?”
“Not necessarily, but probably. The masses become impatient with absurdity much faster than a narrow group of locked-in legislators. Witness what happened to Senator Joe McCarthy. I’ve always thought that if we’d had television back in 1868, President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial would not have lasted three months, but three weeks, if that long. The people would have seen through the politics and prejudices of the so-called impartial judges, their congressmen, and they’d have risen up and demanded Johnson’s acquittal at once. In fact, they would have probably demanded that two-thirds of the Senate be impeached. No, Doug, I’ll take my chances on the electronic eye. If it helps us in no other way, it at least guarantees us that Zeke Miller and Bruce Hankins won’t dare to bamboozle their Hill clan with any bigoted anti-minority sleight-of-hand.”
Dilman had unwrapped his first cigar of the morning. He lighted it, enjoyed the aroma briefly, and then took a chair across from Abrahams. “Well, Nat,” he said, “now we’re alone, the two of us, a few hours before the showdown. Truly, what do you think are my chances?”
“Honest to God, I can’t say, Doug. Usually, going into any trial, I have a suspicion of what may happen, I can make an educated guess as to the outcome. But this impeachment business is so unique-the procedure so damn irregular-that no matter how much homework you’ve done, you can’t predict what is going on in those 100 senatorial heads today or what will be in those heads two weeks from today. After all, we have only a single precedent to go by. Just as the newspaper said, there’s only been one Presidential impeachment trial before this. Of course, that gives us several guideposts-” He stopped, and considered Dilman. “How familiar are you with the Andrew Johnson trial?”
“Shamefully ignorant of the details, I’m afraid,” Dilman confessed. “I remember some of it from school, and side reading, of course. And lately the papers have been full of it, highly colored, and the radio and television have been dinning it in our ears, but somehow, I’ve been unconsciously avoiding it. I don’t know. I have the impression that President Johnson was given a bad time of it. My survival instinct tells me not to relive his hell when I’m about to undergo one of my own. It’s like-I’ll tell you what-like you’re about to face an unusual life-or-death major surgical operation. You know there’s been one similar case. Well, you’re not inclined to study the gory details beforehand. You sort of prefer to shut your eyes and let them roll you in, the mystery of it still a mystery, holding your layman’s blind high hopes before you go under.”
Abrahams had listened solemnly, full understanding in his face, “Yes,” he said. “Nevertheless, if you can bring yourself to it, I believe you should try to understand something of that other impeachment trial.”
“If you think so, Nat. But why?”
“Because, far from being dead history, the facts of it will become a living part of your own trial. I repeat, it is the single precedent both sides have to go by. The House managers and the four of us will quote from it, refer to it, whenever it is to advantage, you can be sure. Furthermore, not surprisingly, President Johnson’s impeachment crosses and touches yours in several important areas. I do recommend you acquaint yourself with the salient facts, Doug.”
“All right, then, I will.”
“I’m not saying you must go out and get some weighty tome from the Library of Congress. I know you haven’t the time. But-” He leaned sideways, riffling the file folder tabs in his briefcase on the floor. “I have something here, if I can find it… ah, here it is.” He came up with what appeared to be a stapled typescript. “We all read what we could on the Andrew Johnson trial. Then Tuttle condensed the proceedings of that trial into eighty pages, for easier reference.” He handed it across the table to Dilman. “Take a look at it when you can. Of course, the great amount of offstage byplay, the cloakroom hanky-panky, isn’t in there-”
“Like what?” asked Dilman, fingering the manuscript.
“Like-well-to be quick about it-when Booth’s derringer pistol killed Lincoln, it was Vice-President Andrew Johnson who became President in 1865, when he was fifty-seven. It makes me laugh, Doug, when I read those columnists who say you weren’t prepared for the Presidency. You were ten times better prepared for it than half our past heads of state, and a hundred times better prepared than Andrew Johnson. He’d been a tailor in North and South Carolina, and owned a tailorshop in eastern Tennessee. He’d never had a single day’s formal education. So he went into politics, and made the United States Senate. Lincoln took to him because, even though Johnson owned slaves and was a Southern Democrat, he fought against secession. Well, anyway, by the time Johnson became President, he had few friends left. The Southern Democrats considered him a traitor. The Northern Republicans considered him an untrustworthy rebel-lover. He was lonely as hell in the White House. He had a wife, but she was invalided by tuberculosis, and I believe she made just one public appearance beside him in four years.”
Dilman nodded. His heart went out to that vilified President who had been treated like some sort of white nigger. “I never knew any of that,” he said.
“Oh, there’s more,” Abrahams said, “but to get to the crux of it, his impeachment. Why was he impeached? Basically because the Northern Republicans, who controlled Congress, wanted to treat the defeated states as a conquered and occupied country, wanted to keep the South disenfranchised and in bondage. President Johnson, on the other hand, following Lincoln’s policy, wanted to heal the wounds of war, conciliate the Southern states, bring them back into the Union. So that was a bad breach. Almost every time Congress passed some bill of reprisal keeping the South under the military heel, giving freed slaves control there, Johnson would veto it, and then Congress would override him. Finally, it resolved itself into a fight for power between the executive and legislative branches of government. Congress felt that it should run the Reconstruction of the South, and the President felt that this task belonged to him. There were endless secondary factors against Johnson, also. He was hated as a man who was neither fish nor fowl, neither true Southerner nor Northerner. He was resented for going soft on the ex-rebels, when they were being blamed for Lincoln’s assassination. He was feared by the Republicans, who didn’t want him to bring the Southern Democrats back into power on the Hill by admitting the Southern states back into the Union. So the House decided to get rid of him. They started impeachment proceedings against him, not once but three times, and the third time they succeeded in getting their impeachment. And on March 5, 1868, his case went on trial before the Senate.”
“There were eleven Articles charged against him, weren’t there?” Dilman asked.
“That’s right,” said Abrahams. “Most of them, like most of the charges against you, were pure stuff and nonsense. Andrew Johnson was charged with using foul language, with drinking intoxicants, with ridiculing Congress in his public speeches. But the whole thing came down to the three Articles accusing Johnson of breaking the law by defying the Tenure of Office Act. That was the grandfather of the New Succession Act that you defied by firing Eaton. The tenure act handcuffed Johnson to his Senate, told him he could remove no one in the Cabinet he had inherited from Lincoln without the approval of the Senate. Well, the President saw that his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, was performing not as his adviser but as his enemy and as a spy for his opposition in Congress, and so he asked Stanton to resign. Stanton refused. So the President, in effect, threw him out without consent of the Senate, arguing that Stanton didn’t come under the tenure act since Johnson hadn’t appointed him, and insisting the tenure act was unconstitutional anyway and the Senate had no right to tell him who to keep and who to fire. Shades of you and Eaton, Doug.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“It was a nasty eleven-and-a-half-week trial, the House’s seven managers pitted against the President’s five attorneys. But there was considerably more that went on than oratory and cross-examination of witnesses. The majority of the Senate was determined to get Johnson, whether the charges against him were proved or not. They arranged to have witnesses favorable to him kept out of court. There were attempts at bribery. And as for sitting as an impartial body of jurors-listen to this, Doug-the President pro tempore of that Senate was Benjamin Wade, who hated Johnson, and who was next in line to become President if Johnson was found guilty, and yet he was allowed to sit and vote on Johnson’s impeachment. In fact, Wade was so sure he and his friends would convict Johnson, and that he himself would be the new President, that he picked his Cabinet before the trial was over and before he had cast his vote!”
“Incredible,” said Dilman.
“Yes, it was incredible. Of course, while you don’t have a President pro tempore eligible to succeed you, sitting in judgment of you, you do have some senators-notably Hoyt Watson because of his personal involvement, Bruce Hankins because of his regional prejudices, John Selander because of his affection for T. C.-already committed against you. But, to get back to precedent. In order to convict President Johnson, two-thirds of the Senate had to find him guilty, that is, at least thirty-six senators against eighteen. Well, you know the result. One senator, Edmund Ross of Nebraska, though he personally disliked Johnson, disliked even more what he had observed and heard from his fellow congressmen during the trial. He determined that the office of President should not be disgraced and degraded by an impeachment based on partisanship. And so at the last minute, after sleepless nights, he went over to Johnson. His vote, which cost him his political future, was the President’s life belt. The final tally showed thirty-five for guilty, nineteen for not guilty. The two-thirds required for conviction had fallen short by one. Andrew Johnson remained President of the United States.”
The cigar in Dilman’s hand had long gone cold. Deliberately, he flicked the gray ash into a tray and lighted the end again. He waited for the first cloud of smoke to lift, and he said, “Nat, I think I have far less chance to remain President than Andrew Johnson did.”
“Less chance? No, there’s no reason to believe-”
“Nat, in our careers as attorneys, we’ve both tried all kinds of cases before hundreds of jurors. You know as well as I do that jurors are not legal-minded, often subject to being moved to vote guilty or not guilty because of their emotions and prejudices. They will ignore or discard the logic of a case, and simply vote for or against a defendant because they like or do not like his manner, personality, nervous habits, clothes. It’s happened to us in court, and it still could happen here, despite the early judicial background of so many senators, because they’re politicians now, not level-headed jurists, and you can’t deny it.”
“Yes,” admitted Abrahams, “that occasionally has happened, and conceivably it could happen here.”
“Very well. I feel certain Andrew Johnson lost as many votes because his jurors didn’t like his crudities, bad temper, immoderate speech as because of the legal case against him. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it a last time. I suspect it will be worse for me. In my trial, the defendant is a black man, whatever else is against him, and the emotions and prejudices this may evoke among the jurors, and not Southern ones alone, is not too difficult to imagine.” Dilman shook his head sadly. “Why-dammit, why does it have to be? Why does so much judgment of me-not only me but all men like me-have to be influenced by some instinctive rejection or acceptance of so superficial a thing as my color? Why are we still darkies, shines, coons, spooks, jigs, or, at best, hanky-heads, and not people? Why are we isolated, forced into our squalid ghettos, our Niggertowns, from Atlanta’s Buttermilk Bottom to Chicago’s South Side to Los Angeles’ Central Avenue, with tin plates feeding us morsels of tokenism, concession, slight adjustment, unfulfilled promises? Why this callous and subhuman mistreatment? It-it’s bewildering, Nat. I won’t go further, no, I won’t say that the white men, not the lunatic fringe but the otherwise decent Caucasians, can’t really understand how we Negroes feel, can’t fathom what it is really like to be a Negro, because that would concede to them their argument that Negroes are inherently different, which we are not.”
Then an embarrassed smile crossed Dilman’s lips. “Silly of me, Nat, at a late date like this, bringing it up again. That’s like trying to obtain an Instant Answer to a tired and complicated old question-how can civil rights still be an issue in a free country? And yet, I keep asking myself-how is this possible? Why? Ridiculous. Let’s forget it, and-”
Abrahams had been thoughtful, but now he said, “No, Doug, you’ve posed a legitimate question, familiar as it is to both of us. We all know the endless reasons why American whites are prejudiced against Negroes. We’ve heard it from anthropologists and psychiatrists, from intellectuals and segregationists. We know there is a basic prejudice in all human beings that grows out of xenophobia-the dislike of foreigners, the fear of persons who look and seem to act differently. In the case of Negroes, this phobia is severely heightened. We know there is a widespread psychological, as well as an esthetic, antipathy toward black-skinned people. We know there is a belief, hidden or overt, that Negroes are of inferior mentality. Don’t segregationists always quote Arnold Toynbee to the effect that of history’s twenty-one great civilizations, Negroid Africa produced not one? We know that there is a fear, a deep unreasoning fear, among whites that Negroes are closer to savagery than to civilization, and therefore are unpredictable and threatening. I was thinking about this point just the other night. We’ve kept the Negro down so cruelly and for so damn long, denying him equal housing, employment, education, transportation, public accommodations, justice at the ballot box and in the courts, that despite the Supreme Court demand that we assimilate him ‘with all deliberate speed,’ we find we are reluctant to do so, to open up the Niggertown stockades and let him out. You see, by now, Doug, we’re simply afraid to let him free. Do you understand?”
“I’m not sure,” Dilman said uncertainly.
“Well, let me put it another way,” Abrahams went on. “By now, we suspect that the most meek and submissive Negro servant in our kitchen harbors a strong resentment toward us. And outside the kitchen, in the city streets, we know there are colored men who have been so long deprived, whose lives are so hopeless, that they no longer have anything to lose by employing force and violence against us. We know we have shoved too many of them beyond the safe boundaries of adherence to custom and law. We fear that, given half a chance, they may invade our secure boundaries to confiscate what is rightfully theirs, and more, and beat us up in the process, take our women by force, maim and kill, because they do not recognize the rules that we have for so many years forbidden them to live by. That’s part of the picture we both know, Doug, but in your case there is one more thing, I believe.”
Dilman waited, and then he asked, “What more can there be?”
“This. The men who are prosecuting you, and the public out there that has denounced you, they have done this for many of the reasons I’ve enunciated. But the quality of their antagonism toward you is different from what it is toward the Negro-on-the-street. This antagonism doesn’t spring from fear of you-since they know you are educated, oriented to the white world, surrounded by whites of strength and importance-and they know you are in the full glare of the spotlight, unable to initiate any violence, always subject to their laws and accountable to their decision. If they hate you, and want to be rid of you, and are trying you, I suspect it is for a different psychological motive than fear.”
He hesitated, and Dilman said, “For what, then, Nat? Why do they want to get rid of me?”
“Not because they fear you, but because-because they are ashamed of you. There are a hundred truths, but this is the main one, I would suggest. Men live by pride, and the predominantly white population of this country is mortified by the fact that their beautiful land and their beautiful lives are being run by a person who is-they have been brought up to believe-so shockingly their inferior, by a person whom one and all think they are superior to, and whom consequently they cannot respect, and whom they cannot have pride in before each other and the world at large. There is a kind of unvoiced national desire to regain national pride by liquidating, through due process, through civilized process, the one blot on the pure white landscape-and also, in doing so, sleep and play with less guilt for not having to look up constantly at you, Negro, so long wronged, who towers as a blatant rebuke to the national conscience. So, by legal hook or crook, out, damned spot. And that, I suppose, is why you go on trial in four hours.”
Dilman sat back in his chair, and his eyes did not leave those of his friend. “Nat, I intend to help you, not for myself but for what it means to everyone, the tormentors and the tormented. How can I help you?”
“By staying right in the Oval Office. By doing your job as President as well as you can. By letting us fight to keep you there.”
“Nat, that’s not enough. I want to confront the Senate and the country. I want them to see me and hear me on trial. I want them to see the man they’re ashamed of. I want to be the last witness for the defense.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Andrew Johnson never appeared in the Senate during his impeachment trial. His managers would not permit it. They felt that he might be goaded into losing his head and into saying things that could never be taken back. They felt his appearance could only endanger his cause. Johnson complained and protested, but he gave in.”
“Nat-why not?”
“Listen, you nigger lover, don’t you give me any more trouble. I’ve got headaches enough,” he said lightly, and he stood up. Then, looking at Dilman, he became serious. “Why not, Doug? Because I won’t throw a sheep, even a black sheep, to a slobbering pack of jackals. I may be your couselor, but I am also your friend… Now, you wish both of us luck, and if you believe in St. Christopher, it wouldn’t hurt to give him a jingle on the hot line, and ask him to hold a good thought.”
At five minutes to one o’clock in the afternoon, Nat Abrahams was witness to a sight that had been seen only once before in American history.
Jittery and impatient, he had left his three associates awaiting the official summons in the Senate Office of the Vice-President, slipped past the emptying Senate lobby, and come to the filled doorway on the Minority’s side of the Senate Chamber. The two doors had been fastened open, and the entry was crowded with curious, blue-uniformed Capitol police and gawking, scrubbed Senate page boys.
A policeman recognized Abrahams, and started to make a place for him just inside the Chamber, but Abrahams declined the offer. He did not yet want to be seen by the assembling congressmen and the eagle-eyed occupants of the press gallery. Instead he hung back, partially hidden from public view, but, because of his height, he was able to survey the scene inside fully.
The scene of this second Presidential trial for impeachment was, Abrahams felt sure, twice as hectic and highly charged as the first one over a century before. When the Andrew Johnson tribunal had convened, in those horse-and-carriage days, there had been 54 senators in attendance, and 190 representatives of the House present as onlookers, representing a United States populated by 30 million constituents. This early afternoon, there were packed in the Chamber before him 100 senators, to sit as jurors, and behind them 448 representatives of the House who had voted to become a Committee of the Whole to present themselves as guests in court, and these represented 230 million constituents. In 1868, the Andrew Johnson trial, beyond settling the balance of power in the government, as well as a political vendetta, possessed no central issue that would affect the lives of the citizens of the country. Today’s trial, Abrahams knew, possessed an issue of incalculable importance, that of the hidden reason for which President Dilman was being tried, the color of his skin, an issue that touched the life of every American. The outcome of the judgment on this issue would seriously affect America’s future at home and abroad.
Peering upward over the heads of the page boys, Abrahams’ eyes roved across the three sides of the galleries visible to him. As in Andrew Johnson’s time, the House had ruled that public admission to the trial would be by ticket only, a different-colored ticket to be printed for each succeeding day. The top-priority tickets had been passed out according to rank. Of the 1,250 tickets printed daily, 50 were given to President Dilman, 60 distributed among the foreign diplomatic corps, two went to each senator, one went to each representative, and only a few hundred were made available, on a first come, first served basis, to the quarter of a million persons, the public, who had been applying for them by telephone, telegram, and letter.
Except for the space requisitioned by the television cameras and technicians, the five steep tiers of the public galleries on high, with a sixth row for standees, were jammed tightly with humanity, and had been so for over an hour. Even the aisle steps above were occupied, and in the doorways could be seen the conservatively attired, ever-watchful agents of the Secret Service. By squinting, Abrahams could make out several familiar faces, among them Hugo Gaynor’s and Lou Agajanian’s. Then, as last-minute arrivals appeared with their dripping umbrellas, removing their wet raincoats, he could distinguish other persons known to him-Dilman’s chubby housekeeper, Crystal, the lobbyist, Gorden Oliver, the Party chairman, Allan Noyes, and then, dressed smartly in flagrant red, as if for an afternoon’s party, Sally Watson. In vain, Abrahams tried to locate his wife, and then gave up.
Turning slightly, to take in the desks of the press gallery directly over the Acting President pro tempore’s rostrum, Abrahams could see the reporters, feature writers, and columnists squeezed elbow to elbow, strips of their long white writing pads hanging down over their desks as they bent to their notes. Side by side, chatting, laughing, were Reb Blaser, of the Miller chain, and a young man whom Abrahams guessed to be George Murdock.
Now his gaze dropped to the floor of the Senate Chamber, shortly to be the arena of ceremony and then fierce conflict.
Never in its venerable life, Abrahams supposed, had the Senate Chamber undergone such a chaotic physical transformation as this. The comfortable, spacious, clubroom seating was no more. Within the biege walls and veined marble pillars of the Chamber, the spacious semicircle of proud senatorial desks had been rudely shoved together and pushed forward to the very lip of the rostrum. Every senator, ailing or not, appeared to be in his brown leather straight-backed armchair. On each mahogany desk, as if a last determined genuflection to tradition, sat those hangovers from the quill pen period, the paperweights that were once crystal shakers of blotting sand. Arranged on almost all the desks, also, were notepads as well as copies of the Articles of Impeachment. At each senator’s feet rested an unused polished cuspidor. Here and there, Abrahams could identify a juror he must soon confront: the smiling visage of the Majority Leader, Senator John Selander, the testy countenance, decorated with its pince-nez, of Senator Bruce Hankins, the vaguely Negroid features of Senator Roy Sampson, the perpetually snarling face of Senator Kirk Bollinger, the unexpected feminine profile of Senator Maxine Schultz, the leonine head of Senator Hoyt Watson.
Arrayed behind the jurors, standing, sitting, kneeling in conversation, but compressed like so many sardines, were the less dignified members of the House of Representatives.
Suddenly Abrahams heard a Capitol policeman to his left announce, “Well, fellers, here she goes.”
Abrahams’ gaze swung directly ahead. Everyone on the Chamber floor who had been standing or crouching was now finding a seat. The Acting President pro tempore of the Senate, John Selander, and his colleagues, Hankins and Watson, were marching single file toward the rostrum. Immediately in front of the elevated bench, with the marble counter beneath which the clerks sat, they closed ranks. They passed the empty long oak table and tooled leather chairs at the right of the podium-similar long wooden table and chairs were on the opposite side, and Abrahams remembered these were reserved for the managers-continued past the vacant seat perched between the rostrum and the counter, where the witnesses would sit in turn, and they disappeared through the two doors opened for them. The doors remained open.
The august Chamber was hushed, as if a mammoth blanket had been thrown over it and smothered it. Senators and representatives alike leaned forward attentively. The occupants of the gallery were stilled, craning their necks to see what would come next. The reporters in the front row of their gallery were half on their feet, hanging over the cream-white rail of the balcony.
Through the gaping doors that led from the Senators’ Private Lobby into the Senate Chamber there materialized the lone, erect figure of a patriarch, as imposing and aloof as an austerely draped statue of Eternal Lawfulness and Righteousness. Abrahams recognized him at once. This was Noah F. Johnstone, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, resplendent in his billowing black robe of office. For a fraction of a second, his keen, sunken eyes took in the scene before him, and then, as his committee of escorts, Selander, Hankins, Watson, clustered around him, Chief Justice Johnstone entered the Chamber proper.
Immediately, in a human wave that broke from the front to the back of the auditorium, senators and representatives came respectfully to their feet. In the balcony above, the spectators and journalists also rose.
Gathering the skirt of his judicial robe in one hand, Chief Justice Johnstone climbed to the summit of the rostrum, then wedged himself between his high-backed chair and desk, and waited. His escorts had hurried back to the door, where a second robed figure, the senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Irwin Gray, a younger, smaller judge, waited. Speedily, Senator Selander showed him up to the top of the rostrum.
Now the two justices of the Supreme Court were alone, with every pair of eyes upon them. Justice Gray held forth a Bible, and Chief Justice Johnstone placed his right hand upon it and raised his left hand high.
In his rumbling bass, the Chief Justice intoned, “I do solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws: so help me God.”
And now Chief Justice Johnstone, dismissing his associate with a nod, settled into the high-backed chair of the presiding officer, and held his silence while the congressmen and visitors and press followed his lead and sat down.
The Chief Justice lifted a heavy gavel, struck it once, and its wooden sound echoed throughout the Chamber.
“The Senate will come to order,” the Chief Justice announced. “Since the senators present did yesterday take the oath required by the Constitution, the Senate is now organized for the purpose of proceeding to the trial of the impeachment of Douglass Dilman, President of the United States. The Sergeant at Arms will make proclamation.”
Chief Justice Johnstone sat back, and directly beneath him the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, Harold L. Greene, clearing his throat, bellowed out, “Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons are commanded to keep silence on pain of imprisonment while the Senate of the United States is sitting for the trial of the Articles of Impeachment against Douglass Dilman, President of the United States.”
Immediately after the Sergeant at Arms had lowered himself to his chair, Senator Selander came to his feet from behind his front-row desk. “I move that the Secretary of the Senate notify the managers on the part of the House of Representatives that the Senate is now organized for the purpose of proceeding to the trial of the impeachment of Douglass Dilman.”
The Chief Justice assented with a nod. “Since the rules of proceeding were adopted unanimously by the Senate yesterday, to the effect that the Senate is now organized as a separate and distinct court of judgment rather than as the Senate sitting in its legislative capacity, the Secretary of the Senate may now notify the managers of the House of Representatives that the Senate is ready to receive them.”
As the Secretary of the Senate, officious as a dapper Pekinese, hastened into the Private Lobby, and the Chief Justice pulled at his nose and then inspected his gavel, many members of the Senate fell to putting their heads together and consulting in whispers.
Nat Abrahams touched a wide-eyed, neatly dressed adolescent page boy on the shoulder. “Young man, I’m one of the attorneys for the President. Will you go to the Formal Office of the Vice-President where three of my colleagues are waiting-tell them, ‘Nat Abrahams says it’s time’-and you bring them right here. Do you know your way?”
“Yes, sir!” The page boy was off at a run.
When Abrahams gave his attention to the Chamber again, he saw that the five managers of the House had aligned themselves in a straight row before the bar. The Sergeant at Arms was once more standing, announcing the presence and readiness of the prosecuting managers of the House, and introducing them by name, one by one.
Narrowly, Nat Abrahams studied his opponents in this death struggle. The easiest to identify was their leader, Representative Zeke Miller, because of his semibald head, his cocky spread-legged stance and continually fidgeting fingers, and his customary showy attire, this afternoon an inappropriate (almost defiant) unseemly Glen plaid suit in shades of blue and green. To his right, more conservatively garmented, standing ramrod-straight, was the veteran Majority Leader of the House, Representative Harvey Wickland. Beside him, scratching a thigh, was the gawky, uneasy Minority Leader of the House, Representative John T. Hightower. Next to him stood the stunted, potbellied Representative Seymour Stockton, renowned for his drawling, long-winded oratory. Finally there was the boyish, intellectual, new-breed Southerner (“new-breed meaning they quote University of Virginia geneticists instead of Calhoun to prove Negroes are inferior,” one liberal newspaper had remarked), Representative Reverdy Adams, with his pyramid tuft of hair, thick sideburns, horn-rimmed glasses.
Nat Abrahams counted noses: two Southerners, one Easterner, one Northerner, one Westerner; three Protestants, one Catholic, one Mormon; five graduates of Law Schools who had become politicians and members of the House of Representatives. A formidable and colorful crew, Nat Abrahams decided, thinking of the President’s own managers who were, like himself, relatively staid.
There would be a problem here, Abrahams foresaw: since the Senate was not a usual courtroom, it would be more receptive to emotional argument and pleadings. The House managers had been schooled by countless campaigns to speak the Senate’s language, which was also the people’s language. Dilman’s managers possessed no elective political experience, and their legalistic pleadings might be considerably less effective. Nat Abrahams promised himself to remind Hart, Tuttle, and Priest that they had better incorporate into the wisdom of Blackstone some of the wisdom of such eminent American philosophers as Dale Carnegie, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bruce Barton, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Robert Ripley, and Artemus Ward.
He realized that Chief Justice Johnstone was speaking. “The managers of the impeachment on the part of the House of Representatives will please take the seats assigned to them.”
Led by Zeke Miller, the five opposition managers made their way to the chairs behind the oak table to the right of the rostrum at the far end. Of the group, only Representative Miller did not sit. Instead, he raised a hand to catch the Chief Justice’s eye.
“Mr. President of the Senate,” Miller called out, his voice highpitched, “we are instructed by the House of Representatives, as its managers, to state that since the Senate has already taken process against Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, that he now be made to appear at the bar of the Senate in his answer to the Articles of Impeachment heretofore preferred by the House of Representatives through its managers before the Senate.”
The Chief Justice plainly scowled. “Are you suggesting, Mr. Manager Miller, that the President of the United States be present to answer the Articles against him?”
“Mr. President of the Senate, I am suggesting that he appear in person, or have competent persons appear on his behalf, so that his trial may proceed with punctuality.”
“I am quite well acquainted with the proper procedure, Mr. Manager Miller,” said the Chief Justice, sniffing. He waited, while Miller shrugged and sat down. Johnstone then squinted at the rows of senators. “I have been informed that the President of the United States has retained competent counsel, and that counsel was duly sworn in at noon. I understand that the President’s counsel have been awaiting notification to appear. They are in the Vice-President’s suite attached to this wing of the Capitol. Will the Secretary of the Senate bring them before the bar?”
Seeing the Secretary of the Senate clamber down from his marble counter and start toward the doorway behind which he stood, Nat Abrahams nervously turned to seek his associates. He almost bumped into Felix Hart, directly behind him, as Priest and Tuttle quickly joined them.
“Okay, gentlemen,” said Abrahams, “what’s the look of the defense counselors to be-cheerful confidence? Remorseless concentration? Benign aloofness?”
“Unalleviated terror,” said Hart with a grin.
“Well, if you’re going to quake, Felix, restrict it to your boots, not your jowls. Set, Walter? You ready, Joel? Swell-”
Abrahams turned around just as the police and page boys parted for the hurrying Secretary of the Senate. He stopped short breathlessly at the sight of Abrahams.
“We couldn’t hold back,” Abrahams said with a smile. “We’re raring to go.”
The Secretary did not smile. He beckoned them with his hand. “This way, gentlemen.”
Nat Abrahams walked into the Senate, followed closely by Tuttle, then Priest, with Hart bringing up the rear. Abrahams directed his gaze to the back of his escort’s neck, trying to avoid any and all of the almost two thousand pairs of eyes following his progress past the senators at their desks. He came to a halt, arms stiffly at his sides, while his three colleagues formed a group around him.
The Secretary of the Senate announced the appearance of the defense managers, and identified each of them aloud by name. When he had finished and returned to his first-level chair, the Chief Justice squinted down at Abrahams.
“You are the authorized counsel retained by the President?”
“We are, Mr. Chief Justice,” replied Abrahams. He extracted a document from his left coat pocket, and unfolded it. “I have here, Mr. Chief Justice, President Dilman’s authority to enter his appearance which, with your permission, I shall read.”
“Proceed.”
Abrahams read aloud, “ ‘Mr. Chief Justice. I, Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, having been served with a summons to appear before this honorable court, sitting as a court of impeachment, to answer certain Articles of Impeachment found and presented against me by the House of Representatives of the United States, do hereby enter my appearance by my counsel, Nathan Abrahams, Walter T. Tuttle, Joel B. Priest, and Felix Hart, who have my warrant and authority therefor, and who are instructed by me to ask of this honorable court that they fully represent me in this court of impeachment. Signed, Douglass Dilman.’ ”
Abrahams folded the document, handed it up to the Secretary of the Senate, who lifted himself from his seat to receive it and turn it over to Chief Justice Johnstone.
“The court stands so instructed,” said the Chief Justice. He gestured toward the vacant chairs and oak table to his left. “Will the managers of the President of the United States please take the seats assigned to them.”
As Abrahams and the other three promptly found their places, the fifth chair was quickly occupied by Leach, the perspiring White House stenotypist, who hoisted a weighty briefcase to the table, unstrapped it, and then shoved it toward Felix Hart. While Abrahams’ partner began to distribute legal papers, pads, pencils, Leach located a note in his breast pocket and passed it down the row. Tuttle handed it to Abrahams, who opened it.
The lettering at the top of the half sheet read The White House. Beneath it, hastily penned, was the following:
Dear Nat, Before going to work, I got down on my knees beside the Lincoln bed and I prayed for the Lord Almighty to join in judging our cause and our worth. I don’t know if He heard, but I was kind of loud, so maybe He did, or maybe St. Christopher did. Anyway, make yourself heard beyond the Senate Chamber, just on the chance He is Up There listening. Win or lose, you try for Heaven. But give them Hell. Your eternally grateful friend, Doug Dilman.
Tenderly, Nat Abrahams refolded the note and deposited it in his pocket. He would be heard loud and clear, he silently pledged, but first the traducers and haters would have to be heard.
Chief Justice Johnstone’s bass was booming across the Chamber. “The Senate is now sitting for the trial of the Articles of Impeachment. The House of Representatives and the President of the United States appear by counsel. The court is now prepared to hear the opening arguments.” He bent to his right and looked below. “Gentlemen managers of the House of Representatives, you will now proceed in support of the Articles of Impeachment… Senators will please give their undivided attention. Proceed-proceed-Mr. Manager Miller.”
Had Zeke Miller dared to wear galluses and snap them before this dignified assembly, as he had often been pictured doing during campaigns in the Deep South, they could have been no more real than the illusion of them at this moment. He exuded humble folksiness, as he hooked his thumbs into his lapel buttonholes and came in short, uneven strides to center stage. His stained teeth were bared, and his thin lips curled in an attempt at a winning, self-deprecating smile, as he examined the faces of the expectant senators.
“Mr. Chief Justice and gentlemen of the Senate,” he began, “it was on a similar day to this one, back in 1868, that your honorable predecessors sat forward in their chairs in this Chamber to hear and judge evidence against another Chief Executive of the United States, who had attempted to render ineffective the constitutional prerogatives of the legislative branch of government and who had otherwise proved himself unfit for the highest office in the land and a detriment to the domestic well-being of our beloved nation. The fact that, by the luck of a single vote, he escaped removal from the Presidency in no way lessens the integrity and patriotism of the House of Representatives that had the courage to impeach him and the Senate that had the onerous duty to try him. Had the charges against him been more objectively drawn, fewer in number and better prepared, he would have been driven from office, crude and malevolent turn-coat that he was, and although my native South would have suffered more intensely, time and good judgment would have tempered vengeance, and American justice would have prevailed the sooner. Nevertheless, the legislative branch of the government of our fathers proved then, and it proves today, that it will forever serve as the watchdog of democracy over incipient tyrants who are elevated to the executive office by accidents of fate.
“We gather here, today, on behalf of 230 million American people, as watchdogs once more, guardians of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our responsibility, however, is far, far graver than that assumed by our predecessors in 1868. In that other time, the one impeached, for all his reckless malversation in office, presided over a Union he could harm but could not liquidate. The world was slow and small then, and the island of the Union, no longer riven, only hurt and bloodied, was a fortress unto its own, and withdrawn enough so that no single fumbler, no single incompetent, no lone traitor, could bring it to disaster.
“We, today, live in another and terrible age, the nuclear age, a clouded and fearful time where the jet, the rocket, the hydrogen bomb can liquidate life on this wondrous planet of the Maker in minutes, fulfilling the terrible prophecy of the Apocalypse. Contracting, momentarily, our view of our era, we live in the one great free republic of this planet, where intelligent and God-conscious men have laboriously, through two centuries, constructed a utopia of peace-loving, free and independent citizens, who dwell in prosperity and equality. We are the fortunate heirs of a society that is sinless and decent, lawful and just, a Christian society so brilliantly arranged that in our government, in our government of the people, by the people, for the people, there are three branches of government, with their magnificent checks and balances, one upon the other, assuring the preservation of our democracy.
“A world such as I have described, sensitive to every national indiscretion, capable of self-extinction in the blink of an eye, a democracy such as I have described, delicately responding to any mutinous hand that would rock and sink the ship of state-a world such as this, in this new epoch of ours, cannot afford executive leadership which, out of ignorance or wickedness or selfishness, can destroy us all through the madness of a perverted bias. Because we are the elected caretakers of the life of our proud country and of our good neighbors, to preserve ourselves under the judgment of the Supreme Being who made us all, we are met here today to cast down from his high seat a pretender and usurper who has placed himself above the law, above every standard of common decency, above and outside the pale of respect, wittingly or unwittingly leading the United States and the world toward inevitable total extinction.
“Who is this evildoer among us? You know, and I know, but I shall enunciate it clearly for the world beyond this Chamber to know, and to realize that we are men of good will. The one I refer to is not a man among ordinary men like ourselves. He is not possessed of our good intention and good purpose. I hesitate to identify him for what he truly is, as we know him and this trial shall prove him to be. He is-no, let not the words be mine, but those of one of greater stature than myself, an immortal American liberal who loved black Americans with the same fervor as he loved white Americans, yet who loved America more and would not see it wrecked by the one other President in our history whose disgraceful conduct earned him impeachment. The words I shall repeat were spoken in the House of Representatives by Thaddeus Stevens, upon hearing that President Andrew Johnson had committed his most notorious act of treachery and infamy. ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ Stevens thundered to his colleagues. ‘If you don’t kill the beast, it will kill you!’
“The beast. Yes, the beast, he had branded that earlier dangerous and delinquent President-and the appellation, I say to you honorable gentlemen, is far more aptly suited to the one who sits in the White House today. On behalf of the entire country, I paraphrase the warning of a great dead statesman-I entreat you, I implore you-if you don’t remove the beast, it will kill you and me and all of us-and the beast that you must expel from the government, from the company of civilized men, is the one under trial today, the one already entered in the roll call of history’s blackguards and villains. He is the beast who dares bear the name of a man-I refer to Douglass Dilman-known to the press as His Accidency-known to our shame as the President of the United States!”
The viciousness of Zeke Miller’s opening attack elicited from the audience not what Abrahams had hoped for, which was shock and revulsion at such lese majesty, but surprisingly, a reaction of understanding and approval. In Abrahams’ eyes, it was as if Miller had thrown a spear near a large, coiled, dozing snake, not to harm it but to awaken it and warn it of danger from a beast in the jungle. And now the snake writhed awake, twisting and rising and hissing.
The senators, the House members, the gallery spectators stretched before Abrahams had been momentarily transformed into that malignant serpent. They were alerted to the beast at their back.
Abrahams watched Miller strut a few steps this way and that, satisfied, regaining his composure, as he waited for the audience to settle down. Abrahams did not bother to look at his own associates. He knew that they must feel as he felt, and he concentrated his contempt upon the House prosecutor. Hatred was an emotion almost unknown to Abrahams. For even the most unregenerated criminals, the most dangerous bigots, he had always been able to leaven disapproval with charity, trying to understand their motives, born of heredity and nurtured by environment. Yet, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt the awakening inside himself of blind hatred for Miller and Miller’s colleagues and all the ignorance and malice on earth that they represented.
As he assessed the content and tone of the opposition’s initial attack on Dilman, another thought came to Abrahams. The boundaries of the forensic battle were now more clearly drawn. Definitely, the conflict between the managers would not be warfare within the limits of legalistic weapons. The boundaries had widened to include emotional demagoguery at its basest level. How well Ben Butler had understood the value of this when he had opened his first barrage upon President Johnson in 1868. Snatches of Abrahams’ reading of that earlier impeachment trial came back to him now. Butler had made it clear at the very outset that the arena for an impeachment battle was not to be a gentlemanly courtroom but a political cockpit. What had he told his senator-jurors in that other time? This proceeding “has no analogy to that of a court.” Each step must be different “from those of ordinary criminal procedure.” Then, “A constitutional tribunal solely, you are bound by no law, either statute or common, which may limit your constitutional prerogative. You consult no precedents save those of the law and custom of parliamentary bodies. You are a law unto yourselves…”
Abrahams had begun to jot a note to his colleagues, reminding them of this precedent established by Ben Butler, reminding them this was not gloved fighting, but bare-knuckle, when, to his amazement, he realized that Zeke Miller had resumed, and that Zeke Miller had done homework at the same source.
“-and so, I repeat, able gentlemen, I repeat the words of my illustrious forebear who had opened for the House in that first impeachment of a President-I repeat-you are not tied down to the steps of ordinary criminal procedure, because you are an elected parliament. You don’t have to follow any precedents except those established by Congress. ‘You are a law unto yourselves, bound only by the natural principles of equity and justice, and that salus populi suprema est lex.’
“More and more as this trial progresses you will find me, and my fellow managers, harking back to the noble wisdom of our watchdog legislators of more than a century ago, the legislators who desperately tried to preserve the Union and government against the dictatorial encroachment of mad, drunk Andy Johnson. Again, with your leave, I echo the injunction of Ben Butler in 1868. In other times, in other lands, he pointed out, despotism was removed by assassination and rebellion. ‘Our fathers,’ he said, ‘more wisely, founding our government, have provided for such and all similar exigencies a conservative, effectual, and practical remedy by the constitutional provision that the “President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Constitution leaves nothing to implication, either as to the persons upon whom, or the body by whom, or the tribunal before which, or the offenses for which, or the manner in which this high power should be exercised; each and all are provided for by express words of imperative command.’ ”
Miller paused, surveyed his listeners, and then he said:
“We assemble here as warriors enlisted in the holy cause of the United States Constitution. Despotism has cast its black shadow across our fair land. As warriors of righteousness, we have heard the imperative command, and now, at any cost, we shall obey it.
“Honorable gentlemen and impartial judges, fellow warriors in this crusade, what are the charges we bring against the despot reigning in the White House? Are these four Articles of Impeachment, approved so overwhelmingly by your colleagues in the House, merely vindictive paper charges, indictments created out of envy, pique, spitefulness, and based on hearsay and conjecture? No! One thousand times no, and no again! The case of the People versus Douglass Dilman, President, motivated by patriotism and Americanism and nothing less, nay, motivated by a loftier purpose, motivated by duty to flag and country-this case is firmly based on the bedrock of truth and fact. Hear me-truth and fact!
“Let us proceed to examine the Articles of indictment one by one, and permit me to elaborate upon their fuller meaning, upon their intent, and upon the support of evidence we are prepared to give to each.”
Miller’s hand had gone into his pocket, extracted a rolled wad of notes bound by a rubber band. With deliberation, he removed the rubber band and spread out the notes.
“Article I,” he read, and then looked up. “Indictment number one arising from the heinous and treasonable behavior of the respondent…”
Nat Abrahams settled back, tightly crossing his arms over his chest, prepared to hear the outline of the prosecution’s case. There was no need for him to make notes. The pencils of Tuttle, Priest, and Hart would be busy. The stenotype beneath Leach’s fingers would capture it all for later reference. For Abrahams, it was enough to hear and weigh the slant and direction of the speech, so that he could make a final judgment about his own opening remarks.
Attentively, he listened.
Slurring the words, Miller hastily read Article I. Then, at a more deliberate pace, with greater care, he defined the indictment. The charge was treason. President Dilman was in possession of the nation’s topmost defense secrets. He was also possessor of a lady’s affection, and this lady, this Miss Wanda Gibson, who had once been tutored by, mesmerized by, employed by a professor of leftist leanings, had naturally gravitated to other employers who were of leftist persuasion. For five years she had worked as a confidential executive secretary for a Soviet Russian spy, who had since fled the country, and she had accepted a high salary, Judas money, from him and from his Vaduz Exporters, a secret Communist Front organization. Subsequently, from the President of the United States, who had perhaps been seduced by her beauty and proffered love, who had either innocently trusted her or deliberately sought to help her hold and improve her position, whose tongue had been loosened by a brain befogged by drink, Miss Gibson had acquired precious military secrets. Then, either because of her desire to impress her Soviet Communist employer or because of her long indoctrination in socialistic beliefs, she had passed on the American President’s confidences to Franz Gar, who had in turn speedily relayed them to Premier Kasatkin in Russia. Thus, knowing the secrets of our then current policy and strength, the U.S.S.R. had been in a position to anticipate and best us in divided Berlin, in India, in Brazil, and elsewhere.
In the immediate days ahead, Miller went on to explain, the House managers would fill in the details of this traitorous design. They would provide witnesses, from Vaduz employees to White House employees, to prove-to prove beyond a shadow of doubt-that the President of the United States had this close relationship with Miss Gibson. They would bring to the stand the President’s own personal secretary, and enter a diary she had kept as Exhibit A, and they would bring to the stand the President’s own social secretary, to prove his extramarital liaison with Miss Gibson. They would bring forth subpoenaed witnesses, ranging from the leftist-minded professor who had taught Miss Gibson at the University of West Virginia, to the Director of the FBI, to prove that the President’s indiscretions had opened every file in the Pentagon, in SAC, in Cape Kennedy, to the Premier of Russia.
Now Miller read Article II, and in his explanation of it, gave it little elaboration. Because the President had placed a blood relationship above his oath of office, because of “a natural and unfortunately understandable passion for a member of a minority race and a desire to help militant members of that race,” the President had been in secret collusion with the infamous Turnerite Group and its condemned and soon-to-be-executed leader, Jefferson Hurley. There would be ample evidence to convince the eminent Senate members of the President’s criminality. There would be entered into the record Exhibit B, a letter in the hand of Julian Dilman, confessing his intent to become a secret member of the Turnerites. There would be subpoenaed witnesses who had seen the President and his son holding their surreptitious and questionable meetings in the White House and at Trafford University. There would be read an affidavit signed by the Attorney General of the United States himself, to reveal by what means the President had obstructed the Department of Justice in his effort to protect the Turnerites, and thereby protect his son. And because of this prejudiced interference, it would be shown how the President was as responsible as the murderer Hurley for the death of a noble and selfless Southern magistrate, namely, Judge Everett Gage, now in his Mississippi grave, a martyr to executive selfishness and conspiracy.
With the lip-smacking, leering delight of a young boy slowly turning the pages of a nudist periodical, Representative Zeke Miller fluently rolled out the charges specified in omnibus Article III.
“We are grown men, men of the world, and we know that Babylon has existed, and that weak men are weak in the flesh,” said Miller, his words winking out across the Chamber. “Seduction of the innocent, the fair, the frail, lechery imposed upon other men’s daughters and wives and widows, exists. However”-and his high-pitched voice rose several decibels, like a Confederate bugle, until its shrillness knifed across every portion of the auditorium-“when the leader of our democratic and spiritual renaissance, through wicked and sinful behavior, profanes the sacred sanctum where once slept the illustrious Abe Lincoln, profanes the hallowed halls of the President’s House where the tread of Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, and both Roosevelts was once heard, it is a time not for revulsion but for retribution.”
The President, said Miller, grown coarse and intemperate in his long years of solitary bachelorhood, often inflamed by drink, had become disrespectful of the opposite sex. One extramarital love affair, with one of his own race, had not been enough to satiate him. He had sought out and hired the sweet and innocent daughter of one of the nation’s most respected and beloved legislators. He had brought close to him this young lady, little qualified though she was for the position he had offered her, baiting her with it for no other purpose than ultimately to satisfy his carnal needs. Yes, he had degraded his office, and his manhood, and his race, by attempting to force himself upon Miss Sally Watson while intoxicated, seduce her, and only through the grace of the Lord had she escaped. In due time, the victim herself, agonizing as reliving the experience would be for her, would recount the details of the horrifying episode. Photographs of her injuries, taken immediately after the terrible experience, would be entered into the record as Exhibit C by the managers of the House.
Miller went quickly over the other specifications in Article III, and from his table Abrahams grudgingly had to concede the effectiveness of his tactic. Miller sensed that he had made an impression with the details of the Sally Watson charge. It had been strong stuff, as the faces of the senators indicated, and Miller was too clever to water it down.
He glossed over the Wanda Gibson affair. Mainly, he emphasized that the President had dwelt under the same roof with this single woman for five years, encouraged by the Reverend Spinger (who would be a witness to the fact), because the Reverend had offered her up as a bribe to get preferential treatment for his Crispus Society. Suffice it that, even after leaving his licentious house on Van Buren Street and moving into the White House, the President had been compelled to return in the night, against all security advice, in order to be by the side of his mistress.
Dilman’s veto of the Minorities Rehabilitation Program required little explanation, according to Miller. There would be a host of specialists of every race to show how severely the veto had hindered America’s economic advance and had damaged domestic peace. Soon enough, the House managers would spell out in detail the reasons behind the President’s incredible veto: his inability to study the bill with a brain sodden with alcohol, his persistent desire to placate Afro-American extremists who had no desire for the domestic tranquillity that passage of the bill would insure, above all, his determination to insult Congress and take all the reins of government into his own hands.
As to the President’s history of alcohol addiction, that would be put forth in irrefutable affidavits collected throughout the Midwest, and in Washington, D.C., and its environs.
Now, his voice having become ragged, Zeke Miller paused and swallowed a few times. He laid aside his notes, and then standing wide-legged, hands on his hips, he surveyed the crowded Senate Chamber.
“At last,” he said, “we have come to Article IV, the gravest crime we can charge against the President, the one beside which all others seem petty misdemeanors in their meaning and portent. For, in commission of this single misdeed, the Chief Executive has, like an insane Samson, attempted to crumple the pillars of our institutions and bring our proud temple of democracy down into rubble and ruin. It was mainly for this high crime that Andrew Johnson was haled before the bar of justice, and it is for this same act of arrogant lawlessness, if for no other, that we are met here this afternoon.
“Once more, permit me to quote Ben Butler’s remarks, on a similar issue, in the first impeachment trial. ‘Has the President, under the Constitution, the more than kingly prerogative at will to remove from office, and suspend from office indefinitely, all executive officers of the United States, either civil, military or naval, at any time and all times, and fill the vacancies with creatures of his own appointment, for his own purposes, without any restraint whatever, or possibility of restraint by the Senate, or by Congress through laws duly enacted? The House of Representatives, on behalf of the people, join this issue by affirming that the exercise of such powers is a high misdemeanor in office.’ ”
Miller halted, pulled himself to his full bantam height, and scanned the rows of senators directly before him.
“Honorable gentlemen, need more be said today? Has there been, in this century, in these United States, a Presidential act more overtly and nakedly tyrannical? No, never, never, in any century. The offense may be read on your desks. The crime admits of no discussion. What remains is only punishment for the crime.
“Honorable gentlemen, we of the House do here and now charge the President of the United States with contemptuously breaking a major law of the land, a law almost unanimously passed by Congress, a law not vetoed by his pen. We, of the House, do here and now charge the President of the United States with summarily removing from office the Secretary of State of the United States without the legal consent of the Senate, and of so doing not because his first Cabinet member had been disabled or was incompetent, but because his first Cabinet member advocated policies that were and are desired by the majority of the American people. For this adherence to democracy, our Secretary of State was beloved by the American people as he was beloved by our late President. And because our Secretary of State earned this popularity, because he was the next in line to succession of the Presidency, because his popularity posed a threat to the uneasy holder of that primary office, he was fired illegally by a horn-mad, jealous, spiteful President. For this vicious act, honorable gentlemen, we of the House do here and now charge the President of the United States with violation of the Constitution of the United States.”
Zeke Miller paused, sucked in his breath, drew back his shoulders, lifted his arms high above his head in an evangelistic posture of beseeching both the Lord above and the Senate below.
“Fellow Americans!” he shouted. “I close our argument with the prayer that the historic warning be emblazoned from this memorable day of justice undertaken, to the day of reckoning and final judgment in this Chamber. Fellow Americans, kill the beast before the beast kills you!”
The galleries broke out into an unrestrained burst of applause, and here and there senators, and the majority of the House members behind them, came to their feet, clapping their hands. Zeke Miller gave a short nodding bow, turned on his heel, and went swiftly to his table, where his colleagues waited, all standing, faces wreathed in smiles of congratulations and triumph.
From above, Chief Justice Johnstone’s gavel fell steadily, its pounding drowned out by the tumult and clamor.
Nat Abrahams, arms still crossed over his chest, sat grimly, observing the spectacle, the animated congressmen and spectators, the swiveling television cameras. He knew that Miller had scored, hit low, scored high.
Engaged in a trial, Abrahams always divested himself of self-delusion, not hope but self-delusion. The opposition, he calculated, was far ahead at this point. They would have to be caught. It would not be an easy matter overtaking them. Miller’s hour and twenty minutes of oratory had worn down the senators, undoubtedly exhausted the attentiveness of millions of television viewers. How could reason hold them now? When you were sated with a rich feast and heady wine, what taste would there be for health foods and the milk of kindness?
Behind Abrahams, the Chief Justice’s gavel monotonously pounded, and gradually the din of mob celebration began to subside.
Aware of activity to his left, Nat Abrahams looked down the table. Felix Hart had passed an open note to Priest, who read it, nodded, gave it to Tuttle, who glanced at it noncommittally, and then handed it to Abrahams.
Abrahams stared at the note. “Nat,” it read, “that was rough. We’ve lost them, unless you can bring them back sharply. Need an immediate attention grabber, what writers call a narrative hook. Suggest you discard agreed-upon opening, and alternate as well, and go all out with third possibility we discussed. What do you say?” The note was signed “Felix.”
Abrahams’ mind had already been made up. Taking up a pencil, he scrawled across Hart’s note, “I say YES!”
He passed it back, observing each of his associates read his reply. He waited for their decision. Felix Hart was the first to answer, vigorously nodding his approval. Then Joel Priest ducked his head twice in affirmation. Abrahams waited upon Tuttle, who sat with his jaw on his fist, thinking. Tuttle’s head turned. “Hate to fight their roughneck style,” he said gruffly, “but when you’re set upon in a dark alley by ruffians, guess you got to knee as well as punch. No choice, Nat. Yup, better bring that audience back, right quick, or nobody’ll know we have a case or a President.”
Abrahams was relieved, and now edgy but eager for the counterattack. He glanced behind him and upward.
The sputtering Chief Justice had hit his gavel down one last time. The Chamber had finally lapsed into silence. Abrahams’ gaze returned to the senators at their desks. While respectful and half attentive, most of them were slouching and slumping in attitudes of relaxation, as if they had heard it all, as if there was no more to be said, as if the show was over and only the necessary and boring closing formalities of the first day remained.
The Chief Justice had rolled his chair forward and leaned across the side of the rostrum.
“Mr. Managers for the President,” he called down, “are you prepared to proceed with your opening statement?”
Adjusting the knot of his tie, Nat Abrahams came swiftly to his feet, hearing the crack of his knee joints and feeling the strained pull on his back and calf muscles.
Facing the Chief Justice, he replied, “Yes, Mr. Chief Justice. I am instructed by my associates to say that we are ready to proceed with our evidence against the Articles of Impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives against the President of the United States. I am Nathan Abrahams, Your Honor, and I have been assigned to present the opening testimony for the defense.”
“Very well, Mr. Manager Abrahams, proceed with the evidence.”
Abrahams lifted a document from the table. “Mr. Chief Justice, before undertaking the defense, I should like to offer first, on behalf of the managers, a certified copy of the oath of the President of the United States, which I will now read.” He read aloud from the document: “ ‘I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ Signed, ‘Douglass Dilman.’ ”
Handing it up to the Chief Justice, Abrahams announced in a voice penetrating enough to be heard not only by the presiding officer but by the legislative jurors, “That is our prime exhibit, and the cornerstone of our case-evidence, first, that Douglass Dilman is the legal President of the United States, and evidence, second, that he was and is fully cognizant of his oath of office, which we contend he has entirely lived up to and is continuing to live up to, and which contention we shall support through select witnesses and further certified evidence. Now, Your Honor, I shall enter upon my opening argument.”
Walking slowly to the spot on the carpet between the rostrum and the jammed Senate benches, his face rigidly set and unsmiling, Nat Abrahams was prepared to begin. He had left his multitudinous notes on the table. He had committed to memory every fact and shred of evidence. All the stored knowledge he possessed of the case, provoked by his opponent, had been electrified, and now pulsated with life inside his brain, waiting for his summons. He required no written reference. He was alert, anger controlled, ready as he would ever be to even the score. If it was possible, he would do it. He would try.
“Mr. Chief Justice, gentlemen of the United States Senate, fellow citizens,” he heard himself say, surprised at how firm and even was the pitch of his address. “As the document I have turned over to the Chief Justice of the United States confirms, we have for President of the United States a man, a man who has sworn, before the presiding officer now seated on the bench above, that he will preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution and our nation under God. We have, I repeat, a man for our President of the United States.
“Perhaps, from the outset, since the managers of the House have raised the point, some clarification is necessary. What is a man? Is he, indeed, Emerson’s ‘golden impossibility’? Or is he, in the definition of Noah Webster, simply ‘a male human being’? Is he, to give the anthropological view of him, ‘an individual (genus Homo) of the highest type of animal existing or known to have existed, differing from other high types of animals, especially in his extraordinary mental development’? Is he Pindar’s ‘a shadow and a dream’? Or is he more? Is he, in the words of Genesis, that one whom God created in his own image, that special and holy being whom God formed from the dust of the ground, and into whose nostrils God breathed ‘the breath of life’ so that he became ‘a living soul’? Or is he, as the poetic Psalms would have it, a creature ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ and made only ‘a little lower than the angels’?
“You see, then, man is defined as many things, but of one fact I am positive, and all higher authority is positive, one thing he is not. Man is not a beast.
“A beast, again quoting Noah Webster, is plainly, precisely, ‘any four-footed animal,’ and an animal, as apart from a plant, is most often ‘a brute or beast, as distinguished from man.’ There are many beasts on the earth, quadrupeds all. A lion is a beast, a panther is a beast, a rhinoceros, a dog, a jackal, a wolf, a hyena, each is an authentic beast. But only among the unknowing and the ignorant, or the malicious and unbalanced, is a man ever confused with a beast. Sometimes, in the North of our nation, I have heard pathetic and psychopathic perverts called beasts, even though they were men. Sometimes, in the South of the United States, not the South of Africa, in the South of the United States and occasionally in the North, I have heard our citizens of black skin called beasts. But I have always attributed that confusion of identity to ignorance or malice, and believed the only corrective measure to be education.
“Forgive me the biological discourse, honorable senators, but since my able opponent mistook the nature of the subject on trial today, I thought it but proper, indeed necessary, to correct him. Let there be no confusion among you from this moment on. In 1868, the President of the United States was a man, a man made in the image of God, Thaddeus Stevens notwithstanding. Today, the President of the United States is another man, a man created in the image of God, Zeke Miller notwithstanding. The President is not a four-legged brute, but a man, as you are men, no more, no less, as even the managers of the House are men.
“I am determined to keep the definitions in this trial precise. You are here to sit in judgment on the future of a human being who is the President of the United States. The managers of the House are here to prosecute a human being and try to remove him from his rightfully held office. My colleagues and I are here to defend a human being and retain him in the highest position in the land. If that is understood and agreed upon, I am prepared to enter into our argument against the Articles of Impeachment voted upon by the House of Representatives.”
It was time for a breather. Nat Abrahams halted. With unfaltering gaze, he surveyed the faces and the profiles of the senators arrayed before him. He had gained and held their attention, he guessed, shamed some, annoyed others, but he had opened the path for what must now, of necessity, follow. Along this path there was danger, but there was no other way.
Bending his head to organize his thoughts, he took several paces to his right. When he raised his head, his eyes met those of Zeke Miller, and it pleased him to see that Miller’s balding warm pate was beaded and his eyes burning and his thin-lipped mouth compressed with contained bile.
Abruptly, Nat Abrahams swung back to confront his audience.
“Gentlemen of the Senate, I shall now enter into my argument against the five Articles of Impeachment-wait, it was not a slip of the tongue, I repeat, the five Articles of Impeachment pronounced against the President this afternoon.”
There was puzzlement on many faces, he could see, and there were rustles and whisperings of wonder from behind some of the desks. Rapidly, Nat Abrahams resumed. He almost had them; now he must grab them and hold them and bang their skulls against the truth.
“It is not the fourth Article, as my distinguished opponent has stated, that stands as the gravest charge and the one most crucial to the welfare of our government and our democracy. No, gentlemen, it is the fifth Article of indictment against our President, the covert, hushed fifth Article, unannounced, unwritten, unmentioned yet in this judicial court, that pervades the atmosphere of this Chamber, that dominates this trial, and that exists as truly as if it had been made public from the first-it is this Article, I submit, that is and shall be the head and heart of the House’s case against our President, and the disposition of which shall affect the future existence of our democracy most seriously.
“This vaporous, invisible, elusive Article V, if the opposition had possessed the courage to set it down in writing against President Dilman, would have read as follows: ‘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 in violation of the Constitution, did irresponsibly, and without regard for the will of the majority of the public and its elected legislators, accept the high office of the Presidency, despite his origin and color. And said Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, did then and there commit high crime and misdemeanor by daring to undertake his duty as Chief Executive and perform as President, while knowing that in the eyes of zealots and bigots he was unqualified and unfit for leadership because he was of the Negro race, and therefore not a full citizen but a second-class citizen, and therefore semiliterate, shiftless, mentally arrested, socially inferior, addicted to whiskey and violent behavior, possessed of unnatural inherited desires, if not to marry, then at least to molest daughters of Caucasians, and contemptuous and sullen in his determination not to know his rightful place and in his refusal to serve his racial betters.’ ”
Nat Abrahams could hear the vocal storm rising before him, around him, the legislators barking their indignation, or pounding their desks, the lung-filling intake of shock followed by scattered outbreaks of applause from the galleries, the enraged protests from the House managers’ table.
He tried to go on. “Gentlemen!” he cried out over the tumult. “This unannounced Article, I submit, is what lies behind the announced four Articles, colors them, shades them in the hue of darkness, and unless this fifth indictment of President Dilman is brought into the open and aired, and considered by honest and courageous men, there can be no justice done in the impeachment trial of Douglass Dilman!”
He wanted to say more, but he could hardly hear his own voice now over the hubbub, and so he stopped and waited for what would happen next.
Chief Justice Johnstone’s gavel smashed down three times, and the sounds of it were as deafening as a cannonade, and at once the tumult receded, settled into order, except for a pocket of continuing protest at the rear of the Chamber.
Then Abrahams realized that Senator Hoyt Watson, gray hair disheveled, string tie out of line, was standing, arm aloft, attempting to hail the chair.
“Mr. Chief Justice! Mr. Chief Justice!” Senator Watson roared. “Objection! I submit a question on a point of order!”
At last, the room fell silent.
“The chair recognizes the honorable Senator on a point of order,” Chief Justice Johnstone announced. “Your inquiry, Senator?”
“Mr. Justice, we have just been subjected to the most insolent performance I have ever been witness to in my many years on this floor. That Mr. Manager Abrahams, on behalf of the President, should dare to insult our intelligence, impugn our integrity, by implying that we fly under false colors, that the four Articles under consideration are lies created to mask some horrendous racial plot, that he should dare assail the honesty and human decency of the Senate of the United States, and the House as well, by charging that we want that miscreant Dilman out of the White House because he is black, and not because he is incompetent, offends me, offends every one of us, beyond conceivable expression… Mr. Chief Justice, I demand that the manager’s offensive grandstanding tirade be stricken from the records forever. I suggest that he be reprimanded by the chair for attempting to convert this august Chamber into a Turnerite meeting hall. I demand that he not be permitted to discuss again his ludicrous and inciting fifth Article, this rabble-rousing figment of his imagination, at the pain of being ordered to withdraw from the case and from this Chamber for the remainder of the trial. I trust, Mr. Chief Justice, that you will instruct Manager Abrahams to confine himself strictly to a discussion of the evidence against his client that is known, that exists, that is the subject of this impeachment trial, and if he should arrogantly persist in disobeying, that he be held in contempt of court!”
As the flushed Senator sat down, his colleagues and the House members crowned him with a smashing round of applause.
Nat Abrahams had turned to the bench. “Mr. Chief Justice-”
Chief Justice Johnstone nodded. “What say you to the objection, Mr. Manager Abrahams?”
“It was not my purpose or intent to incite or inflame through demagoguery, or to imitate the manner and method of the opposition,” said Abrahams calmly. “I submit, Your Honor, that it is President Dilman’s difference of color that has antagonized his opposition, and inspired them to build their cleverly diverting Articles of Impeachment. I submit that the President’s color will in turn color and affect the mind of every prosecution witness, and a majority of the jurors, and largely to the detriment of my client. I submit this is the real hard-core issue, and no mere figment of my imagination. I stand prepared to offer concrete evidence in the form of affidavits-signed editorials from newspapers, speeches in the Congressional Record, off-the-record statements made by biased Senators-to prove that the President’s color is the central issue of this trial. I am prepared to contend with the four Articles as voted, to fight them with all my heart and soul, but I suggest that they are windmills, Your Honor, and that the real dragon to be slain is racial prejudice. I beg your leave to be permitted to speak further, with as much restraint as possible, and when it is appropriate, on this invisible Article of indictment.”
Chief Justice Johnstone huffed, gathered his judicial robe around him, and looked past Abrahams toward Senator Hoyt Watson.
“The Senator’s objection is sustained,” he announced. He peered down at Abrahams. “The counsel will not allude to a fifth Article again in this trial, but devote himself solely and entirely to the four Articles before this court. Proceed as directed, Mr. Manager!”
Abrahams tried to accept the rebuke graciously. Turning his head from the bench, he could see his three associates watching him, and while their faces remained phlegmatic, there was applause in their eyes.
Slowly, Abrahams continued around until he was once more face to face with the Senate. Legally, his accusation was stricken, but in fact the entire nation had heard his charge, and now it was a living issue that would hang over the conscience of every man in the days to come. If he could no longer allude to the fifth Article, it was nonetheless now made visible for all to see and reckon with. Officially, the color prejudice against President Dilman had been segregated from this hostile and limited Chamber, but now it ran rampant across the breadth of the broad country.
By his reckless offensive into the exposed high ground of truth, Abrahams decided, he had lost hard votes for Doug Dilman as a President on trial for impeachment, but perhaps he had won something more important for Doug Dilman as a man. He hoped that his choice of tactic had been the right one, and that Doug would, somehow, understand.
Inaudibly, Abrahams sighed. Well, he told himself for the last time, the truth was in the open. He had done what had to be done, in a manner most repugnant to him, but there had been no other choice for one who believed his cause was just.
And now, he could see, he had accomplished something else, also. He had won the eyes and ears of the Senate, the House, the galleries, the entire nation. He had them even as Zeke Miller had not.
Satisfied with this one victory, Nat Abrahams, relieved to be able to resume the role of attorney once more, quietly began to address his audience again.
AT approximately a quarter to three in the afternoon, Edna Foster had suddenly turned off her television set, blotted the loathsome spectacle from her screen if not from her mind, impulsively changed into a severe suit, set a hat on her bunned brown hair, pulled on her transparent olive-colored raincoat, telephoned for a taxicab, snatched up her umbrella, and gone downstairs to wait for it.
Now, at a quarter after three, she walked purposefully through the puddles of rainwater gathering across the circular driveway leading from the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance to the West Wing lobby of the White House. What she had relived, during the short taxi ride, she continued to relive intensely, unmindful of the steady drizzle spattering upon her umbrella overhead.
It had been a horrible week of lies, lies and indecisiveness, and she was glad she had finally brought it to an end.
She had seen George Murdock only once after her return from Paris and his belated return from the extended visit to New York City.
Their meeting had taken place during the early evening of the day that the President’s impeachment had been introduced into the House of Representatives. It had not been her best evening, from the moment George had picked her up to the moment he had left her at her apartment door after dinner, because her mood had been at such odds with his. She had been stunned and unhappy over the fantastic attack on Dilman. George had been alive and gay because of his new high-paying job with the Zeke Miller chain of newspapers, which he had announced to her that night. She had hated his taking the job, somehow equating it with her misery over the threatened impeachment, and not even George’s naming an actual marriage date had improved her mood. She had desperately tried to evince some pretense of pleasure, but she had failed. She had hoped that a long evening together-she was relatively at liberty, with the President off on his tour of the Midwest, Far West, and Atlantic Coast-would work its miracle, restore her joy in the knowledge that she would soon be Mrs. Murdock, but then George had had time for only a short evening. He was, he had apologized, toiling nights as well as days now, to impress his new employers, anxious to get off on the right foot. Then, after he had hastened away to the Washington Citizen-American Building, and she had wearily returned to her living room, the orderly, well-regulated, promising personal world around her (which excluded the Dilman part of her world) had disintegrated completely (because Dilman could not be excluded from it, after all), and since that time, by choice, she had not seen George again.
The events of that unforgettable night still haunted and possessed her like a recurring hallucination. She had been too occupied with the last of her work during the hours before seeing George to inquire into every detail of the impeachment charges, to watch and hear the indictments read on television and radio, or read them in the newspapers. During her incessant typing, and hectic taking of telephone calls, she had become aware of several of the general charges. Something incomprehensible about the President having broken the law in his firing of Eaton, she had heard. Something ridiculous about his having frequent bouts of intoxication. Something utterly absurd about his having made improper advances toward that stupid, spoiled Sally Watson. But not until George had left her so early, and she had been able to kick off her shoes and be alone with the day’s newspapers, had she fully read all four of the Articles of Impeachment.
Then, before they had made their full impact upon her, her privacy had been invaded, and her apartment had teemed with officious and threatening men. She had found herself cornered, with warrants and subpoenas thrust under her nose. She had found herself being questioned by the stuttering Casper Wine and two other attorneys or investigators sent by the House Judiciary Committee, and she had protested against the Federal Marshal turning her premises inside out.
In desperation, she had tried to locate someone, anyone, to advise her during the barrage of questions, but there had been no one. Curiously, her first thought of succor had been the President, but he was traveling and out of reach. Then she had sought to reach George by telephone, but he was nowhere to be found. A last gasp had been a telephone call to her accountant, the one who made out her annual income tax, but neither his office nor residence number had brought an answer.
And when the inquisitors had departed at midnight, they had left her with the extra copy of the shocking confession or affidavit or whatever it was called that she had been forced to sign (for everything in it was true, and could not be denied under oath). They had left her with a subpoena to appear (if needed) for the prosecution against the President. They had left her without her precious diary (located, impounded, carried away by them over her tearful protests). Worst of all, they had left her with the wreckage of herself, her shattered self, and the first full realization of her unintended perfidy and disloyalty to the persecuted man who was her boss before he was her President.
It had been a horror night, with a more dreadful week to follow it, because then the self-questioning had come, and for a long time she had refused to face the one unacceptable answer. How had they known that she had once inadvertently monitored a private telephone call from the President to his son? How had they known that she alone, among outsiders, had knowledge that the President possessed a daughter who was passing for white? How had they known that the President’s wife had once been a patient in a sanitarium for alcoholics? How had they known-no one, no one on earth knew-that she kept a private diary and had recorded every event and bit of knowledge on its lined pages?
All of this information had been hers alone, unshared, as private as the date of her last menstrual period and the petite electric razor she used to remove the unattractive hair from her legs, and yet it had been known by someone, and now it would be known to the world. And then searching, searching, rummaging through the attic of memory, she had discovered the traitor, and first was disbelieving, and then unwilling to believe, unwilling to fasten the blame fully upon him.
Her dreadful sin had burned her with shame, until she was nearly mad. For, and there was no avoiding it any longer, she had committed the only real wickedness a confidential secretary could commit. She had committed Indiscretion.
And so she had exiled herself to her lonely apartment. For, difficult as it had been to face herself, it would have been completely impossible to face anyone else, either the one she had betrayed or the one who had betrayed her. She had lived her week of lies, and sent a message to the White House that she was unwell and would have to rest in bed for some time, and left a message for George not to call because her mother had fallen ill in Wisconsin and she was flying home to be at the bedside, and she would write.
Only one human being, and then it was by accident, had even had a peek into her private inferno. Late during the fifth afternoon of her absence from work, there had been a knock on the door. She had expected the grocer’s boy with some cold cuts, bread, and milk. Instead, to her dismay, she had found herself confronted by the solicitous Tim Flannery. He had apologized for dropping by unannounced, but he had been concerned, he said, as the President had been concerned, about her health. It amazed her that anyone decent, let alone the harassed President, gave a damn about her, now that her disloyalty to her boss was known.
She had meant to turn Tim Flannery away, and continue to nourish her self-pity and self-hate, when suddenly she had realized that she wanted someone near, anyone kind and good, and Tim Flannery was both. She had invited him inside, barely listening as he spoke of the difficult trip around the country, the untriumphant return, the President’s decision to fight back. The moment that he had lapsed into silence, she had bared her soul to him, determined to expiate her guilt. First haltingly, then with a torrent of words, she had revealed herself to him as she might to a father confessor. She had divulged everything, her weeks-ago drunken babblings to George Murdock, her next-day regrets lulled by her utter and reassuring trust in George, and she had gone on this way, unable to prove it was George who had given over so many of the President’s secrets to the enemy, but adding that she was almost certain of it, else why had the enemy so quickly knighted him with a reward?
“I meant no harm to the President, I swear on my mother and father I didn’t,” she had told Flannery. “But I’m still one of the ones who has hurt him most, I know that, I’m not denying it. What’ll I do, Tim? I can’t go back to my office now, I can’t face him, and even if I could, he’d probably throw me out, and have every right to.”
“Well, Edna, this is one of those times I can’t speak for him,” Flannery had said, “and I really-well-I don’t think it’s my place to advise you what to do next. It depends on how you feel about the President and-well-how you feel about Murdock. After all, George is the man you’ve been planning to marry. I wish I could help you. I can’t. But I believe you didn’t mean to do any harm. I believe that.”
After he had gone, she had felt better but was no less confused. Flannery had reminded her, as the modest sparkling crest of tiny diamonds on her finger reminded her, that she was engaged to be married. To whom, then, did a girl owe her loyalty-to a boss she had sold out (not that these truths about him would not have been uncovered elsewhere, anyway), or to a fiancé who had sold her out (if he had done so, which he probably had, but then, perhaps, he had felt he was doing it for both of them, and it was not wrong because he loved her so)?
She had slept on it, and wakened with it, this insoluble dilemma, and she had spent hours playing out little fantasy games, with herself the heroine.
In one version, she had married George (for his explanation had been satisfactory), and she belonged, and she had dozens of other married lady friends, and they had teas and played bridge, and she marketed and cooked for George, and dutifully attended the PTA meetings, and they had marvelous summer vacations each year, in Palm Beach or Atlantic City or Provincetown, the young and happy marrieds, she a doting mother and the wife of the eminent columnist.
In a frighteningly different version of her fantasy, she had refused to marry George (for his explanation had not been satisfactory) and, discharged by the President, or losing her position after the President’s impeachment conviction, she had been forced to take one of those gray mouse-on-the-wheel jobs in the Commerce Department or the Pentagon, and she was a spinster and would always be one, gulping her lunches in dank basement cafeterias where the thick crockery was never quite dried, going to Hecht Company sales every Saturday with the other “girls” who had taken to dyeing their graying hair, collecting her cheap reproductions from the National Gallery of Art, spending summer vacations with her parents outside Milwaukee, growing fat and resentful and old alone, alone, and bitterly remembering that she’d had her chances (one chance anyway) and turned her back on them (well, on it), and garrulously recollecting (even for those who had heard it before) that she had once been the personal secretary to two Presidents of the United States, one killed, the other crucified.
She had awakened late this morning fortified to act out her last deception in the week of lies. George Murdock, she had almost convinced herself, could not be at fault, and if he had been, it might have been a slip of the tongue like her own, and even if it had not been that, but had been intentional, there was nothing that George could have given to the enemy forces that would have damaged the President more than he had already been damaged by himself. So, that was settled.
But then, at one o’clock sharp, she had turned on the television set, as everyone in America was doing, meaning to watch only a little of it out of curiosity, expecting to see no more than a tedious enactment of the kind of quasi-technical or irrelevant or senile verbiage you came across in the Congressional Record every morning. Instead, she had found herself absorbed in the trappings and opening grandeur of a drama that gripped her as much as any historical drama by Shakespeare that she had ever seen. And then there was that horrible Zeke Miller spouting his foul calumnies, and her numbed absorption had become inflamed to the point of sickening wrath. And then there was Nat Abrahams, making public the invisible fifth Article of Impeachment, and her wrath had melted into sickening shame.
It was all of that week behind her, and the morning and early afternoon of this day, that she had relived and dwelt upon as she splashed across the White House north driveway to the entrance of the West Wing lobby.
Closing her soggy umbrella, shaking it twice, she went into the small hall, and, avoiding the Reading Room straight ahead, filled with so many journalists with whom she was acquainted, she turned to the open doorway that led into the cramped pressroom.
To her surprise, the narrow work enclosure was abandoned except for a single reporter in the rear, tilted back in his green chair, swallowing from a soft-drink bottle while he studied a yellow sheet of teletype. She took in the room that she had so infrequently entered. A cardboard sign, tacked to a square pillar, read: WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS. There were aisles to her left and right, and in the center of the room were the two rows of reporters’ cubbyholes, back to back, each slot separated from the adjoining ones by perforated, soundproof plywood dividers. She hesitated, wondering which one was the right one.
Then, with determination, she went up the left aisle, between the green wall-unevenly decorated with framed photographs, many faded or yellowing, of former press regulars and Presidents-and the line of nine cubicles on her right side. Reaching the sixth cubicle, peering into it as she had into the others, her eye caught a typewritten notice Scotch-taped upon the blue center partition. It read: “Poachers Stay Out! Private Property Of Miller Newspaper Association. R. Blaser. G. Murdock.”
Shoving the chair aside, she searched around the battered standard typewriter, telephone, spindle with its sheaf of impaled handouts, and reference books. At last, she located a memorandum pad upon which was imprinted, Quickie-Note. Tearing off a sheet, she found a pencil stub and wrote, “George: Sorry, it doesn’t fit. Edna.” Then, easing the engagement ring off her finger, she placed it atop the note that she had written, and then she hurried out of the press quarters.
Approaching the Reading Room, returning the White House policeman’s hearty greeting, she intended to turn left and duck into the corridor that led past Flannery’s office to her own office. But the entrance to the press secretary’s corridor was blocked by a crowding, heaving, elbowing mass of correspondents, and in their midst, his rust-red hair tangled, his tie yanked down from his open collar, in shirt-sleeves and suffering harassment, was Tim Flannery.
The reporters milling around him were noisy, vociferous, and profane. Although Flannery kept raising a hand to silence them, his tormentors continued to wave their pads and shout questions: “Tim, is the President watching the impeachment on television?… Hey, what did he think of Zeke Miller’s opener?… Did Dilman himself get his counsel to inject the Negro issue?… Say, Tim, how is he taking it?… What about a statement? What time is he making a statement?”
“Pipe down, will you?” Flannery bellowed. “Now listen, fellows, I only stuck my head out here because you’ve been driving my poor secretaries nuts with notes and questions that you know they can’t answer and I can’t either… wait a minute-quiet-listen-I told all of you every day last week, I told you yesterday, I told you this morning, and I’ll repeat it once more for those of you who need ear trumpets: the President, and correctly so, believes it would be improper to make any public statement about his impeachment trial while it is in progress. He may have something to say afterward, but right now-”
“Afterward will be too late, and nobody’ll want to listen!” someone croaked out, and Edna could see the speaker was the repulsive Reb Blaser. “Tim, you tell him, for his own sake,” Blaser went on, “he better take advantage of any free space while he can get it. Two weeks from now he won’t be able to get mention in a single paper unless he takes out want ads!”
Another voice shouted angrily, “Can it, Reb, will you? You’ll always have Jeff Davis to write about anyway!… Hey, Tim, what about-?”
There was a chorus of laughter, and then Flannery stilled it. “Boys-repeat and stet-no comment from the President until the trial is over. However, he will continue to make statements and give out releases on other matters of government. Right now, I have two or three routine-”
The press crowd had quieted, bringing pencils to their pads, as Flannery read the White House news of the day.
Edna Foster realized that she would have to take the long route to her office, or whoever’s office it was by now. She started across the lobby, and had just passed the heavy center table adorned by the White House police pistol-shooting trophy, when she heard her name called aloud.
Slowing, she turned her head in time to observe George Murdock, decked out in an expensive smoke-gray suit she had not seen before, his pitted face beaming, as he hastened around the table to intercept her.
“Honey,” he said, grasping her forearms, “what a sight for sore eyes. Why didn’t you call me? When did you get back?”
The obligatory scene, she told herself. There was no use trying to escape it. A phrase from the trial crossed her mind, and she altered it for George and herself: kill the beast before it-even if it-means the end of your own life.
“Edna, when did you get back?” he repeated.
“I’ve never been away, George.”
“Never been away?” he echoed, puzzled, slowly releasing her arms.
“That’s right. I was here all the time. I didn’t want you to know, because I didn’t want to see you.”
“Edna, what in the devil do you mean-you didn’t want to see me?”
“I mean I want nothing to do with a person I can’t trust. You took what I told you in confidence, you sold it to Zeke Miller in return for a filthy job, and you are as responsible as anyone for the President being on trial, and that makes me ill-and you make me ill.”
At first, from the crimson hurt on his face, she thought that he would deny everything. To her surprise, he did not. He said, “Look, sure, but there was no question of breaking trust-I’ve never double-crossed anyone in my life-and you, I wouldn’t-” Suddenly he was aware that the conference around Tim Flannery was breaking up, and his colleagues were spreading about the room. “Edna,” he said urgently, “we can’t talk here. Let’s go out for something and I’ll explain-”
“I’m not going anywhere with you, now or ever.”
Pained, he dropped his voice low. “Look, honey, you promised to help me hold my old job or get a new one by tipping me off in advance to any news-and I thought, maybe I was mistaken, but I thought what you told me that night was meant to be in the nature of offering me something I could use-to help both of us. Well, I was just going to use a little, and that’s all I did use, but Reb and the Miller staff, they added two and two and came up with more. My own part in it was next to nothing.”
She would give no ground. “If your part was next to nothing, how come Zeke Miller paid you off so handsomely? For next to nothing?”
“Honey,” he whispered, “the ammunition that maybe they got from me, that I hinted at, was practically a dud compared to what they had found out and stored up already. Miller, he was just being grateful that I-I was on the side of people who want to see this country run right, that’s all. You don’t know him, Edna. Miller is actually a generous man beneath that political bombast. Anyway, I really believe it, that stuff about the President, and I really believe I’ve done something good for my country. Is that wrong? It’s all out now. And you know it as well as I do. Dilman isn’t fit to be our head of state. So be sensible-”
“Be sensible? For what? So we can be married, and you can have a cheap source of hot news for-”
“Stop it, Edna. Dilman’ll be out on his butt in two weeks, and you’ll be out of a job, so what kind of news source will you be? I want to marry you because I want to, that’s all. I can afford it now, and I want to be a family man-”
“Well, I can’t afford it now, because you’ve cost me too much.”
She saw him glancing off nervously, and then she became aware that Reb Blaser was hovering nearby, pretending disinterest. She was perversely pleased with George’s discomfort. She placed the soggy umbrella under her arm and started to go around him.
“Wait a minute,” he said, attempting to block her, “we’re not through.”
“Oh yes, we are.”
“You mean you’re choosing Black Sambo over me?” he said tightly.
“I’m choosing to go back to work for a man who’s trying his best, if he’ll have me, rather than live with a-a-with whatever low, slimy thing you’ve become. Good-bye, George. You and Blaser go on writing good lynch stories. I’ll be watching for them in print. Only don’t bother to call me ever again, especially not when you can’t sleep nights.”
“Edna, for God’s sake-”
She heard no more. She rushed out of the lobby. In the corridor, she was pleased with only one thing: that she was tearless.
Entering her office, she could see that nothing had changed except that her swivel chair was now occupied by the scrawny colored girl, Diane Fuller, who was busy on the telephone. As Edna put down her purse, propped her umbrella in a corner, and took off her raincoat, she realized that Diane was regarding her with popeyed disbelief, as if she were an apparition from another world.
Diane Fuller said, “Yes, Mr. President,” into the telephone. Then hanging up, rising, fumbling for her shorthand pad and pencils, she nervously said, “Hello, Miss Foster. I somehow didn’t expect you.”
Edna reached the desk. “Where are you going?”
“Inside. There’s a meeting about to start. The President wants me to take it down.”
“Well, you never mind.” She held out her hands for the pad and pencils. “I’m ready to go back to work.”
Diane Fuller clutched the pad and pencils. “I-I don’t know if-”
“I don’t know either, Diane,” she agreed, “but I intend to find out.” Firmly, she removed pad and pencils from the colored girl’s fingers. “You stand by for a while, take the phone messages. If I remain inside over five minutes you can go back to your office in the East Wing. If I come flying right out, you’ve got yourself a permanent position right here.”
Without bothering to check her appearance in the mirror, Edna Foster opened the heavy door to the Oval Office and walked into the room. At first, as she advanced toward the Buchanan desk, she saw him in profile, and she realized that President Dilman was unaware of her entrance. He stood behind the desk, his attention entirely fixed on the television screen. The volume was turned low, and not until Edna reached the desk could she make out the words spoken by the voice coming from the television set, that of Nat Abrahams, as it gently chided the House for having included Article II as one of the impeachment charges.
Reaching the desk, Edna Foster coughed discreetly. At the sound, President Dilman’s head jerked toward her. His brow contracted slightly, but there was no astonishment in his reaction. He turned off the television set.
“Good afternoon, Miss Foster,” he said. “Are you fully recovered?”
“I’ve been ill, Mr. President. But now, yes, I am fully recovered. Whether or not I am well enough to work, that’s entirely up to you. I do feel-I feel I owe you an honest explanation-”
Dilman fussed with the papers on his desk. “No further explanation needed. I heard the whole thing from Tim Flannery at lunch today. He finally confessed to seeing you, and took it upon himself to repeat what you had told him.”
She was thankful that Tim had made at least a part of her task easier. Still, she felt that she must speak for herself. “Then all I can add-whether it means anything to you or not-but I must say it for my own sake-it’s this-I’ve had to make an important personal decision, and I’ve made it. Sooner or later, I guess, everyone is called on to choose sides. There’s no avoiding it. Well-not that it matters to you any more-but I am on your side, whatever happens, and I won’t tolerate or have anything to do with anyone who is not on your side. I’d like to work for you, not because it’s the most rewarding secretarial job in the world, but because, like Mr. Abrahams, I want to do my part. I know I’m not being fair to you. You have every reason to tell me to leave. If you do, I won’t blame you a bit. I know in your shoes I’d-”
“Miss Foster,” the President said, with a trace of impatience, “this is a busy day. Please sit down and let’s go to work.”
Her heart, its beat momentarily suspended, or so it seemed to her, suddenly resumed its thumping. She wanted to embrace him. She murmured, “Thank you, Mr. President,” and quickly occupied her accustomed place. The President pushed a button on the intercom, and spoke something to his engagements secretary.
Almost immediately, Shelby Lucas’ door opened, and the Director of the CIA, Montgomery Scott, entered, unzipping his portfolio. He was followed by General Jaskawich. Both men greeted the President, and then Scott saluted Edna, and Jaskawich warmly introduced himself to her. Edna, whose years around the Senate and the White House under T. C. had made her incapable of hero worship, found herself awkward and thrilled in the presence of Jaskawich. She had read that he had been sworn in as the President’s new military aide, and somehow, she had expected that he would be as aloof and remote as the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Instead, as if refusing to take his rank, uniform, and orbital flights seriously, he was as friendly and natural as, well, as Tim Flannery. To Edna, it was as if one of those stone statues in Lafayette Square had leaped down from the saddle to enlist itself on their side.
“Where shall we sit, Mr. President?” Scott asked.
“You sit here, right next to Miss Foster,” Dilman said. “General Jaskawich, you pull up a chair next to me, so we’ll be facing them.”
“I’ve been watching television,” Jaskawich said, lifting a chair and moving it to the indicated spot. “If ever I laid eyes on an animated cuspidor, I did today, watching that Zeke Miller. But you know, I think your Mr. Abrahams is spitting him right back in the eye.”
“Do you think so?” Dilman asked. “It’s difficult for me to judge.”
“You may lose the first round by a shade in the Senate,” said Jaskawich, “but you may have won it by a mile around the country.”
Dilman nodded thoughtfully, then suddenly pulled up his swivel chair and again buzzed his engagements secretary. He studied Jaskawich and Scott, and then he said, “They’ll be coming in now… When I think of what we’re up against this second, that show on television seems about as important as a cartoon short for children. Mr. Scott, you’ve got to lay it on the line.”
A door opened and closed, and at once, with the arrival of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the atmosphere of the Oval Office seemed to become highly charged. Secretary Carl Steinbrenner, embodying in his every movement the irreproachable solidity of the self-made successful aircraft manufacturer, exchanged guarded courtesies with the others, while General Pitt Fortney, after flinging his braid-trimmed cap and military trench coat on a sofa, strode forward with a more aggressive helloing.
“Well, now, Mr. President,” drawled General Fortney, settling himself beside the Secretary of Defense, “what’s so pressing that Carl and I have to come hopping over here in the middle of the day? Far as I could learn, everything that’s been coming in this afternoon on our restricted communications wires and the command lines might as well have been delivered by doves. All’s pretty much at peace around the world-no rumbles, except for that little brush-fire conflict down on our own Senate floor maybe.” He chuckled. “Guess that’s pretty much outside our province.”
Dilman appeared to endure this calmly, and then, gripping the edge of his desk, ignoring General Fortney, he addressed himself wholly to Steinbrenner. “Gentlemen, I summoned you because there is a very real and grave crisis developing abroad. As of and until yesterday, Mr. Scott and I have kept you fully apprised as to the situation in and around Baraza, and-”
“Oh, that,” General Fortney interrupted with a snort.
Dilman stared at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Yes, that,” he said. “So long as there is a place on earth where the Soviet Union, secretly or overtly, is prepared to challenge the independence of a democratic government, no matter how large or small, to which we have pledged support, that is a place with which we must concern ourselves. Baraza is such a place. We persuaded Baraza to relax its guard against Communism, as a barter for Russia’s good will and promise of peace. Now there is ample evidence that Russia is about to break its promise by helping overthrow President Amboko. Our responsibility is to see that Amboko is not overthrown.”
“Mr. President,” said Secretary Steinbrenner, “based on the information that I have seen up to and through yesterday, it would seem extremely doubtful that Premier Kasatkin has any real intention of fomenting rebellion in Africa.”
“That was yesterday,” said Dilman. “Today’s another day, and the additional information we’ve been waiting for came in late this morning… Mr. Scott, repeat right here and now what you told me an hour ago, the latest intelligence that just came in to CIA.”
Montgomery Scott had emptied his portfolio, and shuffling the papers in his hands, he looked gloomily at Steinbrenner and General Fortney. “Unhappily, gentlemen, the prospects for maintaining peace in Baraza are deteriorating with each updated report. Our last intelligence from our agents in Baraza, you recollect, we rated as being from a 4 to 3 in dependability, meaning fairly reliable. Enough for us to become concerned, and to suggest that we investigate the situation further. We have investigated further. It has cost us the life of an outstanding CIA agent to obtain today’s report, and this one we have evaluated at 2, only a shade under positively reliable, and that makes the situation sufficiently serious to warrant consideration of military countermeasures.”
“Monty,” said the Secretary of Defense, “what’s in that last report?”
“You’ll find a complete copy on your desk when you get back to the Pentagon,” said Scott. “What’s in it? Briefly, the information that Soviet Russian officers are just outside the Barazan frontier, mainly in the high country, whipping together and preparing a Russian-sized division-that would make it somewhat smaller than our divisions-of native Barazan Communists. Maybe as many as 13,000 men. The infantrymen are equipped largely with American small arms, M14 rifles, AR-10 Armalite rifles, 3.5-inch rocket-launching bazookas. However, most of this Communist division is both mechanized and armored, having been supplied with Soviet-manufactured tanks, mortars, Gaz jeeps, medium artillery. They have even hurriedly constructed several hidden airfields, and delivered a limited number of MIG-17 jet fighters and some twin-engined light jet bombers. We know that the buildup and equipping of this native Communist force is nearing completion, and all that remains is to find out precisely when-at what date-the rebels intend to strike. We expect to discover this date sometime between tomorrow and the end of the week. Several of Kwame Amboko’s own security agents have infiltrated the enemy camp, and if one of them gets out alive, Amboko hopes to relay his vital information to us by then.”
Steinbrenner’s attention went to Dilman. “Do you trust Kwame Amboko, Mr. President?”
“Completely,” said Dilman.
“I don’t,” snapped General Fortney. “He’s sure to come up with something alarming, merely to drag us into that swampland of his and use us to liquidate his political opposition. Mr. President-”
“General,” Dilman interrupted, “I trust him… Go on, Mr. Scott.”
The CIA Director patted his Vandyke beard. “Of course, the CIA will also evaluate Amboko’s sources, as we evaluate the findings of our own agents. If Amboko’s findings match ours in rating, are found to be nearly positively reliable, I am afraid you will have to act swiftly.”
Chafing, General Fortney exploded, “Wait a minute there, hold your horses, Scott! You trying to egg us on into a shooting war, based solely on some inciting literature you double-domes over at CIA are producing? Not on your life!” He leaned on the desk, across from Dilman. “Mr. President, there’s too much at stake to put our country’s future completely in the hands of CIA. There’re plenty of us who’ve been keeping an eye on Mr. Scott’s Spy Palace over in Langley. What do we see? A bunch of collegiate amateurs. Why didn’t CIA tell us Red China was coming into the Korean War? Where was the CIA when we fell on our faces in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba? How come they let us fly U-2 planes over Russia when we had a big summit conference pending? Is that the outfit you want us to listen to-to listen to and then send us charging into Baraza?”
“Pardon me, Mr. President, if I may reply,” said Montgomery Scott, maintaining his composure with difficulty. “General Fortney, I daresay the CIA has done as much as, if not more than, the Pentagon to safeguard this nation and its interests. We gave you advance intelligence on the Arbenz gang in Guatemala, we told you about Sputnik before it went up, we predicted and alerted you to the rise of both Khrushchev and then Kasatkin, we supplied the information that has so far enabled us to thwart the Communists in India and Brazil. I suggest you pay heed to our CIA intelligence on Baraza, although I am not suggesting you act until our report is confirmed by Amboko’s own statement as to the date of the expected Communist attack.”
General Fortney scowled, muttering to himself, as he fingered the four stars on his right shoulder.
“We have two courses of action,” said Dilman. “Either we sit back and wait for the Communists to make their actual attack, or we anticipate it and prepare for them, holding a mobile force in full battle readiness, and letting Soviet Russia know we mean business and will brook no evidence of bad faith. I don’t like the first course, sitting back and waiting, because then if we have to move, we may be too late, and it may cost us too many American lives to recover lost African territory. I prefer the second course. I want a full division alerted and ready to move on fifteen minutes’ notice, if required. Have you such a force, Secretary Steinbrenner?”
“I have,” said Steinbrenner, moving restively in his chair. “There is only one modernized force I can recommend that could swiftly and economically, yet successfully, pull off an operation of this kind. It has artillery battalions together with a guided missile, our new Demi John, and it has units incorporating the latest airborne cannon, and mobile rocket platforms with their movable launching ramps, along with standard, air-transported infantry units, and fighter-bombers, to give us diversified airborne firepower. This group is trained for speed and flexibility. It cuts in fast, sets up faster, opens full blast, and then zooms away before the enemy can zero in on it. This is our elite and most advanced division, Mr. President-you know-the Dragon Flies.”
“The Dragon Flies,” repeated Dilman thoughtfully. “Excellent. I want them put on battle alert.”
“Mr. President-!” It was General Fortney again, his scarred face glowering. He stood up and demanded heatedly, “Isn’t anyone in this office going to listen to some reason? Do you mean to say that it’s worth the risk of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, worth sending American soldiers into some black hole that isn’t on half the maps, so’s we can uphold a piece of parchment that says they’re a democracy when everyone knows they’re only primitive tribesmen who haven’t even learned how to read yet? Baraza isn’t worth the loss of a single American life, not one, let alone thousands, and if such a war spreads, maybe millions. Only yesterday, when I was talking to the Secretary of State-”
“General Fortney,” said Dilman, “you must be mistaken. There is no Secretary of State.”
Momentarily, Fortney lost his poise, stood bewildered, then recovered his equilibrium. “Okay,” he said shortly, “let the Senate settle that. I’m not interested in politics. I simply had to see Eaton about some old diplomatic problems-whom else was I to see? Anyway, I can’t condone any rash decision that will commit my most highly trained force, the best-equipped military outfit in the United States, the most technically proficient, to some unimportant jungle hell spot. If you want me to make ready a couple of ordinary infantry divisions, as a token gesture to the AUP-”
“General Fortney,” said Dilman firmly, “I want to make ready the Dragon Flies.”
“Mr. President, you can’t do that,” General Fortney insisted emphatically. “Do I have to spell it out for you because”-he looked disdainfully at the others in the room-”because no one else here has the guts to spell it out for you?” He stared at Dilman once more. “Okay, I’ve got the guts. I’ll spell it out, I sure will.”
General Fortney’s cold eyes seemed to fasten harder on Dilman. His thin lips by now seemed bloodless. He said, “No matter what you’ve heard, do you know what the Dragon Flies are, what they really are? They are a fighting force that is 100 per cent-not 99 per cent not 89 per cent, but 100 per cent-Caucasian white. This is a division composed from top to bottom, from Lieutenant General C. Jarrett Rice at the top to the lowest one-striper on the bottom, of militarily educated, all-white, fighting veterans. And in case this gets anyone’s dander up here, it is not all-white for discriminatory reasons-if Rice and I could’ve included colored boys, we’d have welcomed them-this group is what it is because when it was created, developed, and ever since then, it required fighting men with advanced technical know-how, good education, plenty of savvy, to handle this newfangled complicated airborne rocketry hardware, and we’ve found such men only among the white troops and white population. That’s the way it worked out, and that’s the way it is.”
Dilman’s expression neither evinced surprise nor conceded compromise. Not a muscle in his dark face moved. He waited.
“Now you know the military facts of the situation,” General Fortney continued relentlessly, “and knowing them, maybe you’ll have some second thoughts. Because I tell you, Mr. President, it’s my duty to tell you-you send that 100 per cent white elite corps of ours into that 100 per cent black hellhole, send our white lads in to fight and die for a pack of ignorant tribesmen and savages, and, Mr. President, you’ll have yourself a nationwide rebellion on your hands right here at home. You think the Congress of this country, or the people out there, will sit still and allow such an action for one solitary second? You bet your life they won’t… Look, don’t think I’m not considering you, too. You’ve got yourself enough problems with that impeachment trial under way. Why ask for more? Why try to commit suicide? Even one hint in public that you’re putting the Dragon Flies on combat alert for Africa, and you’re politically dead and buried. It’ll look just one way-like you are absolutely determined to sacrifice only American whites for African blacks, all the while keeping your Negro brethren who are in uniform safe at home-”
“General Fortney, if I may interrupt, sir.” It was General Jaskawich speaking for the first time. “If we are being absolutely frank, sir, why not go a bit deeper? I think it is well known in military circles that the Dragon Flies are today an exclusively white force because that’s the way you and your Pentagon command willed it to be ten years ago. If you had permitted young Negro recruits to have the same advanced education, technical training, military opportunity as those of us who are white, I venture to say that 30 per cent of that force would be colored today. I think the blame, sir, falls not only on your shoulders but on the whole country. Now we must all face the consequences.”
General Fortney shook an angry finger at Jaskawich. “Young man, don’t you try to tell me what’s going on right here on terra firma, because I’m the only one with enough military experience to know. You stay way out there in outer space where you belong, and leave the real problems down here to men who have to tend to them.” He turned upon Dilman. “Mr. President, you listen to me, for your own sake if not the country’s. You let me alert a couple of substantially Negro outfits, or evenly mixed ones. They’ll do well enough, and then we can stall along until we see what the future brings-”
For Edna Foster, absorbed in the verbal give and take, as well as her own pothooks on the shorthand pad, the sum total of Fortney’s resistance gradually became clearer. He was trying to stall for time until the impeachment trial ended. Then Dilman would be out, and Eaton would be in. Eaton would never commit any racially mixed American divisions, let alone an all-white battalion, to action in distant Baraza. She wondered: Does the President perceive this? She had her answer almost instantaneously.
President Dilman was on his feet. “General, if it is your hope that the near future will bring a more reasonable white President into this office, you may be right, but I cannot permit you to wait for him or for his orders. Nor will I endanger our integrity by allowing the country to wait. Right now, it will be my orders that count. I want the Dragon Flies readied.”
Steinbrenner was standing. “Of course, Mr. President-”
“If you insist,” General Fortney said bitterly to Dilman. “But-”
“I don’t merely insist,” said Dilman, “I command it, I command it now.”
After Fortney, Steinbrenner, and Scott had gone, there were three of them left alone.
“Brassy bastard,” said Jaskawich.
“Never mind him,” said Dilman. “What’s next, Miss Foster?”
She came out of her chair to take up the engagement holder. Her eyes traveled down the card. “At five you are seeing Mr. Poole and Mrs. Hurley, and at-oh, before that, in fact, almost any minute, you’re scheduled to go to Walter Reed Hospital-”
Dilman slapped his desk. “That’s right. I want to get over there… General Jaskawich, I’d like you to draft a short note to Soviet Ambassador Rudenko. Let him know that we have a good idea of what’s going on around Baraza, and the part his country is playing in that skulduggery, and that we are taking necessary steps to prevent any Communist takeover. Just rough it out, and let me see it later… Very well, Miss Foster, better have the car brought around to the South Portico. I want to get right over to Walter Reed Hospital. This is something I want to do-while I’m still President of the United States.”
IT was the first full day during which Otto Beggs’s body was not racked by excessive postoperative spasms and his mind was not fogged by pain-killing drugs. It was a day during which he could think clearly. This lucidity he had at first welcomed as a blessing, but now he could see it was leading him steadily toward morbidity and dejection.
An hour ago, a nurse had been in to roll up the head of his hospital bed so that he could more easily look over his splinted and bandaged right leg, suspended in traction, and divert himself with the doings on the television screen.
Every network channel at this time carried the same picture: Nat Abrahams, on the Senate floor, methodically attempting to refute the lurid charges brought against President Dilman by Zeke Miller, spokesman for the House of Representatives. For a viewer who found his own condition and situation more pitiable than that of the President, the on-the-screen coverage of the momentous trial provided little diversion or escape from his increasing depression.
By now, Otto Beggs’s attention had drifted entirely away from the screen to turn inward on himself and his own trial. Automatically his thumb pressed down on the volume key of the remote control unit beside him on the bed. He clicked the key several times, until the sound of Nat Abrahams’ voice had become inaudible and only the image of him on the screen ahead remained.
Wearily, Otto Beggs turned his head on the pillow and stared out through the rain-streaked window at the limited square that was his view of the 113 acres of the Walter Reed General Hospital and Army Medical Center, the compound which had become his world and prison. Although the steady downpour had abated by late afternoon, the rain still fell in thin slanting lines, creating a gray shrouded and vaporous effect that obscured any view he might enjoy of the outdoors. Directly below him, marking the hospital entrance, was the high-spouting fountain, centered in the now muddy flower bed, and Beggs could make out the top of the fountain’s geyser as it reached up to meet the weakening rainfall.
Of his treatment in Walter Reed General Hospital he could not complain. He was not even sure that he belonged here. He knew that its doors were open to career soldiers, ranging from generals, like Pershing (who had made it his home in the seven years before his death) and MacArthur, to ordinary privates. He knew that Presidents like Eisenhower and T. C., and even Dilman, had come here, and that Cabinet members like George Marshall and John Foster Dulles and Arthur Eaton had been treated here. He did not know what had made him eligible for the free treatment and care. Unless it was that he had once been in the service. Unless it was his Medal of Honor. Unless it was that he had saved a President’s life. This much he did know-he had heard it from the talkative anesthetist-that the consulting orthopedic surgeons, brought down from Johns Hopkins, had been ordered by President Dilman himself. Beggs had accepted knowledge of this special treatment with mixed feelings. Instinctively, he had been grateful for the President’s unpublicized assistance. At the same time, he had not liked the idea of being indebted to anyone, let alone Dilman, especially in this period of helplessness. Yet, when his head was clearer, as it was today, he realized that Dilman was the one who was really trying to pay off a debt.
Leaving the window, his eyes took in the close hospital room that had come to resemble a hothouse. Among the elaborate banks of flowers, from everyone, from his onetime neighborhood friends, the Schearers, from his brother-in-law Austin and family, from the proprietor of the Walk Inn, from the White House correspondents, from Miss Foster, and dozens more from dozens of others, the least ostentatious was the modest pot of violets placed on the medicine table next to his chrome water pitcher. Gertrude, the other day, examining and impressed by the cards of the various senders, had found no card among the violets. “Who’s this little thing from, Otto?” she had asked. He had replied, “I don’t know, Gertie. Crazy, but it came without a card attached.”
Of course there had been a card attached, addressed simply to Mr. Otto Beggs and not, correctly, to Mr. Otter Beggs. The card had read: “You are the bravest man in the world. Will you and the Lord Jesus ever forgive me? Ruby.”
He had tried to trace Ruby Thomas through the card. He could learn only that the order had come to a Washington florist in an envelope postmarked Los Angeles, along with the card pinned to a ten-dollar bill and the typewritten request that whatever the money would pay for in a flowering plant be sent to Mr. Otto Beggs.
In his early drugged fantasies he had hunted Ruby down and punished her, or meant to punish her, for the fantasies had always ended with his embracing her nude, flawless, coffee-colored body. In moments of clarity he had wondered if he would ever see her again and, if their paths crossed, how he would behave.
Then, slowly, in his recuperation, Ruby had receded to some hazy dream of make-believe, and Gertrude, less sharp-featured, less baggy, better groomed, and more kindly than at any time since their early married years, and ten-year-old Ogden, and eight-year-old Otis, as awed by their father as when they were younger, had taken over and dominated his real world. They had visited him early every evening, and every few days the boys proudly presented him with a cardboard box of newspaper clippings which they had cut out themselves or received from friends, clippings proclaiming the heroism of Otto Beggs. The seven boxes of clippings stood piled against the wall. Except for the first box, which he had undone to find out what was inside, he had not bothered to open them. He was pleased to have these from his sons, but the contents no longer interested him as once they might have.
For Otto Beggs, each clipping was not a new merit badge proclaiming his courage, but an obituary. He could not bear to read the last of himself that he would ever see in print. For Beggs, the assassin’s bullet had, to all intents and purposes, ended his useful life. While Admiral Oates had considered the surgery a great success-because his smashed right leg had been repaired and not amputated-Otto Beggs had considered the medical victory a hollow one. His leg had been saved, true; but for a man of action, for a Secret Service agent, it was no longer an effective limb but a paralyzed appendage that could do no more than give him the appearance of being a man, when he was, in fact, a cripple. Admiral Oates had assured him that he would be able to walk under his own power, with the aid of a crutch or cane, and he would be able to drive a specially modified car. But never in his remaining years would he be able to run, jump, crouch, to be the Otto Beggs of West Coast gridirons and Korean battlefields again. Or even the Otto Beggs who had sprinted toward the President, brought him down with a flying tackle, taking the assassin’s bullet and answering with the fatal shot of his own. Gone forever the whole Beggs. Left merely the half Beggs.
“Hey there,” he heard the colored registered nurse say to him. “What you got your face so crunched up for in that nasty look? You in pain?”
She was offering him the tiny paper cup with its pink pills, and a glass of water.
“I’m okay,” he said.
“Well, take these anyway. Good for digestion. Hey, is this a new fad, looking at television without the sound? You should turn it up. Whole ward’s seeing and listening. That smart lawyer fellow for the President, he’s giving back as good as he got. He’s closing his speech.”
Beggs washed the pills down, and after the nurse had gone, his thumb manipulated the remote control, and the volume came on full blast.
On the screen, the President’s attorney, Abrahams, had paused. The camera closed in on his worn countenance. In measured sentences, he began to speak once more.
Dutifully, because all the others on the hospital floor were listening, Otto Beggs watched and listened, too.
“Honorable gentlemen of the Senate, allow me to conclude my opening address to you by quoting from the words spoken over a century ago by that legendary member of Congress upon whom the opposing manager lavished so much affection earlier in the day,” said Abrahams. “I refer to Thaddeus Stevens, and to his last anguished tirade before the Senate, after that Senate had rejected his demand for conviction and had acquitted President Andrew Johnson.
“Gentlemen, I quote Thaddeus Stevens’ bitter words following that other trial. ‘After mature reflection and thorough examination of ancient and modern history, I have come to the fixed conclusion that neither in Europe nor America will the Chief Executive of a nation be again removed by peaceful means. If he retains the money and the patronage of the government it will be found, as it has been found, stronger than the law and impenetrable to the spear of justice. If tyranny becomes intolerable the only resource will be found in the dagger of Brutus. God grant that it may never be used.’ ”
Abrahams seemed to weigh this, then he appeared to address the camera lens and its unseen audience. “Gentlemen, these are words worth pondering tonight. For little could Thaddeus Stevens, that champion of the colored people, yet enemy of the executive branch of government, have known how a future generation would distort his warning to its own ends. For today, at the bar of justice, stands a Chief Executive of the United States, unarmed with money or the power of dispensing government patronage, weakened by unconstitutional laws that have been devised to do him harm-today he stands alone to oppose the intolerable tyranny of his accusers, who, literally, have attempted to wrest control of his office from him, and have defied his necessary resistance by wielding, figuratively, the dagger of Brutus.
“Yes, honorable gentlemen of the Senate, this trial of impeachment, instigated by members of the House as a vengeful means of slaying a lawful leader so that he may be replaced by one of their own choosing, this trial of impeachment is the true dagger of Brutus. The blade has been drawn from its sheath today, by the opposition, for all the world to see. With its challenge to reason, to law and order, to democracy itself, the naked dagger of Brutus is being flourished, ready to be plunged again. I entreat you, I implore you, to heed the plea of Thaddeus Stevens: ‘God grant that it may never be used.’… Thank you for the courtesy of your attention.”
Otto Beggs’s thumb pressed the remote control key, and the television screen went dark.
Disturbed-for he suffered the curious sensation that a second assassin, weapon bared, was approaching the President and he was helpless this time to intervene-Beggs reached for his package of cigarettes on the medicine table. As he fumbled for it, he was surprised to see Gertrude, one arm around Ogden, the other around Otis, standing in the doorway. She was in her best dress, the boys spick-and-span in their going-out suits, and their unexpected appearance at this time of the day, before visiting hours, made no sense.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, trying to sit upright, but pinned down by his suspended leg. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“Otto,” Gertrude called out, “are you wide-awake-?”
“What do you mean-am I wide-awake? Of course I am.”
She was mysteriously beckoning to someone in the hospital corridor, and then she came into the room, pushing the boys before her. “Otto, this is a special occasion.”
Puzzled, he watched the sudden parade of Very Important Persons through the doorway into his hospital room. First came Secretary of the Treasury Moody, and then Chief Hugo Gaynor and Lou Agajanian, and then came Admiral Oates and Tim Flannery and Edna Foster, and finally, disregarding protocol, preceded and followed by more of the Secret Service men, came President Douglass Dilman.
The room was filled with smiling faces, and Otto Beggs’s head swam.
“What’s going on here? What’s going on?” he demanded worriedly.
President Dilman had circled the bed to the right side, and even he was smiling, which was incredible to Beggs, considering the impeachment trial he had just been watching.
“How are you doing, Mr. Beggs?” the President asked.
“I’m okay-I guess-” Beggs gestured in bewilderment at the roomful of people. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
President Dilman nodded, digging both hands into his coat pockets, and extracting a black box with one hand and a small sheet of paper with the other.
“Mr. Beggs, I hope you can endure this brief and belated ceremony, well overdue and well deserved by you.” The President unfolded the sheet of paper. “Permit me to read the citation. ‘To Mr. Otto Beggs, veteran agent of the White House Secret Service Detail: At the recommendation of the President of the United States, and the Secretary of the Treasury, I hereby bestow upon you the highest award the government can give to a civilian, the Exceptional Civilian Service Honor, which is reserved for those who demonstrate outstanding courage and voluntarily risk personal safety, in the face of danger, while performing assigned duties, and whose performance results in direct benefit to other employees of the Department and to the government. Otto Beggs, for outstanding bravery in shielding the person of the President while under fire from an assassin’s gun, I do here and now cite you for your action and present you with this gold medal, gold lapel button, and certificate testifying that your country has bestowed this honor upon you.’ ”
Tears welled in Beggs’s eyes, and he was too choked to reply. He had the gold medal, and then the President’s hand, and he tried to smile at the applause, and at the photographers who swarmed into the room to shoot pictures of the bedside ceremony.
After posing with the President, and then with Gertrude and the boys, and then with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chief, Beggs fell back against his pillows exhausted. The President held up his hand.
“Mr. Beggs,” he said, “you are now a unique American hero, the sole citizen in our land who is the possessor of both the nation’s highest military award and its highest civilian award. One might imagine there is no place higher for you to go. However, it is our belief that there is much more you deserve, and can attain, in your chosen career. The Secret Service is waiting for your return to active duty, Mr. Beggs, although not at the same old stand. I am pleased to announce your promotion, effective as of today, to the position of Chief of the White House Detail. Our good friend, Lou Agajanian, is moving on to New York, and you, Mr. Beggs, will have his responsibility, his desk. We need you. Get back to us as soon as you can!”
Beggs, tears trickling down his cheeks, whispered, “I’ll be there, you bet. Thank you, Mr. President.”
The room was emptying now, and Gertrude herded the boys against the wall and held back, as the President went to join Flannery, who was waiting for him.
It was then, as Dilman and Flannery were about to leave, that Beggs remembered something he had meant to tell the President.
“Mr. President,” he called out. “May I speak to you for a moment, sir?”
“Why, yes, of course-”
Dilman nodded for Flannery to go outside, and then he came back to the bed and stood beside Beggs.
“Mr. President, I just have to tell you one incident I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” Beggs said in an undertone. “Zeke Miller himself, and some fellow named Wine, they were here last night. They sort of sneaked in. They tried to get me embittered about being crippled, tried to work me up against you-but what they were really after was a signed affidavit from me for the trial-a statement confessing that I saw you with Miss Wanda Gibson, behaving like they pretended you behaved-and claiming that I saw you drinking from time to time-and that I saw you, overheard you, at Trafford University talking to your son about the Turnerites. Know what I told them?”
President Dilman waited, silently.
Beggs said, “I told them to get the hell out of here before I knocked their crooked heads together and dropped them both out the window.” Solemnly, he stared at the leg suspended in traction. “You see, Mr. President, men like that don’t understand the first thing about the Secret Service. If they did, they’d have known my responsibility is to protect the President of the United States from every harm including assassination, even if it’s character assassination. I guess they didn’t know I was still on duty-and always will be. That’s all I wanted to assure you of, Mr. President.”
It was the President’s turn, Beggs could see, to be emotionally moved, much as Dilman was trying to hide it.
“Thank you, Mr. Beggs.”
“Nothing to thank me for. Like I said-I was doing my job.”
The moment the President was gone, Beggs wanted to be alone, but there were Gertrude and Otis and Ogden rushing toward him. Gertrude was over him, smothering him with her thin kisses, sniffling and wheezing, while the boys fought to clasp his free hand in panting joy. All Beggs could find to say to Gertrude, keep mumbling to her, was that now, with his promotion, there would be a sizable raise in salary, and now she could start hunting seriously for a different house, something in the suburbs where the Schearers lived, a house in a neighborhood that would make her happier. And she kept saying that it wasn’t a snob neighborhood that she would look for, only a larger place, a ranch-style house with sun, something roomier, that offered better surroundings for the boys. And he kept saying, wearily, that the task was in her department, and he was sure she would find something, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt if she left some time for herself to shop for a new dress or two, maybe that wouldn’t hurt.
When the nurse pried them apart, and led Gertrude and the children out of the hospital room, Otto Beggs was thankful to be by himself at last. There was a good deal to think about, the gold medal in his hand, its luster dimmed and its size diminished only by his bandaged hulking leg in traction. There was that, and the new executive job with its higher salary, and the new house in a classier neighborhood, and the family with their new respect and new clothes, and yet his mind touched each of these wonders briefly, then impatiently left it behind.
He turned his eyes toward the modest violet plant standing on the medicine table beside him.
Upon this, his thoughts lingered at length.
Otter.
He wondered what it would have been like, when he was still a man of action…
“I WONDER,” said Leroy Poole, “what’s keeping the President. It’s twenty minutes already. I’m sick of looking at that stupid fish.”
Poole grimaced at the fish mounted on the board above the fireplace of the White House reception room, then glanced at Mrs. Gladys Hurley.
Gladys Hurley, seated straight, her shoulders back, mouth pinched, continued to look at the carpet and said nothing.
Fretfully, Poole wandered to the desk, picked at the museum-piece typewriter that was supposed to have been used by President Woodrow Wilson (another overrated fink, half his Cabinet members Southerners, ordering Negro Federal employees in Washington to be segregated, so busy trying to make the world safe for democracy he’d let sixty-nine lynchings take place in one year of his administration). Then irritably, Poole returned to the center table, yanked up a chair, and squatted in it, drumming his pudgy fingers on the tabletop.
He tried to keep his mind from imagining how Jeff Hurley felt this late afternoon, in his debasing prison garb, in his chilly deathrow cell in the State Penitentiary. It made Poole tremble to think what Jeff Hurley himself might be thinking this minute: in six days from this day, this hour, he would be strapped into the big lethal chair, held helpless while the cyanide capsules dropped, and he would be gassed until dead because of kidnaping for ransom and murder. He would be dying for a crime that was not his own but America’s crime, an innocent saint rubbed off the earth because the guilty who remained did not want to hear his accusations. This minute this good giant, this Gulliver pinioned by pygmies, was helpless, voiceless, impotent. Noble Jeff, great Jeff, poor Jeff, lost to life and the future, unless the two of them in this reception room, his protesters by proxy, could save him.
This was it. They were it.
Leroy Poole wished that he had obeyed his instinct and traveled down to see Jeff Hurley for himself. When he had proposed the visit, through Hurley’s lawyer, he had learned that Hurley would not have it. Hurley’s sole request of Poole had been to give his mother in Louisville a few bucks to make the trip to Washington, and there to help in building up the appeal for clemency-clemency desired not out of fear of death but out of fear of leaving his scattered but militant armies leaderless.
There had been little enough of the Turnerite funds left to work with, that for sure. Just recently, Poole had learned to his dismay that Frank Valetti had produced no more than half of the war chest for Hurley’s New York defense lawyer, and had skipped off to his Commie friends behind the Iron Curtain with the rest.
Poole’s own available funds had been meager. Except for a hundred bucks sent him by Valetti before taking off, except for what Burleigh Thomas (the ignorant numbskull with his stupid assassination attempt) had left behind for Hurley, delivered to Poole by that sister, Ruby (who had disappeared from town fast enough), there had been only his own dwindling bank account, the blood money, the last of the advance against the future royalties from the Dilman biography, which he had not yet had either the time or the interest to complete.
Poole had spent the Turnerite money and his own savings with care, as if every paper bill contributed another year to his beloved Jeff Hurley’s life. Poole had allotted some of the money for the New York lawyer, and used some for his own side trips and payoffs in order to gather the fresh evidence needed for the appeal. He had doled out some cash in treating influential Negro correspondents in the capital to dinner, bending their ears with the injustice mounted against Hurley, and a good deal of the press space his pleadings obtained had been gratifying, had whipped up further sympathy for Hurley among the Negro population, had even provoked one petition for clemency signed by eight hundred Northern Negroes. Then, when time had all but run out, and the money, too, Leroy Poole had purchased the round-trip bus ticket for Mrs. Gladys Hurley, mailed it to her in Louisville, brought her here to Washington yesterday, put her up in his hotel, all to have her on hand for this last, last climactic act.
Abruptly, Leroy Poole ceased drumming his fingers on the table. Once more he considered the mother of his idol, and was again vaguely disturbed and disappointed. Most often, Poole had observed, and made note of it for some future writing, the mothers of celebrities proved disconcerting. You might consider a novelist or scientist or philosopher or military hero so great, so invincible, so perfect as to believe that he had burst upon this mundane earth full-grown, without the process of human birth and with no previous habitat except Olympus. And then, sometimes, you learned he had a mother, a living rag, bone, and hank of hair, and it amazed you that a womb belonging to one so unattractive, mean, stupid, or merely garrulous and mediocre, could have produced Greatness. Especially was this often true in the case of celebrities renowned for their beauty, actresses or actors-flawless idols, all, until their mothers came out of the closets, shrill and repulsive crones.
From the moment that he had sent for her, to the time he had awaited her arrival, Leroy Poole had expected Gladys Hurley to be such a mother, a parent the complete antithesis of her sublime son. And what confounded Poole the most last night, when he had set eyes upon his idol’s mother for the first time, was that Gladys Hurley appeared to be the Olympian mother incarnate. Nothing about her, neither her appearance nor her manner, had contradicted her son’s heroic proportions.
Secretly, emotionally, Poole had been pleased that Gladys Hurley was worthy of her great son; secretly, intellectually, Poole had been distressed. He had wanted, when he went before President Dilman in these critical moments, someone to supplement himself and his own appeal in the confrontation. The brief that he and the lawyer had prepared, Poole hoped, would provide the argument that would be acceptable to Dilman’s intelligence, what little there was of that. The mother, he had hoped, would be the woeful and pathetic universal mother, perhaps the mother of Dilman’s own childhood, who would shake and soften Dilman and reach his deepest feelings.
For once, in the shrewdness of his preparations, Leroy Poole had prayed for a nauseating pudding of a mother, a weeper, a mammy talker, a servile, menial mother, a shawl and Good Book mother, a breast-beating, psalm-sniffling, kneeling, begging mother capable of making the hardest heart crack. Instead, he had been handicapped by Gladys Hurley, and the final touch to his grand design had been botched.
He inspected her now. She was tall and thin, neat and respectable in her dark Sunday-meeting dress. The gray in her hair had been blue-rinsed. Her square, taut, dignified visage was as impassive and tough as that of a plains squaw. She carried silence like a sword. Except for her lack of formal education, which showed itself during her brief forays into speech, except for her work-roughened hands, except for the stoicism in her bearing, there was nothing that betrayed the oppressed and embittered Negro mother. She was worthy of Jefferson Hurley, yes, but she was wrong, all wrong, for a sentimental yahoo like Dilman.
Nevertheless, between them, they would have to make do, Leroy Poole decided. The cautious confidence he had brought along with Mrs. Hurley to the White House now became surer as he recalled his lengthy petition for executive clemency, his detailed review of the unjust trial and sentence, his documentation of new evidence (the prejudicial remarks to the press by the Federal judge presiding, the refusal of the court to grant immunity to the one surviving Turnerite-since Burleigh Thomas was dead-who had participated in the kidnaping with Hurley but escaped, and had been prepared to vouch for the fact that Judge Gage had threatened Hurley’s life before and after the kidnaping, as well as other new and important facts), and his closing moving plea that the President commute Hurley’s death sentence to life imprisonment.
Leroy Poole wondered how carefully Dilman, with his self-absorption, the distractions occasioned by his impeachment, had studied the appeal. The last time he had spoken to Dilman-it seemed another age by now-he had been threatening, even insulting, to the President. Would the residue of his resentment weight the scales as part of the President’s judgment? Poole feared it might and then he did not. For when he had last been here in Miss Foster’s office, she had come straight from Dilman to inform him that the President had promised he would see that the cumbersome process of appeal for Presidential clemency would be expedited. If Dilman had still borne him a grudge, he would not have made the concession.
Indeed, Poole had definitely received cooperation from the Department of Justice. His appeal of the sentence, in the case of the United States v. Hurley, had been rushed through all five stages. His application had been swiftly processed. His affidavits, in the hands of the appointed pardon attorney and United States Attorney, had been rapidly investigated, considered, acted upon, and the Attorney General’s personal recommendation, along with the original appeal, had moved speedily on to the President. Now the petition for clemency was on the threshold of the fifth and final stage-notification of the President’s decision.
Surely, Poole thought, the Dilman who had read this appeal could no longer be the faint, vacillating, half-ostrich, counterfeit-white Dilman he had known months ago as a senator and as the repugnant subject of his hack biography. Surely, Poole thought, the Dilman who read this appeal had been altered by the events around him, which would explain why Dilman himself was unjustly on trial (yes, even Poole would concede this, because, as Dilman’s smart attorney had said on television today, he was being indicted under an invisible Article of Impeachment directed at his black skin).
Suddenly Poole was distracted by a movement from Gladys Hurley. She had opened her imitation-patent-leather purse and found her compact, and was phlegmatically examining herself in the mirror.
As she returned the compact to the purse, Leroy Poole said, “I was just reviewing the case, Mrs. Hurley. I think we have everything on our side.”
She said, “I hope so, Mr. Poole.”
He said, “Of course, we’ve got to allow for anything to happen. If-if it goes the wrong way-you remember our discussion last night, don’t you? I mean, we’re of one mind about that?”
She said, “Yes, sir, if that’s what’ll save my boy.”
Satisfied, Leroy Poole began to consult his wristwatch for the twentieth time, when the corridor door opened.
A White House policeman said, “The President is back. He’ll see you now. Right this way to Mr. Lucas’ office. He’s the engagements secretary.”
Hastily, Mrs. Hurley and Leroy Poole followed the policeman across the checkered tile of the hallway, until they were shown into a modest antechamber with two brown desks. Shelby Lucas, the bespectacled engagements secretary with the Hapsburg lip and undershot jaw, was standing.
“Mrs. Gladys Hurley? Mr. Poole? Sorry to have delayed you,” he said. “The President had to attend a ceremony, and he’s only now returned. I’m afraid he’s running behind schedule, but you may have ten minutes.”
Poole liked the sound of that ten minutes. Bad tidings took more time. One did not snuff out another’s life without lengthy explanations. Good news needed no hour hand.
Lucas had opened the door beside his broad desk, signaled his visitors, and they obediently followed him through a little corridor. Lucas rapped, opened the next door, and announced to the occupant inside, “Mr. President, Mrs. Gladys Hurley and Mr. Leroy Poole.”
They went inside, and Douglass Dilman, on his feet beside his desk, shook Mrs. Hurley’s hand, murmuring some amenity, and then he took Poole’s fat hand. “Hello, Leroy. It’s been some time. Do sit down over there by the fireplace. It’ll be more comfortable.”
Poole trailed his miscast mother to the sofa, waited for her to sit stiffly, then sank into a cushion beside her. Dilman, the appeal folder in one hand, sat in the ornate Revels chair. He opened the folder in his lap, licked his thick lips, and peered down at the first page.
Poole strained to discover a clue to the decision in the President’s face. His visual exploration detected the fatigue of one overtaxed, detected stress, detected despondency. But no facial feature provided a hint of judgment made.
“Mrs. Hurley-Leroy-” Dilman said, turning a page, still reviewing the bound folder, “I have given considerable time to reading, and re-reading, your request for clemency. It is well conceived and well put together. I have also, since, received the report and recommendation on your appeal from Attorney General Kemmler and his staff. I want you to know that I am fully cognizant of every aspect of the case, from the public protest activity of the Turnerites that inspired Judge Gage to treat the demonstrators harshly, imprisoning them for ten years, to the details of the retaliatory action by Mr. Hurley and his accomplices. I have studied the FBI reports on the kidnaping, and on the shooting in Texas, as well as the transcripts of Mr. Hurley’s interrogation by local police officers and Federal agents, the statement of Mr. Hurley’s refusal to defend himself once his witness would not be admitted under the conditions his attorney requested.”
Quickly, Poole blurted out, “Jeff Hurley pleaded guilty only after he and his attorney were promised a deal. They promised him an unpremeditated manslaughter sentence and imprisonment with eventual chance for parole, if he would plead guilty. So he pleaded guilty, and then the Federal judge double-crossed him and slapped the death penalty on him.”
“Yes, I saw that in your brief, Leroy. But the only affidavits you could supply, to support the existence of such a-such a deal, were those signed by Mr. Hurley and his attorney, who are concerned parties. You have no impartial confirming evidence to this deal. According to the United States Attorney’s investigation last week, the other participating parties-the United States Commissioner and Federal judge-vehemently, and under oath, denied that such a deal was ever made, and so did the stenographer present at all meetings.”
“Well, they’re liars,” said Poole. “What do you expect them to say now?”
Dilman nodded. “Be that as it may. I simply wanted both of you to understand that, busy as I am, I have given this case much study and reflection. Now, besides your eloquent appeal, I also have here on my lap the Attorney General’s remarks and recommendation, as I said.” Dilman lifted his head and gazed at Mrs. Hurley. “The Attorney General recommends, without reservation, that clemency be refused and the death sentence stand as ordered.”
Mrs. Hurley did not move or speak, but Leroy Poole, his round forehead perspiring, jumped up indignantly. “That Kemmler-that lousy rotten racist-”
Dilman ignored the writer and resumed addressing Mrs. Hurley. “Of course, as President I have the right to disapprove the Attorney General’s recommendation, override it, return the papers with instructions that they be revised according to my wishes. This rejection of a Justice Department recommendation is the exception to the rule. It has been exercised by Presidents in the past, but in very, very rare instances.”
“Well, thank God, thank God you got that right to do justice,” Poole cried out, and sat down, anxious thyroid eyes fixed on the President’s mouth.
Dilman appeared to gather his strength.
“Mrs. Hurley, I was once an attorney myself, and as an attorney, and now the last judge in this case, responsible for the ultimate decision that must be made on the life of your son, I must tell you honestly-I cannot-I cannot, with any pretense at honesty, countermand the recommendation of the Attorney General. There is nothing here, none of Leroy’s so-called new findings, that convinces me that the decision of the Federal court was wrong, the Department of Justice was wrong, and that your son should not be punished, as he is to be punished, according to the law of the nation and not according to my personal beliefs, for kidnaping and for murder. Mrs. Hurley, it grieves me, but I must reject this appeal to commute the death sentence. I am sorry. I hope that-eventually, if not now-you will understand.”
Leroy Poole fell back into the sofa, covering his face with his hands. His anguish was too overwhelming for an immediate protest or contention. It was as if he had been axed, split from head to toe, by a black brother whom in his desperation he had decided to trust.
To his surprise, he heard Gladys Hurley speak, and her voice was low and composed.
“Mr. President,” she said, “when they stuff my boy into that gas chamber, they’re doin’ to him like the Nazis once did to the Jews-they’re punishin’ him and killin’ him off for what he is, an’ not what he did.”
“Mrs. Hurley, believe me,” Dilman said with intensity, “if I could prove that-prove it-I would commute his sentence immediately. I cannot prove it. Jefferson Hurley is a confessed kidnaper and murderer. The essential truth is that he was a self-appointed Messiah of our people, taking the law into his hands, and the government cannot condone such action. I have no grounds on which to give Jefferson Hurley his life, to overlook his crime, except the fact that he is black like I am, like the three of us in this room are, and if I commuted his sentence, he would be getting preferential treatment, special consideration which a white kidnaper or murderer would not get in this office. Can’t you see that, Mrs. Hurley?”
“No,” she said flatly. “I see one thing. He’s goin’ to die because of his skin. The Federals and Southerners are puttin’ him to death because he’s a black man who won’t crawl, like the Senate is puttin’ yourself to death because you’re a black man who suddenly stopped crawlin’.”
Poole had recovered his wits. “It’s the invisible prejudice law against him!” he shouted. “Same as there’s the invisible Article V of impeachment against you!”
Dilman said sternly, “Mrs. Hurley-Leroy-however we feel about the prejudice that we know exists-and we feel as one in this-there is still the law of the land we live under, our law, the law that keeps us a civilized community and not a pack of roving barbarians. In this case I am the final symbol of that law. Despite the passionate forensics of my good friend and advocate on the Senate floor today, you heard his invisible Article thrown out of the court. It does not enter into my trial, and will not, unless he can legally prove I am being prosecuted as a Negro and not as a criminal. There is little chance he can prove that. And there is no way for you to prove Jefferson Hurley is going to the gas chamber simply because he is a Negro. Jefferson Hurley is going to the gas chamber because, as a man, he committed a crime against men, and against their law. If I am convicted by the Senate body, and punished and disgraced by removal from office, it will not be because I was tried as a Negro but as a government official who committed high crimes. I may have other feelings or views about this, but in court there is the law, and I will abide by it shortly, as you must abide by it now.”
Mrs. Hurley’s inflexible composure broke slightly. “There is-is more than law, Mr. President. There is human bein’s’ compassion, one for the other, there’s that, and sometimes it’s above the law.”
To Poole it appeared that Dilman, perturbed, shaken, would reach out to touch her hand. He did not. He said softly, “Mrs. Hurley, I am not inhuman. I have a son, too, and I know, and I can feel for you.”
Dilman’s mention of his son aroused the last crouched hope inside Leroy Poole, and suddenly he found himself standing again.
“Mr. President, Mr. President!” Poole cried out, his voice a shriek. “Listen to me, listen! This is just for the three of us in the privacy of this room, this one more thing. You keep saying you’re a human being, not just a Negro like us. Okay. Then like a human being you’re fighting for your rights and your life in the Senate, you sure are. I listened some today, and it’s not going good for you, no, but you’ve got a chance, maybe a chance, if it doesn’t get any worse. Okay. That Article II of Zeke Miller’s, one-fourth of all the case against you, that’s leveled at your conspiring to protect the Turnerites because you knew your son was a member, right? Okay. What have your enemies got to support that serious accusation? Nothing much except circumstantial evidence, and some exhibit of a letter from Julian to someone who’s name was not even mentioned, in which he said he was planning to join the Turnerites. That’s all their evidence is, and it’s nothing, because Julian answered, through your attorney, that he was only angry when he wrote that letter, and talking big, and that he never actually joined and there’s no proof he ever joined. Isn’t that the way it is, Mr. President?”
“What of it?” said Dilman suspiciously.
“What of it? Listen to me, man to man. What if that crummy, flimsy evidence in Article II against you overnight became real factually proved evidence, huh, what then? Well, I told you before, and you blew me down, I told you before that your Julian was a member of the Turnerites. I once had it in a letter from Jeff Hurley. But no, father and son, your son, you wouldn’t believe me then. Okay. Mitts off. We, the two of us, Mrs. Hurley and yours truly, we got the living, breathing proof that your Julian was an extremist agitator, an extremist Turnerite-a member of a subversive outfit, as you put it. We have the proof. After you banned the organization, and before he took it on the lam, Jeff, who was personal custodian of every secret membership application and pledge, filled in and signed by every Turnerite, he gave this file over to the one person he trusted in the world, to his mom, to Gladys Hurley here. She has that file, and there is one application and blood pledge in it, swearing to work underground for the cause and die for the cause, and it is signed by none other than your son, namely, Julian Dilman, in his own handwriting, which you’ll recognize and an expert can prove.”
Poole had the satisfaction of seeing that the blow had struck its mark. Dilman’s self-assurance appeared to falter, give way. Dilman’s troubled eyes darted from Poole to Gladys Hurley. She gave a slow nod of confirmation.
For Poole the exalting moment had arrived. On the success of his surrender deal depended Jeff Hurley’s life or extinction from the world of the living. With all the power he could muster, Leroy Poole pressed home his last effort.
“Okay, there’s the membership evidence Zeke Miller wished he had, but doesn’t have, doesn’t know exists, somewhere in Louisville, somewhere in the keeping of Jeff Hurley’s mother. Okay, inside the four walls of this room, let’s come to a businesslike understanding. You’ve been a politician most of your life, and you know there’d be no politics, no economics, no survival, no nothing without bartering and trading, without wheeling and dealing. Mrs. Hurley and I already discussed this, and I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to speak of it, but she agreed that I could if it was necessary. I’ll offer you a deal here and now, Mr. President. You do what should’ve been done anyway, you commute Jeff Hurley’s death sentence to life imprisonment, and Mrs. Hurley will turn over her file to you instead of to Representative Zeke Miller.”
He waited, out of breath, now that the final terms were in the open. He waited for reasonable capitulation.
Curiously, Dilman had seemed to regain his poise. He contemplated the Negro author with equanimity. When he spoke, his tone was almost gentle. “Leroy, that is no deal, that is blackmail.”
“An eye for an eye, like Jeff used to say,” said Poole. “You spare Jefferson Hurley, we spare Julian Dilman-and yourself. It’s take it or leave it, because-”
The buzzer on the President’s desk pierced through Poole’s threat, and then urgently persisted.
Dilman left the Revels chair, hastened to his desk, and snatched up the telephone. “Yes?… What? No, bring them right in, right in now, Miss Foster!”
Confused, Poole’s gaze went from the President to the secretary’s door, and then back to him. Dilman had gone behind his desk, suddenly so agitated, so nervously distracted, that he now seemed entirely oblivious of the presence of Poole and Mrs. Hurley in his Oval Office.
The door flew open, and into the office, striding fast, came a tall, long-legged African, turban on his head but otherwise garmented in a conservative blue suit. Behind him came a slender, uniformed Air Force officer, whom Poole recognized a moment later as the hero of outer space, General Leo Jaskawich. Bringing up the rear, pad and pencil fluttering, came a disheveled Edna Foster.
All of them crowded around the desk. There were no greetings, there was no formality, there was only an electric air of emergency.
“Ambassador Wamba,” Dilman was saying to the African, “Miss Foster says you have definitely heard. What is it?”
Before the Barazan Ambassador could reply, General Jaskawich, after a nervous glance behind him at Mrs. Hurley and Poole, quickly said to Dilman, “Mr. President, your other guests-this may be confidential-”
Impatiently, Dilman dismissed Jaskawich’s concern with a gesture. “Forget them,” he said. His attention was again entirely concentrated upon the Barazan. “Ambassador Wamba, do you have news?”
Wamba’s speech, with a lilting English accent, precise and Sussex public-school, was forceful. “I have heard from President Amboko directly on our Embassy telephone. The word is in, sir, and the evidence is being flown to you by the CIA. Our own best agents have discovered that our Communist insurgents in the hills will launch their attack at daybreak, in ten days from tomorrow morning.”
Anxiety bunched Dilman’s features. “There can be no mistake? This is positive?”
“Positive,” said Wamba, without equivocation.
Jaskawich stepped forward. “This is it, Mr. President, no question. Scott said for sure they’ll raise the reliability rating from 2 to top 1 on this.”
“Then it is clear-cut,” said Dilman. “We’ve got to prevent their first offensive, and we can only do it by letting the Soviets know we are onto it and that we are prepared to stop it. Very well, Ambassador Wamba, speak to President Amboko at once. Tell him to convene the Foreign Ministers of the African Unity Pact nations in Baraza City, and brief them, and request that they mobilize their forces, and inform them that the United States stands ready to honor its mutual defense treaty with them. Unless Premier Kasatkin gives me absolute assurance there will be no further action, I shall order dispatched by air and sea, within ten days, our fully equipped forces, our very finest troops and rocketry teams, to fight side by side with the armies of the African democracies… General Jaskawich, notify Secretary Steinbrenner of this development. Tell him I want the Dragon Flies battalions on red alert, and I want them quietly, speedily positioned at points of takeoff. When you’re through with him, let’s get out our note of protest and warning to Ambassador Rudenko, for immediate transmission to Premier Kasatkin. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jaskawich.
Jaskawich had Ambassador Wamba by the arm, and hastily the two of them, in whispered consultation, left the office.
President Dilman was about to sit down to his eighteen-button telephone console, when he became aware of Edna Foster still standing at his desk.
He considered her curiously. “What’s the matter, Miss Foster?”
“Don’t-don’t do this!” she blurted.
He appeared confused. “Don’t do what?”
“It’s not my business, except I don’t want you convicted for impeachment. Mr. President, I hate General Fortney, I abhor him, but what he said to you before, about sending an all-white military force into Africa to die for those underdeveloped people, it’ll ruin you in the Senate, it’ll create a storm against you. Can’t you see? It’ll be used to prove what Zeke Miller’s been insinuating all along, that the New Succession Bill had to be made law so you wouldn’t show favoritism to Negroes, even if they’re African Negroes, and that here you are, ready to sacrifice the best of our white troops to do that very thing. I’m not saying don’t defend Baraza. You must-I agree, you must-but can’t you send mixed white-and-Negro battalions to fight there? Can’t you-?”
“No, Miss Foster, I cannot. There is only one counter-guerrilla force that can act effectively, that is equipped to do so with a minimal loss of life, and that, as Steinbrenner said, is the Dragon Flies.”
Edna Foster persisted. “Don’t, Mr. President. Please don’t. This will ruin you-this’ll be the end of you-”
Dilman did not disagree. “It may be,” he said. “But whatever happens to me right now does not matter. It’s what happens to a good neighbor, black or white, one that’s put its entire faith in our decency, its trust in our way of life, that does matter. I can’t make deals with Fortney, or anyone else, to compromise my country, and I won’t. I appreciate your feelings for me, Miss Foster, I really do, but I must handle it this way. Now, please, tell Tim Flannery to notify the networks that I wish air time to deliver a short, major address-fifteen minutes, say-on a matter of national emergency-make it tomorrow at six o’clock our time. Thank you, Miss Foster.”
She shook her head sorrowfully, then ran from the office.
From the sofa, Leroy Poole had witnessed these scenes with fascination. He continued to watch as the President, by now completely unaware that there were others still in the room, swiveled toward his telephone console once more. Then, to Poole’s bewilderment, Gladys Hurley was on her feet and advancing toward the desk. Poole leaped up and chased after her.
Dilman’s hand was on the white telephone when he saw Mrs. Hurley. He blinked, perplexed, then seemed to remember, and pushed the chair back and rose. “Mrs. Hurley,” he murmured, “forgive me, but-”
She stood tall, head high, shoulders thrown back, worn fingers working over her smooth shiny purse.
“You forgive me, Mr. President,” she said. “I am sorry you cannot see fit to save my boy, but from what my eyes have seen, I have seen your goodness. If you cannot help my son, I can help yours and yourself, because you are deservin’ of help from every American. I am goin’ home and I am burnin’ those files of Jeff’s, Mr. President, because even if your boy was in it too, like Jeff was, he did no wrong against the people’s law like Jeff did, and if I will appeal anywhere, it will be to the Lord Jesus Christ, to punish Jeff’s misdeeds and give him mercy so he can become the companion of the holy angels in heaven above.”
Then her voice trembled, as she went on. “Mr. President, no matter what, my Jeff was always a good boy, attendin’ church and learnin’ the scriptures, keepin’ to cleanliness, never fibbin’ or runnin’ wild in the streets, behavin’ and readin’ his books. And when he growed up, he always respected his father, when his father was alive, and was obedient to his father, and he took care of me, always took care of me and his younger brothers and sisters and needy kin with money and letters. He was a good boy, Mr. President, and he only meant well, but there was no one to understand… Come on, Mr. Poole, let’s leave the President be. He’s got his work to do for all of us.”
At nine-thirty that evening, the West Wing of the White House was still ablaze with light.
In the Reading Room of the press section, a handful of hardy correspondents, aware that the President was still at work, lolled about, hopefully waiting for some fresh morsel of news. In the antechambers beyond the Oval Office, numerous secretaries, on overtime, pecked away at their typewriters. In the corridors, the special police and the Secret Service men of the White House Detail ceaselessly maintained their vigils.
And, in the Cabinet Room, before an audience of three, Douglass Dilman was concluding his rehearsal of the latest draft of the crucial speech that he would deliver to the nation the next evening.
Nat Abrahams, recovered from his ordeal on the Senate floor, puffed his mellow pipe, picked at the rumpled napkin on his depleted dinner tray and listened. General Leo Jaskawich, chewing a half-smoked cheroot, absently doodled on a scratch pad and listened. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jed Stover, one hand forming a hood over his shaggy eyebrows, followed the circling needle of the stopwatch cupped in his other hand and listened.
Across the glossy Cabinet table, seated in the high-backed leather chair bearing the diminutive brass plate engraved THE PRESIDENT, Douglass Dilman, without exerting himself, without emphasizing the key phrases, approached the end of the television address that the four of them had hammered out before their informal dinner.
Dilman flipped the page, and then, in a voice becoming hoarse, read aloud:
“It is my fervent prayer that these powerful battalions of this democracy, now battle-ready and on full alert, will not have to leave our nation’s boundaries. It is my fervent prayer that even if we should commit ourselves to a limited conflict, it will not spread into a worldwide holocaust, and that our ICBMs will rest forever in their silos, and our jet bombers will continue confined to their runways or routine missions, and that our Polaris submarines will cruise under the seas with their nuclear rockets safely unarmed.”
He paused, and then he resumed.
“This is my fervent prayer, and I know that you share it with me, one and all. But let not the enemies of freedom misconstrue this wish for peace as an evidence of weakness. There are many abroad who may think the United States speaks in many voices, and who may choose to hear, and believe, the voice that pleases them the most. They may prefer the American voice that reflects our normal, two-party political wrangling and discord, so that they may suspect we are disunited. They may prefer the American voice that reflects our onetime isolationist ideology, that promises we will not trade a single American life to preserve the independence of an African democracy whose entire population can fit into a single one of our largest cities, so that they may suspect we are disunited. They may prefer the American voice that reflects our own domestic racial strife, the one vowing we will not protect our colored brothers in other lands any more than we will integrate them in our own land because they are inferior, so that they may suspect we are disunited.
“To the hopeful cynics abroad, I can only say-do not be misled by the discordant sounds of opinion and disagreement so much a part of our democratic system-for, in times of danger, America has always and will always speak out in one single united voice, and that will be the voice of the majority of its free citizens.
“Tonight, fellow Americans, the words to be spoken by our united voice, the voice we want our friends and enemies around the earth to hear and heed, may best be taken from the words spoken by our beloved former President, John F. Kennedy, who said, ‘The free world’s security can be endangered not only by a nuclear attack, but also by being nibbled away at the periphery… by forces of subversion, infiltration, intimidation, indirect or nonovert aggression, internal revolution, diplomatic blackmail, guerrilla warfare or a series of limited wars… Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.’
“Thank you, and good night.”
Dilman exhaled, tossed the typescript on the table, and looked up.
“Well, how did it sound to you?” he asked. “There are a few rough spots, but I think we can smooth them out in the morning. Otherwise, I believe it says what should be said.”
Jed Stover was all enthusiasm. “I think it’s great, and about time!” He held up the stopwatch. “Almost on the nose, Mr. President. Only fifteen seconds over.” Then he added, “This is going to make Amboko and the African Unity Pact nations very happy.”
“I’m not so sure it’ll scare Premier Kasatkin,” said Jaskawich, “but it’s sure as hell going to scare the living daylights out of the Senate!”
Revolving his empty teacup in its saucer, Nat Abrahams said nothing. He saw Dilman’s attention focus on him.
“What about that, Nat?” Dilman asked. “I’ve given you a tough enough job, asking you to handle that trial, without making it tougher. Anything you want me to reword or tone down?”
Nat Abrahams removed the pipe from between his teeth. “Hell, no,” he said. “The devil with the Senate. Sure they won’t like this, but it’s only a big stick you’re waving at Russia, not a bazooka. It probably won’t influence a single senator’s vote, one way or the other, not yet.”
“Then you think it should read as it stands?” asked Dilman.
“Not quite,” said Abrahams. “If anything, at least in one passage there, I’d be a little more explicit. I mean earlier, when you go into our military resources, and when you detail the power potential of the Dragon Flies. I think you should come right out and explain why you and Steinbrenner have selected this all-white force for the African assignment.”
Dilman’s features revealed his worry. “I don’t know, Nat-”
“Why not, Mr. President?” asked Abrahams. “It’s in the open anyway-”
“It sure is,” said Jaskawich. “Mr. President, I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Abrahams. You heard the late afternoon broadcasts, saw the early evening papers. ‘A reliable top-level Pentagon source admitted today that the military chiefs are doing their best to dissuade President Dilman from throwing only white troops into the African inferno.’ ” Jaskawich snorted. “ ‘A reliable Pentagon source’-ha! Spelled Pitt Fortney. You’ll never be able to prove he leaked it, but one gets you ten he did. You’re his superior officer, Mr. President, so he can’t blow you down face to face. What he’s doing is the next-best thing, whipping up a tornado against you among the general public. If anybody’s going to fight and die for us in Africa, he’s going to make damn sure it’ll include our Negro soldiers with our whites, even though the mixed battalions aren’t prepared for that kind of warfare. Or maybe he just wants to solve our race problem by shipping as many colored men to Africa as possible. No, seriously, Mr. President, Fortney’s tidbit has been out for hours, burning across the country like a prairie fire, prejudicing more and more misinformed people against you. Mr. Abrahams is right. Douse that fire while you can.”
“Maybe I should,” Dilman mused.
Abrahams bent forward, leaning on his elbows. “It wouldn’t take much, another line or two in the speech. You know, ‘Fellow Americans, concerning the Dragon Flies, you may have heard irresponsible talk that this entirely Caucasian battle force will be committed to the defense of Baraza, if required, because of your Commander in Chief’s desire to protect those of his own race. This canard could not be further from the truth. The Secretary of Defense recommended the Dragon Flies because their units are the only ones equipped and trained for the type of defense indicated. Unfortunately, there are no colored soldiers in the Dragon Flies, because none have been given the long training necessary for handling weapons of such complex-” Abrahams shrugged. “That sort of thing, and that would be enough. It may blunt a good deal of criticism from around the country, and it’ll certainly show Fortney you’re not going to take any of his treachery lying down.”
Dilman hit his fist on the table. “Sold. We’ll write it in.” He stared at Abrahams. “Do you think all of this will become an issue in the trial, Nat?”
Abrahams emptied his pipe. “Mr. President, everything you say or do is an issue in the trial. But you wouldn’t be making this speech at all if you didn’t believe there are some things more important than the trial.”
“That’s right, Nat.”
“So-”
There was a sharp rapping on the corridor door, and Nat Abrahams stopped and looked over his shoulder as the door came open and a distraught Tim Flannery rushed into the room. His face was as fiery as his hair, but then, as he started toward Dilman, he seemed to realize there were others present.
“Sorry to bust in on you like this,” he apologized, “but-” He hesitated, as if wishing to speak to the President, yet unsure if he should do so in front of Abrahams, Jaskawich, and Stover.
“What’s wrong, Tim?” Dilman asked. “Is anything the matter?”
“I hate to tell you, Mr. President,” said Flannery, “but your boy’s out in the press lobby-”
“My boy? You mean Julian-he’s here?”
“He just popped in from nowhere, and before I heard about it and could stop him, he had gathered the wire service men around him and begun making a statement. When I got out there, it was too late, dammit. Now he’s answering their questions-wouldn’t listen to me-so I thought I’d better find you-”
Dilman came to his feet. “What kind of statement? What’s Julian saying?”
Flannery hesitated, then blurted, “He just now confessed that he had for a long time been a secret member of the Turnerite Group. He-he said that young Negroes like himself got sick of seeing how their parents had been bought off by white men’s lying promises-sick of seeing the way the old folks were still in the anteroom, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their citizenship papers-and he was one of the ones who had decided to do something about it. So he joined the Turnerites and pledged himself to secrecy.”
“He confessed to all of that?” said Dilman quietly.
Flannery nodded. “Right off. Then he told the reporters that if they believed that much, they had to believe more-that he never did a single violent thing or subversive act for the Turnerites-only did clerical work for them-and shortly after the Turnerites were banned, he telephoned Frank Valetti and resigned. Then he said-” Flannery faltered, and glanced uncertainly about the Cabinet Room.
“Go on,” Dilman said, “what else did he say?”
“He-he was sorry about only one thing-that he had to lie to you from the start. He told the reporters you never really knew he was a member, and that Zeke Miller’s Article of Impeachment concerning him was idiotic-because not only you didn’t know, but if you had, you wouldn’t have obstructed the Justice Department or made a deal with Hurley, because you disliked the Turnerites and their policies and their methods.” Flannery paused, and shrugged helplessly. “That’s as much as I heard. I was afraid to stop him, haul him in here. I didn’t want to start any commotion. But if you’d like me to go out there now and-”
Flannery halted, suddenly aware that no one in the room, not Dilman or any of the others, was listening to him any longer. Their attention had been diverted to someone behind him. Puzzled, Flannery turned around, and then he, too, saw Julian Dilman standing in the open doorway.
For once, Julian’s hair was not sleekly pomaded, and his form-fitting suit was wrinkled. Fidgeting, his tremulous eyeballs rolled, and his gaze went from Abrahams to Dilman to Flannery, and then back to his father. With an effort, he seemed to gather up his courage and finally entered the room.
“You heard what I did?” Julian said to his father. Julian nodded toward Flannery. “He told you?”
“Yes,” Dilman said.
“I-I know it’s going to count against you in the-the trial-but I had to do it.”
“Why?” Dilman asked.
“Why?” Julian repeated. “Because when they impeached you, I figured you’d quit, and you didn’t. You set out to fight in the open the ones I tried to fight in secret. And then, from what I heard on the radio today, I knew you meant it-not being scared to punish Hurley because you believed he should be punished, and then-what I figured out from that ‘reliable source’ Pentagon story against you-that you were not afraid of the big-brass Charlies in uniform because you believed our best troops, no matter what color, should go to Africa. It-it just made me sick of my lying, when all I had wanted to do was to fight back in the open like you-so I took the plane here and figured the best way to begin was to stand up and tell the truth.” He paused. “I-I hope you’ll forgive me for what I did in the past, and what I did out there just now.”
Dilman considered his son evenly. “I already knew what you did in the past, Julian. I found out this afternoon,” he said. “As for what you did out there in the press lobby, that’s all right. I guess it had to be done… Now get yourself upstairs and find some nourishment in the pantry. I’ll be up in a little while.”
Quickly, awkwardly, Julian left the room, and when he was gone, Dilman turned slowly back to Abrahams.
Dilman stared thoughtfully at Abrahams for several seconds, and then he said, “Yes, I know, Nat, this can help lose me the Senate trial. Well, I suppose this was a sort of trial, too, in a way-only this was one I couldn’t afford to lose.” He tried to smile, but no smile came, and then he said, “That’s something. At least, it is to me.”