(1964) The Man (117 page)

She had wanted to reach the White House sentry box, but she could only reach the iron fence. She gripped the metal pickets to keep from falling, and then her legs gave, and she slid to the pavement.

There was the sound of feet, and then she heard her name and opened her eyes.

She blinked up into the worried features of a mulatto woman, blinked up with no recognition.

“Miss Watson—Sally—are you badly hurt?”

“I dunno—no—not—what’s your—”

Then, for Sally, recognition came. She had seen the mulatto face before, yes, every day, newspapers, television, Senate, yes, Wanda Gibson, Wanda Gibson, President’s lady.

“I’d better find you help—” Wanda Gibson was saying.

Sally closed her eyes, listening to the sirens, and then through stinging, puffed lips, she groaned, “No, Wanda—no—just get me home—please, please, take me to my father—you take me—I—I’ve got to tell him something, it’s important—help me—it’s important to both of us.”

It was almost midnight, and they were still there in the Oval Office. From the sofa, Nat Abrahams, smoking his pipe, calmly watched, listened, and marveled anew at Douglass Dilman’s energy.

The President looked up from his desk at Tim Flannery and General Leo Jaskawich nearby, and he handed the sheet of paper back to his press secretary.

“That release will do fine, Tim,” he said. “I think we have given the facts, and it’s a fair enough statement about the riot so that it will please both sides or neither. . . . There’s been no later news from the city police?”

“No,” said Flannery. “Luckily, no deaths, and no one on the critical list, but there were 187 injured, a few concussions, mostly cuts and lacerations, broken ribs, a couple of fractured arms. It was bad, but it could’ve been worse. Remember that race riot in Detroit in 1943? Went on for a week. Thirty-four killed and almost one thousand hurt. I think fast action saved us here. The whole thing was contained in ten to fifteen minutes.”

“Thank the Lord,” said Dilman. “All right, Tim, you can roll out that release, give it to the correspondents, and let them go home. Better get some sleep yourself.”

After Flannery had left, Dilman’s gaze held on Abrahams briefly. “Still puzzles me, Nat, what Wanda is doing over at Senator Watson’s, of all places, and what the Senator wants with me at this hour. Well, as long as Wanda is safe and sound.”

Before the lighting of the fiery cross on the lawn, and the resulting riot, Dilman had been expecting Wanda Gibson to come to a late White House dinner, Abrahams knew. The riot itself had diverted Dilman’s mind from her for an hour, but once the troublemakers had been dispersed and the area was under patrol and was peaceful again, and Wanda had still not appeared, Dilman had become fretful. His concern was that she might have been caught in the fighting, and injured.

Even when no woman’s name was reported on the injury list, Dilman had continued to fret. Then the telephone call had come through. It had been Wanda on the other end, at last, to apologize for not appearing. Something had come up, she had explained, and she was now at Senator Hoyt Watson’s house, and no, there was nothing wrong, she would explain later, but meanwhile, Senator Watson had asked to see the President tonight. “Tonight?” Dilman had protested, and then, as far as Abrahams could guess, Wanda had said that she thought the President should see him, that it was something important, for Dilman had replied, “Very well, Wanda, if you think so. Have him come over.” All of that had transpired a half hour ago.

Like Dilman, Abrahams wondered what Wanda was doing in the dugout of the enemy, and what Senator Watson wanted with the President at this late hour. It was all highly irregular.

Dilman had swung his chair toward Jaskawich.

“Well, General, any last-minute intelligence from the international-situation room downstairs?”

“Status quo. The pins in the map are unchanged. The teletypes are still. Absolutely no word from Kasatkin, or the Soviet Embassy here. And nothing new from Baraza City. Just what we had earlier. Continuing signs of growing activity on the frontier. And you’ve already heard from Steinbrenner. The battalions of the Dragon Flies will be airborne and heading for Africa in—let me see—about two hours.”

“It looks like a fight, doesn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr. President.”

“You know, General, something occurred to me before. I think we all have the same feeling about this action. Not you, or Nat, or I want to see a drop of American blood shed, and yet we agree this is right; as things are, it has to be done. But what occurred to me was—by a fluke of fate—and to our eternal shame—it may never be done. You don’t understand me, do you? I’ll tell you. Suppose the Communists launch their attack, as planned, tomorrow, and suppose we are there to meet them. At two o’clock tomorrow, the Senate jury starts its vote on me. If I’m convicted, thrown out—why, by late tomorrow afternoon there can be a new President of the United States sworn in—and with Eaton in this chair, I can just see him with Fortney, making our troops retreat, recalling them, agreeing to a phony armistice. In a week from now, Amboko would be in a dungeon, and his democracy, our democracy, there with him. And the Soviets would have a satellite country in Africa. All we’re trying to do, all we’ve done, may be wasted if two-thirds of the Senate tomorrow says I’m a Negro out to trade white boys to save Africans.”

“I hope we don’t live to see that happen, Mr. President,” said Jaskawich fervently.

“We likely will,” said Dilman. “You may have worked your last full day as a Presidential military attaché. Hope they still have a place for an unemployed astronaut. Well, you’d better get some sleep, too.”

“Good night, Mr. President. . . . Good night, Mr. Abrahams.”

Once Jaskawich had departed, the two friends were alone for the first time that day. Abrahams moved from the sofa to the chair across from Dilman. He began to analyze the closing speeches that would be made before the Senate tomorrow morning, first what he anticipated must be expected from Zeke Miller, and then the defense points that he himself wished to stress.

They had been discussing this for no more than five minutes, when they were interrupted by a knocking on the door between the Oval Room and the personal secretary’s office.

“Yes?” Dilman called out.

The door swung open, and a haggard Edna Foster stood in it.

“Are you still here?” Dilman said. “I appreciate it, Miss Foster, but I want you to get right home.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I was only waiting for Senator Hoyt Watson’s arrival. He is here now.”

“Oh. All right, show him in.”

Dilman stood up, alive with curiosity, and so did Abrahams, as Miss Foster held the door wider and Senator Hoyt Watson came through it. When the door closed, he advanced slowly toward the the President.

Abrahams had never seen the formidable Senator Watson this close before, and in this light. It surprised Abrahams how old the Senator appeared as he dragged his feet across the Oval Office. Midway in his passage he had with one hand removed his dark felt hat, and with the other adjusted his string tie, but he made no effort to divest himself of the birch cane hooked on his arm or the velvet-lapeled overcoat. Hatless, his hump of white hair mussed, his horsy, lumpy face seemed longer than ever and more doleful.

“Good evening, sir,” he said to Dilman. “It is kind of you to see me at this time. I gather that Miss Gibson telephoned to notify you of my intended visit?”

“Yes, Senator,” said Dilman cautiously, confused by Watson’s courtesy. “Please sit down.” He indicated Abrahams. “Is this anything you’d prefer to discuss in privacy?”

“No,” said Senator Watson, sitting with a grunt on the edge of the chair, “no, I would prefer to speak in front of your counsel. I shall be brief. I come here with a heavy heart, and with little to say, yet what I do say must necessarily be said by me tonight since it is important for you, both of you, to hear it tonight. My daughter Sally was caught up in the unfortunate riot outside this evening. She suffered some bruises, a minor laceration, but was otherwise uninjured. What did happen to her, whatever happened, apparently shook her back to her senses. She was found by Miss Gibson on the sidewalk, in a somewhat delirious condition, and Miss Gibson brought her directly to our house and to me.”

Senator Watson fell silent, nodding at the desk calendar, and Dilman, for want of anything better to say, said, “I’m glad she’s well, Senator.”

The legislator raised his head and shook it sorrowfully. “She is not well, sir. She never was, but I refused to face that truth, or accept it. I closed my eyes to her behavior and instability, but no more, no more. Tonight I saw Sally for what she always has been. She is ill, mentally ill, and there is no more hiding from it. You, Counselor Abrahams, surmised as much in your cross-examination. I despised you for doing so, because I suspected the truth but could not accept it. But you were right, and I must learn to live with it.”

Senator Watson unhooked the birch cane from his arm and leaned it against the desk front, and met Dilman’s eyes.

“Sir,” Senator Watson said, “my daughter has confessed what eeally happened that evening with you. She has confessed it before me, Miss Gibson, and an attorney friend I brought in to record it and witness her signature on it. Sally admitted having—having become involved with Secretary Eaton—then going to your bedroom to take notes from a CIA report, then being discovered by you, insulting you, and fashioning the entire episode into a lie to satisfy Eaton, Miller, Hankins. She did you grievous harm, Mr. President, and perjured herself before the body of the Senate, and I cannot let things rest this way another moment, or neither she nor I shall have peace again.”

His hand had gone inside his overcoat, and he withdrew a blue-covered folded document.

“I have Sally’s full statement recorded here, signed in her hand, witnessed and notarized. I suggest your counselor make use of it in his closing address to the Senate tomorrow, to let the truth be told, and destroy that specification in the House’s indictment. I wish I could offer you further redress. You deserve it. All I can offer you is this document, Sally’s wish for forgiveness, and my own deep apology.”

Abrahams watched, his mind in turmoil, as Senator Watson bent forward and held the document out for Douglass Dilman to accept.

Dilman stared at the paper. His hands remained motionless on the desk. His eyes went from the signed confession to the legislator.

Slowly Dilman shook his head. “No, Senator. I don’t want it. Tear it up and throw it away.”

The document trembled in Watson’s fingers, but still he continued to offer it. “Please, sir, you will need it, you will need as much truth on your side as possible tomorrow.”

“No,” Dilman repeated. “She is ill, as you have said, and ill people can be cured and saved. The public entering of this retraction and admission into the trial would destroy Sally forever. She would be beyond help, and as one who also has a daughter, a daughter who is ill and not yet destroyed, I will be no party to this. I appreciate it, Senator, but no. My acquittal or conviction will not be decided by this, by the Article charging this lie, nor by any of the other Articles.”

With reluctance, Senator Watson withdrew the deposition, turned it over in his gnarled hand several times, considering it, and then he looked up.

“You are generous, sir, and a gentleman,” he said to Dilman. “You must understand, however, that this humane decision on your part can have no influence on my vote tomorrow afternoon. I would not have judged against you if I believed you had behaved against my daughter as first charged by herself and the House, solely on that indictment, and I cannot judge in your favor now, simply in knowing my daughter perjured herself and that the House was misled. You understand that, sir?”

“I do.”

Senator Watson tore the document in half, and then tore it into halves again, and he stuffed the shredded paper into his overcoat pocket.

Once more he looked at Dilman. “I must judge you tomorrow on your merits as a President of the United States. I must decide in the matter of Baraza, taking that as being representative of all other matters and the most crucial, whether you acted wisely or unwisely as a President, and whether you acted as an American President or as a Negro President. The majority of my Southern colleagues are against you, and have judged you on other issues. The minority of members are for you, and have judged you on other issues. But the final weight of tomorrow’s independent vote falls on a great number of our one hundred who sleep tonight and who have not prejudged you, but must awaken with a final decision based on consideration of your merits as a man who is President.”

“I ask for nothing more, whatever the outcome,” said Dilman quietly.

Senator Hoyt Watson came wearily to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said, and then, head nodding, he left the room.

From somewhere distant, a clock struck midnight, and time went on past midnight, and the life of the new day had begun.

B
orn of some half-remembered superstition from Douglass Dilman’s childhood was his hope that the sun would shine on this momentous and decisive day of his life, and its appearance would be a lucky omen, melting the hard hearts of his enemies and reviving the spirits of his allies.

Nature was deaf and blind to human superstition.

There was no sun this late November day. Bellicose, brooding clouds, like threatening hosts of strife, gathered low in the bleak sky. The air was wintry, the temperature twenty degrees above zero, and the steady wind from the Potomac swept rawly over the high-strung capital city.

The headlines slashed across the newspapers on the table behind his Oval Office desk were as chilly and ominous as the weather: CRUCIAL IMPEACHMENT VOTE IN SENATE TODAY; PREVIEW POLL INDICATES “CONVICTION CERTAIN” . . . TENSION MOUNTS IN AFRICA; SECRECY ENVELOPS AMERICAN TROOP MOVEMENTS; U.S.S.R. MAINTAINS SILENCE . . . SAVAGE RACE RIOT BEFORE WHITE HOUSE CONTROLLED AS FLAMING CROSS BURNS ON PRESIDENT’S LAWN; WHITES AND NEGROES CLASH IN DOZEN CITIES.