(1964) The Man (3 page)

She realized with a start that she had been standing at the desk, daydreaming away five more precious minutes, and 3,000 miles away in Frankfurt the President was nearing his telephone in the ancient Palace, and she had not yet made the few preparations necessary for his call to the Cabinet Room. Hastily she searched her desktop for the list of those who would be present for the conference call, found no such list, and then guessed that Wayne Talley would, from long habit, have left it on the President’s own desk.

Hurrying now, Edna opened the nearest door on her left, and crossed the rug to the sturdy brown Buchanan desk at the far end of the President’s corner office. The green blotter held nothing, and neither did the empty card stand, so much like a menu holder, into which T. C.’s daily engagement schedule was slipped. Concerned, she looked about, and then she saw it, the single sheet of paper that Talley had left for her, a corner of it pinned under the weight of the black telephone, the deceptively ordinary telephone that was the much-publicized hot line.

Taking the sheet, she scanned the list typed upon it: Talley himself, of course; Secretary of State Arthur Eaton, of course; Senator Selander, Majority Leader in the Senate; Representative Wickland, Majority Leader in the House; Senator Dilman, President pro tempore of the Senate; General Fortney, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Mr. Stover, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs in the State Department; Mr. Leach, the stenotypist. Eight in all. That was it for this morning.

Studying the personnel on the list as she slowly left the President’s desk, Edna played her deduction game. One did not have to be Scott of the CIA or Lombardi of the FBI to make an accurate prediction, once one was given a set of clues. Edna made her prediction to herself, enjoying the sport almost as much as she enjoyed the diversion of the crossword puzzles and Double-Crostic games that she hoarded for weekends. The emergency conference call from the President, she told herself, would be devoted almost entirely to Africa and the trouble over the new Republic of Baraza. The presence of the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs indicated this. Then there would be talk about pushing something through a balky Congress, probably the unpopular ratification of the renewal of the United States’ membership in the African Unity Pact, as well as further economic aid to newly independent African nations. The presence of two senators and one representative and one general indicated this. The attendance of Talley and Secretary of State Eaton furnished no added clues. They were always present when T. C. spoke, always there, his confidants and alter egos.

Yes, Edna decided unhappily, Africa would be the subject, and that promised a dull and wearisome morning. African talk meant almost nothing to her. What was it, really? A black jumble of crazy names like Basutoland, Nyasaland, Malagasy, Gambia, Dahomey, Chad, Rwanda, and lately, Baraza. Even if you were intelligent, you could not tell one country from another, or one primitive face from another (despite those wild robes they wore, despite those odd Oxford or Harvard accents they assumed when they called upon the President). It was all impossible and, for Edna, Africa remained the Dark Continent, affecting her day-to-day existence in no way whatsoever. And—repressed heresy—she suspected that those comic-opera countries meant little more to T. C. or Talley or Eaton, either. Soviet Russia, now, that was another matter. Russia could blow us up, and ruin everything, everyone, before some of us had a chance to get married and live and have children.

She had paused before the French doors leading out to the cement walk with its overhang and colonnades. Outside—T. C. called it his “backyard”—the darkness had gone, and the gray dawn was brightening. Even in late August, the Rose Garden was still in full bloom, the roses and Shasta daisies and geraniums dominated by early chrysanthemums. At the far end of the garden Andrew Jackson’s hoary magnolia tree, partially obscuring the White House rotunda and Truman’s Balcony, was thick with green foliage. For a moment Edna was tempted to step outside, join the White House policeman who had appeared on the walk, deeply inhale the cool fresh air, and fully revive herself for the Frankfurt call. But the platinum watch on her left wrist bound her to duty. Swiftly she left the President’s office and returned to her own desk.

Yanking open drawers, digging supplies out of them, she was at last occupied with routine and too busy for daydreaming. In a few minutes, her thin arms heavily weighted under a pyramid of memorandum pads, boxes of pencils, shorthand notebook, and spare ashtrays, she went carefully to the door of the Cabinet Room. Balancing her load against the frame of the door, she grasped the knob, turned it, and pushed the door open with her knee.

She had somehow expected to find Arthur Eaton inside. He was usually first, seated and hunched over the long eight-sided, coffin-like mahogany table, his chalky, finely chiseled, aristocratic profile bent over sheaves of briefing notes. But he was not there. Instead, across the Cabinet Room, two khaki-clad enlisted men, plainly Signal Corps, were finishing the wiring of two gray metal boxes that rested on the dark table. Edna recognized the larger box, with its perforated side, as the receiver that would unscramble and the loudspeaker that would amplify the President’s confidential conversation from Frankfurt, while the sensitive smaller audio box was the microphone which would pick up any voice in the room, scramble it in a special transmitter, and send it off to the Gothic study in the Alte Mainzer Palace, where it would be unscrambled and made comprehensible through a similar portable system set up for the listening President.

Apparently the two Signal Corps men were too occupied to be aware of Edna’s arrival. She coughed, and called out, “Good morning, gentlemen.”

The younger, a technician third class, glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, good morning, ma’m. We’ll be outa here in a jiffy.”

“Go right ahead. We still have fifteen minutes.”

Edna lowered her precarious load to the table, then went to the three pairs of green drapes concealing the French doors and opened them, so that once more Jackson’s magnolia tree was in her view and the room behind her filled with the filtered early morning light. After shaking loose the Presidential flag, which now hung well, and taking note of the American flag, which was fine, Edna resumed her familiar routine. She distributed memorandum pads, pencils, ashtrays. She filled the water carafes. She was hardly aware that the Signal Corps men were making tests, and then saying good-bye.

She was not yet through when the corridor door opened. Startled, Edna wheeled, expecting Eaton, but instead saw two of the Secret Service agents of the White House Detail, one the red-faced, beefy Beggs, the other the wiry, blond Sperry.

“Got you busy early this morning, hey?” Beggs called out.

“They sure have,” said Edna.

“Just want to thank you for Ogden and Otis, Miss Foster,” said Beggs. She knew that her face must have reflected blankness, for he quickly added, “They’re my boys.” Then he said, “First ones in their school with the new Baraza stamps. We’re all grateful.”

“I haven’t had any more from Africa this week,” said Edna. “Most of the mail is from Frankfurt—from Germany—by diplomatic pouch, so no stamps. Of course, some other things drift in.”

“Anything’ll do, Miss Foster. Boys can use those for trading. Sure appreciate your thinking of us.” Beggs’s colleague, Sperry, had touched his arm, and he looked off, then turned back. “Here they come, Miss Foster. Be seeing you.”

The moment that the Secret Service agents were gone, Leach came through the open door, nodding his skeletal head, carrying his perpetual harassment and his portable stenotype to the table, two chairs from the center where Eaton would sit.

Edna heard more footsteps on the tile corridor floor and waited. The three of them appeared in the doorway at the same time, and then Talley and Stover hung back, deferring to Eaton. The Secretary of State, tall, slender, magnificent in his pin-striped gray Saville Row suit, fedora in his hand, entered briskly.

“Hello, Miss Foster,” he said in his deep, well-modulated voice. “Sorry about the hour, but T. C. appears to need our help.”

Eaton’s appearance, his evident good breeding, always struck Edna dumb, and as ever, she could do no more than duck her head and murmur her welcome. She watched Eaton as he deposited his hat on a bench and walked to the chair where Stover had already placed his alligator briefcase. She could see Eaton with the same eyes that the President, an old friend, saw him, and what she saw was an Easterner of excellent antecedents, schooled in the Ivy League traditions, a careful, moderate, thoughtful man, mellowed by the best of taste, and still youthful in late middle age. Where Eaton differed from T. C. was in the matter of human relationship. The President was gayer, warmer, more flamboyant, the politician’s brass section accompanying the subtle chamber-music strings. The President would always be elected; Arthur Eaton would always be appointed.

She continued to observe Eaton as he removed clipped papers from his briefcase and sat down with them. He was the most attractive man currently in public office, she was positive. The press liked to say that he resembled Warren Harding, but Edna resented this, for Harding was not patrician and his historical image was weak. Edna had once seen a portrait of James K. Polk, and although she had heard that Polk had been slight and inconspicuous, she knew that this was the man in American history that Eaton most resembled. Like Polk, the Secretary of State possessed a smooth, sleek pompadour, graying above the forehead and at the temples. His eyes were full and deep, his nose slightly Grecian in its line, his jaw (like his entire face) bony and long. He was Virginia, Andover, Princeton, and perfect.

And now, Edna could see, he had lifted his head from his papers to listen to an exchange between T. C.’s right-hand adviser, Wayne Talley, and Eaton’s own Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Jed Stover.

The short, heavyset, electric Talley was poking a finger into Stover’s shoulder for emphasis. “I don’t care about your damn facts and figures, Jed. We’ve done enough for Baraza, more than enough, and you know that. Do you want us to go to war with those Communist apes over some little jungle country not much bigger than a football field? Do you want to fight over 30,000 square miles in West Africa?”

The taller Jed Stover, squirming at Talley’s poking finger, patted his bristly eyebrows and scrub of mustache, and said calmly, “It is 33,000 square miles, and has a population of 2,437,000, Wayne. It has gold, a good deal of gold, and diamonds and iron ore. Besides—”

“There’s not enough gold in the entire place to pay for what it might cost us in trouble.”

Doggedly Stover continued. “Besides, it is our model, in a sense, our creation, our showcase, Wayne. You cannot give an emerging black nation democracy, and then turn your back on it.”

“We have enough showcases over there. We have Liberia and Ghana and a half-dozen more. That African Unity Pact was fine when it was first set up. Paper work, good propaganda. We never intended to renew. Now, just because Baraza is in it, I see no reason to change our minds. You people in African Affairs get too involved in your own little world, and you can’t see it as a small part of a bigger world with bigger problems. You’re like so many whisker-combing scholars, each with one lifetime specialty, and you get to thinking that the truth about Nancy Hanks is more important than the Presidency, or that the significance of democracy in San Marino is more important than Italy. Don’t look so damn hurt, Jed. I’m not disparaging all the spadework you fellows do, and how well you serve, but you’re all inclined to suffer from funnel vision. I mean it. The President and I have discussed this many times. And I’m sure Arthur understands this even better than the two of us.”

Talley had turned to seek Arthur Eaton’s collaboration. Jed Stover, who had been about to reply, was immediately subdued by the reference to his superior. He seemed to bite his tongue and make an effort to hold silent.

Eaton, who had been listening, pursed his lips. He considered the President’s aide. At last he spoke. “Jed and his department are doing an excellent job, Wayne.”

“I admitted that,” interrupted Talley. “I was only saying—”

“I heard what you were saying, Wayne,” Eaton went on. “There is much to what you have been saying. You can be sure that T. C. and I are perfectly aware of what is going on and what must be done.”

Witnessing the verbal scuffle, Edna Foster saw that this time it was Wayne Talley’s turn to be cowed. Eaton had made it clear that he and T. C. would make the final decisions on African intervention. He had, in a refined way, reminded Talley that although he was the President’s aide, he was not his first adviser, in no way his Gray Eminence, but only his sounding board and runner. He had put Talley in his place, which was not between the President and the Secretary of State, but somewhere behind them, outside them. But it had been carefully done, so that Talley would not lose face before a lesser State Department appointee.

Edna noted that Governor Talley reacted to the encounter, and subtle rebuff, as he always had in the past. His right eye, the one that was slightly crossed, involuntarily began to twitch. His bulbous nose reddened. He seemed less sure of the checkered suit and blue shirt and gaudy gold-coin tie clasp he was given to wearing. He appeared, Edna thought, like the officious manager of a Midwest haberdashery, who had just been reminded by the wealthy absentee owner that he had once been a humble clerk.

“Of course,” Eaton was saying now, with a serious smile, “we are dealing with yesterday’s facts, are we not? What I know, what you know, Wayne, and what you know, Jed, is useful, as of this minute, but in five minutes the President will be speaking to us from Frankfurt. After another morning with the Russians, he may have new facts, new ideas, and our recipe for a decision on Africa may be considerably changed. Don’t you both agree?”

Edna found that she had to keep herself from smiling at the Secretary of State’s adroitness. He had taken Talley and Stover in as his equals at last, and they were mollified. Talley, grunting and bobbing his head, circled the table to sit beside T. C.’s favorite. Stover, exhaling satisfaction, found a place opposite his superior.