(1964) The Man (72 page)

Suddenly, unmistakably, he heard Wanda’s voice in the earpiece. “Mr. President—is this President Dilman?”

He understood her hesitancy immediately. “One second, hold on,” he said. “Uh, Miss Foster—”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Personal call. You need not monitor this one. Thank you.”

He listened for the audible click of his secretary’s telephone, heard it, and was assured that Wanda and he were now alone. “All right, Wanda—”

“Are we private?”

“Absolutely.” The restrained tightness of her voice troubled him. “Wanda, what is it? Are you all right? Is there anything wrong?”

“I don’t know, Doug. I wanted to phone you all morning, but it was dangerous, so—”

“Dangerous?” What could be dangerous on a crisp, beautiful American morning? “Wanda, I don’t—”

“Wait, Doug, listen. I had to hold back until lunch, so I could get away without being obvious. I’m in a grocery store booth now. There’s so much that’s been—” She paused as if to organize her thoughts, and then her low modulated voice came through the telephone swiftly but clearly. “Our office was chaos this morning. Mr. Gar had summoned all the Vaduz associates from New York, Savannah, Galveston, San Francisco. There was so much pressure and haste, I think half the time they forgot I was there. Anyway, I was able to piece things together, and I could see how it might affect you, and thought you should know about it.” She caught her breath, then continued. “Doug, the agricultural equipment Vaduz Exporters has been sending out these last months to their home warehouses in Liechtenstein, it wasn’t entirely farm equipment, but weapons, small arms, machine guns, ammunition. My company was using Liechtenstein only as a cover-up. The weapons were actually being shipped on behind the Iron Curtain to Bulgaria and Albania, and from there to—to certain parts of Africa.”

“You mean Baraza? The Communists are shipping weapons to Baraza?”

“I heard Baraza mentioned once. I’m almost certain of it.”

Shaken, Dilman said, “And your company, Vaduz Exporters, they’re actually a Communist Front over here?”

“A trading corporation for the Soviet Union. I’m positive.”

“Wanda, did you ever have an inkling of this before?”

“Never, not once. Everything exploded early this morning. There were these people pouring in, rushing around like insane, and I was one of several ordered to burn duplicates of procurement orders that had gone out, duplicates of orders I had never seen, typed by someone else, kept by Gar in his office vault. I could read bits and pieces before the stuff went into the incinerator, and I could see Vaduz was shipping weapons and they were winding up eventually in Communist hands in African ports. But the main thing—”

“Wanda, what alerted them to destroy everything this morning?”

“I was just going to tell you, Doug. That’s the main thing. I heard CIA mentioned twice. I was all ears for everything by then, but I don’t think anyone realized I was listening. But Gar said their informant knew of a special CIA report that had gone to you about a Communist weapons buildup in or around Baraza, and by now Vaduz was probably under surveillance, and orders were—whose orders, I have no idea—orders were to take precautionary measures. This may all be unreliable, Doug, but something
is
going on. You probably know the entire story, and this is silly. You do see all the CIA reports, so—”

“I’m supposed to, Wanda, but I haven’t seen any CIA report like that one. I know nothing about a weapons buildup around Baraza. In fact, I was just having lunch with the United Nations delegates, telling them how the Russians promised me hands off.”

“Doug, maybe—” Wanda’s tone had become uncertain. “I’m sure I haven’t got any of this wrong, but maybe I’m reading wrong things into what I’ve heard and seen. It’s just that I’m so worried about you. Maybe you should—I mean, don’t depend too much on what I’ve said—but on your own, I think—”

“You did the right thing, Wanda, calling me. If there is nothing to it, fine, nothing lost. On the other hand, if what you’ve reported can be verified—” He was full of it now, his mind straining in every direction, until he realized that Wanda was still on the other end, in a telephone booth, worried, perhaps frightened. “Wanda—?”

“Yes—?”

“Thank you for this. I’ll look into it immediately. There’s one thing I want you to do for me. I want you to quit Vaduz, get out of there as fast as you can.”

“Yes, I had decided to do that myself, even if it’s a false alarm. I’m afraid of them, what might happen. Even if I’ve blown this up out of all proportion, the money isn’t worth the worry in staying on. I’ll give Mr. Gar notice tonight. Doug, I’d better run. No matter what, do be careful.”

“You be careful, Wanda. I’d give anything to see you. Well—I’ll call you, let you know at home—tonight, tomorrow night latest. Good-bye.”

After hanging up, Dilman remained very still. He suffered a curious sensation of loss, and then of inertia induced by helplessness. He tried to liken his reaction to that which he had known the evening he had vetoed the Minorities Rehabilitation Bill. On that occasion, after his act of rebellion and the bitter response to it, he had felt that he had cut himself adrift from his crew. He had been pervaded by, almost overwhelmed by, the awesome experience of loneliness. He had turned the ship of state into an open boat on a running sea, and he was not sure that he could navigate it, without help, to port. But the sense of aloneness then had not engulfed him. He had gone on. He had tried.

This was different. If the danger to which Wanda had alerted him had any reality—and she was not one to panic, to convert rumor into fact, to exaggerate—then he had not cut himself adrift from his crew by his own choice, but had been forced into the helpless isolation of an open boat by hostile mutineers. His own crew had conspired against him, to take over the ship of state and to let him sink.

For the first time, the full realization of what might be happening struck him: he was President in name only, while those around him, without his knowledge, were at the helm, performing the functions of high command.

If this was the case—and now his strength was revived by growing anger—he would not go down, and let the country go down, because other hands had tried to heave him overboard and themselves take control. He was still President of the United States, possessed of the total authority of the executive branch, and he still had enough of a crew at his beck and call to use this authority.

He lifted the telephone from the hook, identified himself to the White House operator, and asked for Edna Foster.

“Miss Foster? Two things. Confidential. Contact Bob Lombardi at the FBI. Notify him I want to see the complete files on every foreign subversive organization, and especially those under suspicion of being Communist Fronts, located in this immediate area. Do you have that?

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I want the information on my desk by two-thirty today. Second thing—” He thought about it. He had met the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency only three times, and never once in private. He wondered if he could trust him, or if the Director was in the conspiracy against him, if such there was, and then he decided that he had no choice of action. If he could not trust the CIA, he was lost anyway. “Get hold of Montgomery Scott at Central Intelligence. Tell him I want to see the original, unedited daily reports, for every day of the past month, on every one of the African Unity Pact countries, especially those on Baraza.”

“Mr. President, if I may say so, we do have a complete file of these CIA reports in our—”

“I know we have copies, Miss Foster. And I know the Secretary of State has copies. I need the originals. Tell Scott I want to see him personally, along with the original reports, in my office at three o’clock sharp.”

“I’ll have to rearrange your appointments. And I want to leave you time to rest up before tonight’s dinner—”

“Do whatever you have to. But Scott is top priority. Understand?”

He hung up, then recalled that he had left the United Nations delegation in Eaton’s hands. He was in no mood for the delegates now, especially when he was less certain about the durability of the worldwide peace he had achieved at Chantilly, but he must return to the table. At least they must be prompted to remember that he was President.

Quickly he crossed the Red Room, and as he reached out to open the door, he realized that it had not been entirely closed during his telephone conversation. He must remind Miss Watson to be less hasty and slipshod in the future. He would hate to have had the valet or the other servants overhear any of his conversation with Wanda, and then use it as fodder for their backstairs gossip.

He looked down the vast hall, and in the distance he could see a girl in a white blouse and blue skirt rushing to her work. Not until she had gone around the corner and out of sight did he remember that Sally Watson had worn a white blouse and blue skirt today. It was too late to call out to her and reprimand her. It was also unimportant, considering what was on his mind and what the afternoon ahead held for him.

Bemused, he started back to the Family Dining Room to take his place at the head of the table.

Edna Foster brushed the limp brown strands of hair from her eyes, left the President once more buried in the heap of files delivered to his desk by the FBI twenty minutes earlier, and unhappily returned to her own office to get the disagreeable task over with.

The instant that she returned, before she could prepare herself for him, Leroy Poole was out of his chair, forehead perspiring, swollen eyes moist, black porcine face beseeching her. She tried to escape behind the moat of her desk, but doggedly he trudged after her and hung over her electric typewriter.

“What did he say, Miss Foster?” Poole begged to know. “Did you tell the President that the Federal judge of that lousy U.S. District Court sentenced Jeff Hurley to death, to be executed in the lethal gas chamber?”

Edna Foster squirmed. “Yes, the President had heard the news from Mr. Lombardi.” She hated this scene, and tried to avert her gaze from Poole. It was evident that the grotesque little Negro had been crying all morning, and over the death sentence of a man, not even one of his family, a man crying over another man. It embarrassed her and made her slightly ill.

“Will he see me, or is he still sore at me?” Poole asked.

Edna summoned a vestige of dignity. “I really can’t say if the President is—is sore at you, as you put it—but he definitely cannot see you, even for a minute. This is honestly one of his busiest days. I can vouch for that.”

Leroy Poole seemed to sag into some emotional morass, nodding, nodding, and then whining, “What about my request that he commute the sentence? He has that power. I have new evidence, and we’ve filled out the application for executive clemency in the Justice Department. If I have to wait for all those investigations and recommendations from the pardon attorney and the Attorney General, Jeff Hurley will be dead and buried before my appeal gets to Dilman’s desk. Did you tell him that?”

“Everything, Mr. Poole.” She flipped a page of her shorthand pad. “I passed on to him everything you asked me to, and the President answered—I have it here word for word—‘Inform Mr. Poole to go through proper channels at the Department of Justice on his appeal for executive clemency in the case of Jefferson Hurley. For my part, I will personally contact Attorney General Kemmler and request that he cut the red tape and expedite the appeal. When I have the new evidence, and the Attorney General’s recommendation, I shall review the appeal and summon Mr. Poole to hear my final decision. I promise him this will be done before Mr. Hurley can go to the gas chamber.’ ” Edna looked up. “That’s all.”

A gust of air escaped Poole’s mouth, as from the neck of a balloon, yet his puffed features did not deflate. “Okay, fair enough,” Poole said. “I’ll go ahead. I’ll see the appeal is in order. You just see that I’m here to talk it over with the President and hear his pardon before Jeff Hurley is gone.”

“You have the President’s word, Mr. Poole.”

“Okay. Goddam them down there, legalizing murder of the best, most decent human being in the country. I won’t let them, and Dilman won’t either, once he reviews the facts and hears what I have to say. . . . Okay, I know you’re busy, Miss Foster. Just remember to call me.”

Temporarily appeased, Leroy Poole shuffled across the office, out the door and out of her sight, and Edna Foster dropped into her hard swivel chair with a sigh of relief. She laid her notebook aside, and waited to see if the pinch behind her eyes was going to develop into another migraine headache. It was getting worse and worse, all this pressure, and all these people, like just now, a black man in here, a black man in there, and all their anger and self-pity.

Why had she fastened on Dilman’s color again? She tried to think. Was it the tension of the job, created by Dilman’s color, or simply, simply the discomfort of being secretary to a Negro? How far had she come since that first day when she had agreed to work for Dilman, just as she had so long ago for T. C.?

Intellectually, she supported all the
right
things for Negroes, their right to vote, to sit like anyone else in any school classroom, to be equal under God and the Constitution. All the right things she believed in, without equivocation, yes—yet in some mysterious way her emotions continued to dominate her intellect, and at such times she felt that those black people were a threatening and inferior people. Threatening because black was threatening, because black was evil, like blackmail, black arts, blacklist, black magic. Threatening because, no matter what common sense you had, when you walked in the street, in the dark, alone, and you saw a Negro man walking toward you, you felt unsafe, because black was African and black was night, meaning uncivilized, meaning oblivion. And, illogically, you considered them inferiors. When she was on a bus, and looked out the window to find a Negro at the wheel of a large new car that had drawn up to the light, she was always surprised if he was not a chauffeur, surprised and vaguely resentful. How could a lesser person have more than she, who was white, meaning good and decent, and educated and chaste? After such internal bouts, and with difficulty, brought on by shame, she would recall her popular readings on race: these were not inferior people, only different-appearing people. Desperately she would evoke the names of Booker T. Washington and Carver and Bunche, but it was no use.