(1964) The Man

by Irving Wallace

  “Mr. Blaser, I can’t comment on that, you understand,” said Eaton.

  “Let me just say this, fellows,” said Talley, taking a step forward. “Secretary Eaton is quite correct in keeping away from speculation. But the Party has taken its own informal poll of the senators who will vote. I can tell you, frankly, there will be no problem in getting two-thirds of the Senate to announce that the President is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Boys, tomorrow you’ll have a new look, a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, a government of all the people, again!”

  There was smashing applause, and Eaton acknowledged it with a dip of his head. Linking his arm inside his wife’s arm, he called out, “Gentlemen, the press conference stands adjourned—and the stampede for the food and drinks begins. Again, thanks for you attentiveness, and now, follow us!”

  And then Reb Blaser shouted, “Thank you, Mr. President!

  Immediately, the room was filled with an uproar of laughter, handclapping, cheers, whistling, and Arthur Eaton, feeling as he guessed T. C. must have felt in those great climactic days before the election, led the stampede to the celebration.

  At twenty minutes after twelve o’clock in the afternoon, the tray containing two small mixed green salads, two ham-and-cheese sandwiches on rye bread, one coffee and one hot tea had been delivered to the Oval Office of the White House from the Navy Mess below, and it now rested on the coffee table between the sofas.

  Waiting for his friend, Douglass Dilman had just sat down to pick at the salad when Nat Abrahams came in, casting aside his hat, shedding his overcoat, massaging his chilled red cheeks.

  “Brrr, what a day,” he said.

  “You’re right, what a day,” said Dilman, watching Abrahams sit down across from him. “Nat, I didn’t see all of your closing address, but what I saw was great.”

  “I’m afraid Miller’s was as good,” Abrahams said.

  “Nevertheless, thanks.”

  Abrahams appeared neither to have heard him nor to have any interest in the lunch before him.

  Dilman inspected him. “What is it, Nat? You have something on your mind. I can tell.”

  Abrahams gnawed his lower lip thoughtfully. “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  “Shoot.”

  He looked at Dilman squarely. “We’ve had an offer, Doug. Political horse trade, but an offer.”

  “For what?”

  “Senate votes in an hour and a half from now.”

  “From whom?”

  “Boss of the Party. Allan Noyes buttonholed me when I was leaving. Took me aside. Said there are nine on-the-fence Party senators who are more concerned about what your conviction will do to the Party tomorrow than about what you are up to today. They feel that if you are kept in office, in the long run there’d be less harm done to the Party. They’re considering that there’s only a year or so of the unexpired term to go, and they’d lose fewer votes in the next election this way than if you are publicly disgraced and kicked out.”

  “Lose fewer votes? What votes?”

  “Well, the Party has been taking samplings around the country. You’ve regained the sympathy of most of the Negro population, and of other minorities. The bloc of white liberals behind you has grown. Some independents here and there are shifting toward you. Noyes said it isn’t a big switch to your side right now, but an impeachment conviction might gain you more sympathy than ever, and lose Eaton a lot of votes when he came up for election.”

  “Eaton’s election. Is that what the Party is worrying about?”

  “Frankly, yes. And that’s the proposition. These nine senators put their heads together with Noyes, and here’s what they came up with. Instead of splitting over you this afternoon, or going against you, they’ve promised to vote for you under certain conditions.”

  “All right, let’s have it, Nat. What’s the price?”

  “If they swing an acquittal for you, then they want a public announcement from you tomorrow that you will neither seek reelection as the Party’s candidate nor allow yourself to be drafted as a candidate by a third party, and that you will come out in full support of Arthur Eaton or any other Party choice for the Presidential nomination next summer. That’s it. Agree to this, and you’ve got nine powerful votes for acquittal you might not otherwise have.”

  Dilman squinted at Abrahams and put down his sandwich. “And I need those nine votes?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt, you can use them,” said Abrahams casually.

  “And they want my answer before two o’clock?”

  “Before a quarter to two.”

  “Nat, my answer is no. You tell them no.”

  Abrahams did not seem at all surprised. He began to eat. “I don’t have to tell them no,” he said, between mouthfuls. “I’ve already told them.”

  “You already told them no?” Dilman fell back, laughing and shaking his head. “You were that sure? What are you, my conscience?”

  “Why, I’m your counselor, Mr. President.”

  “My assistant gravedigger, you mean.” Suddenly Dilman sobered. “How badly did we need that deal, Nat, no soft-soaping? At the press conference today, Reb Blaser said the House managers took a straw poll, and while they need only sixty-seven votes to convict me, the poll says they have eighty. Any truth to that?”

  “Exaggerated. Allan Noyes took his own poll. He’s hardheaded Party. No sleight-of-hand.”

  “Well?”

  “He comes up with seventy-four to convict. Seven more than they need.”

  “What do you come up with, Nat?”

  “How do I know? I look and listen. I hope.”

  “Come on, Nat.”

  “Okay. If it is sixty-seven for conviction, they win. If it is sixty-six for conviction, short of two-thirds by one, you win. Right now, wetting my finger and putting it into the wind, I’d say they have—there’s no way of knowing—but Tuttle and Hart believe they may have seventy votes.”

  “In other words, they have what they need plus four?”

  “Don’t think about it, Doug. It’s all guesswork. Let them vote and let’s see.”

  “Oh, I’ll let them vote.”

  “There are other things to think about. . . . Hey, Edna Foster tells me Mindy is here. Is that true?”

  Dilman found a way to smile. “Absolutely true. She’s hurt, she’s not well, I’m going to see that she gets help. But she’s back, yes. And beautiful beyond belief. She’s upstairs napping this minute.” He shook his head. “I only wish I had come to my senses sooner and forced Mindy to come here, permitted Wanda to, while I was still a tenant of the White House.”

  “You’re still a tenant.”

  “Yes. Only it’s beginning to feel like Leavenworth.”

  The desk telephone rang. Dilman wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, then rose and hurried to the desk.

  “Direct Pentagon hookup—I wonder what now—”

  He could picture Secretary of Defense Steinbrenner ensconced behind the door with the placard reading “3-E-880,” busy at his nine-foot glass-topped desk. Except for the deceptively placid view from Steinbrenner’s four spacious windows, lulling one with the sight of the Pentagon lagoon below and the Jefferson Monument beyond, it was an office of intense action. Steinbrenner was on the direct White House line now, but he also had the gray telephone to all command posts open, and his military assistants busy at the easel on which they sketched and simplified tactical problems for him, as well as the strange wall clock depicting time zones in defense areas (“For Cincpac—Subtract 6”) constantly in view. So much might come through that office today.

  Dilman picked up the telephone. “Yes, this is the President.”

  “Mr. President, Steinbrenner here. I have just heard from General Rice in Baraza City. His aerial reconnaissance has delivered—no more than an hour old—film showing highly intensified Communist movement on the Barazan frontier, in fact, throughout the enemy perimeter. All equipment is being mobilized. There is no question but that
they have decided to move. General Rice believes it a strategic necessity that our advance rocketry units, now positioned, hit first. He thinks an enormous advantage can be gained. I don’t feel empowered to make such a decision. He is standing by in Baraza City for the go-ahead. I’m ready to give it, but not on my own responsibility. I’m passing the buck, Mr. President. Do you want to give us the green light?”

  Dilman’s palm was warm on the hand telephone. He thought of Harry Truman: the buck stops here, here in this Oval Office, not in the more ornate office of the Secretary of Defense.

  It was a difficult decision to make. If he gave the word, the Dragon Flies would strike, perhaps topple the enemy in a lightning stroke, perhaps gain an advantage, perhaps save countless lives. Yet he would have committed the United States to an action of offense, not defense. He would have betrayed America’s entire historic philosophy of peace for a possible military advantage.

  He hesitated, momentarily troubled by the man in the Pentagon with the command line and easel and zone clock and maps, and then he heeded his instinct.

  “I don’t want to be the aggressor, no matter what is going on,” Dilman said. “You order the General to continue to keep a close watch on their movements, but only shoot when shot at.”

  He heard Steinbrenner’s snort. “If that’s it, then I’ll pass it on. But if it is defense we’re thinking of, we’ve got to anticipate the worst, we’ve got to anticipate the conflict’s broadening, and the possibility of an attack by Russia. I feel it is important to consider putting our defense forces on second-strike standby alert.” There was a pause, and then Steinbrenner said, “Mr. President, what about going on DEFCON ONE?”

  Again Dilman hesitated. The official order to set in operation DEFCON ONE would poise the entire United States, its military and civilian forces, on an all-out war alert. Dilman tried to visualize this alert: The screens of the DEW and BMEWS radar network would be under double surveillance, and fingers would creep closer to buttons that could order the North American Defense Command to activate 720 different Warning Points. The triple blockhouses stationed throughout the world would begin electronically elevating the fixed Minuteman ICBMs from their concrete casings. The secret trains carrying their mobile Minuteman missiles and squadrons would speed to preassigned positions. The Polaris submarines, each with twenty nuclear weapons, would rise from the ocean bottoms. Beneath the yellow clay of Nebraska, from the concrete command center of SAC, special world would send the B-70 jets and their hydrogen-bomb loads hurtling aloft in greater number. And just as his own Marine helicopter would be readied nearby to spirit him away to the subterranean second White House burrowed deep in a Virginia hillside, Dilman knew that fallout shelters across the nation would be manned for the ultimate signal of war imminent. There would be consternation, fear, even panic. Yet there would be preparedness.

  A precautionary measure, this DEFCON ONE, Dilman thought, a drastic measure; perhaps a necessary one, as Steinbrenner was suggesting. Still, it was a hazardous choice. For, Dilman realized, DEFCON ONE could not go unnoticed by the world and the enemies of America in the world. Not many city blocks away, the Soviet Embassy would be informing Moscow of the highly charged activity—the canceling of all military leaves, the bustling in the Pentagon—and the Soviet radar units in the Arctic and on picket ships in the Atlantic would be reporting to Moscow the unusual movements of the United States surface and underseas fleets and its aircraft in the skies. How would the suspicious Kasatkin and his nervous Presidium react to this? Would they look upon this defensive preparation as a maneuver for aggression far beyond the provocation of the Dragon Flies in Africa? Would the concrete walls of Russian mountains then open wide to disgorge Soviet nuclear missiles—perhaps even the Gigaton Bomb that Kasatkin had so often boasted about—all building toward a forty-day assault that could snuff out the lives of 180 million of the United States’ 230 million people? Or were the Soviets doing all of this anyway, without the provocation of DEFCON ONE?

  There was a pounding behind Dilman’s temples. His head ached. Then, suddenly, there was the relief of decision. The defensive value of DEFCON ONE was obliterated by the horrifying danger it invited—that of hastening the triggering of the first shot against the United States itself.

  “No,” said Dilman, “too soon.”

  The Secretary of Defense was worried. “They are on the move in Africa, Mr. President. Are you sure you want to hold back?”

  He was sure. “For an hour, anyway, Secretary Steinbrenner. Stay in close touch with me.”

  After he hung up, Dilman remained standing behind his desk. Shuffling the papers lying on his blotter to be signed, he told Nat Abrahams what was happening.

  Before Abrahams could reply, there was a sharp knocking on the door leading to engagement secretary Lucas’ office, and then, without waiting for an invitation to enter, General Leo Jaskawich broke into the room.

  Gone was the astronaut’s normally reassuring expression. Anxiety was written across his swarthy features.

  “Sorry to bust in on you, Mr. President, but I think the fat’s in the fire,” Jaskawich blurted out. “Just heard from the Soviet Russian Embassy. They asked for an immediate appointment for Ambassador Leonid Rudenko, and before I could hang up and get to you, the southeast gate called in to say Rudenko’s car had just passed through. He’s coming straight in without an appointment. I guess there must be—”

  “Looks like this is the showdown,” said Dilman.

  “I can stall him,” said Jaskawich.

  “To hell with protocol,” said Dilman. “Let’s get it over with. Get out to the South Portico, General, and bring him right in here.”

  Jaskawich tugged down the brim of his officer’s cap and rushed past the President’s desk, and then through the French door.

  Dilman was still on his feet behind his desk. He felt oddly calm, almost fatalistically calm. He saw Abrahams rise.

  “Maybe I should get out of here,” Abrahams said.

  “You stay where you are,” said Dilman. Abrahams nodded, and moved to the shabby Revels chair and sat. Dilman wet his lips with his tongue. “Well, they’re not only moving in Baraza,” he said, almost to himself, “they’re moving in Moscow, too. I guess it is one and the same.”

  He looked off. He could see Jaskawich snappily leading the Russian Ambassador along the colonnaded walk, followed by two Secret Service men.

  Jaskawich held open the screen door, and Ambassador Leonid Rudenko entered the Oval Office while the astronaut closed the French door and hung back in front of it.

  Ambassador Rudenko was a small, muscular, middle-aged Russian with a perpetually glowering, unsmiling, pimpled face. He was the antithesis of the international diplomat. His English was exact and uncolloquial, his choice of words often sharp and uncivil, and he was famous for his use of a vituperative tongue in public.

  He was unsmiling and gloomy this minute. He had removed his dark fedora as he advanced to the President’s desk, but he had not touched his maroon woolen scarf or mountainous overcoat. Under his arm he carried a wafer-thin attaché case.

  “Mr. President Dilman,” he said, but did not offer his hand. “I requested my Embassy to telephone, but on the assumption that a matter of such urgency—”

  “Never mind,” said Dilman. “Sit down.”

  Dilman lowered himself into the high-backed leather swivel chair, but either Ambassador Rudenko had not heard him or was too preoccupied to accept hospitality, for he remained standing before the desk, pulling off his kidskin gloves, then unzipping his attaché case. He extracted three blue sheets of paper, laid his case on the desk, knocking over several pieces of miniature statuary, and then fixed his eyes on Dilman.

  “Mr. President, I have received, as of twenty minutes ago, an urgent communiqué directly from Premier Nikolai Kasatkin in Moscow. I have been ordered to read it to you in person.”

  “Go ahead,” said Dilman. His face was expressionless as he tensely waited.

  Ambassador R
udenko cleared his throat and began to read the diplomatic note aloud.

  “ ‘To the President of the United States, Douglass Dilman.

  “ ‘Dear Mr. President. I have been in receipt of your note, communicated by your Ambassador, concerning the necessity of your intervention in Baraza. I did not reply at once, nor did I immediately discuss the matter with the Presidium, or anyone, except for one informal reference to it in a public speech, the contents of which represented my immediate reaction. I have continued to delay reply until I could investigate the Baraza problem, the African situation generally, through my advisers in the Kremlin and abroad, and until I could apply to it the full weight of my thought and judgment.

  “ ‘Mr. President, now that the facts have been clarified for me, there is no doubt in my mind that you have been seriously misled by your militarist clique, pawns of a system that desires only to seize control of illiterate blacks in Africa and exploit them for capitalism. The so-called facts you have presented to me about the African Communist buildup on the Baraza frontiers, about the equipment and leadership supplied by the U.S.S.R., which you have received from your intelligence sources, are both faulty and vastly exaggerated. They were cleverly designed by your military and capitalist cabal to provoke you into a warlike act of aggression, and to frighten us into not responding to this aggression. It grieves me that you have fallen prey to advisers who would see colonialism continued, even at the risk of a worldwide catastrophe.’ ”

  Ambassador Rudenko paused, peered more closely at the tightly spaced transcript, and then resumed reading.

  “ ‘Mr. President, you have met me, and know me for one who will not be easily frightened. You know, too, the might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, of our defensive strength, our unity of purpose, and our will for peace. What we seek for ourselves and every nation is peace, prosperity, and equality among all human beings. You know, too, that I believe the strongest secret weapon we possess is not our hydrogen bomb, but our Idea to free the world of the shackles of slavery and bondage, as we have freed our own people in little more than a half century. For our Idea to triumph, there must be a civilized and populated world to save. If there are only the embers and corpses of a civilization left, there is only a junk heap and a graveyard to save.