The Man

by Irving Wallace

  Edna had known Montgomery Scott since the day T. C. had appointed him Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. She had never been able to reconcile his appearance with his record. Scott’s silky brown hair was parted low and combed up and over his head to disguise a bald spot. Yet his Vandyke beard was full and pointed. In between, his pink, bland, ageless face, with little pulls and punctures for features, was innocent and noncommittal. His long frame, slouched, carried his familiar sports jacket and dark-gray slacks. His carved meerschaum, the gift of some Middle Eastern potentate, added to his sedentary, scholarly aspect. Yet, Edna remembered, Scott had once been an active cloak-and-dagger man for the OSS. Later, while with the CIA, he had been involved in the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala, the instigation of the U-2 espionage aircraft, the onetime invasion of Suez, the assassination of Trujillo. Except for the incisiveness of his speech, his incongruous braying laugh, the spade of a beard, there was nothing to indicate that Scott was unique, yet he was the Director of derring-do, with a half-billion dollars of funds (never publicly accounted for) and 15,000 employees (rarely publicly recognized) at his disposal in Langley, Virginia, and around the world. The reporters who admired him referred to him as “Great Scott,” and those who disliked him referred to him as “Great Scott!”

  Edna Foster opened the door and entered the President’s Oval Office.

  Not until she reached the desk did both men look up.

  “Hello, Edna,” Montgomery Scott said to her. “Long time.”

  “Yes, good to see you, Mr. Scott.”

  Dilman pointed to the chair next to his desk. “Sit here, Miss Foster. I’m going to interrogate Mr. Scott. It’s important, so take down everything. Transcribe it and have it ready for me today. I may want to study it after dinner tonight.”

  Edna sat, pulled down the hem of her skirt, pad and pencil waiting. “Any special security rating for this, Mr. President?”

  “One copy, for me and no one else, stamped ‘Eyes Only’ and ‘Top Secret.’ ” Dilman indicated the chair on the other side of the desk. “Please sit down, Mr. Scott.”

  “If you don’t mind, I will.” The CIA Director slumped into the chair and, propping himself in it like a fishhook, tugged at his short beard, then massaged the orange-stained meerschaum in his other hand.

  “All right, Miss Foster,” Dilman said over his shoulder as his eyes remained upon Scott, and he finally swerved his leather chair to face him completely. “Mr. Scott, I’ll tell you why I wanted to see the original file of your daily reports, and why I wanted to see you. Shortly after one o’clock today, from a private source, I learned that the Vaduz Exporters, a Liechtenstein corporation with offices in Bethesda, is a Soviet Union Communist Front organization, operating illegally, shipping arms and ammunition through Liechtenstein to Iron Curtain countries, and from those countries to Africa. I have now found this confirmed in the FBI file on foreign subversive organizations in this area.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. President, we gave the FBI the lead on that two weeks ago, two weeks ago yesterday,” said Scott, with obvious satisfaction. “Unlike Amtorg, the Vaduz people are unregistered enemy agents. Lombardi told me they were already under surveillance, but what came in from our Barazan operative was the first concrete evidence of what was actually going on here. I think the FBI intends to crack down any day now.”

  “Tomorrow,” said President Dilman. “The FBI is rounding them up and closing them tomorrow.”

  Edna Foster’s mind, which had still been trapped by the mystery of George’s peculiar telephone call, now released itself to the new mystery she was recording in shorthand on the pad resting upon her knee. As her interest focused upon the two men in conversation before her, her pencil darted across the ruled lines, hooking, looping, scrawling.

  “Excellent,” Montgomery Scott had said. Then he added, “Of course, that’s no longer strictly a CIA matter.”

  President Dilman leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what is a CIA matter and a matter that seriously concerns me. How did you know that Vaduz weapons were pouring into Africa, the Baraza area, for native Communists?”

  Scott sat straighter. “It’s in the special daily report I sent you-as I said, I remember the day-two weeks ago yesterday.”

  “Mr. Scott, I received no such report from you,” said President Dilman grimly. “It’s not in my file here. Miss Foster brought my file in before you came, and I was able to see what I had overlooked before. One day’s report is missing from my file. As you said, the one dated two weeks ago yesterday. How is that possible?”

  Montgomery Scott had shoved the meerschaum into one capacious pocket, and was entirely erect in his chair now. “I can’t imagine, Mr. President,” he said. Then he poked his forefinger at the second mound of sheets before Dilman. “In any case-”

  “It should be in your original CIA file that you just brought in,” said President Dilman, finishing the Director’s sentence. “Well, sir, it isn’t. You saw me go through your original reports a few minutes ago. That one daily report is missing from there, too.” He leafed the sheets backward, and then said, “I find only a blue memorandum slip inserted, with the date, and the note, ‘Talley/Eaton to return.’ ” He looked up. “What does that mean?”

  Scott, who had become increasingly disturbed, suddenly rapped the desk. “Of course. I remember. Following our usual procedure, that morning I sent out two copies from Langley, one to Governor Talley for you, and the other to Secretary of State Eaton. Later in the day Talley telephoned me that both you, Mr. President, and Secretary Eaton were concerned about the report, and wished our entire file, including the original from which the two copies had been made.”

  “Wasn’t that unusual, Mr. Scott?” asked President Dilman.

  Scott pulled at his Vandyke. “Why-yes-reconsidering it, I suppose it was. But I saw no reason not to comply. After all, President Truman established our Central Intelligence Agency primarily as a source to supply him, and future Chief Executives, with vital foreign data and information, unedited, unslanted, uninterpreted.” He bent forward, eyes narrowing. “Are you telling me, Mr. President, that although Governor Talley and Secretary Eaton sent for every scrap of that daily report on Baraza in your name, you saw neither our direct copy nor the original?”

  “I saw nothing,” said President Dilman, “and until two hours ago I knew nothing. That is why I brought you here.”

  “Well, I don’t understand,” said Scott, scratching his jaw through a portion of his beard. “Of course, I can’t become involved in politics, but speaking on a purely factual level, there can be a simple and quite understandable explanation of why your aide and the Secretary of State acted as they did.”

  He appeared to be considering what he would say next. At last he spoke. “On occasion, a Secretary of State or some other Department head will withhold information from the President until it is fully confirmed or simply because, at that point, the Department head believes it to be unimportant.

  “I can’t vouch for this, but I am told that during the Eisenhower administration the American Ambassador to Mexico learned that Fidel Castro had long been a Communist and had been trained to take over Cuba and convert it into a satellite of the Soviet Union. The top-secret report went to Washington. For some reason it was put aside, never shown to President Eisenhower. As a result, the President and his aides knew too little of Castro’s Red leanings. They blessed him as a democratic rebel, as did most Americans in those early days-only to learn later that he was, in truth, a puppet of the Soviet Union. The original warning report to Eisenhower? Who knows? Maybe somebody thought it was too idiotic and untruthworthy to be treated seriously.”

  President Dilman held up his hand. “Mr. Scott, this missing report on Baraza, the one that has been kept from me-do you feel it was such as could be justifiably regarded as idiotic and untrustworthy, or not fully confirmed?”

  The Director of the CIA was, in Edna Foster’s eyes, definitely uncomfortable. “Mr. President, I real
ly feel I should not get involved. We are a fact-finding organization. We dredge up the facts, evaluate the source, and present them to you for consideration, and you decide what happens after that.”

  “Very well,” said President Dilman, “then you dredge up the facts in that missing report on Baraza. You evaluate the source for me, and I shall do the judging. Since I prefer not to go to Talley or Eaton for the actual report just yet, I must depend upon someone else for the information it contained. Do you have that information in your head?”

  “Yes, I have, Mr. President.”

  “All right, shoot.”

  “The information we received was precisely this: In the hills, on the entire northern frontier of Baraza, there is now taking place a buildup of a native Communist rebel army. Crates from the Vaduz Exporters have been coming in, along with Russian officers who are training these African Communists. The Soviet Embassy in Baraza City is paying for, and directing, the secret buildup. We do not know the size of this Communist force yet, or the extent to which it is being armed. So much for the information. Now, you want the source?”

  “The source,” said Dilman.

  “The first information came to our Embassy in Baraza City from a Communist defector, a native. To look into it further, our head CIA undercover agent there recruited an educated native, good clearance, who was, as we say, ‘in place,’ on the scene of the buildup. Our report, two weeks ago, was based on this source.”

  “And your evaluation of the reliability of the source?” demanded President Dilman.

  “As you know, Mr. President, we rate all incoming information on a scale that starts at 1-meaning positively reliable-and this scale grades downward to 6-meaning probably unreliable. Most of the reports that we give further attention to are those rated 2, 3 and 4. The Baraza report? I remember the rating exactly. It was rated between 3 and 4, meaning fairly reliable but requiring more investigation.”

  “What have you done about it since?” asked President Dilman.

  “We’ve ordered our field men to continue probing for information.”

  “Not enough,” said President Dilman firmly. He stood up, stared at the windows behind him, then slowly turned back to Scott. “Whatever Talley or Eaton determined-whether they kept this information from me because they decided it was unimportant or because they refused to trust me-I am not yet ready to let them usurp my powers, the powers of this office, and make decisions for me. This can be serious, serious beyond belief. Mr. Scott, I persuaded President Amboko to relax his guard against Communism, give the Russians a freer hand in Baraza. Five days ago I received Premier Kasatkin’s assurance that this democratic freedom we had insisted upon in Baraza would not be misused by the Soviet Union. No matter how others in our country may feel about Baraza, I will not break faith with Amboko or with other African leaders who trust us and depend upon us. Nor will I let Russia deceive us, play us for fools, make us keep hands off while they are getting ready to take over the independent, underdeveloped nations of Africa through intimidation and terror. Mr. Scott-”

  Montgomery Scott had come to his feet. “Yes, Mr. President?”

  “We’re way behind, and Baraza may be in danger and we may be in danger. I want to make up for lost time. I want the number of undercover CIA agents in Baraza doubled, and redoubled, if necessary, and at once. I want the secret funds committed to this investigation doubled, tripled. Hereafter I want every CIA report on Baraza brought to me, by you in person. Let Talley and Eaton keep their heads in the sand. I cannot, and shall not. I want a final report on Baraza rated up to 1 or down to 6. Whatever it becomes, I want the truth, and I want it fast!”

  By five minutes after ten o’clock that evening, Sally Watson, fortified by the three Bloody Marys before dinner, the two glasses of wine and one full-grain energizing pill during dinner, the second refill of champagne in her hand now after dinner, felt at last possessed of the daring to go through with her scheme.

  Her bare shoulders backed against the striped satin wallpaper of the Blue Room, Sally Watson stood removed from the clutter of military guests some feet away. The informal reception and dinner for the Pentagon crowd, in the State Dining Room, had gone off smoothly. There had been no last-minute dropouts, no ostracizing of Dilman, since the military needed the President’s support in their next budget battle. Now the thirty-two guests, the beribboned, bemedaled men in their brown, blue, gray, green uniforms, and their wives in semiformal dress, were enjoying their after-dinner drinks, a choice of champagne or brandy.

  Sally drank, and through the tipped curve of her champagne glass, somewhat distorted, she could make out President Dilman, surrounded by Secretary of Defense Steinbrenner (a clod), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Fortney (a lecher), Admiral Rivard (a bore), Air Force General Ormsby (a social climber). Undoubtedly, she guessed, they were discussing with the President the trip he would be leaving upon late tomorrow, a one-week swing around the nation to visit military installations and deliver three speeches: on his Chantilly accord with the Soviets, on defense spending, on the forthcoming culmination of Project Apollo with the three-man orbital flight and moon reconnaissance under the direction of that attractive young General Leo Jaskawich.

  It was interesting, to Sally, to watch how the President made a pretense of attentiveness, when she could see how disinterested he really was-in fact, how self-absorbed and moody he was, as he had been throughout the evening. He’s bugged, absolutely neurotic, about that telephone call he received during lunch, she decided. She knew that she was right. It takes one to know one. For she was bugged too, absolutely psycho, about what she had overheard and had reported to Arthur Eaton, and about how Arthur had reacted and what she had promised him.

  With quiet desperation, before she lost her courage, before she became undone again, she wished that the damn after-dinner drinking would cease, and that they would all go down to the projection room for that Air Force film and leave her alone. Instead they stood there, lapping up the free booze. She considered her own empty glass: not that she was one to protest.

  She peered down at her sea-green chiffon cocktail gown and wished that she had worn something less provocative. The next thing, General Pitt Fortney would be leering over at her again, and trying to make her come down to the projection room as his partner so that he could put his hand on her knee in the dark. She had her speech all made up for Dilman. She did not want any Texas lunk-head spoiling it.

  From the top brass in the drawing room, her thoughts careened to the golden Galahad splendor of her lover. Tonight she was putting it all on the line for Arthur Eaton. Not that she had not already put plenty on the line for him, but tonight would cinch it. After tonight he would know for sure that she was not only good in bed, but good for a wife, a perfect wife for an entire life. After all, where had that snotty Kay Varney, his wife in name only, been during this crisis in Arthur’s life? What had Kay ever given him but a bank account and a cold in bed? As for herself, Sally was giving him more-everything, in fact. She was giving him an excitement in loving that he had never known before-he had admitted it the last time-and now she was preparing to undergo any risk to protect and elevate him.

  The issues at stake were cloudy to her. She had no mind, she was the first to admit, for politics. She knew only that what was going on was of life-and-death importance to her Arthur, and that if she saved him, he would save her. He would have to, whether he wanted to or not, and he would want to anyway. They were together in this. Besides, they were in love, not kid love, lifetime love.

  In front of her, some jazzed-up darky was starting to splash more champagne into her glass, and she pulled it away and let the rest of the champagne pour on the rug. She did not want to be intoxicated. Too much at stake. What at stake? She relived the highlights of the hectic afternoon.

  During lunch, after leading Dilman to his Miss Gibson on the telephone, after leaving him, Sally had deliberately left the door slightly ajar. Why? She did not know. Why not? She had heard what
she had heard, not comprehending fully, knowing only that it was something terribly surprising to the President, terribly involved with foreign affairs, and that she must convey to Arthur what she had learned. Whew, it had been close, getting away just in the nick of time. She was certain that Dilman suspected nothing. He was a dimwit, nice but a dimwit, through and through.

  The second that she was back in the privacy of her office, she had telephoned Arthur at the Department of State. She did not get far. Brusquely, he had cut her short, asking her not to tell him any more on the telephone, but to come over at once. Pleased to have struck a spark, she had made some excuse to Diane about an errand, and hastened downstairs to her sports car.

  When she had arrived at the Department of State and entered Arthur’s marvelous office, she was dismayed. She and Arthur were not alone, as she had expected they would be. A third party, Wayne Talley, was also present. At once, Arthur, perceiving her embarrassment, considerately had placed an arm around her, assuring her that she could speak as freely before Talley as with him.

  She had recounted everything that she could recall having “accidentally” overheard of the President’s conversation with Miss Wanda Gibson. When she had mentioned that the President had said he had not “seen any special CIA report like that one,” Arthur’s face darkened and there was a rapid exchange between Talley and himself.

  Arthur had said, “Dilman knows. He’ll try to see that CIA report now.”

  Talley had said, “There’s none to see.”

  “You are certain of that?”

  “Arthur, I am positive.”

  “Good… I know we have acted in the right. T. C. would have commended us.”

  “No question, Arthur. How could we let someone like Dilman have that information-and possibly misuse it? He’d not think of what was best for us, only what would be best for his African friends.”