Authors: Irving Wallace
Dilman had awaited with dread the inevitability of this important day. It was his moving day. And now it was here. T. C.’s widow Hesper, Dilman had been told, had overseen the removal of the late President’s and her own personal effects and furniture from the White House yesterday, just as Governor Talley and Edna Foster had removed T. C.’s personal belongings from the Oval Office of the West Wing three days before.
For long, painful hours last night, Dilman, with the help of his housekeeper Crystal, his Senate secretary, Diane Fuller, Rose Spinger, and two nervous Army enlisted men, had assembled and packed into cartons and crates his pathetically limited and long-used possessions. Dilman had refused to allow anyone from the White House to help him, not Edna Foster, not T. C.’s valet Beecher, and not any of the White House staff that included the housekeeper, the houseboys, the ushers. Although Flannery had talked him into permitting newspapers to publish photographs of his simple living room in the brownstone row house, he did not want any critical outsiders to see or poke through his home. Nor had he permitted the Reverend Spinger or Wanda Gibson to come downstairs to assist him. In his new role, Dilman realized, he could no longer treat Spinger as a friend, only as one who headed America’s foremost Negro pressure organization. As for Wanda, her presence might have made the Secret Service men wonder about her relationship to him, and someone might have divulged it to the press, which in turn might distort it. While he had spoken to her briefly on the telephone every night before going to bed, he had not seen her personally since assuming the Presidency. She had not chided him for his neglect, for that was not her way. But he suspected that she commiserated with him, knowing his weaknesses, which was justifiable on her part.
Through the window he could see that they were turning off Sixteenth Street. Suddenly he was terrified. He tried to define his terror. It was not simply that he was giving up the safe anonymity of the ground floor of his modest two-story brownstone to spend a year and five months of life in the unfamiliar, awesome, museum-like, constantly exposed second story of the White House. That was bad enough, being the intruder-lodger in a mansion supported by a population that had never before permitted him to live among them, as part of them, in their easy streets and developments and tracts. The worst of it was that he was being carried farther and farther away from the only woman on earth whom he loved, and who cared for him. In short minutes he would be entombed in a prison that she could not visit, to which he dared not summon her. He wondered how long she would wait for his release, or if she would wait at all. He might lose her. He would lose her. Then he would be alone, utterly alone, in a hostile world. It was this terrifying possibility that had chilled him.
He brought his eyes from the window to the ominous radiophone beside him, and then to the sour face of the Secret Service agent in the jump seat. Fleetingly he wondered what the agent was so unhappy about. Perhaps, Dilman decided, his expression was really that of anxiety over his responsibility.
The agent’s full name was Otto Beggs, Dilman remembered. He had been on the afternoon shift, on guard outside the Oval Office, throughout the week. This morning he had appeared at daybreak, introducing himself again, saying that he was on a split shift today, four hours now and four hours late in the afternoon. With the three women, Beggs had helped supervise the Army privates who carried the cartons and crates into their huge military truck. There had also been several pieces of Dilman’s furniture, a small bedroom desk and bench, a maroon leather armchair, a tall lamp with a shade that Aldora had painted so long ago, and the Revels chair, that Dilman had permitted to be moved. The Revels chair was the possession of which he was most proud. He had received it as a gift from the state Party organization upon his election to the United States Senate. Although it was a genuine John Henry Belter rosewood chair with an upholstered panel in its scrolled back and with an upholstered felt seat, handmade in New York in 1870s, he had been told its real value lay in the fact that in the 1870s it had belonged to Hiram R. Revels, of Mississippi, who had become the first Negro to sit in the United States Senate.
The rest of the furniture Dilman had left behind, so that Rose Spinger could lease his old quarters for him furnished, to bring a better rental. After the Army truck had wheeled away toward the White House, followed in a Presidential staff car by Crystal and Diane Fuller, who would direct the unpacking, Beggs and the other Secret Service agents had waited to escort Dilman himself.
Still filled with the panic induced by his thoughts of losing Wanda forever, Dilman determined to question Beggs. He must be discreet, he reminded himself. But he must also know what was possible.
“Uh, Mr. Beggs—”
The Secret Service agent turned his head. “Yes, sir—yes, Mr. President?”
“I’d like to ask you a question.”
“Anything, Mr. President. Pardon me if I keep my eyes on the street while I talk. Duty, sir.” He was attentive, but his eyes were pointed to what lay out beyond the limousine window in the gray morning.
“While I haven’t had time to acquaint myself with the functions of the Secret Service, I do gather your Detail is assigned to protect me at all times.”
“Yes, sir, since 1901. Title 18, United States Code, Section 3056, amended and approved by the 82nd and 83rd Congress,” recited Otto Beggs. Then he went on, “ ‘Subject to the discretion of the Treasury, the United States Secret Service, Treasury Department, is authorized to protect the person of the President of the United States and members of his immediate family.’ ”
“I gathered that,” said Dilman dryly. “I haven’t been out of your sight for a second this week, except when I’ve gone to the bathroom or have been asleep. Does it always have to be that way? Isn’ there some time when I can go out alone, privately, to see certain—certain friends?”
Beggs shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. President. How can we protect you if we’re not with you?”
“I can’t believe every President has been followed every minute of his term by agents,” said Dilman.
“It’s true, sir. Mr. Truman tried to get off on walks without us, and General Eisenhower tried to get rid of us to play his golf in peace, and Mr. Kennedy tried to escape for some swims, but they never succeeded one minute, far as I know. Mr. Johnson was more cooperative in some respects, but T. C. once tried to sneak off to a stag party in Foxhall Road at one in the morning. We caught up with him.”
Dilman was thoughtful. “Let us say I kept it perfectly secret, yet insisted I had to see some friends alone?”
“You can see anyone alone, Mr. President, but you can’t travel to them unguarded.”
“What if I ordered it?”
Beggs turned his head, his puffy red face showing astonishment. “You couldn’t, Mr. President—begging your pardon, sir, but it’s the law. Chief Gaynor is empowered by the law to prevent you from any physical movement that he considers dangerous. This is sort of embarrassing, Mr. President, but like I said, it’s the law—sir.”
Dilman surrendered. “Thank you, Mr. Beggs.” The conversation left him more agitated than ever about Wanda and himself. Circumstances had made any future relationship impossible for them. He could not see her again on his terms, which demanded complete privacy. He could visit her only on the Secret Service agents’ terms and, he supposed, her own desired terms—publicly—and this would for the first time make known to one and all their longtime association. He considered the last, and then one more possibility came to his mind, and he thought about it.
“Crowding up a bit,” the chauffeur called out. “Take us another five minutes, Mr. President. Mind if we go on sirens?”
“I’d prefer not,” Dilman said. “There’s no hurry.”
There was no hurry inside him to face what lay ahead. He put the meeting with Wanda out of his mind. He would tackle that dilemma later. He tried to consider his more immediate problems. Edna Foster had telephoned him at breakfast to read him his schedule for today. He would have one hour in the living quarters of the White House, to become further acquainted with the historic rooms that were now his home, and to meet his staff, to brief them on where his furniture and personal effects should be placed. After that, there were his morning engagements: a half-hour meeting with Secretary of State Eaton and Governor Talley; a one-hour full-dress Cabinet meeting, his first, not counting the brief gathering when he had asked the members to stay on; a short meeting with his son, Julian, who was coming down from Trafford to see him; a short meeting with his biographer, Leroy Poole, who had so insistently been telephoning.
Lunch, he remembered, would be with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were coming over from the Pentagon. This afternoon would be packed, conferences with the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, conferences with the Directors of the CIA and the FBI, a conference with Tim Flannery, a conference with the Federal Loan Administrator, a conference with the Ambassador to Russia. Only the hours between five and eight had been left free, so that he might catch up on his official reading. After eight in the evening there would be the best time of the day and the week, a private and informal dinner in the White House, his first as President, with Sue and Nat Abrahams.
Thinking of everything he had to do before dinner made him acknowledge the tension that was overlaid on the weariness and uneasiness that had accumulated in the seven days behind him. It was incredible to him that a week, an entire week, had passed since he had become President of the United States. Even now, in his protective, mechanized capsule that moved toward the White House, he did not feel the way the President should, however it was that a President was supposed to feel. Perhaps, he realized, this was because he had not yet been made answerable to the demands put upon the executive branch. The events of the past week had been out his hands, had rolled in pomp and tragic splendor to their climax, as if motivated by the force of a Supreme Being. He had been an observer. And he had been grateful for this, and for Governor Talley and Secretary Eaton, who had both possessed the kindness and intelligence to speak for him when his voice was supposed to be heard.
Vividly he recalled T. C.’s funeral. His memory turned like an orderly kaleidoscope, yet showing him only hasty, quickly changing fragments of color, almost abstract varicolored impressions of sliding glass. There was the impression, streaked by the rain of the late afternoon, of himself and the Cabinet and the Congressional and military leaders at Dulles International Airport, when the jet known as 809 Air Force One landed after its trip from Frankfurt and disgorged the coffins containing the bodies of T. C. and MacPherson. There was the impression of the morning after, when T. C.’s widow Hesper, back from Arizona, stately and contained in her grief, supported by her awkward, adolescent son and by Secretary Eaton, had met him. They had gone together into the East Room of the White House to find T. C.’s flag-draped bier beneath the dimmed chandeliers, surrounded by the flickering candles and the rigid guard of honor. There was the impression of the following noon, the yellow sun shining down upon the massed thousands who lined Pennsylvania Avenue, as he plodded behind the muffled black-draped drums, behind the horse-drawn caisson with its coffin, behind T. C.’s widow and son and relatives. He walked side by side in step with The Judge and two other ex-Presidents, toward the public Rotunda of the Capitol, where the 21-gun salute rang out and the Marine Band played “Hail to the Chief,” and the brief Episcopalian services were observed. There was the impression of the funeral itself, once more in the noon sun but screened from the general public’s view, with himself and The Judge and other ex-Presidents and T. C.’s Cabinet in the landscaped family burial plot on the grounds behind the family manor near Concord, New Hampshire.
There was the change in the kaleidoscope of his memory from yellow to muted and mixed colors. There was the impression of himself, with Eaton and Talley on either side of him, in the Cabinet Room—he had been unable to bring himself to return to T. C.’s Oval Office—greeting and reassuring the countless heads of nations who had participated in the cortege and attended the burial. He remembered meeting the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the President of France, the Deputy Premier of Russia, the Chancellor of Germany, the King of Belgium, the Premier of Japan, and half a hundred more coming, chatting, going, in those bewildering hours. There was the impression, even less bright, more settling, of himself in the Fish Room the day before yesterday, engaged in the lively but brief discussion with The Judge, so forthright, so encouraging, then the more formal discussions with the other ex-Presidents, the short exchanges with senators and representatives whom he had known, with the Party heads, with the members of T. C.’s advisory team. There was the impression of himself, in Tim Flannery’s press office yesterday behind closed doors, being informed of the ugly riots that had broken out like bursting boils, riots between whites and blacks, unorganized but savage, in Tennessee, in Louisiana, in Texas, in California, in Missouri, in Michigan. And the impression of Tim’s reading aloud the first public opinion poll on President Douglass Dilman—in favor of him: 24%; against him: 61%; undecided: 15%—and the remembrance of his secret dismay at this harsh factual appraisal of him, so at variance with the optimistic guess and hopes of the moderate New York newspaper editorial that had heartened him the week before. And then the impression of Tim, and others, afterward, helping him hastily draft the statement requesting national unity and support, promising adherence to the principles T. C. advocated, reminding Americans that the eyes of the world and of history were upon them.
“Mr. President—”
It was Beggs addressing him, and quickly he collapsed the kaleidoscope of memory and hid it in his mind, and he looked up.
“—here we are at the White House.”
The limousine had, indeed, drawn to a halt before the South Portico. A group of men, three of their number brandishing large cameras, were gathered between the curved driveway and the canopy. Beggs leaned forward to open the rear door, but a uniformed White House policeman had already opened it. Before stepping out, Dilman looked off to his left. The view, that would now belong to him for a year and five months, as it had belonged to Jefferson and Jackson and Lincoln and F. D. R., momentarily lulled his apprehension. There was a sylvan, pastoral quality about the sloping expanse of green lawn, flecked here and there with autumn’s rust, and between President Cleveland’s Japanese maples a circular fountain threw off its steady clean spray. Behind the birch and elm trees in the distance he could make out the high iron fence that enclosed the President’s private park and protected it from the traffic on South Executive Avenue. Beyond the fence he could see the majestic white marble obelisk of the Washington Monument pointed to the cloudy sky. The greatness demanded of the Mansion’s occupant pierced his peaceful mood, and apprehension suffused him again.