(1964) The Man (80 page)

“What kind of trouble can he give us?” said Eaton testily. “Be realistic. What has he got on us now—considering what we’ve got on him? After tonight, that incident with Sally, he knows what he’s in for. He won’t lift his voice to us. He won’t dare say a word.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Talley.

“I know I’m right,” said Eaton.

He could see that Miller and Sally had been holding a whispered conversation, and that now Sally was trying to rise and Miller was assisting her. Eaton hastened to them, and took Sally’s other arm.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked solicitously.

“Arthur, Arthur,” she said, “I’m suddenly so sleepy. Did you give me something? I forget. Did you give me pills?”

“Yes, I wanted you to rest. I’ll take you into the library—”

Zeke Miller blocked them from leaving. “Only one thing, Arthur, and I’ve asked Miss Sally and she’s agreed, fully agreed. I’m notifying Casper Wine and his boys to come on the double right over here. I want to dictate everything Sally told us as it came straight from her lips. He’ll type it up as a legal affidavit, and then Miss Sally said we could waken her and she’d sign. She’s cooperating to the limit.”

“Whatever she wishes is agreeable to me,” said Eaton.

Sally was leaning heavily on his shoulder now, and Eaton’s arm encircled her as he began to lead her from the room.

He heard the telephone ringing—strange, at this improbable hour—and he waved at Talley to take it. Then he waited, propping Sally up, watching Talley on the telephone, unable to hear him. The call lasted no more than twenty seconds, and then Talley slowly hung up.

Eaton’s gaze stayed on Talley as he came from the telephone and approached them. Talley’s face was drawn and grave, a portrait of apprehension.

“Arthur,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “that was Edna Foster, from the White House. She’s just left the President. He ordered her to call you, to wake you if necessary. Dilman wants you in his office at nine o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. He wants to talk to you about an important and personal matter. She hit the personal matter. She hit the
personal matter
pretty hard.”

“I see.”

“I think this is it, Arthur. The fat’s in the fire. I think this is the showdown. He’s got the gun now.”

“So have we—now,” said Eaton grimly. “Only what we possess is not a gun but a howitzer.” He freed himself from Sally Watson, who was half asleep, and offered her limp arm to Talley. “Here, Wayne, you take her to the library, and see that she is comfortable. Treat her with care. She may be worth her weight in ammunition.”

He remained immobilized, deep in thought, until Talley had led Sally Watson out of the living room. Then Eaton turned and walked slowly to the couch, where both Zeke Miller and Bruce Hankins were busily scratching notes, one in an address book, the other on the back of an envelope.

Eaton stood over them until first Miller, then Senator Hankins, looked up inquiringly.

“Gentlemen,” Eaton said, “I have changed my mind. I don’t believe that I can stand by idly, as a neutral, any longer, and allow you and the Party to fight this man alone. I’m with you tonight, and all the way.”

Miller beamed, and his hand tugged at Hankins, who was also smiling happily. “By God!” Miller exclaimed. “I knew you’d see it right!”

“However, there is one thing I want both of you to understand,” Eaton went on. “If I fight Dilman, join with you in forcing his resignation, it is not because he is a Negro but because he is a fool.”

At one minute past nine o’clock the following morning, President Douglass Dilman stared through the rear windows of his Oval Office at the barren trees scattered across the south lawn, and at the cloudy, overcast November sky. He tried to equate his inner spleen with the threatening turbulence of the new day.

At last he swung his swivel chair back to the telephones, lifted one, and buzzed.

“All right, Miss Foster,” he said, “send him in.”

He girded himself, and waited.

The door opened, closed, and Secretary of State Arthur Eaton entered, solemnly greeted him, and carefully arranged his topcoat and homburg across the back of the sofa. Dilman, who had not spoken yet, was satisfied that Eaton’s features were as severe as his own. But there, he suspected, their similarity of mood, as reflected in their countenances and carriage, ended. If Eaton was concerned, then the emotion was camouflaged by the pale, bloodless pallor of his aristocratic negotiator’s mask and his easy, elegant Saville Row attire. Dilman felt that his own emotion, that of persistent displeasure, showed in the rigid lines along his tired eyes and bitter mouth. After Sally Watson’s disgusting behavior last night, after his rereading of the Scott interview and his realization of what must be done, he had slept fitfully.

“You can sit there,” he said, pointing to the Revels chair across from the corner of his desk. “I won’t keep you long.”

Eaton took his seat, crossing his legs, extracting his silver cigarette case and silver holder. He offered the open case to Dilman, who ignored it, and then Eaton fixed his cigarette and lighted it. After exhaling the first puff, he said easily, “Since your message stated that you wished to see me on a personal matter, I did not bother to bring any of my papers.”

Dilman pulled himself closer to his desk and to the one so imperturbable before him.

“Eaton,” he said, “I want your resignation from my Cabinet and from the Department of State.”

To Eaton’s credit, Dilman observed, there was no surprise, no reaction whatsoever, in his expression. Not one muscle moved beneath his patrician visage. He considered the President coolly, then he considered the smoke curling from his cigarette, and then, at last, a thin smile appeared. “A rather inhospitable beginning for so early a morning,” he said. “Are you serious?”

“I want your resignation today,” Dilman repeated.

Eaton remained outwardly unruffled. “Don’t you think you owe me at least an explanation for this extraordinary request?”

The Princetonian’s aloof insolence goaded Dilman’s anger. “I didn’t think an explanation would be necessary,” he said. “I was sure your spy, and whatever else she is to you, I was sure Miss Watson gave you ample reason last night to know I was on to you and Talley. I will not suffer the continuing presence of a Secretary of State who is trying to usurp my office and its constitutional functions. Nor will I suffer the company of any man who sends, or permits, or uses a member of my White House staff to pry among my confidential papers. I hold ambitious disloyalty next to treason. I suggest that I will be better off, and the nation will be better off, if I remove you and your antagonism. That is my explanation, which I thought unnecessary.”

Eaton had made no effort to interrupt and refute what the President was saying. His poise had not wavered. He betrayed no hidden concern, beyond the evidence of his inhaling and exhaling of smoke, which came faster now.

“There can be two versions of the truth to every matter,” Eaton said at last. “I find that, for whatever real reasons you may have, you have chosen to believe a warped version of the truth, and have not been judicious enough to wait for my version. Shall I go on? I think I should. No one spied upon you, at least on my behalf, last night, or ever. If Miss Watson took it upon herself to prove to me, as an old friend concerned about your—your questionable behavior, that you were my enemy, it is not my offense or concern—any more than is my knowledge of your private behavior with female members of your staff and your unseemly activity and habits after hours.”

Dilman stiffened. “What in the devil does that mean?”

“It means, Mr. President, in matters not affecting the welfare of the state, I have no right to interfere with your personal life. However, I, too, carry a public trust, and in matters concerning the life or death of my country, where I feel you have performed or may perform to the national detriment, I believe that I have the right to pass judgment on you, and interfere patriotically to correct you. I will not deny that Governor Talley and I temporarily withheld a Central Intelligence document concerning Baraza. We did so, for the time being, because of our knowledge of your temperament and—if I may say so—prejudiced judgment. We evaluated the rumor of a Communist buildup around Baraza as being ill-founded, and of minor consequence. Yet we foresaw that, because of your affection for Amboko, your understandable affinity for the struggling tribal people of your own color in the new African nations, you might have overreacted and committed the United States to a course of action from which there could have been no retreat. You displayed your favoritism, with dire results, in ignoring our advice to disband the Turnerite Group immediately. You displayed your arrogance and rashness in ignoring the majority will, the interests of the country at large and the pledges of your Party, by vetoing the Minorities Rehabilitation Program. I could not stop these disasters that you perpetrated in domestic affairs. But when I saw that you might perform as improperly in foreign affairs, which are my primary responsibility, I felt it my duty to guide you, whether you wished it or not. My motive was not to usurp your powers, but to preserve the peace.”

Throughout the last, delivered as if by a prep-school headmaster to a gauche poor boy in on a scholarship, Douglass Dilman’s wrath had been leavened by wonder. How unbelievable, he had thought finally, that this man could really justify his actions to himself by this self-hypnosis, this distorted rationale that he alone knew what was best for America and what was not. Could Eaton not see that he was doing no more than asserting his feeling of superiority, ergo: no second-class black citizen was able to possess the same wisdom and objectivity toward other peoples that an expensively educated, well-bred, white Protestant possessed by birthright.

Dilman had not meant to debate with Eaton, only to be rid of him. Yet the Secretary of State’s last remarks could not go unchallenged before their interview ended.

“Mr. Eaton, did it ever occur to you that by your act of withholding information from me, in effect taking it upon yourself to bury a grave warning to the government, you might be endangering the country you want to protect? What if I had not found out what was going on, and no one else in the executive branch had? What if the Soviet buildup of native Communists about Baraza proved to be true, and continued while we slept, what do you think would happen then? There would be an overnight takeover of the Barazan government by the Soviets. Then we would be forced to honor the African Unity Pact under the worst of circumstances, to try to save an ally, many allies, even a continent, where circumstances would put us at a military disadvantage. Can’t you see that preventive treatment is less costly than desperation surgery?”

Eaton shook his head, smiling disagreeably. “Mr. President, forgive me, but you are more naïve about foreign affairs than I even suspected. Do you honestly believe that T. C. or Congress or the Department of State or the Joint Chiefs of Staff ever intended, from the start, to honor the African Unity Pact to the letter? Yes, we ratified it to bolster the strength of our democratic friends in Africa—but only on paper, for diplomatic propaganda. No one, not ourselves, not the African states, not Soviet Russia, ever believed we would commit our armed forces to uphold that pact.” He shook his head more vigorously. “No, my good man. Only an unsophisticated and overemotional Afro-American—and I put this in the kindest way—could so misunderstand the intent and purpose of our foreign policy. Do you believe any of us, who have experience in these affairs, would ever risk a nuclear war with the Soviet Union over Baraza? It grieves me that you have to learn the facts of life and politics this late in the game. But better now than never. In any event, all this conversation is pointless, as you will shortly learn. In fact, your wish to see me on a personal matter this morning coincided with our Party’s wish that I see you on a personal matter, also. I’m afraid I am on a painful mission. If you are prepared to listen to—”

Dilman’s disgust, his loathing for this diplomat’s crawling sophistries, was now complete. “Mr. Eaton, I have nothing more to discuss with you. Consider this interview our final meeting, and consider it now terminated.” He placed his palms against the edge of his desk and rolled back his chair, and then, hands on his knees, he said, “I shall expect your resignation within an hour. Good day, sir.”

To his utter surprise, Arthur Eaton did not move, but remained complacently settled in the Revels chair, casually ejecting his cigarette butt into the standing tray. Without bothering to look at the President, Eaton said, “Your bravado is admirable, Dilman. But do you honestly feel you are in a position, this minute, to ask anyone in your government to resign?”

Dilman, about to rise, held to the arms of his chair. “Do I feel I’m in a position to—?” He paused, then said slowly, “I feel I’m in a position to do whatever I believe to be right.”

As he absently examined his silver cigarette holder, the Secretary of State spoke. “I have been assigned to tell you—I find it painful, but no less my duty—that you are the one who is no longer wanted in our government. For many hours now, all through last night, the leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate and your Party have been meeting to weigh the evidence they have uncovered about you. They have agreed, unanimously, that you are dangerously incompetent, and consequently unsuited for the high office accidentally thrust upon you, and that your continuing services are a detriment to the future of the United States.”

Eaton stared at Dilman.

“They desire to impeach you for high crimes and misdemeanors in office. Because I feel that such a method of publicly disgracing you and removing you from the Presidency is abhorrent, I have prevailed upon them—it was not easy, but I prevailed upon them—to accept a more moderate means of disposing of you. They would prefer, and I would prefer, that you do what is necessary to be done as a gentleman would, do what you so childishly requested of me earlier, and that is, tender
your
resignation immediately, for reasons of disability brought on by ill health. However, I was able to foresee that even such a natural solution might antagonize you, and understandably—that is, embarrass you and make you lose face before your own people. As a consequence, I was able to convince Miller, Hankins, Selander, Wickland, Noyes, all of them, that there was yet a third course. They do not like its moderation, any more than I like the extremism of their course of impeachment. Yet they will go along with me, if you are tractable.”