Irving Wallace - The Man

Nevertheless, they accompanied him up the corridor, past the Green Room, until they came to the entrance to the Blue Room, where Otto Beggs was on guard, and Beecher had pushed the door open. Dilman hung back a moment, steeling himself for this crisis that was as yet unknown to him, and then went into the large formal chamber, hearing the door click closed behind him.

There were two of them waiting for him, he observed. Robert Lombardi, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, bald as a cannonball and as inflexible and physically round, was pacing in short, quick steps near the velvet-draped circular table in the middle of the room. His usual forced public smile was missing. His forehead was damp. Beyond him, fingers laced together behind his back, loomed the presence of Attorney General Clay Kemmler, still wearing his coat.

“Gentlemen,” said Dilman, announcing himself.

Lombardi’s pacing stopped. He moved to one side of the room in token deference to his superiors as Kemmler spun around from the lofty center window, and as he did so, the spire of the Washington Monument in the distance appeared to emerge from his head, making him resemble a unicorn rearing on its hind legs. Immediately, Kemmler came forward to where the FBI Director had been, and Dilman, advancing to meet him, could see across the circular table that the Attorney General’s cold eyes glittered, but that his tight lips, a slash in his craggy face, were severe and implacable.

“Mr. President,” he said, “what I’ve been expecting has happened. The second that Bob Lombardi received the flash from his field operatives and brought it to me, I came right over. I hated to break in on you, but I think you’ll agree the news is of critical import.”

Dilman placed his fingers on the draped table to steady himself, and then remained immobile.

“We don’t have every detail yet, but the essential news is this,” Attorney General Kemmler said. “The Hattiesburg kidnaping was committed by a gang of Turnerites led by Jefferson Hurley himself. They have since killed Judge Everett Gage in cold blood, and the FBI has apprehended Hurley. The others in his gang got away. But we have Hurley, we’ve got him good, and now you can have no more reservations.”

Dilman allowed the sensational report to sink in, rocking on his heels, cursing himself for not having believed Kemmler this morning and in consequence having been made to look like an indecisive fool-or worse, like a prejudiced black. “You have Hurley?” he repeated woodenly; “And they actually murdered Gage? What more do you know?”

Kemmler jerked his head toward the FBI chief. “Bob-” he said.

Robert Lombardi came back to the table. The dampness on his forehead had spread to the top of his pate. His high-pitched confirmation came out as if strained through his nostrils. “Mr. President, as of a half hour ago, this is what happened, and this much is accurate. My men trailed the kidnapers from Mississippi, across Louisiana, into southeast Texas. They were moving fast, those kidnapers, but they weren’t too hard to follow, being amateurs and, begging your pardon, being of dark skin. They holed up on some ranch before reaching Beaumont, and laid low, and my field agents spread a pretty wide net to catch them in. Then there were a couple of pistol shots on this ranch, and as luck would have it, some of our men were nearby. We sent out an alert, surrounded the farm, and nabbed Jeff Hurley and found Judge Everett Gage’s corpse. The rest of the gang-don’t know how many there were yet-got away. Hurley’s not telling, but evidence indicates there may have been two more of them.”

“You know that it was Hurley who killed Judge Gage?” Dilman asked.

“He confessed it, Mr. President. Well, not at first, of course. What we figured out was he’d stayed behind a minute too long to clean up things-burn some papers and hide his gun. We found the revolver. Two chambers empty, and two bullets were in old Judge Gage, one in his chest and one in his abdomen. Ballistics says the markings on the bullets were made by the barrel of Hurley’s revolver. Then we-we put a bit of pressure on Hurley-he’s a sullen bull-and he finally admitted to doing it. We’ve got his signed confession to the murder. Well, what he said, actually, at first, was that they intended Gage no physical harm, they weren’t killers like Gage and his Southern Klansmen-lots of propaganda like that-but in trying to hide out from us, trying to find a real concealment until they could continue to Mexico, they let down their guard on their victim. Gage worked his wrists free, got his hands on one of their rifles, and instead of trying to escape, prepared to gun them down. Hurley came into the room, and Gage fired at him. Hurley said that it was a matter of self-defense, his own survival, and instinctively he pulled out his pistol and began firing back, got Gage with his first two shots.”

Lombardi shook his head. “Mr. President, you can discount that kind of whining. We always get that song at the Bureau. It was murder, pure and simple, compounded by the Federal offense of kidnaping, crossing two state lines. As Clay here says, Hurley is the secondary issue. He’s caught, he’s confessed, and he’s as much as buried. The bigger issue, and that’s what the Bureau is proud of, is that we’ve proved it was a Turnerite Group plot and crime. Since we know they’re a pack of Red scum anyway, this gives us what we’ve been hoping for.”

Something inside Dilman prickled, and he said, “What have you been hoping for?”

Kemmler’s arm went out, forcibly pushing Lombardi from his spot near the table. “Let me take it from here, Bob. My department… Mr. President, I laid it on the line with you this morning. I said we have evidence that Valetti, the Turnerites’ Number Two man, is a member of the Communist Party and is a go-between, financing violent racial groups like the Turnerites so they can commit acts of subversion, create an atmosphere of hate and rebellion in this country, and weaken us at home and abroad. I said that the first major crime of this sort had been perpetrated by the Turnerites, and I demanded that we act at once to outlaw them, to discourage further organized violence. You felt I was being hasty about such a big move. I said Turnerites definitely, and you said Turnerites maybe. You wanted more evidence before acting. Now you have the evidence. You can’t have any more doubts. I want to invoke the Subversive Activities Control Act at once. This is our first clean-cut opportunity to show these damn agitators the law has teeth. I’ve got to use it, and put an end to insurrection.”

During this demand, Dilman’s mind had gone to the consequences of invoking the control act. It would place a terrible onus on his race. Worse, and here his cooler legal brain was at work, it would strike a blow against civil liberties, setting a precedent that could soon be misused. Still, there was the law, and there was the crime against this law-Kemmler was right about that-and justice must be observed, and national security (his prime concern) must be preserved. But there must be no mistake, no margin of error, no matter how small or narrow. Lombardi had a reputation for being ruthlessly if not sadistically anti-Communist on the United States domestic front, not wrong in itself, but often he had been too eager to interpret every coloration of opinion and action as Red, and consequently had had his arrests reversed by more unbiased minds. Was he too eager now? Was he being honestly patriotic, or subconsciously using this as a grand opportunity to make headlines and raise himself even higher on his pedestal as the public’s foremost law enforcement officer and superpatriot?

As for Clay Kemmler, he, too, was eager and ambitious, yet Dilman could find no reason to fault him for bad judgment or overriding vanity. Kemmler had been a district attorney, a Federal judge, T. C.’s Cabinet member, a person of spotless reputation. Still, he had shown himself to be impatient, which Dilman regarded as injudicious, and to be motivated less by considerations of political advancement, probably, than by some kind of absolute view of what was just and unjust. He was a man to be listened to, but not one to be overwhelmed by, not without deliberating upon every word he spoke first.