Irving Wallace - The Man

Intellectually, she supported all the right things for Negroes, their right to vote, to sit like anyone else in any school classroom, to be equal under God and the Constitution. All the right things she believed in, without equivocation, yes-yet in some mysterious way her emotions continued to dominate her intellect, and at such times she felt that those black people were a threatening and inferior people. Threatening because black was threatening, because black was evil, like blackmail, black arts, blacklist, black magic. Threatening because, no matter what common sense you had, when you walked in the street, in the dark, alone, and you saw a Negro man walking toward you, you felt unsafe, because black was African and black was night, meaning uncivilized, meaning oblivion. And, illogically, you considered them inferiors. When she was on a bus, and looked out the window to find a Negro at the wheel of a large new car that had drawn up to the light, she was always surprised if he was not a chauffeur, surprised and vaguely resentful. How could a lesser person have more than she, who was white, meaning good and decent, and educated and chaste? After such internal bouts, and with difficulty, brought on by shame, she would recall her popular readings on race: these were not inferior people, only different-appearing people. Desperately she would evoke the names of Booker T. Washington and Carver and Bunche, but it was no use.

Yet when those stupid Southern-born secretaries made their jokes, Edna was resentful of them, too, and felt superior because she was not so prejudiced as they. She would never stoop so low, she thought then, as to believe that Negroes, because of their color, made so by God’s choosing, were more criminal, more shiftless, more smelly than whites. Whenever she was thus intellectually reinforced, she had easier days with Dilman, treated him with more deference and regarded him with more respect, as if to make up for her fluctuating emotional prejudices and those of her friends. Yet she never wanted to defer too much to Dilman, because tolerance was a form of feeling superior, too. Then she tried to treat Dilman as she would George or Tim Flannery or any other white man. But then she couldn’t, not truly, because since he was black, his presence in the Oval Office meant threatening danger to him, to the country, to herself, and his inferiority made things a mess, and no matter what, she was sure he smelled different. Damnation. And then she blamed George. He was at fault for her miseries, her predicament.

Because of George, she was still on this horrible job. His proposal of marriage, true, had been the high spot of her whole life. Because of it she had not enjoyed her trip to France at all. When she had not been working, she was mooning and wanting to get back to George and marriage. She had not even taken the time to visit the Louvre. And after all that, when she had flown back so full of high hopes and expectations, George had not been waiting for her, which was really too much. There had been a note under her apartment door, nothing more. He was in New York City investigating a possible job. He’d be back in a day or two with good news. The day or two had frustratingly become almost a week, and his brief, enigmatic telephone calls gave her nothing more definite to expect from his trip.

Less than an hour ago she had received his daily call, the call for today. He was still in New York City, he said. He could not promise to be back tonight or tomorrow, but maybe tomorrow. For the first time she had not hidden her irritation. Was this the way to start a marriage, he in New York, she in Washington, not even seeing each other in ten or eleven days? To pacify her, he had stayed on the phone longer than usual, full of hints about a terrific job, a quick marriage, so on and so on. This had soothed her somewhat, but after he had hung up, the long distance operator had called her. There was an overcharge. The party had telephoned from a public booth and left without depositing the extra coins. Would she pay the overcharge? She would. Where should she send the one dollar and ten cents? To the telephone company in Trafford, New York, she was told. Not to New York City? No, to Trafford. Very well, Trafford.

What in the devil was going on with George Murdock, she wondered now. Why tell her that he was calling from New York City, and then have it turn out he was calling from Trafford? What could there be for him in Trafford? It was a one-street college town, Negro college town at that, and neither of them knew a soul there-except the President’s son, if that counted for anything.

So here was she, stewing, and there he was, somewhere ,mysterious and behaving like anything but a bridegroom, and she was-all right, to use Leroy Poole’s word-she was sore as heck.

The buzzer at her elbow startled her.

She snatched at the telephone. “Yes, Mr. President?”

“Miss Foster, put a hold on all calls, and then come in. Bring your shorthand pad.”

She diverted incoming calls to Mr. Lucas, the engagements secretary, took up her notebook and pencils, and went to the door. Momentarily she hesitated, and then placed her right eye against the peephole.

There were two persons at the Buchanan desk, looking oddly magnified by the glass she peeked through. One was President Dilman, seated, features bunched in concentration as he licked a broad thumb and turned page after page of the pile of bound papers on the desk before him. The other was Montgomery Scott, standing over Dilman, watching and speaking, and when not speaking, dryly working his lips.

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.”