Irving Wallace - The Man

There was one partition remaining, and in it were more clipped sheets. She extracted them. The first two listed his tentative engagements for tomorrow. The next, bound in a light-blue folder, bore two block-lettered, ominous, rubber-stamped red-ink warnings upon it: EYES ONLY and TOP SECRET.

She opened the folder. The first page had the typewritten heading: “Following is a Transcript of the Conversation Between the President and Director Montgomery Scott, of CIA, from 3:15 p.m. to 4:22 p.m. Today. (Q means Question by the President; A means Answer by Mr. Scott.) Transcribed by E. F.”

A thrill of intrigue and accomplishment shot down Sally Watson’s bare and shaking arms, into her fingers holding the valuable document. How proud Arthur would be of her, she thought, how proud and pleased, as pleased as he had been after their first night of fulfilled love not many weeks ago.

She turned the pages one by one, counting them. There were seven in all, single-spaced, but with generous skips. Even though her shorthand was rudimentary-she had never had the patience to acquire such a menial skill-she had concocted a homemade shorthand of her own, employing mostly abbreviations and silly symbols that she understood. Unfortunately, her system, efficient as it was, would take considerable time, perhaps too much time to enable her to copy the entire document.

She squinted at the diminutive dial of her wristwatch, finally making out the minute and hour hands. Almost fifteen minutes had passed since the President had led his guests to the ground-floor projection room. They were watching a movie. If it wasn’t a spectacle, merely an ordinary movie, it would take an hour and a half. Then, when it was over, there would be some discussion of it, and there would be more time consumed bidding good night to the officers and their wives. At the least, based on past experience, this should take Dilman another half hour. So she had two hours, minus fifteen minutes, leaving one hour and forty-five minutes. But, assuming there was no lingering after the film had been shown, assuming the President was anxious to return to his homework, she had better shave off a half hour as a margin of safety for herself. That left one hour and fifteen minutes of assured privacy.

She weighed the folder and its precious pages. No, the time left to her might not be enough to copy everything, considering the amount to be done, the pressure, and, she had to admit, her some-what groggy condition. She decided upon a course of action: even if she did not completely understand the contents of these pages, she would copy out fully whatever looked important or factual, or concerned foreign affairs, especially whatever Scott had told Dilman. Then, if there was still time left, she would go back and fill in the rest, or what she could of it.

She came to her feet, folder in one hand, purse in the other, wobbled on her high-heeled pumps, then went hastily to the marble-opped circular table in the center of the room. Pulling up one of the velvet-covered chairs, she laid the folder on its face, snapped open her purse, and brought out her two dozen blank index cards and her gold pencil. Putting her purse aside, she turned over the bound transcript, flipped a page, and read:

Q. 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 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 just now found this confirmed in the FBI file on foreign subversive organizations in this area.

A. Oh yes, Mr. President, we gave the FBI the lead on that two weeks ago, two weeks ago yesterday. 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.

Q. Tomorrow. The FBI is rounding them up and closing them tomorrow.

A. Excellent. Of course, that’s no longer strictly a CIA matter.

Q. 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?

A. It’s in the special daily report I sent you two weeks ago yesterday.

Q. Mr. Scott, I received no such report from you. It is not in my file here. Miss Foster brought my file in before you came-

Sally caught herself. She had become so absorbed in reading, she was forgetting to copy. Of course, most of this she had already relayed to Arthur, it being similar to what she had overheard in Dilman’s conversation with Miss Gibson, but nevertheless, Arthur would want the essence of it.

She slid the first of her small rectangular index cards next to the transcript, took up her gold pencil, and began to write clearly: “Q-Mr. Scott, I’ll tell you why I wanted to see the original file of your daily reports…”

She wrote on. The first part was tiresome, for she had read it and there were no surprises, but then, after she reached the new dialogue, it was more interesting and more sport, and her cramped writing hand hurt less and the time went more swiftly.

Once, as her filled index cards began to form an exhilarating pile-like a square slice of wedding cake-she glanced at the time. More than forty-five minutes of her allotted one hour and fifteen minutes had passed. She had, she realized, covered less than half the transcript, and there were fewer than thirty minutes remaining. What she had put down, she hoped, would be useful to Arthur, but she was being too meticulous, writing everything out in full, and much of what she had written out suddenly did not seem vital. With a pang, she wished that she possessed Miss Foster’s stenographic skill, and her knowledge of what was usable and what was chaff. But then, Arthur would not have been interested in a girl whose talents were so circumscribed.

She determined to resort to her own brand of shorthand, and hoped she would be able to decipher it later tonight. She also determined to skip ahead, setting down only what seemed to touch upon Arthur’s life and interests.

She resumed reading, copying nothing for a few minutes, then realized that Scott was orally filling in for the President what had been in some kind of missing report, and this she duplicated on her cards in detail. Then she skipped more, and then Arthur’s name leaped out at her in the transcription of the President’s words, and the words were threatening to Arthur, and she knew that she must capture them for his eyes. She reread the passage:

Q. What have you done about it since?

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

Q. Not enough. 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.

The words blurred to her eyes, and the champagne’s bitter aftertaste was in her throat, and her writing hand was painful from spasms of cramp, but she knew that she must write this down too, and fully. She suspected it would be more important to Arthur than anything else. When one had knowledge of what other people thought of them, were planning against them, one was forewarned and as strong as one’s self and one’s opponent combined. How much she herself would want such a transcript of Arthur’s private conversations by long distance with his impossible wife. Armed with that, she would know how to behave to perfection. But then, she supposed, such information was superfluous. Every time Arthur lay in her embrace, peacefully asleep, his beautiful repose told her what he thought of Kay, what he thought of Sally, and what she herself could depend upon in the future.