Irving Wallace - The Man

“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.”