Irving Wallace - The Man

She kissed him, and she whispered, “I love you so.” And when he released her, he could see that her face had never been more alive with excitement. “Nat, let’s call the children, and then let’s celebrate with dinner up here, and then-then let’s love each other, tonight and forever, and never stop.”

He reached for her again, but she laughed and slipped away and went to change into her robe. Only at the bathroom door did she hesitate and half turn to him, her sweet face grave and troubled. “Nat, can you save him? You must. I want this to be the kind of country we’d like to leave for our children to grow up in, one where they can live unafraid, one they’ll be proud of. That would be the best thing we could leave them-not a farm, not a hundred farms or a million dollars-but a country like that.”

As the time for combat drew closer, Douglass Dilman had taken to rising earlier each morning. He was living, he found, two wholly separate lives: in one, he continued to perform the endless exacting duties of the Presidency; in the other, he strenuously prepared for the criminal trial that would determine if he was fit or unfit to perform those duties.

He sought and found extra hours he had not previously known existed. Sometimes it astonished him how many there were of these, stolen from sleep, from daydreaming, from inconsequential engagements. Amazingly, these hours he subtracted from himself, for himself, seemed to cost him little loss of energy or hope. It was as if he had discovered, and tapped, a new reservoir of stamina. His single-minded determination to fight back gave him a vigor he had never before enjoyed. His ceaseless activity left him no time to brood about the prosecution that awaited him or to anticipate its likely results.

This morning-because it was the morning of one of the most crucial days in his life-had begun earlier than any other.

Beecher had entered the Lincoln Bedroom at six-thirty, awakened him, opened the drapes to the dark, ominous sky, and then had drawn his bath. After that, attired in the blue terry-cloth robe that Wanda had given him one Christmas, Dilman had padded through the West Hall to the sitting room of the private apartments so many other Presidents had used, and where he had only this week begun to eat his breakfast.

Eight newspapers, among them the New York Times , the New York Herald Tribune , the Washington Post , the Washington Star , were piled high beside his place mat. He took pride in the fact that one of the eight was Zeke Miller’s scurrilous Washington Citizen-American , and that his ego was sufficiently reinforced by the knowledge of injustice being done to him to read it, and he was prouder still that one week ago he had again subscribed to the Washington Afro-American . Beneath the pile, he knew, like an intelligence report on the enemy camp less than two miles away, lay the Congressional Record .

This morning, he had been too preoccupied with ideas for the forthcoming and final meeting with his legal defense staff, and then too devoted to the folder with the label “Application for Executive Clemency re Jefferson Hurley, Petitioned by Mrs. Gladys Hurley (Mother) and Mr. Leroy Poole (Friend)” to open a newspaper.

After breakfast, having gathered the newspapers under one arm, still reading the petition for commuting Hurley’s sentence from death to life imprisonment, he had gone up the corridor, meaning to change into his clothes. But then he had wandered into the Monroe Room, next to his bedroom, and dumping his newspapers on the pedestal table, he had sat in a Victorian chair and read on through the folder submitted by the Department of Justice.

It was there that Nat Abrahams and Nat’s associates had found Douglass Dilman at seven forty-five, his petition laid aside, his newspapers strewn about him on the carpet, still in his terry-cloth bathrobe, absorbed in the fantasies of the Congressional Record .

Dilman had read that the House of Representatives had named five of its most forensically able members to the task of trying him, with Representative Zeke Miller the chief prosecutor. He had read that the Senate, after the formality of converting itself from a legislative body into a high tribunal of justice, had voted upon sixteen rules of parliamentary procedure to govern its behavior as a court of impeachment. He had started to read about other arrangements being made for the Roman holiday scheduled to commence at one o’clock sharp this afternoon, when Nat Abrahams, pipe streaming smoke, had arrived, followed by Felix Hart, Walter T. Tuttle, and Joel Booker Priest.

Dilman gestured toward the chairs around the table, and apologized for his bathrobe. Then, as they unstrapped and unlatched their briefcases, Dilman became conscious of the chamber in which they were about to confer.

“Isn’t it strange I wound up in this room?” he said. “I wonder what compelled me to come into the-into this room-the Treaty or Monroe Room, it’s called. I’ve never used it for a meeting before.”

“What’s so strange about it?” Felix Hart, Abrahams’ young Chicago partner, inquired.

“Look at the inscription over the fireplace,” Dilman said.

Felix Hart scurried over to the white fireplace and, bending slightly, read the mantel inscription aloud. “ ‘This Room Was First Used for Meetings of the Cabinet During the Administration of President Johnson.’ “He looked up, awed. “I assume that means Andrew Johnson, not Lyndon.”

“It does,” Dilman said. “Maybe this is a good omen. I hope I get off as lucky as he did in his trial.”

Without glancing up from the sorting of his notes, Nat Abrahams said. “That was a one-vote acquittal, Mr. President.” Dilman was once again disconcerted by his friend’s formality. Ever since his legal associates had been brought in, Abrahams had taken to addressing him as Mr. President, instead of Doug. Then Abrahams added, “We’ve simply got to do better than that… Ready, gentlemen? We don’t have much time. Let’s review the whole business again, before heading up to the Hill.”

Promptly, they plunged into the last-minute summary of Dilman’s defense. For Dilman, the discussion was comforting. These were attorneys, and he was an attorney, and their language had the mathematical precision of Law School and his legal practice of long ago, so dear to his memory. The talk was rooted in tradition and precedent, and great names of the American bar, some heroes, some rascals, all geniuses in their fashion, were evoked. Dilman listened to the names of Webster, Choate, Stanbery, Darrow, Steuer, and many more.

Dilman gave his complete attention to his four managers-even the title “managers,” as applied to attorneys in a Senate impeachment trial, had a comforting ring, as if these were men who not only defended, but controlled, guided, administered, directed their respondent, who might otherwise be helpless. Dilman heeded every exchange, as they examined the Articles of Impeachment point by point, sentence by sentence, and even word by word. They were trying to anticipate the course that Zeke Miller’s prosecution might take, and foresee what damaging evidence the House’s witnesses, signed affidavits, submitted exhibits, might present.

Then they reviewed one more time how the House’s case could best be refuted.

In replying to Article I, they appeared to be confident they could show that Wanda Gibson had never been privy to any government top secrets that she could have passed on to her Communist employers. They had other former Vaduz employees standing by to swear that Miss Gibson’s connection with Franz Gar was no more than that of secretary to employer, and that she had never been heard speaking to him about matters that were not concerned with her immediate job.