Irving Wallace - The Man

She had awakened late this morning fortified to act out her last deception in the week of lies. George Murdock, she had almost convinced herself, could not be at fault, and if he had been, it might have been a slip of the tongue like her own, and even if it had not been that, but had been intentional, there was nothing that George could have given to the enemy forces that would have damaged the President more than he had already been damaged by himself. So, that was settled.

But then, at one o’clock sharp, she had turned on the television set, as everyone in America was doing, meaning to watch only a little of it out of curiosity, expecting to see no more than a tedious enactment of the kind of quasi-technical or irrelevant or senile verbiage you came across in the Congressional Record every morning. Instead, she had found herself absorbed in the trappings and opening grandeur of a drama that gripped her as much as any historical drama by Shakespeare that she had ever seen. And then there was that horrible Zeke Miller spouting his foul calumnies, and her numbed absorption had become inflamed to the point of sickening wrath. And then there was Nat Abrahams, making public the invisible fifth Article of Impeachment, and her wrath had melted into sickening shame.

It was all of that week behind her, and the morning and early afternoon of this day, that she had relived and dwelt upon as she splashed across the White House north driveway to the entrance of the West Wing lobby.

Closing her soggy umbrella, shaking it twice, she went into the small hall, and, avoiding the Reading Room straight ahead, filled with so many journalists with whom she was acquainted, she turned to the open doorway that led into the cramped pressroom.

To her surprise, the narrow work enclosure was abandoned except for a single reporter in the rear, tilted back in his green chair, swallowing from a soft-drink bottle while he studied a yellow sheet of teletype. She took in the room that she had so infrequently entered. A cardboard sign, tacked to a square pillar, read: WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS. There were aisles to her left and right, and in the center of the room were the two rows of reporters’ cubbyholes, back to back, each slot separated from the adjoining ones by perforated, soundproof plywood dividers. She hesitated, wondering which one was the right one.

Then, with determination, she went up the left aisle, between the green wall-unevenly decorated with framed photographs, many faded or yellowing, of former press regulars and Presidents-and the line of nine cubicles on her right side. Reaching the sixth cubicle, peering into it as she had into the others, her eye caught a typewritten notice Scotch-taped upon the blue center partition. It read: “Poachers Stay Out! Private Property Of Miller Newspaper Association. R. Blaser. G. Murdock.”

Shoving the chair aside, she searched around the battered standard typewriter, telephone, spindle with its sheaf of impaled handouts, and reference books. At last, she located a memorandum pad upon which was imprinted, Quickie-Note . Tearing off a sheet, she found a pencil stub and wrote, “George: Sorry, it doesn’t fit. Edna.” Then, easing the engagement ring off her finger, she placed it atop the note that she had written, and then she hurried out of the press quarters.

Approaching the Reading Room, returning the White House policeman’s hearty greeting, she intended to turn left and duck into the corridor that led past Flannery’s office to her own office. But the entrance to the press secretary’s corridor was blocked by a crowding, heaving, elbowing mass of correspondents, and in their midst, his rust-red hair tangled, his tie yanked down from his open collar, in shirt-sleeves and suffering harassment, was Tim Flannery.

The reporters milling around him were noisy, vociferous, and profane. Although Flannery kept raising a hand to silence them, his tormentors continued to wave their pads and shout questions: “Tim, is the President watching the impeachment on television?… Hey, what did he think of Zeke Miller’s opener?… Did Dilman himself get his counsel to inject the Negro issue?… Say, Tim, how is he taking it?… What about a statement? What time is he making a statement?”

“Pipe down, will you?” Flannery bellowed. “Now listen, fellows, I only stuck my head out here because you’ve been driving my poor secretaries nuts with notes and questions that you know they can’t answer and I can’t either… wait a minute-quiet-listen-I told all of you every day last week, I told you yesterday, I told you this morning, and I’ll repeat it once more for those of you who need ear trumpets: the President, and correctly so, believes it would be improper to make any public statement about his impeachment trial while it is in progress. He may have something to say afterward, but right now-”

“Afterward will be too late, and nobody’ll want to listen!” someone croaked out, and Edna could see the speaker was the repulsive Reb Blaser. “Tim, you tell him, for his own sake,” Blaser went on, “he better take advantage of any free space while he can get it. Two weeks from now he won’t be able to get mention in a single paper unless he takes out want ads!”

Another voice shouted angrily, “Can it, Reb, will you? You’ll always have Jeff Davis to write about anyway!… Hey, Tim, what about-?”

There was a chorus of laughter, and then Flannery stilled it. “Boys-repeat and stet-no comment from the President until the trial is over. However, he will continue to make statements and give out releases on other matters of government. Right now, I have two or three routine-”

The press crowd had quieted, bringing pencils to their pads, as Flannery read the White House news of the day.

Edna Foster realized that she would have to take the long route to her office, or whoever’s office it was by now. She started across the lobby, and had just passed the heavy center table adorned by the White House police pistol-shooting trophy, when she heard her name called aloud.

Slowing, she turned her head in time to observe George Murdock, decked out in an expensive smoke-gray suit she had not seen before, his pitted face beaming, as he hastened around the table to intercept her.

“Honey,” he said, grasping her forearms, “what a sight for sore eyes. Why didn’t you call me? When did you get back?”

The obligatory scene, she told herself. There was no use trying to escape it. A phrase from the trial crossed her mind, and she altered it for George and herself: kill the beast before it-even if it-means the end of your own life.

“Edna, when did you get back?” he repeated.

“I’ve never been away, George.”

“Never been away?” he echoed, puzzled, slowly releasing her arms.

“That’s right. I was here all the time. I didn’t want you to know, because I didn’t want to see you.”

“Edna, what in the devil do you mean-you didn’t want to see me?”

“I mean I want nothing to do with a person I can’t trust. You took what I told you in confidence, you sold it to Zeke Miller in return for a filthy job, and you are as responsible as anyone for the President being on trial, and that makes me ill-and you make me ill.”

At first, from the crimson hurt on his face, she thought that he would deny everything. To her surprise, he did not. He said, “Look, sure, but there was no question of breaking trust-I’ve never double-crossed anyone in my life-and you, I wouldn’t-” Suddenly he was aware that the conference around Tim Flannery was breaking up, and his colleagues were spreading about the room. “Edna,” he said urgently, “we can’t talk here. Let’s go out for something and I’ll explain-”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, now or ever.”