Irving Wallace - The Man

Senator Watson unhooked the birch cane from his arm and leaned it against the desk front, and met Dilman’s eyes.

“Sir,” Senator Watson said, “my daughter has confessed what eeally happened that evening with you. She has confessed it before me, Miss Gibson, and an attorney friend I brought in to record it and witness her signature on it. Sally admitted having-having become involved with Secretary Eaton-then going to your bedroom to take notes from a CIA report, then being discovered by you, insulting you, and fashioning the entire episode into a lie to satisfy Eaton, Miller, Hankins. She did you grievous harm, Mr. President, and perjured herself before the body of the Senate, and I cannot let things rest this way another moment, or neither she nor I shall have peace again.”

His hand had gone inside his overcoat, and he withdrew a blue-covered folded document.

“I have Sally’s full statement recorded here, signed in her hand, witnessed and notarized. I suggest your counselor make use of it in his closing address to the Senate tomorrow, to let the truth be told, and destroy that specification in the House’s indictment. I wish I could offer you further redress. You deserve it. All I can offer you is this document, Sally’s wish for forgiveness, and my own deep apology.”

Abrahams watched, his mind in turmoil, as Senator Watson bent forward and held the document out for Douglass Dilman to accept.

Dilman stared at the paper. His hands remained motionless on the desk. His eyes went from the signed confession to the legislator.

Slowly Dilman shook his head. “No, Senator. I don’t want it. Tear it up and throw it away.”

The document trembled in Watson’s fingers, but still he continued to offer it. “Please, sir, you will need it, you will need as much truth on your side as possible tomorrow.”

“No,” Dilman repeated. “She is ill, as you have said, and ill people can be cured and saved. The public entering of this retraction and admission into the trial would destroy Sally forever. She would be beyond help, and as one who also has a daughter, a daughter who is ill and not yet destroyed, I will be no party to this. I appreciate it, Senator, but no. My acquittal or conviction will not be decided by this, by the Article charging this lie, nor by any of the other Articles.”

With reluctance, Senator Watson withdrew the deposition, turned it over in his gnarled hand several times, considering it, and then he looked up.

“You are generous, sir, and a gentleman,” he said to Dilman. “You must understand, however, that this humane decision on your part can have no influence on my vote tomorrow afternoon. I would not have judged against you if I believed you had behaved against my daughter as first charged by herself and the House, solely on that indictment, and I cannot judge in your favor now, simply in knowing my daughter perjured herself and that the House was misled. You understand that, sir?”

“I do.”

Senator Watson tore the document in half, and then tore it into halves again, and he stuffed the shredded paper into his overcoat pocket.

Once more he looked at Dilman. “I must judge you tomorrow on your merits as a President of the United States. I must decide in the matter of Baraza, taking that as being representative of all other matters and the most crucial, whether you acted wisely or unwisely as a President, and whether you acted as an American President or as a Negro President. The majority of my Southern colleagues are against you, and have judged you on other issues. The minority of members are for you, and have judged you on other issues. But the final weight of tomorrow’s independent vote falls on a great number of our one hundred who sleep tonight and who have not prejudged you, but must awaken with a final decision based on consideration of your merits as a man who is President.”

“I ask for nothing more, whatever the outcome,” said Dilman quietly.

Senator Hoyt Watson came wearily to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said, and then, head nodding, he left the room.

From somewhere distant, a clock struck midnight, and time went on past midnight, and the life of the new day had begun.

Born of some half-remembered superstition from Douglass Dilman’s childhood was his hope that the sun would shine on this momentous and decisive day of his life, and its appearance would be a lucky omen, melting the hard hearts of his enemies and reviving the spirits of his allies.

Nature was deaf and blind to human superstition.

There was no sun this late November day. Bellicose, brooding clouds, like threatening hosts of strife, gathered low in the bleak sky. The air was wintry, the temperature twenty degrees above zero, and the steady wind from the Potomac swept rawly over the high-strung capital city.

The headlines slashed across the newspapers on the table behind his Oval Office desk were as chilly and ominous as the weather: CRUCIAL IMPEACHMENT VOTE IN SENATE TODAY; PREVIEW POLL INDICATES “CONVICTION CERTAIN”… TENSION MOUNTS IN AFRICA; SECRECY ENVELOPS AMERICAN TROOP MOVEMENTS; U.S.S.R. MAINTAINS SILENCE… SAVAGE RACE RIOT BEFORE WHITE HOUSE CONTROLLED AS FLAMING CROSS BURNS ON PRESIDENT’S LAWN; WHITES AND NEGROES CLASH IN DOZEN CITIES.

Douglass Dilman tried to ignore the headlines as he came around his desk.

“All right, Tim,” he said. “Let’s get it over with.”

It was one minute to ten o’clock in the morning as Dilman left his office, preceded Flannery into his personal secretary’s cubicle, nodded absently to Miss Foster, and entered the Cabinet Room to make his brief news announcement to the twenty-five White House press regulars who had been invited.

For an instant he was unable to see in the glare of the television klieg lights, but he was nevertheless conscious of the camera lens and of critical eyes following him in his unsteady walk to the table in the center of the room and the open place from which his chair had been removed.

When his full vision was restored, and he was able to make out the familiar faces in the ring of correspondents, who were armed with their yellow pencils and blank notebooks, Dilman tried to discern the amount of hostility or friendliness that awaited him. There were friendly, interested expressions on an isolated few, but mainly the features of the correspondents revealed doubt, distrust, even antipathy. They were orderly and attentive, true, but their attentiveness was that offered by cynical reporters to a nine-day wonder they had come to interview-on the ninth day.

Dilman rattled the paper in his hand. “Good morning, gentlemen. At least, I hope it will be a good morning.”

There were no chuckles, no appreciation of his weak jest or concurrence with his sad wish. Three or four correspondents murmured their greetings, but otherwise the more than two dozen apathetic journalists remained silent and uncommitted to confraternity.

“I have a brief but important news announcement to make,” said Dilman. He read from the triple-spaced typed lines on the sheet of paper in his hand. “ ‘Precisely one hour ago Eastern Standard Time, so I am informed by the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the battle-ready battalions of a full division of the United States Army, motorized and equipped with the latest in rocketry weapons, landed safely, and without mishap, at strategic airfields in Baraza, and at similar sites in surrounding allied African countries which are members of the African Unity Pact. I can reveal only that fifteen thousand of our soldiers are there. For security reasons, I cannot be explicit about their exact locations. These brave and well-trained men represent an elite segment of our defense forces, popularly known as the Dragon Flies. They are under the field command of Major General C. Jarrett Rice. The military leaders of our combined African allies, in this defensive operation, will also be under the command of General Rice.’ ”