Irving Wallace - The Man

On a warm Sunday morning, with Roger, David, and Deborah churning about the back seat of the four-year-old sedan, they had driven down near Wheaton, Illinois, to look at the farm once more. The beautiful cottage, the freshly painted red barns, the smell of the machinery and livestock and brown-green grass and wheat and corn fields had overwhelmed them again. Driving home, the children happily napping in the back, he and Sue had speculated upon what his life could be on such a farm. He could retain an interest in the firm, serve as a once-a-week consultant on vital cases. He could give time at last to writings about what he believed in, writings that might accomplish more than his private cases had. He could manage the farm. He could be outdoors, live more easily with himself, have more time for Sue, for the children. Above all, he could live. In three years he could have this if he wanted it.

The following morning Nat Abrahams had telephoned Avery Emmich to draft a contract. In a month, he had promised, he would be prepared to go to Washington, to sit with Gorden Oliver, and mold the contract into its final form. And then he had taken an option on the farm outside Wheaton.

“Nat-”

His head came up at the sound of Sue’s voice, and he found her settling into the chair across from him.

“Where were you?” she was saying. “You were a million miles away.”

He smiled. “Not quite that far.” He thought: only the distance away you can reach in three years.

As she went at her grapefruit, he reminded the waiter of her coffee and melba toast, and then stuffed Emmich’s proposals into his attaché case.

“How are the waiters here taking Dilman?” she asked between mouthfuls.

“I gather they’re pleased. That is, if this had to happen, they’re pleased the next in line was one of their own.”

“They’re not all pleased,” said Sue. “I was just talking with our porter. He says most of his friends are glad a Negro will have a chance to show he can perform as well as anyone else. But our porter says he’s not as happy as his friends, because he says he’s a thinking man and they’re not. He says he’s thinking ahead, and he’s frightened. He doesn’t think this country is ready for any Negro to head it. He thinks this focuses the wrong kind of attention on the Negro, and is bound to cause worse resentment and antagonism. Nat, you should have seen his face when he was speaking. So-uneasy.”

For Abrahams it was too early in the day to concur, and to bare his own uneasiness. As he tried to determine what to say to Sue, he observed that her attention had been diverted by three persons taking seats at the table across the aisle. There was an elderly, obviously well-off couple, and opposite them a slick-haired, smooth-shaved, jowly, overweight, middle-aged young man in a tailor-made Oxford gray business suit.

The overweight middle-aged young man, wiping his spectacles with his napkin, was speaking, and not quietly. “Well, after that, the meeting broke up, and we hung around the television set,” he was saying. “I tell you honestly, we weren’t so worried about this Dilman’s competence, because that doesn’t matter these days. The government is run by committee rule, and T. C. had some good heads there. Our worry is in the area where a President can’t be controlled as well. You know, appointments, policy speeches and such. Those people-I mean, like Dilman-are leftist, no question. I can show you the facts. Now that one of them has power, he’s apt to coddle the Communists-don’t get me wrong, Harold, I’m not saying Dilman is a Red; I’m saying he’s apt to have a sympathy for them, rapport, let them slip in and take control here, and go soft on them abroad. Well, Harold, we’re not going to let that happen-no, sir.”

The speaker lowered his voice to address some confidences to his Companions, and Abrahams turned his head away. He found Sue looking at him, gray and helpless. Before he could placate her, there was the sound of a fork against a glass. The middle-aged young man kept up the noise, half turning for the waiter. A tall, skinny waiter came on the run.

“About time!” the middle-aged young man boomed with mock joviality. “What’s happening to the service? You all too busy running our government today?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the waiter said. “I was waitin’ for you to fill in your order.”

“Aw, give us a break, we poor folk can’t write,” the middle-aged young man said, winking. “Come on, Sam, one round of Sanka.”

The waiter stood a moment, unspeaking, and then slowly, with calm dignity, he turned away and walked toward the dining car kitchen.

The three across the way were laughing together now, and then huddled, whispering, and Abrahams did not want to overhear a word of it. He fumbled for his tea, head bent to avoid Sue’s eyes. He finished the tea, and, in no mood for his pipe, picked up the complimentary newspaper.

“Oh, Nat-”

Abrahams was forced to look up.

Sue was near tears. “I’m like our porter, Nat, I’m plain frightened. Doug needs friends so much.”

“He has friends,” Abrahams said curtly. “I’m sure no one in Washington is worried about that.”

She was staring at the back half of his folded newspaper. “Nat, if you’re right-I-I can read your paper upside down-why have they doubled the guard around him?”

“Honey, stop fretting. It’s routine. Whenever there’s a new President, they assign twice as many Secret Service men to him. Now, let’s hurry up and get out of here.” He tried to smile. “You concentrate on taking care of your husband, and let the Secret Service take care of Douglass Dilman.”

After securely buckling the strap that connected his revolver in its shoulder holster to his waist, Otto Beggs pulled on his dark, conservative, worn suit coat. Going to the bureau that he and Gertrude shared, he took down his open leather wallet, for good luck rubbed his thumb across the silver star of his Secret Service badge pinned inside, closed the wallet, and slipped it into his inner coat pocket.

He felt the constriction of hunger in his stomach, and yet he was not ready to join Gertrude and the boys for breakfast. He felt unnaturally elated this morning, and wanted to savor it minutes more, alone, before risking the loss of this rare well-being to his enemies downstairs.

Humming to himself, Otto Beggs strolled about the mussed and used bedroom, tidying it, then continued to his desk to straighten the three scrapbooks with his name imprinted in gold upon each. Considering his activities of the last twenty-four hours, it was strange that he should feel so fit.

He had worked not eight hours but eleven hours yesterday, after his boss, Lou Agajanian, Chief of the White House Detail, had awakened him to tell him to come in earlier and replace one of the night-shift agents who had become ill from a virus. Then there had been that pressure and strain, after the news that the President and Speaker had been killed, when the correspondents and half the government officials had overrun the West Wing. To make matters worse, not only Agajanian but Hugo Gaynor, the Chief of Secret Service, had been all over the place, on everyone’s tail, out of temper. It had been nerve-racking. And then, instead of giving him any rest at home, Gertrude had kept encouraging her relatives to come over, including her hotshot brother, Austin, and his wife and brats. It had been a nut house, and once, around midnight, he had tried to escape by saying that he was out of cigarettes. He had headed straight down the block for a couple of beers at the Walk Inn, but the joint was jammed with wild, drunken Negroes, and he had gone back to the house, embittered, to stay with television until three in the morning.

Before turning off the set he had heard one added interesting piece of news, and it had been confirmed, and it had kept him wide-awake and speculating about it until almost dawn. The interesting piece of news had been that the collapse of that ancient ceiling in the Alte Mainzer Palace had not only killed T. C. and MacPherson, but it had also crushed to death two Secret Service men. Beggs had known them both well. One had been Agajanian’s aide, Assistant Chief of the White House Detail Gene Sonenberg, and the other had been mobile White House special agent Les McCune, the only one of fifty on the House Detail who held seniority over Beggs.