Irving Wallace - The Man

Lying in bed, stimulated by what tragedy had made possible for him, Otto Beggs had done some simple subtraction and addition. The subtraction had consisted of removing Sonenberg from his position as Agajanian’s aide, and removing McCune as the next in line to fill that position. They were gone. The addition had consisted of putting a plus sign before his name. He was next, the one next eligible to move up and replace Sonenberg as Assistant Chief of the White House Detail. This promotion would make other promotions more likely. Once you got off your feet, taking orders, and on your seat, giving orders, the world was yours. After that, he might one day became Chief of the White House Detail, and then Deputy Chief of Secret Service, and then Assistant Chief of Security, until at last he became Chief of Secret Service under the Secretary of the Treasury. With the first giant step accomplished, the rungs above would be easier to grasp. And he had time. He was only in his early forties. In recent months Gertrude had made that seem too old for him to achieve anything better, and he had begun to believe her, but now, in a flash, he was young again, and once more on the road that had seemed so straight and easy when he had entered onto it at Corvallis, Oregon, and continued up it outside Seoul, Korea.

Last night, twisting and turning on his bed, he had wondered when he had lost the road, and where, and how, or if he had lost it at all. He had tried to relive his short journey, so much with him in recent years that he could only relive it as an experience ever present and not of the past.

At Oregon State University he was invincible. He had come to the campus on an athletic scholarship. Except for his innocent, pugged, smiling baby face and small head, everything about him was formidable. He was powerful, husky, amazingly agile and fast for his 190-pound weight. Swiftly, at fullback, he became the mainstay of the football team, carrying it in his senior year to a victory in the Rose Bowl and himself achieving singular recognition by being voted to Associated Press’s All-American second team. He was popular. The girls competed for his favor. Gertrude was one of them, not beautiful but attractive and smart. She earned his gratitude by helping him with his homework, and she earned his respect by letting him kiss and pet her but not letting him go all the way. By the time he graduated, they were dating steadily.

When he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the First Marines, and before he was shipped off to Korea, he married Gertrude and spent a three-day honeymoon with her in Yellow-stone National Park. After arriving in South Korea, the tension of battle evoked his football days and he was fearless. When a superior officer rebuked him for an unnecessary risk on a patrol, calling him “too goddam stupid to be afraid,” Beggs was proud. On a cold and icy night before Christmas, during his eleventh month in Korea, in the wintry scrubs outside Hagaru-ri, he became an authentic hero. Four wounded Marines lay trapped in enemy-held territory, as Chinese gunfire kept medical-aid corpsmen from reaching them. Enraged, Beggs snatched up a machine gun, and, darting forward, falling and rising, he decimated the Red Chinese, personally rescuing his four wounded buddies. For this he received America’s highest military award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, for valor in action.

In the Oval Office of the White House, the medal was pinned on Otto Beggs by President Eisenhower. There were columns of photographs and feature stories, and one of Gertrude’s gifts was the first scrapbook. There were dozens of well-paying executive jobs offered him, and he took the best, and left it, and took another, and then a third and a fourth, and left these also. After Oregon and Korea the jobs were too tame and caging. He wanted challenge and danger. He wanted-Gertrude’s word-“clippings.”

His nostalgia, in his waking dreams, was for that climactic moment in the White House when President Eisenhower had given him the Medal of Honor. He was jobless, but not concerned, because Gertrude had saved their money, and he was telling friends that he was “looking around for the right sort of thing.” Then one noon, in a barber’s chair, leafing through a magazine, he found exactly what he was seeking. There was a coverline article commemorating the death of a White House police officer who had been shot down before Blair House in the assassination attempt on President Truman by two Puerto Ricans. The alert and gallant White House police and Secret Service agents on guard had saved the President’s life in a gun battle. The story then went on to explain the role of the White House police, as a branch of the Secret Service, and told about the history and the daring adventures of the Secret Service itself, from the time after the murder of President McKinley when its prime responsibility became that of protecting the life of the President.

Intrigued by this one rare job that put a premium on courage, that promised drama, Otto Beggs wrote to the Chief of Secret Service, Treasury Department, Washington, D.C., relating his background, his keen interest, and applying for a position as a special White House agent.

What followed came quickly. Beggs was summoned to prove himself. With enthusiasm, he took the United States Civil Service test, the four-hour written observation and memory test of the Secret Service, the thorough physical examination. He overcame each obstacle, including the personal interviews, with ease. He received his appointment to the Secret Service at the beginner’s salary of $5,000 a year, with the assurance that once he had experience he would be raised gradually to $10,000 a year, and once he became a supervisor of top grade he could earn $16,000 a year.

While the money was not what he had earned in business, as Gertrude kept reminding him, he pointed out to her that it was more than sufficient for their needs. He told her that he would be serving his country again, which was worth any monetary sacrifice, and the prestige that he would acquire through the years might make him a political figure with the attendant wealth necessary to insure their future. He did not tell her that he felt he was being paid for having fun.

And, indeed, for Otto Beggs the beginnings were challenging. His enthusiasm mounted as he attended the Secret Service’s special training school in Washington. He was instructed in the use of the most modern submachine guns, revolvers, riot guns. He was instructed in judo, first aid, fire fighting, parachute landing, wrestling, psychiatry. He was indoctrinated into the mysteries of atomic, biological, and chemical warfare. When his basic training was concluded, he was casually asked what position in the Secret Service interested him the most. He was frank. He knew that the procedure was for a newcomer to spend two years in the field, apprehending counterfeiters and forgers, before being considered for an elite job in the Executive Mansion. Nevertheless, he felt that his background warranted his requesting immediate assignment to the exclusive White House Detail. He had no interest in chasing petty criminals. He desired only to protect the nation’s leading official from assassins. Having spoken his piece, he waited with confidence. He did not wait long. The word came from the Secretary of the Treasury himself. Otto Beggs had been assigned to become a member of the White House Detail. He was not surprised. He knew that the old Medal of Honor had counted for something.

The first year was agreeable, if somewhat disappointing. He had expected his supervisors, on the second floor of the East Wing of the White House, to recognize his unique merit by assigning him, at once, to be at the President’s elbow. Instead he found himself with the police at the East, then the South, then the West guardhouse entrances to the Executive Mansion. When he was assigned to what was cheerfully labeled “the diaper detail,” off and on watching over President Kennedy’s daughter and son, President Lyndon Johnson’s two daughters, his hopes soared again.