Irving Wallace - The Man

Dilman had awaited with dread the inevitability of this important day. It was his moving day. And now it was here. T. C.’s widow Hesper, Dilman had been told, had overseen the removal of the late President’s and her own personal effects and furniture from the White House yesterday, just as Governor Talley and Edna Foster had removed T. C.’s personal belongings from the Oval Office of the West Wing three days before.

For long, painful hours last night, Dilman, with the help of his housekeeper Crystal, his Senate secretary, Diane Fuller, Rose Spinger, and two nervous Army enlisted men, had assembled and packed into cartons and crates his pathetically limited and long-used possessions. Dilman had refused to allow anyone from the White House to help him, not Edna Foster, not T. C.’s valet Beecher, and not any of the White House staff that included the housekeeper, the houseboys, the ushers. Although Flannery had talked him into permitting newspapers to publish photographs of his simple living room in the brownstone row house, he did not want any critical outsiders to see or poke through his home. Nor had he permitted the Reverend Spinger or Wanda Gibson to come downstairs to assist him. In his new role, Dilman realized, he could no longer treat Spinger as a friend, only as one who headed America’s foremost Negro pressure organization. As for Wanda, her presence might have made the Secret Service men wonder about her relationship to him, and someone might have divulged it to the press, which in turn might distort it. While he had spoken to her briefly on the telephone every night before going to bed, he had not seen her personally since assuming the Presidency. She had not chided him for his neglect, for that was not her way. But he suspected that she commiserated with him, knowing his weaknesses, which was justifiable on her part.

Through the window he could see that they were turning off Sixteenth Street. Suddenly he was terrified. He tried to define his terror. It was not simply that he was giving up the safe anonymity of the ground floor of his modest two-story brownstone to spend a year and five months of life in the unfamiliar, awesome, museum-like, constantly exposed second story of the White House. That was bad enough, being the intruder-lodger in a mansion supported by a population that had never before permitted him to live among them, as part of them, in their easy streets and developments and tracts. The worst of it was that he was being carried farther and farther away from the only woman on earth whom he loved, and who cared for him. In short minutes he would be entombed in a prison that she could not visit, to which he dared not summon her. He wondered how long she would wait for his release, or if she would wait at all. He might lose her. He would lose her. Then he would be alone, utterly alone, in a hostile world. It was this terrifying possibility that had chilled him.

He brought his eyes from the window to the ominous radiophone beside him, and then to the sour face of the Secret Service agent in the jump seat. Fleetingly he wondered what the agent was so unhappy about. Perhaps, Dilman decided, his expression was really that of anxiety over his responsibility.

The agent’s full name was Otto Beggs, Dilman remembered. He had been on the afternoon shift, on guard outside the Oval Office, throughout the week. This morning he had appeared at daybreak, introducing himself again, saying that he was on a split shift today, four hours now and four hours late in the afternoon. With the three women, Beggs had helped supervise the Army privates who carried the cartons and crates into their huge military truck. There had also been several pieces of Dilman’s furniture, a small bedroom desk and bench, a maroon leather armchair, a tall lamp with a shade that Aldora had painted so long ago, and the Revels chair, that Dilman had permitted to be moved. The Revels chair was the possession of which he was most proud. He had received it as a gift from the state Party organization upon his election to the United States Senate. Although it was a genuine John Henry Belter rosewood chair with an upholstered panel in its scrolled back and with an upholstered felt seat, handmade in New York in 1870s, he had been told its real value lay in the fact that in the 1870s it had belonged to Hiram R. Revels, of Mississippi, who had become the first Negro to sit in the United States Senate.

The rest of the furniture Dilman had left behind, so that Rose Spinger could lease his old quarters for him furnished, to bring a better rental. After the Army truck had wheeled away toward the White House, followed in a Presidential staff car by Crystal and Diane Fuller, who would direct the unpacking, Beggs and the other Secret Service agents had waited to escort Dilman himself.

Still filled with the panic induced by his thoughts of losing Wanda forever, Dilman determined to question Beggs. He must be discreet, he reminded himself. But he must also know what was possible.

“Uh, Mr. Beggs-”

The Secret Service agent turned his head. “Yes, sir-yes, Mr. President?”

“I’d like to ask you a question.”

“Anything, Mr. President. Pardon me if I keep my eyes on the street while I talk. Duty, sir.” He was attentive, but his eyes were pointed to what lay out beyond the limousine window in the gray morning.

“While I haven’t had time to acquaint myself with the functions of the Secret Service, I do gather your Detail is assigned to protect me at all times.”

“Yes, sir, since 1901. Title 18, United States Code, Section 3056, amended and approved by the 82nd and 83rd Congress,” recited Otto Beggs. Then he went on, “ ‘Subject to the discretion of the Treasury, the United States Secret Service, Treasury Department, is authorized to protect the person of the President of the United States and members of his immediate family.’ ”

“I gathered that,” said Dilman dryly. “I haven’t been out of your sight for a second this week, except when I’ve gone to the bathroom or have been asleep. Does it always have to be that way? Isn’ there some time when I can go out alone, privately, to see certain-certain friends?”

Beggs shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. President. How can we protect you if we’re not with you?”

“I can’t believe every President has been followed every minute of his term by agents,” said Dilman.

“It’s true, sir. Mr. Truman tried to get off on walks without us, and General Eisenhower tried to get rid of us to play his golf in peace, and Mr. Kennedy tried to escape for some swims, but they never succeeded one minute, far as I know. Mr. Johnson was more cooperative in some respects, but T. C. once tried to sneak off to a stag party in Foxhall Road at one in the morning. We caught up with him.”

Dilman was thoughtful. “Let us say I kept it perfectly secret, yet insisted I had to see some friends alone?”

“You can see anyone alone, Mr. President, but you can’t travel to them unguarded.”

“What if I ordered it?”

Beggs turned his head, his puffy red face showing astonishment. “You couldn’t, Mr. President-begging your pardon, sir, but it’s the law. Chief Gaynor is empowered by the law to prevent you from any physical movement that he considers dangerous. This is sort of embarrassing, Mr. President, but like I said, it’s the law-sir.”

Dilman surrendered. “Thank you, Mr. Beggs.” The conversation left him more agitated than ever about Wanda and himself. Circumstances had made any future relationship impossible for them. He could not see her again on his terms, which demanded complete privacy. He could visit her only on the Secret Service agents’ terms and, he supposed, her own desired terms-publicly-and this would for the first time make known to one and all their longtime association. He considered the last, and then one more possibility came to his mind, and he thought about it.