Irving Wallace - The Man

She went on. “You will be sitting in the chair T. C. was to have sat in these next critical seventeen months. You will be holding the pen he was to have held when his proposals and legislations come to your desk. You will be implementing decisions on matters here and abroad, decisions he had already made but had had no opportunity to carry out. You will be surrounded by good and wise men, Governor Talley, Secretary Eaton, Attorney General Kemmler, General Fortney, whom T. C. appointed, counted upon, whose advice he would have continued heeding, but whose words he can hear no longer.”

She paused. “I-I have no right to ask it, Senator Dilman, because now my husband is gone, and I am no longer a President’s wife but a private citizen and a widow. Nevertheless, I will ask it as a private citizen, one of the millions who put him in office to lead us. I will ask that you try-try your best-to-to perform in the next seventeen months as if the Saviour had resurrected T. C. inside your head and your heart.” Suddenly her voice broke, and her composure with it. “Oh, I know you can’t be T. C., but-” Her hand went to her wet eyes, and she murmured, “Oh, forgive me-”

He had come off the sofa, stirred, to embrace this good woman, but then, as he neared her, arm extended, he could see the blackness of his supplicating hand groping past her white face. He froze, then straightened, trying to find the right words to speak.

There was a light knocking on the door behind him. Startled, he spun around.

“Mr. President?” A platinum-haired, smartly dressed young female was speaking to him from the doorway. “I’m Miss Laurel, the White House social secretary. I have a worried call from Edna Foster. She’s trying to locate you. She says you are running behind schedule. Secretary Eaton and Governor Talley are in your office, and then the Cabinet meeting-”

Dilman nodded, distraughtly, then turned back to look down at the former First Lady. She had found her handkerchief and was dabbing at her eyes.

His voice thick, Dilman spoke to her. “You have my promise, ma’am. On any matter that confronts me, from this day on, I will think before I act-I will think of T. C. first. I can never be the man he was, except in one respect. I love my country as much as he did, and I will do everything I can to preserve its security and wellbeing, no matter what lies ahead.”

Quickly he left her, and as he did, he exposed T. C.’s widow, for the first time, to the full view of Miss Laurel, who was still standing at the doorway. Miss Laurel gasped at the sight of the handkerchief and tears, and ran past Dilman, crying out, “Hesper, dear-what is it? What is it? Don’t, my dear-everything will be all right.”

Dilman fled from the room into the hall, but Miss Laurel’s promise to T. C.’ widow, repeated over and over again, followed him to the elevator. Everything will be all right. These moments, if the alchemy were possible, he would have sold his soul to the devil to bring T. C. back. For he knew that he could never be T. C., because he was weak and he was black. Then, he thought, he crazily thought: an original sheet of paper is white, but the carbon is black, and often the carbon, copy, no matter how weak, is almost as useful. He would try. He would try with all his strength.

When he punched the elevator button, he felt better.

Slouched in the wooden antique chair alongside the Buchanan desk in the President’s Oval Office, Arthur Eaton crossed his legs, dropped the memorandum he had prepared for the Cabinet meeting in his lap, and tightened the navy blue knit tie higher between his button-down shirt collar. He brought out his silver holder, twisted a cigarette into it, lit it, puffed contentedly, and watched with amusement Wayne Talley’s impatient dartings about the office.

“Easy, Governor,” Eaton called out. “Save yourself for the Cabinet meeting.”

“If there’s going to be any,” Talley growled. “Why does he have to be late on a day like this? We’ll have only half the time we need to cram him.”

“It won’t require as much time as you think,” said Eaton.

He continued watching Talley, as the stocky aide went to the French doors, peered across the Rose Garden, made some indistinct sound, tramped to the first window overlooking the south lawn, then came around to the almost barren Presidential desk.

Talley’s arm swept across the desk. “Look at it. Everything gone, even the clock, even his pens, and the captain’s chair. Not a damn thing of T. C.’s left-”

“Except us,” said Eaton, with a smile.

“Yeh, sure. If they get that New Succession Bill through, you’re safe. What about me? How do I know who’ll get to him a month from now?”

“Nobody’ll get to him a month from now, Wayne.” Eaton uncrossed his legs, and held the Cabinet memorandum in his free hand. “Look, Wayne, Dilman is President. Learn to live with it. I knew from the start that Zeke Miller’s protest would be thrown out of the Judiciary Committee and it was. After all, when the written law is obscure, you follow the unwritten law, which is historical precedent. The precedent was, nine times, that the next eligible in line becomes President, and no ifs, no maybes, about it, and no special elections either. Dilman was the next eligible, and now he is the Chief, and let us not waste any more energy fretting about it. Let us get on with business.”

Talley had planted himself in front of the Secretary of State. “Okay, business, Arthur. Do you know that the New Succession Bill sponsored by Senator Hankins is being approved by the full committee in the Senate Caucus Room today? Only one change suggested by the Legislative Council. After a President dies, and the next in line is serving as temporary Acting President, the new President and Vice-President are elected by the existing Electoral College for a full four-year term and not merely the unexpired term.”

“Yes, I heard about the change. I didn’t know the hearings were done and the bill was being approved today.”

“The committee isn’t touching a word in the language about you and the rest of T. C.’s Cabinet. It stays right in there. Dilman cannot remove you or any other member of the Cabinet without Senate consent. In fact, the line of succession as it was the day T. C. and MacPherson died stays untouched for the rest of the unexpired term. No new Speaker, no new President pro tempore of the Senate is to be elected to take precedence over you. The chairmanship will be revolving. That’s it, Arthur.”

“I know.”

“As committee chairman, Hankins is bringing the bill to the floor tomorrow or the next day. It’ll pass.”

“Will it?”

“It certainly will. And now, to expedite things, Zeke Miller is introducing a companion bill, same language, in the House. The House Rules Committee won’t stymie it. When it gets to a roll call there, it’ll go through in a flash.”

“Maybe.”

“For sure, Arthur. The question is-will Dilman sign or veto?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Eaton with annoyance. It irritated him to be dragged into these grimy, tricky, bartering legislative matters.

Eaton allowed Talley to drift out of his vision. He closed his eyes and smoked his cigarette. As much as he had tried not to, he had thought of that damned New Succession Bill, of course. How could he help but think of it? Everyone in T. C.’s inner circle, in the Party, in the press, his own wife, Kay, in fact, had kept reminding him that he was the next in line to the Presidency. Even if he had been able to remain deaf to the talk of the past week, it would have been impossible not to recognize his new position with the arrival of the three Secret Service agents, assigned by law to protect him as the Number Two man in the government.