Irving Wallace - The Man

“Julian, I’m not asking you to go to your father, I’m ordering you to go-as one member of the Turnerite Group to another.”

He was pleased at the result of the impact. Julian’s eyes almost popped from their sockets, his mouth gaped, his jaw went slack. Some instinct of self-preservation appeared to draw his thin body into itself, as if trying to shrivel itself into invisibility. Julian’s terrified eyes went from Poole to the door and back again.

Julian sought helplessly to articulate some coherent reaction, and then he managed to stutter, “I-I-you shouldn’t-I-Jeff made the blood pledge with my pledge-that it would be secret-no one would know in a million years-it was the condition-to be in the secret corps. This is-this is-”

“There’s no betrayal, if that’s what you’re going to say, Julian,” said Leroy Poole briskly. “We have a small public organization, but the mass of the iceberg hidden below is the most of it and the most effective section. I’m an unlisted, undercover member, and so are you. I wouldn’t have known you belonged, except that Hurley wrote me the information the other day. No one knows, will ever know, except Hurley, Valetti, and now me, and I was okayed because I’m on the Advisory Board. When you and I went in, we vowed to do whatever we were ordered to do. I was ordered to write the pamphlets and propaganda. I did. Then I was ordered to get your father on our side. I followed orders, I tried. You-you were ordered to stay in the Crispus Society, get on their Student Council in New York, and you did, and then you were assigned to get inside information for us, about the trouble spots, the hard and soft spots-”

“I’ve done it, that’s what I been doing, that’s enough,” Julian whispered.

“Not now, Julian,” Poole went on relentlessly. “Now you’ve got more to do, because your situation has changed. Your father is President of this country. You’re his son, and that counts for something. You’re one of us, and we are your brothers, and that counts for more. You go to him-”

“What if I fail like you did? I know I’ll fail, I know. What’ll happen then?”

“We’ll worry about that later. All I want to know is that you don’t chicken out on Hurley and the Group. Will you see him today? Will you speak to him?”

Julian’s voice was a croak. “Yes.”

“Good boy.” Poole placed his hands on his knees and stood up. “What time are you going to be at the Union Station?”

“Five o’clock.”

“I’ll see you there,” said Leroy Poole.

He started for the door, but Julian’s quavering voice caught him before he could touch the knob.

“Mr. Poole-it-it’s supposed to be secret-that’s the whole thing.”

“Julian, what do you take us for? It’s as secret as it ever was, about me, about you. No one’s ratting on either of us. Trust Jeff Hurley. He’s the greatest Negro this country ever gave birth to. He’s our savior, our future. Let’s just do as he says, every one of us, and then maybe soon we’ll all be free, and won’t be scared any more, not scared of anyone, not scared of being secret and being found out. This is it, Julian. You get in there. You make your father’s first real Presidential act a gutsy one, and he’ll go down in history and deserve Lincoln’s bed-and so will you.”

Waiting for the President to finish his telephone call, Sally Watson glanced at her wristwatch. The time was twenty-three minutes after twelve. She had been with the President nearly eight minutes, had done most of the talking, and still was not certain if she had impressed him. There were seven minutes left-ten at the most-to prove that she could be an asset to him in the White House.

She was still breathless with the suddenness of Leroy’s call, the careening drive to Pennsylvania Avenue, the bantering passage through the crowd of newspapermen in the West Wing lobby, the immediate face-to-face interview with the new President.

She tried to review the first half of this important meeting. His blackness had not disconcerted her. Indeed, she had found his heavy features rather exotic and his general aspect not at all unattractive. What had disconcerted her was his remoteness. The few questions he had posed, about her upbringing, education, and previous jobs, had seemed directed not at her but at the blotter on his desk. Her replies, carefully detailed, confident yet reserved, well edited, had seemed to slide off the top of his kinky-haired head. He had hardly met her eyes at all. He had not reacted to anything she had told him. She could not be sure he was even listening. Sally Watson was not used to inattentiveness from men, black or white. Even T. C. used to look at her.

The President was still on the telephone, and she was worried now. Had his inattentiveness been due to a natural reticence, or preoccupation with his busy schedule? Or had he been bored by her? She could not believe that she had bored him. She had been composed and controlled, bright but not silly, and when she had left the house she had never looked better. Perhaps, between the house and here, with all the frightful rush and tension, she had unraveled.

Quickly, quietly, while there was time, Sally Watson brought her expensive lizard purse to her lap, located her enamel-inlaid sterling compact, and snapped it open. Her bouffant blond hair was still set perfectly, not a strand out of place. Her eye shadow and mascara were still fresh and right. Her lips-possibly they were overdone. Furtively, she found a Kleenex, brought it to her mouth, and pressed her lips against it. The compact mirror congratulated her on the improvement. The last touch of Aphrodite was gone. What was left, she prayed, was modest Pudicitia.

She dropped the compact into the purse and sat erect, waiting. President Dilman’s call was proving interminable for her. Every minute that he was so occupied was a minute subtracted from her chances. Could he even imagine how desperately she wanted the position? She would be “inside.” She would be “high up,” in the rarefied power hierarchy. She would be Somebody. Her circle of friends would envy her. Arthur Eaton would respect her infinitely more.

She must win the job. Yet there was not a single indication that President Dilman was seriously considering her for it. Of course, he had sent for her, but maybe that had been to satisfy Leroy Poole or toady to her father. A pin of discouragement perforated her grand hopes. Well, anyway, she told herself, if nothing came of it, well, anyway, she’d been the first of the crowd to see him up close, the strange one, the one on everyone’s lips. She would have a conversation piece and attention grabber for a month. But-oh, dammit-she didn’t want a conversation piece. She wanted a real occupation and identity, to make her eligible for continued living and for Arthur Eaton’s love.

She heard the telephone bang into its cradle, and she started, and then, to her surprise, she found President Dilman appraising her.

“Forgive me for the length of that telephone call, Miss Watson,” he said. “If Alexander Graham Bell had not lived, I guess we’d have anarchy instead of a centralized democratic government today.”

She knew her responding laugh was strained. She said, “It’s kind enough of you to see me at all.”

He had a pencil, and absently drew circles with it on a scratch pad. “Everything you’ve told me up to now, Miss Watson, indicates you possess the right background for this type of work. But I must add, to be perfectly honest, I do have one or two reservations about you.”

She felt stricken, as if sentenced to doom without being told the reason behind it. Desperation made her bolder. “What reservations, Mr. President? Please tell me whatever is on your mind. I feel I’m so perfectly qualified for the position, so right for it, that I can’t imagine-” She threw up her hands helplessly, then remembered the scar and turned her right wrist inward. “I can’t imagine anyone on earth not seeing how useful I could be.”