Irving Wallace - The Man

“What is he upset about?” Dilman asked. “Is anything really wrong?”

“Tonight’s State Dinner you are giving for President Amboko. Mr. Illingsworth knows the menu is set, but he just found out Amboko is a vegetarian!”

Dilman laughed. “Is that all? Well, you have the housekeeper prepare a special meal for Amboko. What does a vegetarian eat besides grass?”

“I already asked Mr. Illingsworth. He said he hadn’t had a chance to inquire, but he supposed that a vegetarian could eat anything that, in its original state, would not have bitten back. Anyway, he’s very anxious about this State Dinner, since it’s your first, and Baraza is such a hot spot, and-”

“Miss Foster, you call Illingsworth right back, and have him get in touch with Amboko’s aide-de-camp at the Barazan Embassy, and have him find out exactly what our guest will or won’t eat. Then have him pass it on to Miss Watson, and she’ll take care of Mrs. Crail and the chef. Put in a call for Illingsworth at the New State Department Building right now-I’ll hold-”

Waiting, Dilman tried to review the two meetings that he had already held with Kwame Amboko. In some childlike way, he had expected that the meetings would be informal, lively, easier than those with his own Cabinet members, because both he and Amboko were black, and that would be enough to bind them in quick understanding and agreement. It had astonished him how wrong he had been.

He had found Amboko a young man, no more than thirty-five, a scholarly and withdrawn young man with woolly black hair, suspicious eyes behind rimless glasses, and a flat nose that seemed to cover his countenance from cheek to cheek. His puncture of a mouth was ringed by flabby lips that revealed a quarter of an inch space between his upper center teeth. While Amboko’s accent was Harvard, and he possessed many agreeable memories of his time in the United States, and had tried to model his newly independent democracy along the lines laid out by the United States Constitution, he had appeared unconvinced that the United States was an entirely trustworthy mentor and friend.

Dilman could see that Kwame Amboko was not impressed by a fellow colored man’s ascension to the Presidency in a mammoth white nation where colored men were a minority. Amboko seemed to be suggesting, without saying so outright, that Dilman was merely a front for an undependable white cabal. The African had implied that Dilman was a puppet repeating white men’s words, and therefore could bring no more understanding to the problems of an all-black nation than could his white masters.

Dilman had been able to discover only one common bond between President Amboko and himself. He and his visitor appeared to be equally sensitive to disregard and disrespect from whites. But even this one bond, which might have drawn them closer, was slack, because their sensitivities were activated by different hurts. Whereas Dilman was sensitive to slights reflecting on his human and democratic rights as a man, Amboko was sensitive about the weakness of his small country and the threats of foreign domination. To Dilman, President Amboko was like a longtime prisoner, paroled at last, uncertain that his freedom is real, constantly glancing over his shoulder at the gray walls that had incarcerated him to make sure that someone more powerful than he is not reaching out to pull him back inside. When Dilman had mentioned this to Sue and Nat Abrahams two nights before, Nat had said, “Yes, I think all newly independent nations are at once paranoid and egocentric-they think everyone is against them, and they have no interest in anyone but themselves. Not so long ago the United States suffered those same adolescent growing pangs.”

Dilman’s policy talks with Amboko had been inconclusive. Dilman had been frank about the necessity for a compromise. He would sign America into the African Unity Pact, which the Senate had ratified, he would guarantee continued economic assistance to help industrialize Baraza, if Amboko would be less repressive toward native Communists and the Soviet Union. Dilman felt that this was the least Amboko could do, in order to help the United States pacify Russia.

Doggedly President Amboko had resisted this compromise. True, the Barazan Communist Party was small. True, there was no evidence of subversive activity by the Soviet Embassy in Baraza. True, there was no conclusive evidence that young Barazan natives on cultural exchanges to Moscow were being indoctrinated with Marxist ideas. Yet, despite this, President Amboko felt that his country, in this transitional period, was a fertile field for the rise of Communism. Because Amboko had abolished rule by chieftains, broken up the ancient social structure (which had scattered warring tribes over the grasslands of the plains and through the dense forests of the mountain ranges), supplanted it with not yet effective elected inter-village councils, there was discontent. Furthermore, the per capita income in Baraza was still only sixty dollars a year, and industrialization had hardly begun. The impoverished and unemployed might easily be turned against democracy.

Above all else, President Amboko did not trust the Soviet Union. He feared that Russia coveted his little nation’s resources-the gold, iron ore, diamonds-and, in a power grab, might try to put his people back into a colonial stockade. He had reminded Dilman of the experience of one of his neighbors, Guinea, with Russia. After the French had left Guinea in 1958, the newly independent nation, tempted by the Soviet Union’s anti-colonial talk and its offer of economic credit, had invited the Russians to help them. Within three years Guinea had been forced to expel the Russians because the Soviet Embassy, it was learned, had been working with native union leaders against the democratically elected government. President Amboko feared that the same Soviet activity might occur, if it was not already taking place, in Baraza, and he wanted to anticipate and thwart it.

Impressed as he was by Amboko’s concern, Dilman had felt that he must not be sidetracked by a small nation’s problems to the detriment of world peace. He had tried to behave as T. C. might have behaved. He had insisted upon the compromise, promising that Montgomery Scott, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, would assign a sufficient number of his agents to Baraza to keep a watchful undercover eye on any subversive activity there. Amboko had agreed to think the matter over further, and to give his final reply to Dilman before returning home. He would be leaving for Baraza, Dilman remembered, after tonight’s State Dinner.

“Mr. President.” It was Edna Foster on the telephone again. “I spoke to Mr. Illingsworth. He’ll take care of everything.”

“Fine.”

“There are two messages from Leroy Poole. He wants to discuss the last chapter of the biography with you. Shall I have Mr. Lucas give him an appointment?”

Dilman tried to interpret Poole’s calls. If there had been only one, the writer might indeed have wished to discuss the book. But two messages indicated something more urgent. Dilman suspected that it was the Turnerite business, still. For one who had insisted that he was not a member of that avowed direct-action group, Poole’s interest in the organization was unaccountable. Three weeks ago he had agitated Julian into fighting with his father. A week ago he had cornered poor Nat Abrahams in the Mayflower lobby, without success. Now, no doubt, because of the Hattiesburg sentence rendered by Judge Gage, he was trying to get to Dilman once more.

While Judge Gage’s verdict of “guilty” in the Mississippi trial had probably been technically exact, his sentence had been unduly harsh and vindictive. Two days before, in his Southern courtroom, he had sentenced all the Turnerite pickets, including the blinded one, to the maximum ten years’ imprisonment in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, under State Criminal Code Section 2011. While the Crispus Society had agreed to review the legalities of the case with an eye to an appeal, the Turnerites were too outraged to be patient. The Jeff Hurley statement to the press yesterday had been an uncomfortable threat, understandable, yet imprudent. “We are told this is justice, and to abide by the law of the land,” Hurley had announced. “We are also told to abide by the words of the Old Testament, that ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ But this cautious and creeping Lord is not our Lord. We find a better Lord with better guidance in the words of Nahum, ‘The Lord revengeth and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries.’ ”