The Man

by Irving Wallace

  DURING Governor Wayne Talley’s brief conversation with Dilman, Arthur Eaton had sat on one of the two black sofas of the Presidential reception room, the Fish Room it was called after the mammoth sailfish that T. C. had had mounted and hung on one wall, staring up at the square skylight in the ceiling.

  Arthur Eaton had hardly heard the conversation, so absorbed was he in his own musings. Persistently his mind had dwelt upon the loss of T. C., his closest public friend-in fact his only friend, since he was a person who had never encouraged personal or intimate relationships with other men. Eaton had been in government, a career diplomat, as far back as he cared to remember. His parents, when they were alive, and when there was money, would have been horrified at anything in government under diplomacy. To run for office, to depend upon others for largess, was unthinkable. As a consequence, Eaton had never considered running for any office, although there had been opportunities. His father, before his death-which occurred almost simultaneously with his loss of wealth-had arranged to put him into diplomacy, and in diplomacy he had been throughout his years.

  He could recollect many of his previous posts with ease. There had been the minor beginning as a representative to UNESCO in Paris. There had been the appointment as a delegate to the still growing United Nations in New York. There had been three ambassadorships to three corners of the globe. There had been special troubleshooting assignments, where poise and firmness and keen intellect were wanted, from Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. There had been a period of dismay, almost ennui, when the assignments seemed to be blurring, each one resembling the last, with the same polished tables and same calfskin briefcases and same treaties and same Oriental or Semitic or Asian or European countenances uttering the restrained semantics of upper-echelon diplomatic negotiation. Eaton relished protocol, fine manners, the limited games of wits, and yet he had once become bored by it all. It was a period during which he had felt trapped on a treadmill. Worse, as oppressive, was the fact that he and Kay had lived beyond his means, because this was the way they had been taught to live, and more and more he had become dependent upon her inherited fortune. In his career at that time, not so long ago, he had possessed no hope for change or promotion, and in his personal life he had enjoyed no freedom. It was T. C. who had rescued him, and offered him his greatest hope.

  He had enjoyed T. C.’s vigor and boundless extroversion since their college years. While their paths had crossed occasionally, Arthur Eaton had watched T. C.’s political fortunes rise from afar. He had observed his friend engage and defeat foe after foe in elections of more and more importance. He had, with admiration mingled with envy, observed T. C. become a national figure. He was not surprised when the convention had nominated T. C. as the Party’s standard-bearer on the third ballot, but he was surprised when Tim Flannery had telephoned from St. Louis to report that T. C. needed his assistance in the campaign and wanted him to fly out immediately.

  At the time, Eaton had been between missions, momentarily free of an assignment, and he had gone to T. C. at once. To Arthur Eaton, in that St. Louis hotel suite, T. C. had been as he had always been, only more so, more confident, more exuberant, more stimulating. T. C. had presented his proposition directly. As the Party’s candidate, he was well-enough versed in domestic affairs to handle himself properly. But, T. C. had admitted disarmingly, he’d had little opportunity to be involved in international problems, and on the subject of foreign affairs he was a dolt, and he needed help and advice. He had implored Eaton to take a leave of absence from the Department of State, and join T. C.’s campaign for the Presidency as adviser on foreign affairs and part-time speech writer.

  Although the idea of accompanying anyone on a grueling campaign junket, leaving air-conditioned rooms and polished tables for grubby, poorly lit hotel rooms, half-cooked food, smelly, disheveled local politicians, revolted Arthur Eaton, he had accepted without hesitation. There had been two reasons for his immediate acceptance. One was the chance to get away from Washington, from Kay and her tiresome social friends, from work that was suffocating him, and the other (and more exciting) reason was T. C.’s promise. “Arthur, you help me win, and I’ll see that you have yourself a Cabinet post, not selling stamps or worrying about squaws, but a big one, the biggest. You help me now, and you can help me run this country and most of the world next year.”

  It had happened exactly as T. C. had promised that it would. Two hours after T. C.’s opponent had conceded defeat on television, and T. C. had become the President-elect, Arthur Eaton had answered the ringing telephone in Georgetown. The caller had been T. C. himself. No sooner had Eaton congratulated him than T. C. had boomed out, “Arthur, you got any enemies in the Senate?” Eaton could think of none, not real enemies. Then T. C. had said, “Think they’ll give consent on your appointment?” And Eaton had asked, “To what?” And then T. C., with a delighted laugh that was almost a shout, had bellowed across the wire, “To Secretary of State, my friend. You are the first in my Cabinet, and welcome to it!”

  So he had become Secretary of State Eaton, and with Talley trotting between T. C. and himself, he had assisted the President in running the country. Those had been adventurous and stimulating days, those days of the two years and seven months gone by, and they had been his Fountain of Youth. Not only had each morning, with its challenges, been a joy to wake to, but Eaton had found the independence to shake off the yoke of money that held him captive to his wife. He had been enabled to ignore her disdain, her snobbery, her petty values, her Social Register crowd and her avant-garde artist salon. He had, indeed, been able to plead devotion to something that mattered more, survival of his country. This had been the same shield he had always been able to hold up to fend off Kay’s barbed anger. Her technique had not varied from its pattern in the past; it had only intensified. She had continued to hack away at his masculinity. When she found that she could no longer bring him down, as she had always succeeded in doing in the past, she had begun to increase her trips away from Washington. She had permitted herself to be seen with her endless bright young men in public. Eaton had rarely speculated on what she might be doing with her companions in private. But more and more, freed of her, he had begun to derive pleasure from the company of attentive and appreciative young Washington women, the single ones. There had been but two short-lived affairs-for he was always aware of the dangers-but they had been gratifying enough to remind him that he was a person still capable of enjoying love and companionship, and that he was more than his wife had tried to make him.

  All of this pride and pleasure he owed to the patronage and friendship of T. C., whom he had revered as a friend and respected as a leader. Twenty-four hours ago their future had seemed glowing. There were years of their joint rule ahead of them-the remainder of this term, and the almost certain second term. Twenty-four hours ago Eaton’s resurrection as an individual, a very important person, had been secure. And then, shockingly, with the crumbling of that ancient Palace in Frankfurt, his high hopes and good prospects had crumbled, too. And so he knew that his mourning was not only for the loss of his friend, but for the loss of something of himself.

  Throughout the endless tragic night in Georgetown, following the swearing in of Dilman as President, he had received and listened to or overheard the members of T. C.’s bereft team and the leaders of the Party. Most of the chatter had been about how to preserve the unity of the Party, now that a Negro was its head. There had been a little talk, he remembered, about preserving the unity of the nation as well. Too, there had been talk, mostly in Southern accents, about challenging the constitutionality of the 1947 Act of Succession, and there had been talk, in harder accents, about reviving some aspect of the old 1867 Tenure of Office Act, which had once enabled the Senate to try to restrict a President from removing officers appointed to his Cabinet. In short, Eaton remembered, the concern had not been about Dilman’s ability to handle the office, and how he must best be guided, but rather about how to balk him or, failing in that, to cont
rol him, pluck his powers, so that the nation would not be tainted black and so that those present might not lose their jobs to colored men and to bleeding-heart Negro-lovers.

  Through the night, Arthur Eaton had not permitted himself to be drawn into these discussions. His foresight had suffered from emotional cataracts. He had thought only of the immediate consequences of the fateful night, of the condition of the country and himself now, in the present, without T. C. as mentor. When his living room bar and then his library had emptied, and he had sought sleep, he had still not fastened on the full realization that even though another, by default, had become President, this other must be made to understand that it was still T. C.’s country and T. C.’s government and that any successor was there merely as a custodian of T. C.’s ideas and ideals, which Eaton himself might continue to spell out and present.

  Not until now, in the Fish Room of the White House-a room, like the Oval Office, restored by T. C. to the decor of the Kennedy administration-had Eaton, after listening to Talley on the telephone, after reviewing all that he had reviewed in his head, finally settled on the idea of what must be done. He had a role, after all, and perhaps now it was more important than it had been before. He must ignore every one of those harebrained schemes about blocking Dilman from the Oval Office, or obstructing the lamentable Negro. He must devote himself, Eaton decided, to keeping T. C. as alive as he had ever been. Only thus could their United States be saved, and, parenthetically, only thus could Arthur Eaton have a continuing, meaningful life.

  He sat straight on the sofa, saw that Wayne Talley was standing at the desk near the door, making notes on a sheet that lay beside the quaint early typewriter once used by Woodrow Wilson.

  “What are you up to, Wayne?” he inquired.

  “Dilman’s on his way in. He’s an absolute amateur. I’m not saying he’s stupid-hell, he’s been around the Hill long enough. But he’s ignorant of what really goes on, and of things that have to be done. It kills me when I think of it. The Majority Party senators caucus every time there’s a new Congress in the Conference Room of the Senate Office Building to select a temporary presiding officer to sit up there with the gavel and pound it. The idea is to select one of their own as a substitute or alternate for the Vice-President when he’s out of town. Nine times out of ten, they cast their caucus vote for the member among them who has seniority. There’s no rule about it, but it’s a kind of gesture of courtesy, a custom, to select the senator who’s had the most years of service. That’s why Rydberg had the spot so long. ‘Papa Methuselah’ they called him. Then his doctors make him quit, so the Senate needs a replacement, what with Porter traveling all the time. They’ve got to caucus again. So what happens this time? All those riots, the bloodshed, in Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, Dallas, all of it from Negroes, with those protest marches and boycotts worsening-so a couple of smart guys get the big political brainstorm, let’s give the honorary presiding post to a Negro, a democratic gesture, and shut up those demonstrators, prove to them we mean well. So Senator Selander, the senior member, who normally would have become President pro tempore, seconds the suggestion. That makes it okay. So Selander steps out of the caucus, phones me, and tells me to pass it on to T. C. to find out if he approves. Well, T. C. was so damn busy that day he didn’t give a hoot who held that unimportant President pro tempore of the Senate job, so he said okay, maybe it’ll look good for the Party, let them do what they think best. So the Party caucus elects Douglass Dilman, and puts the resolution naming him to the whole Senate. Then, a routine thing, the opposition offers an amendment putting forth their own candidate, Senator Riggins, and a roll call is held and the opposition amendment voted down. Then the original resolution on behalf of Dilman is put to a voice vote, and the ayes have it, and Dilman has that idiotic do-nothing post. Who in the hell would know that the Vice-President would drop dead soon after that? Who in the hell would imagine that the fourth in line of succession could ever become President of the United States? In fact, who in the hell, on that day they routinely caucused and voted, even knew that the President pro tempore of the Senate was the fourth in line? I always thought it was the Secretary of State. I thought it was you, Arthur, not that it mattered a damn at the time. So for political and publicity reasons we put that poor Party hack in there, and we had our showcase colored man up there for all to see, a man with no qualifications for leadership whatsoever-”

  “How do you know that?” asked Eaton quietly.

  “Douglass Dilman’s been in the House four terms, in the Senate two terms, and what has he ever done or instigated?” said Talley heatedly. “He was sent to Washington because of the temper of the times, and given an honorary gavel in the Senate because of the times, and then a once-in-a-thousand accident happens, and blooey, we’re stuck with a tenth-rater whose presence means potential trouble, and plenty of it.” He lifted his hands to the ceiling. “The fourth in line becoming President-I repeat, Arthur, who could’ve imagined it?”

  “It was always a possibility,” said Eaton. “I was reading this morning that what happened now might very well have happened during the last six weeks of 1961. At that time Speaker Rayburn was dead, and not replaced, and had President Kennedy been assassinated then, and Vice-President Johnson with him, we would have had the fourth in line, President pro tempore of the Senate Hayden, as President of the United States.”

  “But this Dilman, anyone would have been better than Dilman.”

  “Well, if he doesn’t work out,” said Eaton, “you and your senator friends have only yourselves to blame. As an expediency, you played politics instead of exercising judgment, and you did it once too often.”

  “Arthur, don’t lecture me from hindsight. We always play politics. That’s our business. Politics-why, that’s not necessarily a dirty word. It implies bargaining, giving and taking, it means tuning in on the times, doing things people want even when you’re not sure it’s best for them. More often than not, politics produces good results. And usually, when we play politics, we guess right, and what happens is right not only for us here but for most of the people out there. This time, this once, though-” He shook his head sadly. “Well, like I said, we were dealing with a minor decision, and we dusted it off to placate a pressure group. Who in the hell knew that it would lead to this?”

  “Yet it has led to this,” said Eaton. “I suggest that we forget the past, and consider what is to be done in the present. This is the time to be realistic, to make the best of a-a difficult situation.” He paused and considered Talley. “I believe T. C. would have wanted that.”

  Talley’s cross-eye jumped, and he swallowed, as ever cowed by the mention of T. C.’s name. “Yes, I guess you’re right,” he said. He came away from the desk, rattling the sheet of paper in his hand. “Well, you can see that I, personally, am trying to make the best of it. I’m trying to get up a reasonable list of the first duties Dilman must discharge. God knows how well he’ll be able to manage them.”

  “Wayne, certainly he will expect expert counsel and guidance,” said Eaton softly. “Long ago the office became too big for one man. After all, what are the demands on the President today? He is Chief Executive, overseeing the execution of our laws, exercising important powers of appointment and removal. He is chief of state, national host to an endless stream of native and foreign visitors. He is Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy and Marines and Air Force, with the Pentagon dangling from his civilian lapel. He is arbiter of both Houses on Capitol Hill, able to influence Congressional activity, able to nullify its accomplishments by veto. He is Ambassador to the world, making deals with international leaders, ironing out treaties, selecting foreign diplomat puppets, using my own Department of State as little more than a computer. And that, Wayne, is but the start of it, for any President. Consider his lesser jobs-he runs his political party, he molds public opinion, he sees that his voice is heard in the United Nations, he acts as a superpoliceman in areas ranging from strikes to race riots to big-business monopoly.”r />
  Arthur Eaton saw that Talley was becoming impatient, and he smiled. “Forgive a résumé of what you are already too well acquainted with, but this is a morning in which to remember the facts of a President’s life. What lone man, in our complex age, can perform as so many men at one and the same time? There’s enough here to give Hercules a nervous breakdown. Every modern President knows that. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson knew that, and delegated power to specialists. The only one who tried to go it alone was The Judge, and that lasted about one year, and his cranky ego put him in such a hole that it took several hundred experts to dig him out. Why, T. C. once told me our method of electing and depending on one President was as outmoded as the horse-and-buggy, that what this country needed today was the election of a board of Presidents, at least five serving at once. Since he could not have that, T. C. did the next-best thing. He took on you, Wayne, after you lost your election, and myself, and a half-dozen others of the Party as assistant Presidents, and it worked nicely, very nicely.”

  Talley sniffed. “Great, Arthur, I know that. You know that. Maybe every schoolboy knows that. But does our new Mr. President know that?”

  “He may. If he does not understand delegation of power, I think he will come to understand it within a week.”

  “I wish I could be as sure of that as you, Arthur. We’re not dealing with an ordinary man. We’re dealing with a colored man, the product of a race that’s been pushed around for a century or more, and is used to being told what to do, and resents it. You give someone like that power, the power to do the pushing, and he may not want to let go of one inch of it. He can ruin us.”