At the National Press Club the last strong men threw their cards down on the table, drained their glasses, and headed for home. Among them was Malcolm Waters of the Associated Press, who had allowed himself an evening of poker and Virginia Gentleman because The Man had nothing on his schedule until eleven o'clock tomorrow morning.
On Capitol Hill two tired staff men left the Senate Office Building, commiserating with each other over the piles of pre-recess work that kept them at their desks so late.
In a modest split-level house in Arlington Jiggs Casey rubbed his eyes, turned off the lamp, and laid down a battered copy of the World Almanac. It was the only book he had been able to find in the house that contained the text of the Constitution of the United States.
In the small booths around the White House a new shift of policemen took up the task of guaranteeing that the President would be kept safe-as safe as any human being could be-from harm to his person. They guarded the man. The office he occupied took care of itself. For almost two hundred years it had needed no guard.
Tuesday Morning
Jordan Lyman opened one eye, then shut it again. Rain spattered against the windowpanes in the half-light of early morning. Coming out of his sleep, Lyman listened to the comforting steadiness of the downpour and let the sound take him back to the chill, damp mornings of his Ohio boyhood when he'd stay snuggled in the blankets to await his father's ritual calclass="underline" "Time to get up, Jordie, the world's waiting for you."
Here in the White House the world was always waiting, but no one dared wake the President without orders-and Lyman had left none for this morning. He stretched and scratched the back of his head. God, what a dismal day. Why hadn't they ever moved the capital to Arizona? Lyman's months as President had confirmed his pet theory about American diplomacy: that it lacked "initiative" primarily because of the Washington climate. The city was always wet, overcast, humidly hot or damply cold. All the bright, cool, cheerful days in a year wouldn't fill one month on the calendar.
He was awake now, but still reluctant to abandon the comfort of his bed. He thought of his daughter Elizabeth in Louisville. I hope the sun is shining on her, poor kid. She's probably in the hospital right now. Well, it will be a good-looking boy, with Liz and her husband as the producers. Boy? Sure, Liz will come through. Better call Doris this morning and see how things are going.
Lyman was swinging himself out of bed, his feet reaching for the floor, when he remembered. That Marine colonel last night and his incredible story. Scott. MacPherson. ECOMCON.
He sat for a few minutes on the edge of the bed, then picked up the phone on the night table.
"Grace," he said to the operator, "good morning. Or it was until I looked out the window. Call Esther at home, will you please, and ask her to come down as soon as she can. Tell her I'll probably still be eating breakfast. Thanks."
Lyman washed, shaved and dressed within fifteen minutes. Leaving his bedroom, he managed a smile for the warrant officer sitting in the hall with his briefcase full of nuclear-war codes. What a way, Lyman thought, to make a President start a rainy day.
He was in the dining room, inwardly fuming again over the grapefruit, when Esther Townsend came in. She was scrubbed and neat, her lipstick very light, the little collar of her blouse tilted upright with starch and the wisp of hair curling over one temple. Why doesn't she get married? thought the President ... The idea fled before the others crowding in behind it.
"Have some coffee, Esther," he said. "The news is as foul as the weather this morning. Somebody wants my job."
Esther eyed him over her coffee cup as she sat at the corner of the table.
"Now, Governor," she said, using the term she had favored ever since he was attorney general of Ohio and still two years away from the governorship. "Isn't this a little early to be worrying about "76?"
"Somebody wants my job right now, or so I'm informed." Lyman telescoped Casey's story, and his own additions, into about five minutes for her benefit.
"This may be a complete misunderstanding all around, Esther," he said as he finished the recital, "but we've got to find out fast. For the time being, only five people are going to know about this beyond you and me: Ray Clark, Paul Girard, Colonel Casey, Art Corwin, and Chris Todd. If any one of them calls during the rest of this week, no matter what time of day, I want you to take the message."
"Do you think I'd better sleep here at the House?" she asked. Her tone was neutral, and Lyman had no way of guessing her reaction to the story. Lord, he thought, I wish I knew my own. If the sun was shining now, I'd think the whole thing was cockeyed.
"Yes, I do. I think for the rest of the week you'd better use that cot in the doctor's office. And, Esther, what about the switchboard girls? In a situation like this-I know it's silly-but I'd rather not trust anybody you don't."
"That's easy," Esther said. "Helen Chervasi and I are good friends. I'll get her to set up the two daytime shifts so that calls from any one of those five people will be switched to her. I'll take the overnight shift myself."
"You can't do that, Esther." Lyman was genuinely concerned. "You'd be out on your feet in two days."
She shook her head. "No, I can nap some during the day, and there won't be any calls much after midnight."
"Well, what do you think of it all?" He was curious, for she still had made no comment on this weird new problem of the Lyman administration.
She pointed her index finger at her head in a familiar private signaclass="underline" Quiet, secretary thinking. They both grinned.
"Actually, Governor, I'm puzzled, just as you are. As a woman, I'd say I'd have to know more about General Scott. I don't have any particular feeling about him, I mean in that kind of thing. If I were you, I'd find out more about his girl friend."
"What girl friend?"
"Oh, haven't you heard that old one?" Esther smiled wisely and shook her head as if in pity for the backwardness of the male. "It's been the gossip for a couple of years. The General is supposed to slip up to New York now and then to see a very chi-chi item named Millicent Segnier. She's fashion editor of Cherie magazine. They're supposed to have a big thing."
"Well, I'll be damned," Lyman said. "The things a man learns when he lets it drop that somebody is making a pass at his job. That's interesting, dear, but hardly anything to save the Republic with. Look, time's awasting. Get Ray Clark here right away."
The morning papers lay neatly piled on the table behind the desk, still unread, when Clark sailed into Lyman's office.
"What in God's green earth are you gettin' me outa mah bed at this houah fo', Mistuh President?" asked Clark. His face was still wet from the rain. "Ah ain't got me one of them free ten-thousand-dolluh White House funeral wagons to carry me, neither. Ol' Ray gotta drive hisse'f."
Lyman's smile was no more than perfunctory. "Stow the accent this morning, will you, Ray? We've got some fast thinking to do."
He buzzed for Esther and asked her to order a breakfast for Clark.
"Do you know a Marine colonel named Casey, Martin Casey?"
"Sure," Clark said. "If you mean the director of the Joint Staff. He's been before the committee a few times. Did me a favor once, too. The son of a pretty prominent fellow in Atlanta went AWOL from Marine boot camp down at Parris Island. The kid got what was coming to him, but Casey was nice enough to see they kept it out of the papers."