At times, he approached Mr. Truman head-on, and once greeted him with “Good Morning, Mr. President.”
Truman nodded and returned the greeting. As the summer months began, the weather grew unbearably hot. Washington was built on a swamp, and the humidity was deadly. His little room became an oven, and he spent more and more time in movie houses, which provided the only public air-conditioning in town. When the weather hit over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, most of the government workers were sent home.
Dutifully, he called his anonymous contact each day, sometimes varying the given telephone numbers. His routine was essentially boring, and he was growing increasingly impatient and uncomfortable. He became interested in the Washington Senators baseball team and bought himself a little radio to hear play-by-play descriptions of the games. Needless to say, he “beat the monkey” with increasing frequency.
Because of the various regulations concerning parking on city streets, he began putting the car in public parking garages, varying his routine, and turning over the motor periodically.
At the beginning of August, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and a few days later one on Nagasaki. Why hadn’t the Führer developed such a weapon? It now made the United States the most powerful nation on earth.
The Jews had made the bomb. Oppenheimer, a Jew, had organized it from scientific work originally done by Einstein and other Jews. This meant that the Jews had the secrets of the bomb and could blow up anyone who stood in their way. And that little lackey whom he had followed on the Washington streets during the morning was the most powerful man on earth.
What were these stupid Russians waiting for? He was ready and primed to assassinate this man. He had the opportunity, the weapon, and the best possible spot to do the job. Normally, the president walked out of the southeast gate of the White House at six o’clock every morning, accompanied by four Secret Service men. At the gate, a group of reporters and photographers awaited his arrival.
Sometimes, he turned northward and began his walk crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, moving briskly through Lafayette Park, and continuing along the city streets. At times, he turned southward and walked along the Ellipse from which one could clearly see the back of the White House beyond a long expanse of lawn. He smiled and waved at people he passed. He amazed Miller; the Führer had never been so accessible.
He wished he could discuss his plan with someone in authority. Nevertheless, he remained obediently at his post making his daily calls, receiving no instructions. He wondered if he had been forgotten. It was possible that he was written off as valueless. Perhaps they had changed their mind.
“Just wait.”
Dimitrov’s words rang in his ears. He wondered if this was his fate and his future: to wait, to wait forever.
Once, he varied his telephone call, and when it clicked on instead of asking for Fritz, he said, “I must speak to Dimitrov.”
The phone call aborted instantly, and he returned to his regular routine.
Then, in early December, his life took a strange turn. The president had varied the route of his constitutional because of some construction. As always, Miller kept himself at a distance, moving at a varied pace, sometimes fast, sometimes slowing to avoid attracting any undue attention of Mr. Truman’s small Secret Service detail. At one point, while looking in another direction, he fell hard over the wooden barrier in front of a construction ditch.
He knew he had broken bones. He heard the crack. His right arm was lifeless at his side, and his foot was twisted completely around. His sock and shoe were bathed in blood, and the pain was intense. Luckily, someone driving along the still-deserted street had seen him fall. He was a black man who had stopped the car and called to him.
“You okay, buddy?” the man asked.
He was middle-aged, wearing the blue-gray uniform of a post office worker.
Miller was tempted to say “fine” but it was obvious that he could not walk, and his right arm was useless.
“I think I broke something,” he retorted, barely able to speak, convulsed with pain.
His body was bathed in sweat, and he felt on the verge of fainting.
The man reached out a hand and grasped Miller’s uninjured hand and pulled him into a vertical position. His rescuer was a big, obviously strong man. He managed to heft him over his shoulder and put him in the rear of his mail truck.
“GW hospital is a minute away,” the man said. “I’ll get you there.”
The man raced the truck to the emergency exit of the George Washington University Hospital on Logan Circle and went inside, and soon two burly men in white coats helped Miller onto a gurney. He was sweating, almost semiconscious. The pain was unbearable, but he felt the movement of the gurney speeding him to an unknown destination.
Then he passed out.
Chapter 7
Benson had come back from Miami on the train, arriving the day before. That morning, he had checked in with his editor to discuss his interview with Churchill.
“He was having his portrait painted, Todd,” Benson told him, “and was quite evasive about the speech.”
He had debated with himself all night on the train if he should violate Sarah’s conversational confidences made under the influence. Even now, with his editor sitting in front of him, he had not reached a decision.
“Not the slightest hint?” Todd asked. “Why so close to the vest?”
“You know he dictates his own speeches and doesn’t like to preempt his own drama.”
“Did you get an impression, something instinctive?” Baker asked.
He remembered Sarah’s words almost verbatim and had written them down after getting back to his hotel. He had called her upon arriving in Washington, but she had already gone back to Los Angeles. He hoped he would not lose a good friend—and a source, he added cynically to his thoughts.
“My impression, Todd,” he said, after a lengthy pause, “in the light of his deliberate evasion, is that he is planning a significant speech.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“Maybe something critical about the way the peace is going, the division of Berlin by the Potsdam Agreement. Maybe something very unpleasant about the Russians.”
He waited for a reaction from his editor.
“He’s always been critical of the Russians.”
“Still it’s only speculation. I don’t think you could build a hot news story on a mere reporter’s impression without quoting sources. And I’ve never felt comfortable not using real live sources. I hate quoting anonymous sources.”
He knew he was being ingenuous, since the paper often quoted anonymous sources, albeit sparingly. But he knew that if Sarah got wind of a story about her father wanting to create a stem-winder that would rock the world and practically indict Stalin for stealing half of Europe, their friendship would be over. He didn’t want that to happen. It would always be a journalist’s dilemma.
“Tell you what, Todd,” he said. “Suppose I sleep on it. The speech is more than a month away. I know what you’re looking for. Also, Todd, I’ve got some good stuff for a Churchill feature. Maybe I can get Sarah to arrange some photo stuff to go with it.”
“How is your friend?”
“Great,” Benson said, as he walked away to see Maclean.
They met in Maclean’s opulent, paneled first secretary’s office in the British embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. The redbrick dwelling with stone dressing featured a pillared, classical Greek front. The combined residence and diplomatic office, which he had once described in a feature story, suggested an English manor house in the time of Queen Anne.