He couldn’t. He didn’t even try. He had no trouble snagging an apartment in Washington. Now that the war was over, or mostly over, or whatever it was, more people flowed out of the capital than came in. His landlord was almost pathetically eager to have him.
He didn’t have much trouble finding a replacement for Ilse, either. An awful lot of people left in Babylon by the Potomac were secretaries and clerk-typists. Making connections wasn’t hard. Myrtle was more expensive than Ilse; she wouldn’t put out for K-rations. What the hell? You couldn’t have everything.
When Tom applied for a White House press credential, he wondered if the flunkies there would tell him to fold it till it was all corners and then stuff it. But, after one of them made a phone call to a higher-up, everything went snicker-snack.
“Thanks,” he said, wondering how his vorpal blade managed to slice through red tape.
“It ain’t your pretty face, buddy,” the press secretary’s subordinate replied. “If we turned you down, how much crap would you crank out about how we were stifling free expression? So we won’t stifle it. You want to ask the President questions, go ahead. Five gets you ten he spits in your eye.”
Roosevelt had been a gentleman right down to his paralyzed toes. From what Tom heard, Harry Truman was anything but. If he thought you were a son of a bitch, he’d call you one. Well, it made for good copy. “I’ll take my chances,” Tom said.
“You sure will.” The other man sounded as if he looked forward to it.
If Truman cussed him out…Tom had been cussed out by experts. You couldn’t quote a President cussing-there were unwritten rules about such things, as there were about reporting on, say, a Senator’s lady friends-but you could probably get the idea across one way or another.
Tom’s chance came on a blustery day in the middle of January. He presented his pass at the front gate of the White House, wondering if the guards would turn him away at the last minute. But they didn’t. One of them said, “Lucky stiff-you get to go inside. Goddamn cold out here.”
They wouldn’t have had anything to complain about in the White House press room. Tom figured he’d come out as a ham: thoroughly cooked, and just as thoroughly smoked. His own Old Gold added only a little to the tobacco haze. Truman’s press secretary came in and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.” Charlie Ross was a longtime Missouri newspaper man. He was an even longer-time friend of Truman’s; they’d gone to high school together. Rawboned, with a lock of gray hair that flopped down onto his forehead, he stood several inches taller than the President.
But Truman ran the show. He bustled in and started sassing several correspondents he knew well. They returned fire. Truman wasn’t Stalin-giving him a hard time wouldn’t cost you your head. He looked out over the crowd of reporters. When his eyes met Tom’s, he said, “Haven’t seen you here before. You new?”
“Yes, sir. Tom Schmidt, from the Chicago Tribune.”
“Oh. You’re him.” Truman looked as if somebody’d just farted. “Charlie wanted to give you the bum’s rush, but I said no. You don’t have to go sneaking around any more, Mr. Schmidt. If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face. Believe me, I can take the heat.”
“Thanks, Mr. President,” Tom said. “I wouldn’t’ve had to sneak if your people in Germany weren’t hiding how badly things are going there.”
“They’re still fighting in Germany, Mr. Schmidt, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Truman said tartly. “We don’t want to spread information that can help the fanatics.” He might be tart, but he was also smart: he didn’t use the word war. The war, after all, was over.
Sure it is, Tom thought. “Well, yes, sir,” he replied. “But since the Nazis were the ones who kidnapped that poor GI and then filmed him, don’t you think they already knew what was going on?”
Truman glowered at him over the tops of his metal-rimmed glasses. Tom felt as if he were getting grilled by his principal after some high-school scrape. No doubt the President wanted him to feel just that way. “During the War Between the States, Abe Lincoln asked why he had to order a young deserter shot but let the clever so-and-so who conned him into deserting go free,” Truman said. “All these years later, it’s still a damn good question. Or don’t you think morale matters?” He skated around war again.
“Of course I do, Mr. President,” Tom said. “But I think truth matters, too. Or what are we fighting for? Hitler was the one who went in for the big lie.”
Truman’s nostrils flared as he snorted angrily. “I suppose you think we should have pointed a big arrow with neon lights at the Normandy beaches and run up a billboard that said ‘We’re going to invade here.’ Some things need to be kept secret, that’s all. Go ahead-tell me I’m wrong.”
“Not me.” Tom shook his head. “But you can hide anything you want behind that kind of smoke screen. Like I said, we weren’t keeping this from the Nazis. We were keeping it from our own people. I don’t think that’s right.”
“Heydrich’s so-and-so’s didn’t snatch Private Cunningham because they figured we’d yield to those demands they made him mouth,” Truman snapped. “They released that movie because they wanted to confuse decent Americans and to scare them. Schrechlichkeit, they call it. Frightfulness. We tried to suppress it to keep that from happening-at my order, in case you’re wondering. But you played straight into their murderous hands. Thank you one hell of a lot, Mr. Schmidt. I hope you’re proud.”
Tom had thought the President would say his commanders in Germany had made the decision and he backed them because they were the experts and they were on the spot. Something like that, anyhow. But Harry Truman didn’t seem to work that way. He’d done what he’d done, and he was ready to argue about it. Right or wrong, he had the courage of his convictions.
“And now I’ve wasted enough time on you,” he continued. “Too much time, to tell you the truth. Let’s get back to business. Who else has got a question for me?” Hands shot into the air. Truman pointed at a heavyset bald man. “Drew?”
“How long can we keep troops in Germany if the American people decide they don’t want to any more?” Drew Pearson asked.
If the look the President sent him didn’t scream Et tu, Brute? Tom had never seen one that did. “Since I don’t believe the American people are going to decide any such thing, that isn’t worth answering,” Truman said.
“Diana McGraw will tell you you’re wrong, sir,” Pearson responded.
“I respect Diana McGraw. I sympathize with her, too, and with all the good people who’ve lost loved ones because of Heydrich’s fanatics. Hitler called Heydrich the man with the iron heart, and for once Adolf wasn’t lying.” Truman deigned to shoot Tom another glare. Then he went on, “I talked with her when she came to picket the White House last month. I’m convinced she’s sincere. I’m also convinced she’s wrong. If we run away from Germany without finishing the job we set out to do there, we’ll be worse off in the long run than if we stay. And not in the very long run, either.”
“More and more people seem to agree with what she’s saying,” Drew Pearson observed.
“Well, so what? That doesn’t make them right.” Yes, Truman could be as stubborn as a Missouri mule. “And just because there are more of them than there were, that doesn’t mean there are very many of them. Most Americans can see farther than the end of their nose-and a good thing, too.” He nodded to another correspondent. “What’s on your mind, Walter?”
Walter Lippmann asked him a question about farm legislation. Truman answered it with every sign of relief. Most of the time, foreign-policy issues weren’t what swayed elections. In the aftermath of the biggest war in the history of the world-no, not in the aftermath, dammit, because it wasn’t over yet, no matter who’d signed which surrender documents-the usual rules might not apply. But they would if Truman had anything to do with it.