Otto was not listening. “Fatherless families-where did she get that phrase?” he said with disgust. “The spawn of prostitutes is what she means.”
Walter felt heartsick. His plan had gone horribly wrong. “Don’t you see how brave she is?” he said miserably.
“Certainly not,” said Otto. “If she were my sister, I’d give her a good thrashing.”
There was a crisis in the White House.
In the small hours of the morning of April 21, Gus Dewar was in the West Wing. This new building provided badly needed office space, leaving the original White House free to be used as a residence. Gus was sitting in the president’s study near the Oval Office, a small, drab room lit by a dim bulb. On the desk was the battered Underwood portable typewriter used by Woodrow Wilson to write his speeches and press releases.
Gus was more interested in the phone. If it rang, he had to decide whether to wake the president.
A telephone operator could not make such a decision. On the other hand, the president’s senior advisers needed their sleep. Gus was the lowliest of Wilson’s advisers, or the highest of his clerks, depending on point of view. Either way, it had fallen to him to sit all night by the phone to decide whether to disturb the president’s slumbers-or those of the first lady, Ellen Wilson, who was suffering from a mysterious illness. Gus was nervous that he might say or do the wrong thing. Suddenly all his expensive education seemed superfluous: even at Harvard there had never been a class in when to wake the president. He was hoping the phone would never ring.
Gus was there because of a letter he had written. He had described to his father the royal party at Ty Gwyn, and the after-dinner discussion about the danger of war in Europe. Senator Dewar had found the letter so interesting and amusing that he had shown it to his friend Woodrow Wilson, who had said: “I’d like to have that boy in my office.” Gus had been taking a year off between Harvard, where he had studied international law, and his first job at a Washington law firm. He had been halfway through a world tour, but he had eagerly cut short his travels and rushed home to serve his president.
Nothing fascinated Gus so much as the relationships between nations-the friendships and hatreds, the alliances and the wars. As a teenager he had attended sessions of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations-his father was a member-and he had found it more fascinating than a play at the theater. “This is how countries create peace and prosperity-or war, devastation, and famine,” his father had said. “If you want to change the world, then foreign relations is the field in which you can do the most good-or evil.”
And now Gus was in the middle of his first international crisis.
An overzealous Mexican government official had arrested eight American sailors in the port of Tampico. The men had already been released, the official had apologized, and the trivial incident might have ended there. But the squadron commander, Admiral Mayo, had demanded a twenty-one-gun salute. President Huerta had refused. Piling on the pressure, Wilson had threatened to occupy Veracruz, Mexico’s biggest port.
And so America was on the brink of war. Gus greatly admired the high-principled Woodrow Wilson. The president was not content with the cynical view that one Mexican bandit was pretty much like another. Huerta was a reactionary who had killed his predecessor, and Wilson was looking for a pretext to unseat him. Gus was thrilled that a world leader would say it was not acceptable for men to achieve power through murder. Would there come a day when that principle was accepted by all nations?
The crisis had been cranked up a notch by the Germans. A German ship called the Ypiranga was approaching Veracruz with a cargo of rifles and ammunition for Huerta’s government.
Tension had been high all day, but now Gus was struggling to stay awake. On the desk in front of him, illuminated by a green-shaded lamp, was a typewritten report from army intelligence on the strength of the rebels in Mexico. Intelligence was one of the army’s smaller departments, with only two officers and two clerks, and the report was scrappy. Gus’s mind kept wandering to Caroline Wigmore.
When he arrived in Washington he had called to see Professor Wigmore, one of his Harvard teachers who had moved to Georgetown University. Wigmore had not been at home, but his young second wife was there. Gus had met Caroline several times at campus events, and had been strongly drawn to her quietly thoughtful demeanor and her quick intelligence. “He said he needed to order new shirts,” she said, but Gus could see the strain on her face, and then she added: “But I know he’s gone to his mistress.” Gus had wiped her tears with his handkerchief and she had kissed his lips and said: “I wish I were married to someone trustworthy.”
Caroline had turned out to be surprisingly passionate. Although she would not allow sexual intercourse, they did everything else. She had shuddering orgasms when he did no more than stroke her.
Their affair had been going on for only a month, but already Gus knew that he wanted her to divorce Wigmore and marry him. But she would not hear of it, even though she had no children. She said it would ruin Gus’s career, and she was probably right. It could not be done discreetly, for the scandal would be too juicy-the attractive wife leaving a well-known professor and rapidly marrying a wealthy younger man. Gus knew exactly what his mother would say about such a marriage: “It’s understandable, if the professor was unfaithful, but one can’t meet the woman socially, of course.” The president would be embarrassed, and so would the kind of people a lawyer wanted for clients. It would certainly put paid to any hopes Gus might have had of following his father into the Senate.
Gus told himself he did not care. He loved Caroline and he would rescue her from her husband. He had plenty of money, and when his father died he would be a millionaire. He would find some other career. Perhaps he might become a journalist, reporting from foreign capitals.
All the same he felt a stabbing pain of regret. He had just got a job in the White House, something young men dreamed of. It would be agonizingly hard to give that up, along with all it might lead to.
The phone rang, and Gus was startled by its sudden jangling in the quiet of the West Wing at night. “Oh, my God,” he said, staring at it. “Oh, my God, this is it.” He hesitated several seconds, then at last picked up the handset. He heard the fruity voice of Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. “I have Joseph Daniels on the line with me, Gus.” Daniels was secretary of the navy. “And the president’s secretary is listening on an extension.”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary, sir,” said Gus. He made his voice calm, but his heart was racing.
“Wake the president, please,” said Secretary Bryan.
“Yes, sir.”
Gus went through the Oval Office and out into the Rose Garden in the cool night air. He ran across to the old building. A guard let him in. He hurried up the main staircase and across the hall to the bedroom door. He took a deep breath and knocked hard, hurting his knuckles.
After a moment he heard Wilson’s voice. “Who is it?”
“Gus Dewar here, Mr. President,” he called. “Secretary Bryan and Secretary Daniels are on the telephone.”
“Just a minute.”
President Wilson came out of the bedroom putting on his rimless glasses, looking vulnerable in pajamas and a dressing gown. He was tall, though not as tall as Gus. At fifty-seven he had dark gray hair. He thought he was ugly, and he was not far wrong. He had a beak of a nose and sticking-out ears, but the thrust of his big chin gave his face a determined look that accurately reflected the strength of character that Gus respected. When he spoke, he showed bad teeth.
“Good morning, Gus,” he said amiably. “What’s the excitement?”
“They didn’t tell me.”
“Well, you’d better listen in on the extension next door.”
Gus hurried into the next room and picked up the phone.
He heard Bryan’s sonorous tones. “The Ypiranga is due to dock at ten this morning.”
Gus felt a thrill of apprehension. Surely the Mexican president would cave in now? Otherwise there would be bloodshed.
Bryan read a cable from the American consul in Veracruz. “‘Steamer Ypiranga, owned by Hamburg-Amerika line, will arrive tomorrow from Germany with two hundred machine guns and fifteen million cartridges; will go to pier four and start discharging at ten thirty.’”
“Do you realize what this means, Mr. Bryan?” said Wilson, and Gus thought his voice sounded querulous. “Daniels, are you there, Daniels? What do you think?”
Daniels replied: “The munitions should not be permitted to reach Huerta.” Gus was surprised at this tough line
