regular telephone once more. For the hundredth time, it seemed, he was calling the Signal Corps.
About to continue to her chair, and shorthand pad, Edna slowed down, listening hard. She thought that she had heard her own telephone ring in her office. She was listening, trying to make it out above Fortney’s voice, when she heard Representative Wickland, the person nearest to her open door, call to her, “Miss Foster, your phone.”
She darted past the Congressman into her office, slipped between the electric typewriter stand and the table holding the television set, and caught up the receiver in mid-ring.
“Hello,” she answered, “the President’s office.”
For a suspended moment she heard nothing more than the wavy, swooshing sound that indicates a long- distance call. Then a voice came on, a strange voice from far away, and it said, “Is this the White House? Who is this?”
“This is the President’s personal secretary, Miss Foster. May I ask who is calling?”
“Oh, Miss Foster-Miss Foster-” And suddenly Edna felt goose pimples on her arms and a chill across her back, for the disembodied voice was quavering and frantic. “Miss Foster-this is Zwinn-Ambassador Zwinn in Frankfurt- Miss Foster-” The voice seemed to be choked, and then it shouted out, “There’s been a terrible emergency-get me someone-Talley-get me Talley!”
With
“One second-one second, please-” She blinked at the open door to the Cabinet Room, and screamed out, “Governor Talley! Governor, come here, something terrible has happened!”
Talley burst through the door on the run, puzzled, curious, searching her face. She merely wagged her head, wordlessly, and shoved the receiver into his hands. As he took up the telephone, she backed away from the desk, and could see the room rapidly filling with the others, all looking from her to Talley, wonderingly.
“Who?” Talley was saying into the receiver. “Zwinn? Oh, Ambassador, I didn’t know-” His speech halted as abruptly as if his throat had been cut. He listened, and listened, and as he did so, his lips began to move, but dumbness remained, and his face turned grayer and grayer until it was finally ghost-white. At last he spoke. “Are you sure? Are you positive? The President?” And then listening, lifting his head from the mouthpiece to stare at Eaton and the others. “Yes, Ambassador,” he was saying again, “yes, I understand-I can’t believe it-yes, yes, I do believe you. I’ll tell them. We’ll get right back to you.”
Talley lowered the receiver onto the cradle, and stood rooted to the spot, a portrait of stunned disbelief.
Eaton came slowly toward him. “What the devil is wrong, Wayne? What has happened?”
Talley tried to speak, tried to form the words, mouthing them, then stuttering them out. “The Pres-President- the President is dead!”
“What?” Eaton grabbed Talley’s shoulder, roughly shaking him. “What in the hell are you saying? Who was that? What did he say?”
“Arthur, that was Ambassador Zwinn. Part of that building in Frankfurt collapsed-that goddam ancient Palace- the top caved in on two rooms, and one was T. C.’s study-where he was talking to us-that’s what happened, that’s what cut off the call, broke down everything-fell on him, all of them-killed him. The President’s dead, Arthur, dead.”
Eaton was ashen, but controlled. “Are you sure? Is it certain?”
“Dead,” whimpered Talley. “Killed instantly. Blocks, slabs of granite, fell down on him, crushed him. They have the body. Two Secret Service agents in the room, too. Dead, all dead. Oh, God-God, what a terrible, terrible thing-”
That moment, the corridor door was flung open, and Tim Flannery rushed in, crying out, “Have you heard? Associated Press just got the bulletin from Frankfurt. The President-” He halted, eyes going from one dazed face to the other, and then he knew that they had heard.
Eaton’s face was hidden in his palms, and then suddenly he looked up. “The President dead,” he said. “That means the Speaker of the House-Wayne, what about the Speaker? Earl MacPherson was in there-what about him?”
Talley did not seem to comprehend.
Eaton spoke louder. “Dammit, man, is MacPherson alive or dead?”
“Alive,” muttered Talley. “He-I don’t know-I think he’s in pretty good shape-nothing critical-they’ve got him over at the hospital, they’re working on him. This is the worst tragedy in our history. The worst. What’s going to happen to all of us?”
Eaton closed his eyes. “Us?” he repeated. “The roof just fell in on us, too.”
And when he opened his eyes, Edna Foster could tell, for the first time, that they were wet. It was hard to tell, because she was weeping, and she did not know if she would ever stop…
Night had come to Washington, a city, like the nation, dumbed down in grief and mourning.
Night had come to the late President’s Oval Office, where those who had worked with him and for him, who had known him and loved him, who had depended upon him and needed him, now filled the sofas and armchairs, forlorn and disconsolate, stood in corners, heavyhearted and helpless, waiting for they knew not what.
Edna Foster, eyes swollen, lips still quivering, came into the office with the latest special editions of the evening newspapers, and wobbled through the cheerless room, passing out copies. All who had been in the Cabinet Room ten hours before were present here, but now there were also many others. Edna recognized Attorney General Clay Kemmler, Secretary of the Treasury Vernon Moody, CIA Director Montgomery Scott, Senator Hoyt Watson, Admiral Alfred Rivard, and at least a half-dozen more of equal standing. It seemed that every nook and cranny in the Oval Room was filled, except one, and that one, the vacant place tonight, was the late President’s high-backed, black leather armchair behind the Buchanan desk.
Having finished passing out the newspapers, Edna found that she was left with one copy. The group beside the French doors that led to the Rose Garden, the group consisting of Senator Selander, Representative Wickland, General Fortney, and Secretary of State Eaton, were reading the front page of the newspaper that Senator Selander held out for them. Or rather, Edna became aware, all were reading the front page except Eaton, whose attention was disengaged, whose attention was turned inward.
Edna lifted the newspaper in her hand and the mammoth headline, six inches high, assailed her: T. C. DEAD IN FRANKFURT! The second headline, almost as heavy, proclaimed: WORLD MOURNS ACCIDENTAL END OF U.S. PRESIDENT. The third headline, considerably smaller, read: HOUSE SPEAKER MACPHERSON, PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSOR, UNDERGOES SURGERY IN GERMAN HOSPITAL.
She felt the sob grow in her lungs and throat, and suppressed it, and looked at the bottom half of the front page. The lead story, in boldface type, spilling across the width of four columns, began:
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, August 26 (AP)-The shattered body of the President of the United States lay in death tonight in a private room of the ancient Frankfurt cathedral while the entire civilized world grieved over his sudden demise.
The President was killed instantly-his smashed gold wristwatch having been stopped at 1:32 in the afternoon (8:32 A.M. EDT)-when a wing of the Alte Mainzer Palace collapsed and crashed down upon him. With difficulty, teams of West German police and firemen removed the corpse from the half ton of debris, mostly blocks of granite and crumbled brick, that showered down upon America’s head of state and three others in the historic old library from which the President was making a long-distance call to his advisers in the White House. Ironically, the President died in the ruins and rubble of one of the two 14th-century buildings of Frankfurt’s Old City spared by Allied bombers in World War II.
A German official, who did not wish to be named, stated angrily: “The Palace should have been condemned after the War. Not only was it 600 years old, but its structure had been weakened by the bombings, and never properly rebuilt and reinforced. This is a terrible tragedy, and America’s loss of one of its most popular and international-minded Chief Executives in modern times is no less our loss, too.”
At the time of the fatal accident, the President had served in office two years, seven months, and six days of his elected four-year term.
Among the first to offer condolences was Premier Nikolai Kasatkin, of the U.S.S.R., who had been meeting with the United States President this past week to work out important international differences. The official
