The Man with the Iron Heart Read online

  “As long as he takes a good, big chomp out of the fanatics, I don’t much care what else he does, not right now,” Lou said.

  “We’re on the same page there-that’s for damn sure,” Howard Frank said.

  When Diana McGraw went to Washington to talk to her congressman, she could hardly get over being there. The Capitol, the Washington Monument, the White House…Even though Pat’s loss was still fresh as a gash, she’d been a tourist, or partly a tourist, anyway. How could you help it the first time you came to the capital?

  You couldn’t. But when you came back again, the scenery faded into the background. You had work to do. Right now, she didn’t feel like a PTA official. She felt like a third-grade teacher trying to get her class lined up and on the way to where it was supposed to go.

  Like most of the people who were marching on the White House with her, she was staying in one of the hotels near Union Station. They weren’t after anything ritzy. Most of them couldn’t afford anything ritzy. Diana was paying for her trip out of donations from the cause, but even so…. They were a middle-class bunch.

  Diana stood on the corner of Fourth and F, right by Judiciary Square. The U.S. District Court, the U.S. Court of Appeal, Juvenile Court, the Municipal Court, even the Police Court-and she cared about none of them. All she wanted to do was head west toward the White House and get on with things.

  She looked down at the slim watch on her left wrist. “Where is everybody?” she exclaimed, her breath smoking. It wasn’t anywhere near as cold here as it was back in Anderson, but it wasn’t summer, either.

  “Take it easy, Diana,” Edna Lopatynski said. Nothing rattled Edna. If Gabriel were to sound the Last Trump, she’d ask him to wait till she finished dusting. And she’d get him to do it, too. She went on, “It’s only half past eight-not even. We don’t start moving till nine…if we’re lucky. I bet none of these things ever gets going on time.”

  “This one sure won’t,” Diana said fretfully. “I know we’re here early, but I expected more people would’ve shown up by now.”

  “Nah.” The woman from Ohio shook her head. “The ones who show up real early are the organizers and the-well, I don’t like to call ’em fanatics, not with what’s going on in Germany, but you know what I mean.”

  And Diana did. Edna’s calm good sense helped her make her own butterflies quit fluttering so much. Most of the regional leaders were here, and they were taking charge of the people from their areas. Or they were trying to, anyhow. Edna was right. Some of the ones who showed up early looked as if they’d rather be carrying rifles than picket signs. Diana hoped like anything that nobody’d stashed a pistol in pocket or purse. That wouldn’t be so good, which was putting it mildly.

  Someone driving by shook a fist at the gathering crowd. Attorneys going into one court building or another stared at the ordinary-looking people with the signs on their shoulders. And a sizable contingent of Washington, D.C.’s, finest gathered to keep things peaceable-or maybe to arrest anybody who got the least bit out of line.

  At nine on the dot, one of the policemen sauntered over to Diana. Before she could wonder how he knew she was in charge of things, he tipped his hat and said, “Time to get ’em moving, ma’am.”

  “Not everybody’s here yet,” she protested.

  The cop looked over the crowd. “You’ve got enough,” he said. “You’re all up and down F Street, and you’re starting to mess up traffic. The ones who can’t get out of bed quick enough know where they’re supposed to go, right?”

  “Yes, but-”

  “No buts. Get ’em moving, like I said, or I can write you up for blocking the streets here.” I can write you up had to mean I will write you up.

  Diana considered. Several reporters were watching what went on. She recognized E. A. Stuart from Indianapolis (Ebenezer Amminadab! what a handle!). What would they say-what would they write? — if the police broke up the demonstration without letting it get started? But her people really were starting to spill into the street. Not all the car horns that blared at them were political. Some were just plain annoyed.

  She looked a question at Edna Lopatynski. Edna nodded back. Diana nodded, too. She raised her voice: “Come on, folks! The President needs to find out what we think! So does the whole country! Let’s go show them!”

  She started west, toward the White House, holding her sign high. HOW MANY DEAD IN “PEACETIME”? it asked. Behind her, Edna called, “Regional leaders, bring your people along!”

  “We might as well be in the Army ourselves,” somebody grumbled.

  If you were going to run something this size, you had to have organization. Otherwise, you only thought you were running it. But if all the people did whatever they wanted, what you really had was a mob.

  Not quite a mile from the gathering place to Presidents Square. The gray, enormous Greek Revival Treasury Building, on the east side of the square, blocked the view of the White House. Better planning, Diana thought, would have kept something like that from happening. But better planning would have done all kinds of things-like winning the war sooner, and like making sure it was really over when it was supposed to be.

  Diana looked back over her shoulder again. She wanted to see how many men she had here, especially men who’d fought in this war. She nodded to herself. Enough, she judged. Without them, people would think this was only a women’s movement. She was old enough to remember how much that had slowed the suffragettes.

  E. A. Stuart trotted across the street toward her. A cop shook his nightstick. “I oughta run you in!” he boomed. “Jaywalkin’s against the law.”

  “I’m a reporter,” Stuart answered, as if that freed him from obeying laws he didn’t happen to like. From what Diana had seen of reporters the past few months, it was liable to do just that. Stuart poised notebook and pencil. “How do you think things are going here, Mrs. McGraw?”

  “Fine.” Diana was damned if she’d admit to any worries, no matter what. She asked a question of her own: “How can you walk and write at the same time?”

  “Practice. Lots of practice.” When Stuart grinned, he looked like a kid. Then he got serious again: “What do you aim to accomplish today?”

  “I want the President to know not everybody supports his policy in Germany. I want him to see the faces of the people whose sons and brothers and husbands he’s killed. I want the whole country to see them, too,” Diana answered. “I want everybody to know we’re not a bunch of nuts. We’re just ordinary people. If this happened to other ordinary people, they’d be out here, too.”

  A car zoomed by. The driver gave the marchers the finger out the window. It was nothing Diana hadn’t seen before. “What do you have to say to people like that?” E. A. Stuart asked.

  Before Diana could say anything, Edna Lopatynski beat her to the punch: “They can go get stuffed.” Diana stared-that wasn’t like Edna at all. But the Polish woman went on, “I mean it. If people want to talk with me, I’m glad to talk with them. But if all you’re gonna do is something disgusting like that, to heck with you, buddy.”

  They walked past Ford’s Theater. Lincoln got shot there, Diana thought. She would have torn down the place after something like that, but they hadn’t. Then something else crossed her mind. Even as things were, Lincoln got a lot more time than a lot of the kids he sent into battle. And he got a lot more time than Pat had or ever would, too.

  The National Theater stood another few blocks farther on. Diana didn’t know one thing about it. In a way, that came as a relief. Nothing horrible had happened there, except maybe some of the productions.

  She turned right on Fifteenth Street, in front of the Treasury Department building. As soon as she got past it, there was the White House on the left. Leaves had fallen from the trees on the White House grounds, so she could see it really well. They’d had at least one hard frost here, because the grass was going all yellow-brown, the way it did back in Anderson.

  Left this time, onto Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House wa
s at 1600-probably the one address besides their own that all Americans knew. Somebody behind Diana said, “It looks like a postcard.” She smiled. She’d had the same notion at almost the same time.

  Several men waited for the marchers right in front of the gate that led into the White House grounds. Some of them were reporters. A newsreel camera crew filmed the demonstration. People all over the country might see this. The mere idea made Diana automatically pat at her hair with her free hand.

  And one of the men in suits…Diana waved frantically. “Congressman Duncan!” she called. “Thanks so much for coming!” He hadn’t promised he would. He must have wondered whether showing up would gain him votes or cost them. And he must have decided it wouldn’t cost him too many, anyhow.

  “Diana.” Edna tapped her on the shoulder. When Diana didn’t answer fast enough to suit her, she tapped again, harder. “Diana!”

  “What?” Diana said impatiently. “That’s the Congressman from my district there, and-”

  “And the guy next to him-the guy in the gray hat-is Senator Taft,” Edna broke in. “That counts for more, you ask me.”

  “Senator Taft?” Diana whispered. And it was, sure enough. She recognized him now that Edna pointed him out. She thought she would have done it sooner if the hat hadn’t covered up his bald head-and kept it warm, too, she supposed. But she didn’t see Taft’s picture every day. Edna was from Ohio, so chances were she did.

  Some of the other men gathered with Jerry Duncan and Robert Taft were probably Senators and Representatives, too. Their home states and districts knew what they looked like, but Diana didn’t. Maybe a book somewhere had pictures of all of them. Diana had never seen or heard of one like that, but it would sure be a handy thing to have if you were a political kind of person. And I am-now, she thought. I really am.

  “More of them here than I expected,” Edna said. “Have we got enough signs for them all?”

  “We will,” Diana declared. If they didn’t, if they had to rob a few ordinary Peters to let the political Pauls picket, she would do that without a qualm. The country needed to see not all politicians blindly followed Harry Truman’s lead.

  “Hello, Mrs. McGraw.” Jerry Duncan came up to her with a big smile-a politician’s smile-spread across his face. “May we join you?”

  “I hope you will,” Diana said. “Who are your, uh, colleagues?”

  Duncan introduced Senator Taft first, as she’d hoped-he was the heavy hitter in the group. “Very pleased to meet you,” Taft said, his voice raspy. “You’re making people think, and that’s never bad.”

  Diana wanted to make people feel. That would make them get out there and do things. But she didn’t want to argue with the Senator from Ohio, so she nodded. Edna handed Taft a picket sign that said ISN’T AMERICA ENOUGH? He gruffly thanked her and nodded at the sentiment. Diana nodded to herself. Being from his home state, Edna would know the kind of thing he wanted to say.

  Jerry Duncan presented more politicos: from California, from Idaho, from Illinois, from Alabama, from Mississippi. “We’re not all Republicans here, you see,” he said.

  “Sure.” Diana nodded. The Congressmen-or were they Senators? — from the Deep South might call themselves Democrats, but they’d be more conservative than most Republicans. Diana didn’t care whether they worshipped at the shrine of the donkey or the elephant. As long as they wanted GIs to stop dying in Germany, they were on her side.

  Duncan’s sign said DIDN’T THE NAZIS SURRENDER? Reporters shouted questions at the politicians as they tramped back and forth in front of the White House along with the ordinary demonstrators. “This is pretty good,” Edna said. “Now the flatfoots’ll leave us alone. They won’t get tough where big shots can see ’em do it.”

  “Yup.” Diana nodded. In Indianapolis or in Washington, the cops paid attention to power. They had to. What were they but power’s hunting dogs? Diana went on, “This is pretty good, Edna. But you know what? Next time we come here, we’ll fill that whole park with people.” She pointed across Pennsylvania Avenue to Lafayette Square.

  “Wow! You don’t think small, do you?” Admiration filled Edna’s voice.

  “If I thought small, I’d still be sitting at home crying ’cause Pat’s dead. We’d all be sitting at home, crying alone ’cause our boys are dead,” Diana answered. “But sitting at home and crying doesn’t help. If we don’t do anything but that, nobody else will, either. We’ve got to get people moving. And we will.”

  “Damn right.” Edna could swear like a trooper when she felt like it. To her, it was just talk, not filthy talk.

  A car going by on Pennsylvania Avenue honked its horn. “Traitors!” the driver yelled.

  “Jackass!” Senator Taft said crisply. “This is just as much a part of government as all the wind and air up on Capitol Hill.” The man in the car couldn’t hear any of that, of course. But the reporters could. Several of them took down what he said. Most seemed to share E. A. Stuart’s knack for writing on the move.

  Back and forth. Back and forth. They had several hundred people there-nowhere near enough to fill Lafayette Square, but enough to be noticed. Enough, Diana thought, to look like more when they film us. The majority of the picketers came from the East and the Midwest. The majority of people in the country lived in those parts, and they were closest to Washington. But a man was here from Nevada, and a woman from Washington state, and a couple from New Mexico, and several people from California. When something like this happened to you, it hit you hard. You wanted to do something about it. No-you had to.

  After a while, the newsreel crew took their camera off its tripod. They loaded the gear into a van and drove away. Reporters drifted off. Diana hoped they were going to write up their stories, not to hoist a few in the nearest bar.

  Some of the Representatives and Senators left after a bit, too. They must have felt they’d made their point-and they’d got filmed doing it, which was even better. Jerry Duncan and Robert Taft stayed. Diana had expected Duncan to; she thought of him as her Congressman, and didn’t worry about whether he thought the same way. But she was delighted about Taft. People said he was thinking of running for President in three years. If he did, if things changed then…Diana shook her head. Things needed to change right away. That was why she was doing all this.

  A couple of men came around the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventeenth Street, on the far side of the White House grounds. They wore ordinary off-the-rack suits, and hats that might have come from Sears, but they looked like combat soldiers just the same. Diana had seen men who looked like that too often to doubt her snap judgment. And, a moment later, she understood why they did. Behind them strode Harry Truman.

  Diana’s knees knocked. That was the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, even if he did look like a small-town druggist in his Sunday best, right down to his bright bow tie. She’d never dreamt he would come out of the White House. Too bad the newsreel crew was gone.

  He pushed past his bodyguards-they didn’t look happy about it-and walked straight up to her. In person, he seemed a little smaller, a little older, than he did when he got his picture in the paper or showed up in a newsreel on the big screen.

  “You’re Mrs. McGraw, aren’t you? The woman who started this whole silly thing.” His voice was familiar, too, and yet not quite so: it had a different timbre coming from his own mouth rather than booming out of a speaker.

  “Uh, yes, sir.” Diana knew her own voice shook. She forced it to firmness as she went on, “Only I don’t think it’s silly.”

  She kept walking as she answered; the demonstration would have bogged down if she hadn’t. Harry Truman kept pace with her. With her! Only later would she think about how surreal that was.

  “Well, yes, I can see how you’d feel that way,” Truman said. “I commanded an artillery battery in the last war. We must’ve had four-leaf clovers in our pockets-we only took a couple of minor wounds. Most other units weren’t so lucky. Always unfortun
ate when you lose people, but that’s war.”

  “Yes. That’s war.” Diana nodded. “But the war in Europe’s been over since May. That’s what everybody says, anyhow. What are we still doing over there if the war’s been over since May?”

  “Making sure it doesn’t start up again for real.” Truman had an agreeable Missouri twang. It made him sound like a small-town druggist, too. “Parts of Germany got occupied after World War I, too, remember. The Nazis are more dangerous than Kaiser Bill ever was, so this time around the Allies have to sit on the whole blamed country.”

  He wasn’t the first one Diana had heard who argued that way. She’d had to study up since starting her crusade. She couldn’t afford to sound like a jerk when she came up against somebody who thought she was talking through her hat. “But the Germans weren’t killing our soldiers in 1919. How many men have we lost since they said they surrendered? Must be close to two thousand by now. And what about England? And France? And Russia?”

  Truman’s face hardened. “Yes, what about Russia? Stalin isn’t acting like good old Uncle Joe any more. Now that Hitler’s gone and Germany’s kaput, he wants Russia to fill her shoes and then some. Suppose we do what you want. Suppose we come home with our tails between our legs. What happens next? That’s what you haven’t thought about, Mrs. McGraw. Either Heydrich’s goons come out of hiding and start getting ready for the next war or Stalin marches in where we marched out…and starts getting ready for the next war.”

  “Oh, piffle!” One more thing Diana had never imagined was that she might one day say piffle! to the President, but that day seemed to be at hand. “If they get out of line, we drop one of our atom bombs on them, or more than one if they need that the way the Japs did. Then we go in and pick up the pieces-except there won’t be any pieces left to pick up, will there?”

  “It’s not so simple as you make it sound. Do you know, nobody told me about the atom bomb till after I was in the White House? I was Vice President, and nobody told me. That’s how secret it was.” Truman sounded plaintive-and who could blame him? “One thing is plain-it’s not something you can use casually. It’s like swatting a fly by dropping a Sherman tank on it.”