Echo House

by Ward Just

  It was almost ten when he turned the corner of the Treasury, driving Axel's black sedan. He guessed that dinner was ended, though when he'd spoken to the maître d' fifteen minutes before, he was told that the party was still at table. Probably they were finishing their coffee, but it made a late night for the up-with-the-birdies Washingtonians.

  The maître d', leaning on his lectern reading a newspaper, sullenly pointed to a staircase. Alec could hear voices upstairs, one voice rising above the others. He opened the door to the private room, pausing just beyond the cone of light to listen to the speaker, her voice rising like a drill sergeant's.

  "It's a bad plan, gentleman. It's flawed. It is not stürmisch. It lacks Verordnung. It has no organizing principle. Where it should be angestrengt, it is schwach. And where it should be schwach, it is angestrengt. So we are faced with a disaster unless steps are taken." She glowered fiercely. "Leave this to me. I know what must be done. I will inspissate this plan, and we can move forward."

  This seemed to be a private joke of some kind, for there was laughter from the two men who sat with their backs to Alec.

  "I will take it to the Attorney General," the drill sergeant said.

  "He didn't like your last plan."

  "His people didn't like it. His gofers didn't understand it. Go-fers are rats devouring the casualties. I am not taken in by rats. Rats hold no interest for me. Fuck rats!"

  Alec was watching Leila, who was sitting next to the drill sergeant, a lazy smile on her face. She knew a performance when she saw one. Perhaps that was what you gained from proficiency in higher mathematics, her unfaithful numbers, her F Factor; everything was a performance.

  When Alec stepped from the shadows, she looked up but seemed not to recognize him. He thought that she had never looked more alive, her skin glowing, her eyes luminous; and then she winked. The hairs on the back of his neck began to rise when she grinned broadly and motioned for him to sit beside her.

  "Our foot's in the door," she whispered when he was at eye level. "And it's there to stay."

  And when he glanced around the table he knew why. To his surprise, Lloyd Fisher was directly across the table, sitting with André Przyborski. Leila's partner, Hugo Borne, was next to Lloyd, and a wiry young Negro was next to Hugo. That would be Wilson Slyde, Leila had mentioned him often, a defense expert from MIT, a protégé of one of the vice president's people. A stranger completed the table. There were two empty chairs and crumpled napkins carelessly thrown beside empty wine glasses. So there had been two others present, and they had been the ones with the money; unless Lloyd was the one with the money.

  Alec recognized the stranger but could not put a name to the face. Lean and saturnine, he had the ranginess of a cowboy, but he did not look like a cowboy, in his tailored suit and striped tie and polished shoes, indolently leaning back in his chair, thumbs hooked on a pair of bright red suspenders, grinning maliciously. He had what appeared to be a solid gold PT-109 tie clasp, conspicuous as a headlight. He looked vaguely out of place, and Alec wondered if he was one of Leila's inventory of specialists—weapons, the Soviet rail system, Third World, Swiss banks. But "specialist" was not the word that came to mind as he looked at the cowboy. Alec was certain that he had something to do with Democratic politics, a perennial Washington helpful, university division.

  "There will be two areas of concern," the drill sergeant said. "Southeast Asia and the Caribbean."

  Alec saw André roll his eyes and pour an inch of the wine into his glass.

  "And that is where we should concentrate," she said.

  "A sideshow," André said, stifling a yawn.

  "It is where the contracts are, my dear André."

  "Our two friends will have something to say about that," André said.

  "I agree they are serious people," she said.

  André muttered something in Polish, and the company fell silent.

  "Well," Hugo said. "This is a fine beginning."

  Lloyd looked at Alec, nodding fractionally, a finger on his upper lip.

  "What are your thoughts, Lloyd?"

  "I'll have to take this up with my principals, of course. In all its details. But I do believe we've made real progress tonight, even though there're some rough edges. Do you have a thought, André?"

  "I like the rough edges," André said.

  Hugo and the cowboy laughed, and then the drill sergeant spoke up again, staring directly at André; the others listened politely, but it was obvious the evening was almost over.

  "You are late," Leila said out of the corner of her mouth.

  "She wouldn't let me go. Am I forgiven?"

  "You're forgiven. What did she want?"

  "Family business," Alec said.

  "We're done here. If Jo will just shut up."

  "Why is she speaking German?"

  "Her native language," Leila said. "Her name is Josephine Broch. She uses it when she wants to mystify, which is most of the time. She never uses it around me, because she knows I understand it. She's very good, really. Interpol background. God knows what else."

  "I'll have some papers drawn up," Lloyd said, leaning across the table to say something privately to Hugo. The others sipped their coffee, except André, who was drinking wine. The air was dead, as if the oxygen had been drawn from it. Only Leila gave off any vitality, and now she moved closer to him, her fingers reaching. Alec looked up to see the cowboy staring at him with an indolent smile.

  "My name's Red," he said. "I know your father."

  His voice was low and round, with a vibrato that suggested he had been trained as a radio announcer. Alec recognized him now from a newspaper photograph, Red Lambardo, one of the many young advisers, formal and informal, in splendid orbit now that the new administration had found its feet at last. Alec remembered that he was an economist.

  "Your father and I are in the same business, more or less. Remarkable man."

  "Business?" Alec asked innocently. All his life people had confided that they knew his father, pronouncing the words solemnly, your father, never Axel. And they grinned when they said them, as if acquaintance with this remarkable man made them both remarkable men, with shared values, such as absolute discretion and hard-won knowledge of the way the world worked.

  "Politics," Red Lambardo said easily. "And lending whatever support and expertise we can to the fine new team at bat. I saw him in Palm Beach yesterday. Sitting in the warm sun with the President, everyone in shorts and polo shirts and your father in his dark suit and white shirt, bow tie, black shoes. Jack says, Axel, don't you ever relax?' And your father takes off his wristwatch and puts it on the table. Jack laughed like hell. We all did."

  Alec admired the opening gambit, Red Lambardo establishing his bona fides; it was the sort of remark the President might make, if he had said anything at all and if Lambardo had actually been there to hear it. You listened to stories about "Jack" all the time, what he liked to eat and drink, witty remarks that he made, his prowess on the golf course, his aches and pains; and other stories, none of them verifiable. Probably the same thing was true of the Pope or Chairman Mao, mysterious personalities whose offhand remarks proved that they were only human after all, with good close friends to prove it. Red was smiling and shaking his head, all the time looking inquisitively at Alec, apparently expecting a reply of some kind, perhaps an anecdote in return, a lively anecdote that might up the ante. But Alec only turned to Leila and raised his eyebrows. Isn't it time to go? Shall we get out of here? Lloyd was still conferring earnestly with Hugo Borne. André was staring into the middle distance, sipping wine. Wilson Slyde was casually eavesdropping.

  "Jo said you were a friend of Leila's and might be along after dinner. So I'm glad we have a chance to meet and say hello."

  "Red, darling," Josephine said. "It's late."

  "In a minute," Red said, leaning forward and flexing his fingers like a pianist. "You would have liked it in Palm Beach, Alec. The weather was superb and everyone was friendly and relaxed. Lots
of pretty girls around. The enthusiasm was infectious. La Bella Figura was there with your father and she had brought her sister. She's an actress also; isn't that right? They look so much alike we called them Una and Due. Hard to keep our minds on business with those two going through their paces, Una on the high board and Due on the low. Even so, Allen's threat assessments were sobering. We're playing a hot hand right now but the enemy hasn't gone away. He's only underground, planning some crisis we can't even imagine. What do you do, Alec?"

  "Lawyer," Alec said. Paulina went everywhere with Axel, but surely he would have drawn the line at Palm Beach, if not with Paulina at least with her sister. Axel did as he damn well pleased, but this was hard to believe.

  "Only the other day the President was saying we need some fresh blood, people who know where their loyalties lie. The Attorney General was emphatic on that point also. Folks like Leila here, and Jo and Hugo and our new friend, Wilson. Foreign policy's the key, of course, and we still have too many square pegs in round holes. It's such a simple thing, loyalty, but you'd be surprised how quickly people forget the simple things. The campaign'll be hard fought and fortunately we won't have that bastard Nixon to worry about. Of course we're looking for the best people, loyal people with brains and initiative, people who can be trusted, tough people, can-do people who enjoy their work. You'd've loved Palm Beach, so groovy." He smiled wistfully. "So you're a lawyer. Ever think about politics?"

  "My father takes care of the politics in our family."

  Red Lambardo chuckled; of course he understood about the father. "The great thing about the law is that it's fungible and you can practice it anywhere. It's fine training. It rewards precision and thorough preparation. And of course discretion."

  "He works for me," Lloyd said suddenly.

  "My God," Red said. "Of course that's right! Axel mentioned it when Jack asked after young Alec here. Jack knew he'd been to the law school and done well, and it was only a matter of time before he went into the family business, ha-ha. Axel said you've got quite a firm on that La Salle Street there—"

  "Red," Jo said.

  "Later," Red said without looking at her. "So you've got Alec here as a partner."

  "Not a partner quite yet," Lloyd said.

  "Ah," Red said, turning again to Alec. "All in good time, I would imagine."

  "So would I," Lloyd said.

  Alec listened to this with growing disbelief, wondering how much was fact and how much fiction and how much fantasy. He reckoned it worked out in thirds. Red Lambardo was making quite an effort, and he did not look like a man who often made efforts, at least to thirty-year-old Chicago lawyers. He wondered again if Lambardo had actually been to Palm Beach; and if he was as loose as he sounded or if this was the satiric first act of his own two-act play, the tragedy arriving in act two.

  "Thing is, with private law, it's a hell of a long apprenticeship and you're as old as Gepetto before you're making the shoes; do you see what I'm saying here? It's the wills and the trusts that get a man down, the title searches and so forth and so on, while so many young men—and women, too!—have come to Washington to work for our administration. Public service, that's the thing. But of course you know all that."

  "You were an economist," Alec said.

  "Am," Red said. "Still am."

  "Working then at Treasury?"

  "No, they're monetary over there. I'm fiscal."

  "I see," Alec said. "The House Ways and Means Committee?"

  "The House of Representatives? No, they're slow on the Hill. They're tortoises; no place for a man who likes to get things done lickety-split, no fuss, no broken dishes. No, I'm in another activity altogether—"

  Act two, Alec thought.

  "—Fact is, I'm over at State heading up a working group on the Caribbean. Me and three others and a small staff to push the paper around, cryptology and so forth and so on, procurement..." Alec noticed that Lloyd had begun another conversation with André and Hugo Borne, and Leila was preoccupied with Jo. Wilson Slyde was listening hard to Red, and from the expression on his face he did not like what he was hearing. Red motioned for Alec to lean close so that he could talk without being overheard. "And we have need for an outside man, someone who can speak with authority, someone who can brief the reporters, Diplomatic Correspondents they call themselves"—Red looked up and grinned wolfishly—"and this man must be absolutely trustworthy, a man who knows the score, wasn't born yesterday, and's been around Washington for more than a minute and a half. Knows who counts and not only because he can read newspapers. He knows who counts because he knows them personally, has been inside their homes, knows their wives and children. This calls for a man who knows that in Washington even the skeletons have skeletons; and he's made their acquaintance, rattled their bones. Are you in the picture? This isn't something that's going to last forever, at least I hope to God it isn't going to last forever, because I hope to move on in a year. A reform of the tax code leading to a redistribution of wealth is my special interest, and I know it's yours as well, and when I move on my team will move with me. And I'm reporting to Highest Levels, Alec, not some la-di-da flunky in the State Department. See, we all have to get our feet wet sometime, don't we?"

  "You want a press spokesman."

  "That's correct, Alec."

  "Without any experience," Alec said. "At all. Nil."

  "Without the wrong kind of experience," Red said. "The trouble with most spokesmen is that they have too much experience, none of it pertinent. Most of them are retreads with drinking problems and too many friendships, and the kind of cynicism that comes from sitting in the bleachers too far from the field. They're sun-struck. They've been looking at things in the glare for too long, and don't know how it is up close, six or seven decent hard-working men sitting around a table trying to get something done, move the country forward. It's our turn and the old farts have got to step aside. We need people who understand the modern world and aren't afraid of it. Who understand also the world beneath the bleachers, where things aren't so pretty, and where the sun never shines."

  Red sighed heavily and pinched his nose, closing his eyes; what a long day it had been, doing the nation's business. "They're old," he went on. "They don't like to work on Sunday or their wife's birthday or the long Labor Day weekend or when their kid has a piano recital, and they don't know how to function as a team with a single objective: help the man the American people elected President. They've been stenographers for so long they don't know how to think. They're still worrying about the evening deadline and the lead of the story and what kind of fancy splash they can make if it's on page one with their by-line front and center. Thing is, Alec. Loyalty's not their long suit. But it's my long suit. And it's the President's and the Attorney General's long suit. And I'm betting that it's your long suit."

  Alec looked at him, allowing the silence to lengthen. "Did you speak to Axel about this?"

  "No," Red said, looking offended. "Of course not. Would it make a difference if I had?"

  "What's in the Caribbean?" He wanted to hear Red's version.

  "A dictator, worse than Stalin. Who's defying the President of the United States."

  "And your 'working group'—"

  Red Lambardo shook his head, no details on that; he pushed his fists together, meaning that the facts, whatever they were, were tightly held. "I can tell you that Wilson has been acting as our press spokesman, doing a fine job, although there hasn't been much to say so far. As you can see, Wilson's young and we need someone with more experience or, as I've said, the right kind of experience. Everything depends on the presentation. That's the test, you see." He glanced at Wilson Slyde, who was staring sullenly at his empty wine glass. "Sometimes you need merely a wink and a nod, especially now that things are going to get complicated. Controversial, even. Sometimes just one word does the job, if it's the right word in the right ear. So that's where we are. Interested?"

  "Not really," Alec said, looking sideways at Wilson Slyde, whose expressio
n had not changed, except that Alec had mistaken sullenness for fury. God alone knew what effort it had taken Wilson Slyde to make a place for himself at the table, and now it was about to be snatched away. "It's Wilson's job. Let him do it."

  "Mistake," Red Lambardo said coldly. "Big mistake; you don't know what you're missing."

  "Yes, he does," Wilson said. "He knows what it is. It's a field hand's work. Leave it to the field hand. Leave it to the nigger."

  Red smashed his fist on the table and snarled, "Never use that word again in my presence, Wilson." Red flicked an imaginary ash from the lapel of his jacket, stretched, and got up stiffly, shaking the creases from his trousers. On his feet he looked nothing like a cowboy. He was stoop-shouldered and uncoordinated, with the beginnings of a pot belly. Jo rose at once and Lambardo went directly to her, pausing to lay a brotherly hand on Wilson's shoulder, squeezing harder than he needed to. He whispered something in Jo's ear. She laughed and executed a little shimmy, turning to say goodbye to Leila and Hugo, nodding at Lloyd and André. She did not look at Wilson or Alec. She seemed suddenly very young and vivacious, not at all stürmisch. When he first saw Jo, Alec thought of a drill sergeant. Now she looked like a starlet. Red Lambardo took her by the arm and they swept from the room.

  Alec said to Wilson, "Isn't he a peach?"

  "Mr. Red is a man with many friends and convictions to match," Wilson said.