Echo House

by Ward Just

  "I have given only three interviews in my lifetime. They were off-the-record interviews." He thought a moment and added, "I value my reputation."

  "It would help me out," Alec said. "I'm asking you to see her for thirty minutes, here at Echo House. It would take some of the heat off."

  "Off you. And put it on me."

  "Don't be ridiculous. She'll be star-struck. She'll be the rookie reporter at the hometown newspaper who gets the interview with Elizabeth Taylor. Gosh, you have beautiful eyes. And such skin! You're as slender as a teenager. Do you mind if I call you Liz?"

  "What if you're underestimating her?"

  "I'm not."

  "I'll think about it."

  "I'd appreciate it."

  "But I don't like it." Axel blew another smoke ring, sipping his wine carefully, glaring at his son. Alec always had a taste for the limelight, a mistake for anyone who wanted to exercise real influence. FDR never stood for it. These youngsters, perhaps it was different with them; but Alec had made his own bad bargain with the devil, so be it. Axel cleared his throat and told Alec about his ruined hopes for D-Day. He wanted to be there. Lloyd Fisher and Harold Grendall were already in Europe, bound for Warsaw to see André Przyborski, who seemed to be living very stylishly in a neighborhood near the Jewish cemetery, the one where if you looked hard enough you could find a Jew who died of natural causes. They were going to Normandy for the ceremonies. "I'd give my useless left; leg to be there when they're there, but the journey's too difficult."

  "I didn't know you wanted to go to D-Day," Alec said.

  "I damn well do. But I can't."

  "Why not? Car to Dulles, Concorde to Paris, car to Arromanches. That isn't difficult."

  Axel shot a hard look at his son, who pretended to know so much but understood so little. "It is for me."

  Alec thought a moment, swirling the wine in his glass, feeling his father's seething anger. Then he excused himself and walked back into the house. In the study he dialed one number and got an answering machine, dialed another and got Red Lambardo's soft voice, sounding as if he had just been awakened. They talked a moment of the current scandal, who was likely to suffer and why. Alec had some advice for Red on his own testimony the following week, and he had good news as well. The committee would treat him respectfully, mostly because they were trolling for sharks and they knew that in the present scheme of things Red was a minnow. He knew what the committee wanted to know but he did not know it firsthand. The counsel was a son of a bitch, though, and had to be watched carefully at all times. Alec lowered his voice and spoke in the usual code. He had one piece of information that might be helpful, both to Red and to Red's principals. Red was free to pass it on, under no circumstances revealing its source. As he spoke he could hear Red furiously making notes; and when he was finished, a low, satisfied chuckle.

  When the pause came, Alec said he was calling to ask a favor, not a huge favor, perhaps not even a difficult favor, but one he wanted and needed to have. He told Red that his father was in a nostalgic frame of mind, as he almost always was these days, and wanted to go to the D-Day ceremonies—

  "Don't worry about it," Red said. "That's an easy one. I'll get him a seat in the front row, but you've got to promise me he won't shoot Reagan."

  "Well, thanks," Alec said. "More complicated than that."

  "Tell me about it," Red said, his voice cooler now.

  "He doesn't feel like traveling, even by Concorde. His back hurts all the time and he's using two canes and generally feels punk and complains all the time, you understand?"

  Red Lambardo thought a moment. "If he can get to England, my guy can get him on the Britannia with all the other supremos. He probably knows half of them anyway. But I'd have to get on it right away. "

  "That isn't what I have in mind, Red."

  There was a pause, and then Red Lambardo began to laugh. "You bastard. I know what you want. You want him taken care of tee to green."

  "That's right, Red."

  "You want him on Air Force One."

  The call took longer than expected, and when Alec finished the old man was still sitting in his Adirondack chair, tapping his canes on the toes of his shoes, the wine glass empty now. He was staring into the middle distance, a sour expression on his face. He looked like a hawk at rest, alert but weary from the day's flight. Alec stood in the doorway watching him, trying as always to read his mind and failing, remembering when it seemed to him that his father could do anything, the ticket to Wimbledon and all the rest, and then his long absence. So much of his life was wrapped up in France, his Rubicon, a mighty Rubicon; and now he wanted to see it again. Alec wondered how often Axel thought of Nadège; he had not mentioned her name in years. But of course he thought about her all the time, Nadège and Sandrine were the ghosts of Echo House, present everywhere and visible nowhere, like Constance. Probably they had their own conversations late at night when he and Axel were asleep, dead to the world. No doubt Capitaine de Barquin put in an appearance also. It was almost dark now, but the old man seemed not to notice.

  Alec brought the bottle of wine and refilled their glasses.

  He said, "It's fixed. I fixed it."

  Axel looked up, eyebrows raised.

  "You're going with the President on Air Force One."

  His father stared at him a long moment and then began to laugh, a deep sputtering rumble that caused him to spill his wine. He said, "What did you have to do to arrange this?"

  "I spoke to a man who spoke to another man. They're thrilled at the White House. They're delighted."

  "I'll bet they are. I'll be they're turning cartwheels. May I know the identities of these individuals?"

  "You may not."

  "If that son of a bitch expects me to contribute to his campaign—"

  "That wasn't mentioned. That's not part of the deal."

  "What is the deal, Alec?"

  "A man owed me a favor. And as I said, they're thrilled."

  "So they remember me over there."

  "Of course," Alec said, surprised.

  "What did you have to give them?"

  "I didn't give them anything. A man was in my debt. He repaid the debt."

  Axel sipped his wine and then he said sharply, "You're a lucky man, to know people who repay their debts."

  "I didn't have to break anyone's arm. They were happy to do it. I think they're honored. As they should be."

  "I'll have to buy a new suit," Axel said.

  In the event, Virginia Spears's story was a triumph, the cover a photograph of Alec in his office on the telephone, the skin around his eyes crinkling with worldly amusement. Perhaps someone was telling him a joke, or the latest sexual peccadillo of Wilson Slyde, the price of beef in the Argentine, or the roughhouse that got out of hand in the Senate cloakroom the previous week. Alec was in his shirtsleeves, his feet resting on the bottom drawer of his desk, a yellow legal pad in his lap. He looked as handsome as a movie star, one of the old breed, with undeniable sex appeal along with obvious authority, Richard Widmark, say, or Jean-Louis Trintignant. One of Alfred Munnings's fox-hunting scenes was on the wall behind him surrounded by personal photographs—Alec with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Alec with the French ambassador, with Neil Armstrong, with Leonard Bernstein, with Dean Acheson, as a young man with John Steinbeck, as a very young boy with FDR in the Oval Office, as an infant in Senator Adolph Behl's lap in his Senate office, Behlbaver roses in the background. On the credenza behind his desk, peeping over his left shoulder, was a photograph of a much younger and very debonair Axel Behl, leaning on a cane under the porte-cochere of Echo House, his ruined face half in shadows but his bearing calling to mind a European grandee—and the photograph had pride of place, unless you counted the one in the silver frame face-down in the desk drawer, put there moments before the photographer arrived, Sandrine Huet in her Georgetown garden, Alec standing next to her, smiling openly in a way that turned him into a different man altogether from the one on the magazine'
s cover.

  Alec Behl, the Man to See in Washington. Congratulations showered upon Virginia Spears, whose picture appeared alongside the by-line, the first time that had been done in the magazine's history. Everyone talked about the cover story, a masterpiece of the journalist's art, the inside-out account of a legal warrior who sought nothing more than simple justice from Washington's pig-stubborn bureaucracy and image-addicted political class. When the lambs were thrown to the wolves it was Alec Behl who defended the lambs, with no sanctimonious hocus-pocus, only a belief that leaders were accountable before their followers; and nothing was as it seemed in the federal city. When the Nixon scandals threatened to undermine the very legitimacy of the government itself, Alec Behl shuttled from one office to another, offering, as he said, metaphors and scenarios to bring the disgrace to an end and restore the people's faith. His efforts on behalf of the government—for it could be fairly said that he was representing Washington itself, pro bono—had a mighty effect on his own personal life, a painful and bitter divorce. Such were the realities of domestic life in the capital city. Moreover, at a time when American families were falling to pieces willy-nilly, Behl père and Behl fils lived together in the same family mansion that had been bought by Senator Behl in the last year of the first Wilson administration, a Washington landmark, for decades the venue of the capital's most sought-after dinner invitations. Axel Behl—agreeing to an on-the-record interview for the very first time in his long and conspicuous life—had been severely crippled for forty years as the result of harrowing wartime exploits so clandestine they could not be revealed even today—and when he expressed a wish to attend the D-Day celebration, it was his influential son who secured the invitation to ride aboard Air Force One with the President and his staff, who generously put aside partisan differences to recognize that American heroes belonged to no particular political faith. That, too, was in the finest Washington tradition of bipartisanship, and a reminder that in World War Two the nation had stood together, one diverse family—

  Axel read the piece in disbelief.

  "I guess I'm your father now," he said.

  PART III

  8. Echo House

  ON THE FIFTH DAY of the heat wave there was no one about in Soldiers Cemetery. Even the mosquitoes had given up. The leafy crowns of the trees hung limp, exhausted, shading the gravel path, which undulated with the terrain. The path was uneven and overgrown, weeds tumbling here and there among the litter of gum wrappers and cigarette ends. The gravestones were warm to the touch and sticky as candy, yet the parched earth yielded a bright, fresh smell—unless that was the Cologne of the two old women in sun hats and light summer dresses who walked companionably arm in arm, following the path that was descending now but soon to rise. The women knew they would have difficulty rising with it. They were alert to the ragged roots of the great elms and the furnace of the afternoon sun, still high in the August sky. From time to time one of the women would rest a moment, her hand on a gravestone, idly noting the name and dates, and epitaph if there was one; and then she would move on.

  They had not seen each other in many years and had met only by chance an hour before in the dress shop on Wisconsin Avenue, each recognizing the other at once with a sharp cry and an embrace. The salesgirls nudged each other and giggled because it was rare seeing two old parties so animated, delighted would be the word, thrilled to meet once again. They walked out of the shop and down the street until they came to the cemetery, not thinking of it as a cemetery but as a pleasant place to walk undisturbed in the shade. Now they were busy catching up, accounting for the many missing decades. They were both widows, husbands recently passed away, the events a blessing because the end was very painful and difficult though the men were brave. One was grimly elated because he had outlived Nixon, and the other—well, the other couldn't think about much of anything. They talked about their children and grandchildren, where they were living and how they had turned out; the grandchildren of one were estranged from their father and saw him only rarely, a common situation in the capital, where lives were so public and the hierarchy so rigid. Their grandfather frightened them and for good reason. Divorce always cast a long shadow, and it ran in families. And then their own medical bulletins, the arthritis and other complaints that came with great age, bad hips and failing eyesight and the rest. But, knock on wood, nothing major. Nothing threatening.

  They had picked their way down the path, the woody ravine on their right. The descent was steeper than they thought, but they had made it all the way down and now were rising again, resting every few moments next to a gravestone. The sun burned through the crowns of the trees, hot as the tropics. Both women were sweating, unsightly half-moons on their dresses under their arms and on the bands of their sun hats. At last they reached the top of the hill, more or less where they had begun, and sank gratefully onto the wooden bench under the great elm. They were both breathing hard, disoriented in the heat. High overhead a helicopter chugged by.

  Oh, Sylvia, Mrs. Pfister said. It's so good to see you. I knew we would meet again sometime.

  I've thought of you often, Sylvia said, wondering where you were and what you were doing. Someone told me you had moved away.

  Mrs. Pfister nodded slowly. She had moved back to Holland, where she was born, a small market town in the Ardennes with Roman ruins and two medieval churches, overrun at one time or another by all the tribes of Europe, even the French. The mercenary d'Artagnan was killed there. It was agreeable, speaking Dutch again, surrounded by familiar faces and of course the medieval churches. She was in Washington now visiting one of her sons. She had been in America for two weeks and that was long enough. She was eager to return to Maastricht.

  Why did I think you were Romanian? Sylvia asked.

  You didn't, Mrs. Pfister said with a grim smile. They did. On the days when they didn't think I was Romanian, they thought I was a Gypsy. Or Czech. Or Bulgarian or Russian or Polish. From anywhere but reliable bourgeois Holland, land of tulips, windmills, and Vermeer.

  Sylvia smiled and looked away, past the gravestones to the street. Behind the trees she could see the soaring rooftop of Echo House. She wondered if she should tell Mrs. Pfister what Ed Peralta had said so long ago and decided against it. Everyone she knew lived in the past, and what was the point? She noticed the helicopter again, lower this time, circling as if it were patrolling.

  Mrs. Pfister said, They spied on me, you know. And on you, too, and all my clients. They were worried about what happened inside my little bungalow, the cards falling the way they did and people talking as they do. They were afraid of private thoughts, what people think about when no one is looking. People are naturally interested in what precedes them and what lies ahead also. Your husband and his confederates thought I was a communist agent controlled by Moscow. They thought I was interested in their secrets, as if I didn't have enough secrets of my own. I set traps for them and they set traps for me. Some of their traps were clever and one day they had enough and came to me and said I would have to leave Falls Church. My status was "irregular." My papers were not in order. A complaint had been filed, though who filed it and why they never said. My gift was no help to me in this situation, so I packed up and went home to Holland. This was not what I wanted but I had no choice. They followed me to the an port and followed me after I arrived in Amsterdam. I would see them periodically in the market or at church, and then I spoke to someone and the Dutch authorities told them to leave me alone and they did and I haven't seen one for some time now. I could have saved them the trouble. But why bother? I have my gift from my mother and when she died my gift died, too. I think they have forgotten about me now. Perhaps they lost my file. I had no difficulty with the visa. It is the first time I have been to America since they expelled me.

  They didn't forget about you, Sylvia said. They were embarrassed.

  I embarrassed them?

  They would never want it known that they were interested in a psychic. The publicity would have been dread
ful. So they destroyed the file.

  Mrs. Pfister allowed herself a small smile and then she said, They never knew about my husband. They seemed to think they knew everything but they knew nothing of him. It's easy to fall between the cracks in America if you know how. My Nick had more names than the devil. So they did not know of his existence.

  Would it have made a difference if they had? Sylvia had heard a strange chill in Mrs. Pfister's voice. But when next she spoke, Sylvia realized the tone was one of triumph.

  Perhaps it would have. My husband worked for them at one time.

  Worked for American intelligence?

  Not here, Mrs. Pfister said. Abroad. He was the Bulgarian. Not I.

  Strange, Sylvia said, because she did not know what else to say. Mrs. Pfister was sitting straight as a schoolmarm, with her eyes fixed on the middle distance.

  She said, Are you quite certain they destroyed my file?

  As certain as I can be, Sylvia said.

  Because I think that's one of them now, Mrs. Pfister said bitterly.

  Sylvia looked up to see a young black man approach them. He had been in their vicinity for some time, watching. He was dressed in a black suit like a clergyman and moved most gracefully, like an athlete. Sylvia put her handbag behind her and told Mrs. Pfister to do the same. The black man was tall and broad, with the looks of a street-corner tough, except for the black suit. He walked with his ha ids behind his back as if to emphasize his innocent intentions He smiled politely and dipped his head in greeting.

  Ladies, he said. Isn't it a warm day?

  What do you want" Mrs. Pfister demanded, so coldly that the black man recoiled as if struck.

  Your identification, le said curtly, uncoiling the chain around his neck and showing them a plastic card that stated he was William Block, an agent of the U.S. Secret Service.

  We have every right to be here, Mrs. Pfister said.

  And I have every right to ask for your identification. Give it to me now.