Echo House

by Ward Just

  Mrs. Pfister handed him her passport. Sylvia fumbled in her purse for her driver's license and by the time she had extracted it William Block had returned the passport with a nod and a murmured thank you, ma'am. He looked at the driver's license and then at Sylvia and back again, twice.

  He frowned and said, Sylvia Behl Borowy. Are you related to Mr. Axel Behl?

  Sylvia said, I was married to him.

  So you know the house? he said, gesturing across the street.

  I lived there, Sylvia said. Many, many years ago, she added.

  What a strange coincidence, the agent said.

  Sylvia shrugged, finding her situation neither strange nor coincidental.

  It's Mr. Behl's birthday, the agent said. His son is giving a party for him, and the President and the First Lady are expected later in the evening, along with many other notables. The agent explained that he was checking the neighborhood, routine when the President was out and about. He nodded and moved off, apologizing for disturbing them, wishing them a pleasant evening.

  Then it was quiet once more. Mrs. Pfister looked at her wristwatch and rose slowly, looking around for other intruders. She said she was expected at her son's. She seemed to sway a little in the heat and admitted that she was tired. The two women embraced and agreed that it was a pity that neither of them had time for lunch, as Sylvia was leaving for Nantucket in the morning and Mrs. Pfister for Holland two days later. So it is unlikely we shall meet again, Mrs. Pfister said. Enjoy the rest of your stay, she said with a thin smile. I'm sure you will.

  Mrs. Pfister walked off unsteadily. Sylvia watched her until she disappeared among the trees and gravestones, headed in the direction of Echo House; perhaps she would lay a curse on the old mansion, except it would be ineffective, because her gift had vanished; they were only two old women who had met in a dress shop and would never meet again. Sylvia was alone now in the cemetery. The failing light cast long shadows, and then a little breeze came up and she lifted her face to meet it. Dusk was always her favorite time, the day's work done and the long evening to look forward to. Something always turned up in the evening hours, an unexpected telephone call or a novel that beckoned from the bookshelf or an old movie on television. On the island she liked to drink a glass of wine and watch the lights of the ships at sea; and imagine Willy finishing up, one last cast before he trudged up the beach to join her on the terrace. She sat on the bench and thought about Willy's last days, aware suddenly of a commotion behind her. She turned to see a bright light and a tall young woman with a microphone; she was beautifully dressed in a cream-colored pants suit, Armani from the look of it. They were filming the old senator's grave, the rose and the inscription beneath; she could not remember the words now, only that Charles Rath had said them in German at graveside. The young woman struck a pose, pronounced a solemn sentence into the microphone, and then the lights went out. No doubt she was part of the media retinue surrounding the President at Axel's birthday, Axel kept alive by a formidable combination of state-of-the-art pharmaceuticals, round-the-clock nursing care, and Behl family genes, durable as walnuts. She wondered if she should crash the party, give them a taste of what life had been like in the old days, when Echo House was an inner sanctum, with as many secrets as a tomb. Sylvia rose slowly, losing her balance for a moment; and then she abruptly sat down again, savoring the gathering dusk.

  Television crews were assembled in the street, each arriving sedan illuminated by lights that, if not brighter than a thousand suns, were not much dimmer, either. The pavement reporters, of course, were of the junior group; their senior colleagues, including the young woman in the Armani suit, were inside as guests. The usual blank-faced sentinels were in place here and there on the grounds, wires running from their ears, Goethe's gazebo their command post. The stun grenades and tear gas canisters were stacked beside the great poet's bust. A communications van was parked up the street. A small group of neighbors had assembled on the sidewalk to watch the show, the evening news live.

  Inside, agents of the Secret Service were intentionally conspicuous, dressed in dark suits and basic black dresses, whereas everyone else was in full fig. The word was out that the President and his wife and the White House chief of staff would arrive together, so there was an excited buzz in the foyer. Nearly a hundred people had gathered in that room and in the living room, where a pianist from the National Symphony played selections of American music. White-coated waiters circulated with trays of drinks and hors d'oeuvres. The back lawn, in partial light, looked inviting, but the doors leading outside were locked on orders of the Secret Service, for what exact reason no one knew, but assassination threats were constant and the President's bodyguards hated large gatherings preceded by publicity, necessitating vettings of guests and staff, an inherently unstable environment, though just at that moment the only unpredictable element was a rabbit bouncing on the croquet court.

  Alec was talking to a French diplomat while occasionally glancing at the staircase that swept away in the great curve to the second floor. At the summit the landing was empty and the double doors shut. The old man was in his dressing room, awaiting the proper moment to make his entrance. That would not be until the President arrived. Meantime, Alec acted as official greeter, shaking hands with the men and kissing the women and sending them in the direction of food and drink. The French embassy had sent Champagne and a giant truffle in a satin-lined box and the Russians a tub of caviar. There were cases of vodka and Bernkastler, Havana cigars, a jeroboam of slivovitz, nuoc mam, Swiss chocolate, and bundles of flowers. In a rare display of double-edged wit, the President and his wife had sent a doormat with the presidential seal woven by prisoners at the federal penitentiary, Atlanta.

  Alec always enjoyed his encounters with Avril Raye. She had been a friend of Sandrine's, and her apartment a refuge after he returned from his vigil in Southern Europe. They spent long evenings at her table drinking Bordeaux and talking about France; and when she was puzzled about this or that event in Washington, he did his best to unravel it for her. But mostly they drank wine and talked about France and only later did it occur to him how subtle she was, and how kind. She was a big woman and liked to say that she was successful in her work because she looked like a concierge; and was unsuccessful in her romantic life for the same reason. He knew what interested her this evening, the administration's nominee for ambassador to Paris. She pointed out that her government was pleased; Bud Weinberg was a known Francophile and spoke the language beautifully. But there had been no hearings and he was not seen "around." So obviously a problem had developed and Avril wanted to know what it was.

  "Bud Weinberg's a good man," Alec said. "Everyone likes Bud. But he has a son who associates with people he shouldn't associate with and he's supposedly seeing a woman who is not his wife. And there's a twist that you'll appreciate. The stories about the woman may be false. Probably are false."

  Avril Raye rolled her eyes.

  "But he can't kill the rumors. He knows the source but he can't kill them. The more he tries, the more he's accused of cover-up. The more he's accused of cover-up, the deeper the swamp gets. Bud's finished. They're casting around for someone else. Keep your ears open tonight; you'll hear chatter about Bud. Bud's been out of the loop too long. Bud doesn't understand the modern world. Bud stepped on his dick and then shot himself in the foot. Why won't Bud get out of the way so we can get on with it?"

  Avril began to laugh. "Who's the source?"

  "A gentleman who has his own nominee. A gentleman with important business in France who'd like his own man living on the Faubourg Ste. Honoré when it comes time to mount the take-over."

  "I know who that is," Avril said slowly.

  "Sure you do. That's why I told you."

  "The Hollywood thug."

  "None other."

  "And there are no women?"

  "That's what Bud says. I believe him. And there he is now. He's gone to the Venerables for advice. Bad idea."

  Bud Weinberg was
standing in the archway to the living room with Harold Grendall, Lloyd Fisher, and a much younger man whom Alec recognized as a lawyer from one of the small K Street firms. Alec couldn't remember his name but he had grown up in Wesley Heights and his grandfather had been a great friend of President Kennedy Alec reckoned the combined ages of the four men at more than two hundred and fifty years. Harold and Lloyd at ninety-plus, Bud at sixty, and the boy lawyer at thirty. They spanned living memory but they all remembered different things and drew different lessons. Bud was talking and Harold and Lloyd were leaning close, avid to collect each detail. They were seldom in on things now and when given the opportunity devoted their full and undivided attention. The lawyer, too, was listening hard.

  Wilson Slyde was eavesdropping from a safe distance, aware that Bud was making a mistake talking to the Venerables. Harold and Lloyd and their salon des refusés had been out of step with every administration since Eisenhower's. They were as long-lived as the French impressionist painters and in later years came to resemble them, with their out-of-date clothes, long hair, irregular habits, and singular insights. Harold Grendall was Monet's double, as wide as a barge with cheeks as smooth and pink as a lily pad. Lloyd Fisher was as bent and shrunken and saturnine as Toulouse-Lautrec and as mischievous. Washington honored the Venerables but didn't know what to do with them and their sarcastic sermons of reproach. And from the look of things, that was what Harold was getting into now, his heavy finger wagging at Bud Weinberg's chest, Lloyd at his side nodding vigorously. Easy to imagine Harold's complaint; it had not varied in twenty-five years: the cowardice and ignorance of the young, their disloyalty and carelessness, their twenty-second attention spans, their arrogance and self-absorption. When they quit the battlefield they didn't have the courtesy to shoot the wounded. You couldn't even call them cynics, since they knew neither price nor value.

  They're going to hang you out to dry, Bud.

  They're turds. They're creatures of television. They don't care about government, they care about elections. They live by image. Die by image, too. That's why they care so much about "perception." They don't believe in anything.

  They're 'fraidy cats.

  Bud Weinberg was attentive but stepped back, as if to distance himself from Harold's tirade. Harold's voice had risen so that those in the vicinity could hear him easily. There was some nervous laughter and one or two of the younger men had turned their backs. Wilson Slyde edged closer so as to miss nothing.

  They had come to the capital's generational fault line. It was an argument over the inheritance. The old men seemed to exist as a rebuke, relics of the empire that had mastered the Depression and fought a two-front war, in which all able-bodied men participated, as opposed to departing for Sweden or declaring themselves homosexual or sheltering in law school or faking murmurs of the heart, and still had resources left over to rehabilitate the nations of Europe and Asia while defending them against the Stalinist scourge; and at that critical moment managed to assemble the most talented cohort of public servants since the Founding Fathers, men who were poor when they entered government and poor when they left it, often with damaged reputations, owing to the recklessness of Senator McCarthy.

  And the Venerables were not shy about reminding everyone what Washington had been and what it had become, a self-infatuated money-grubbing iron triangle of stupefying vulgarity, vainglory, egoism, and greed, worse than Rome because at least in Rome there was lively sexual license, orgies and the like. These people wouldn't know an orgy if it patted them on the ass and said, Please. The present-day crowd along with their unspeakable arrogance were intolerant. They were sanctimonious. They were puritans. They were budget-cutters, cheap Charlies. In his mountainous contempt for contemporary Washington, Harold was fond of repeating Mandelstam's epitaph for St. Petersburg: "Like sleeping in a velvet coffin."

  This estimate of the nation's capital at the turn of the millennium did not go unchallenged. To younger Washingtonians the opinions of the old men seemed anecdotal, dated, nostalgic, and partial, a loud fart from another time altogether, more unreliable Cold War propaganda. They not only had their own stories about what Stalin had :old Chip and what Chip had told George and what George had said to Tommy and what Tommy had told the President; they had their fathers' stories about what the President had told Cohen and what Cohen had told Corcoran and what Corcoran had said to Frankfurter and what Frankfurter did. All very well and good, but weren't these more ghosts from the past come to terrorize the present? There was another way to look at it, and that was that these most talented public servants since the Founding Fathers, with their admirable modesty and high intelligence, had bankrupted the nation fighting foolish unwinnable wars and encouraging dubious insurgencies, all because of what Stalin had told Chip and what Chip had said to George, et cetera. And they had declined to levy the taxes needed to pay for the installation of the New Enlightenment, their American century. And when the Russian empire had reached its megalomaniacal limit, it collapsed. Even so feckless an operator as Mikhail Gorbachev had brought it to its knees; and now it existed as a collection of impoverished semifeudal states, with grotesque arsenals of nuclear weapons, wholly dependent on the forbearance and generosity of the West, and all thanks to the paranoia of Chip, Tommy, and George, and to that list you could add Harry, Ike, Joe, Edgar, Foster, Jack, Bobby, Dean, Allen, Bob, Mac, Lyndon, Hubert, and Behl, Grendall, Fisher, Peralta, and that Polish agent provocateur Przyborksi, not to mention the unindicted co-conspirator Richard Milhous Nixon, who had poisoned the well for a generation, nearly destroying the nation's fragile faith in its political processes. Hell, yes, the country was in a sorry way and Washington sorrier still. The Treasury was empty. And as for 'Nam—could it not be humanely said that the true victims were those obliged to dodge and weave to save their skins, nobly refusing to be led like lambs to the killing fields? Victims, yes—and heroes, too, answering a higher call.

  But these complaints went unsaid. In the amiable setting of Axel's birthday party there was no point refighting the generational quarrel over the size and value of the inheritance; certainly it would be churlish to do so.

  The young lawyer turned away, leaving the old warriors to circulate as loud-mouthed curiosities, publicly congratulated and privately despised, the oldest creatures in the zoo and the most troublesome.

  The room was brilliantly lit, flowers everywhere along the walls. A barrel-shaped glass vase of red, white, and blue roses, arranged in the French tricolor, rested in the fireplace, pride of place which the ambassador duly noted. Everyone knew that the old man was a great friend of France and that Charles de Gaulle himself had fixed the rosette of the Legion d'Honneur on his lapel, for his wartime exploits and other services to the nation. There had been so many stories about Axel Behl's moment in Aquitaine that Paris sent a team to investigate and establish the truth once and for all. They discovered a hospital record in Poitiers and the report of the gendarme who had found the mangled Jeep. And there the trail ended. No one could account for the twenty-four hours before the accident. The agents ventured deep into the countryside and learned nothing, the peasants so suspicious and closed-mouthed, unwilling to say anything beyond a muttered comment? The agents searched for a château, which according to the rumors had been occupied by the two Americans the night before, a château with a vineyard, it was said; but there were dozens of châteaux, and all of them had vineyards. The owners were polite but uninformative. Of a massacre in August 1944, all those questioned were adamant: there had been no massacre because the Germans had gone, routed by Patton. When the investigators inquired into a massacre of French civilians, they were turned away with a shrug and a sigh. So the mystery remained a mystery, though the chief of French intelligence was convinced that everyone was lying and that something most untoward had occurred. One always liked to tie loose ends, but in the meantime Monsieur Behl had performed a number of very valuable services; and his son was no less helpful. Of course the government had a dossier on Alec Behl, co
urtesy of Avril Raye.

  The pianist was playing Jerome Kern but no one was listening. The crowd pulled and surged through the front door, swirling, spilling into the foyer, pausing to greet and be greeted, commencing animated conversations, only to abandon them at the sight of a new arrival The current was interrupted here and there by eddies of countercurrent, guests stepping out of the way to talk privately or to inspect the artworks, the Hopper over the fireplace and the Caleb Bingham next to the grandfather clock, and the Homer and the Hassan looking oddly out of place, their frames suggesting a cottage on the Maine coast or Cape Cod. Conversation ascended in a crescendo to the ceiling, where it collapsed, crashing to earth. The glass chandeliers trembled in the din.

  Weinberg's here; did you see him?

  He's an embarrassment—

  God, it's warm. Why can't they open the windows? Someone should say something to them.

  It's the Secret Service. Damned Gestapo.

  Waiters were perspiring as they moved with trays laden with glasses of Perrier and flutes of Champagne, many more of the former than of the latter. On the sideboard the tub of caviar sat in a puddle of melted ice and the foie gras had started to run, not a pleasant sight at all, and at that moment Mrs. Hardenburg seized a waiter by the arm and told him to replenish the ice at once and to place the foie gras on a cold platter before her reputation as caterer and social organizer was ruined. And fetch another bottle of Stolichnaya while you're at it, she told the waiter, because on this warm night people wanted something cold in their hands. The strange fact was that while the young and middle-aged sipped Perrier or Champagne, the old people were assembled three-deep at the bar, demanding a gin martini or vodka and tonic or Scotch over ice, in some cases their fingers so bent by arthritis and beset by nervous tremor that they had difficulty holding the glass, and indeed it often clicked against the rings on their fingers.