by Ward Just
Alec raised himself on one arm. The nurse was creeping down the stairs, sidestepping pieces of the wheelchair. Two older men were at Axel's side, gesturing helplessly, their faces horrified. They were holding glasses of Champagne. The nurse roughly pushed them aside and bent to press the old man's neck. With a brusque motion she closed his eyelids, then wiped her fingers on her skirt.
Alec heaved himself to his feet with difficulty and went to his father. The moment when the wheels paused at the top step was still in his mind, a still photograph that would not vanish. Axel had the look of a man who had seen his accuser, Nemesis herself. Defiance gave way to something like contrition, and he bowed his head. Alec saw the rubber wheels moving forward and back and forward again, and the chair falling and his father falling with it, his hands over his eyes and his bones breaking.
He took Axel's hand, the skin stretched and wrinkled as fine paper, warm to the touch, dry and manicured as it had been moments earlier, when he was talking about Marlene Dietrich. "A doctor," Alec said.
But the nurse looked at him blankly.
"A doctor!" Alec roared, furious at the semicircle of faces above him, yet knowing at once that there was no doctor. Doctors were not part of the Behl circle, except for an amiable psychiatrist with a special practice. There were writers and editors and diplomats and politicians and bankers and lawyers and industrialists enough to administer a small nation. But there were no doctors.
Avril Raye had come up behind him now and put a hand on his shoulder. She said, "Alec, dear."
"It was a stroke," the nurse said authoritatively.
Alec said to Avril, ' Did you see the way he dipped his head and raised his hand as if he was surrendering?" Avril nodded. She had been standing next to Sylvia.
The nurse said, "He was talking strangely after you left."
"He was talking about the war," Alec said.
"He was talking to his photographs," she said.
"Same thing," Alec said, pointing at the broken body, looking for all the world like a battlefield casualty, even the tuxedo with its red rose and ribbor of the Légion d'Honneur. He removed his own jacket and covered his father's torso and face, knowing this would be the last time he would see it.
People had begun to gather around him, murmuring expressions of sympathy. Someone asked if he wanted a drink. The old man's death had been so violent and so unexpected that people were confused in their reactions, uncertain what to do or say. A few of them were still holding drinks and others were already slipping out the front door, wanting no more to do with this evil. Alec could see the television lights illuminating the street and the elm trees. He could hear raised voices, reporters demanding admission to Echo House to see the disaster for themselves. The two Secret Service agents were still at the door, but they had holstered their guns and were conferring earnestly with a District policeman. Suddenly the three turned to look at him, their expressions apologetic.
Then Harold Grendall and Lloyd Fisher were at his side. They were perspiring heavily Bud Weinberg was behind them. Harold laid his heavy arm on alec's back and murmured how sorry he was, what a dreadful affair. He began an involved anecdote about a premonition he had had years ago but did not finish. Well, Axel had had a good life. They all had. We've had the best of it, Harold said bitterly, and now maybe it was time for all of them to go.
"They thought there was an attack on the President's life," Harold added sourly. "They thought they heard shots."
"Gunshots?"
"Axel's wheelchair banging into the wall and on the stairs. I don't know what they thought, Alec. It was just an accident. I don't think they understand accidents. The look on Lambardo's face was something to see, all right. He probably saw himself an also-ran in the obits."
"Morons," Bud Weinberg said.
"Let's get some air in here." Alec turned to a waiter standing nearby and asked him to open the doors, but he refused. The Secret Service had given orders. The doors stayed closed until the President was safely inside the White House. Alec looked outside. The rifleman was standing on the croquet court, smoking a cigarette.
"Alec," Harold said. "Sylvia's here." He pointed at her sitting quietly on a chair in the dining room, glaring at Constance's portrait. Alec had to look twice, she seemed so very composed, even the glare. He rose painfully and limped to the bar to pour two glasses of Champagne. They sat together sipping Champagne. When Alec said that Axel apparently had had a stroke and was unconscious when he fell and therefore had no pain, Sylvia glanced at him sideways and said that he had been in terrible pain for half his lifetime and would not know what life was like without it and that therefore what Axel felt or thought or believed in his last moments could only be imagined. He was not interested in pain, his own or others'. He was forever alone. What he felt or thought or believed generally could only be imagined, because he lived in a world that did not value confession, and he trusted no one. Axel was the last aristocrat. He was always brave, Sylvia added, when it suited him.
"I don't think he had much of a life," she said.
"You'd get some disagreement there," Alec said. He saw that she had been crying, but her voice was steady now.
"Probably," she said. "I don't care."
"He had a magnificent life," Alec said.
"At least I had Willy," she murmured. "Poor Axel. He never wrestled with angels."
"A wonderful life," Alec said stubbornly. Then, "How did you get in?"
"Agent Block let me in," she replied. "He said you approved it, as if I needed your approval to enter Echo House."
They sat a few more moments in strained silence, staring across the dining room through the foyer to the staircase, where the dead man was. Alec looked at his watch, realizing suddenly that Echo House was now his alone; and he was head of the family. He swallowed some Champagne, but it tasted like salt. He helped his mother to her feet and they walked slowly from the dining room into the foyer.
Sylvia said, "Do you mind if I keep this?" She held the Presidential Medal of Freedom by its ribbon, swinging it back and forth. "The President dropped it. And I picked it up."
Alec caught the medal in midair. "It belongs to Echo House."
She let it go, smiling her wry smile. "I suppose it would, wouldn't it?"
"Definitely," Alec said and put the medal in his pocket.
"The President seemed to lose his way, didn't he? As if he wasn't quite certain who Axel Behl was. I guess he didn't know that Axel won the Cold War singlehanded." She smiled maliciously. "How quickly :hey forget."
Alec smiled at that. She had a point.
"I wish Willy were he re," she said sadly and walked off to join Harold and Lloyd.
"Mr. Behl?" It was the Secret Service agent. "I'm very sorry."
Alec looked at her.
"Things happened so quickly and we were on double alert tonight. We didn't have time to evaluate the situation. I've called an ambulance for your father." She drew him aside and said there was another problem and she was sorry to bother him with it, but. She nodded at the doorway, where the District policeman stood, hat in hand. The other Secret Service agent had vanished. "The news media wants to come in."
Alec said, "No."
"Because the President was involved, they say they have a right. They're being ins stent. Frankly, they're making a fuss and holding us responsible It's because the President was here, you see. They're concerned that facts are being withheld and it's the fault of the Secret Service. I promised I'd speak to you before we left. And as a matter of fact, they're already filming." She pointed out the front door, where the lights were close up now and much brighter than they had been. Cameras were panning the foyer, then focusing on the body and moving up the stairs. The District policeman was standing on the threshold, looking grim.
"What do they think is being withheld?"
"They don't know. That's why they want to come in and ask questions, to satisfy themselves as to the facts of the matter. You know how they are. They don't want to be int
rusive. They feel your pain."
"No, they don't," Alec said. He got the attention of the District policeman and motioned with his hand, Shut the door. With a nod and a smile, the policeman obliged, and suddenly the foyer was much darker. Alec heard shouts outside and the ringing of the doorbell. He was light-headed in the stale indoor air, thick as mucus. "Will you tell that waiter that it's all right to open the back doors."
She nodded at the waiter. "Do you think you could speak to the media yourself?"
The doorbell continued to ring. Alec glanced into the dining room, where Virginia Spears was leaning against the sideboard making notes. Her gold pen glittered in the light and he guessed that in a moment she'd be over for an interview, asking him what the President did and where Lambardo was when the accident occurred. And where exactly was the First Lady, who seemed so strange earlier in the evening ... One of the other journalists was on the telephone, speaking rapidly, apparently narrating from memory, for he had no notepad; he stared at the corpse while he talked. Almost everyone was gone now, leaving the foyer a disheveled and forlorn place. It had the depleted look of a stage set after the performance, all the energy absorbed by the audience. The doorbell rang now at one-second intervals.
"Alec?" Virginia Spears touched his arm.
"No comment," he said.
"I was in another part of the room. Is it true that the President ducked behind his wife when he heard the shots?"
"I have no idea," Alec said. "Go away."
"Won't take a sec."
"Go away," he said again.
"The story won't go away, and how," she said. She put her pen between her teeth and headed for Harold Grendall.
"That god damned doorbell," Alec said to the Secret Service agent.
She was listening to the microphone in her ear. "The ambulance is outside."
"Tell them to come in through the side door. No press."
"This is no longer our affair, Mr. Behl. Our responsibility is to the President."
Then the medical team was suddenly in the room, standing uncertainly a moment before moving swiftly to the dead man. They verified his condition, then removed Alec's tuxedo jacket and replaced it with a blanket. No one said anything while they went about their business. Alec described the accident, giving his father's name and age. his place of birth and his occupation, fumbling with the last, finally saying "statesman." He had to speak loudly over the ringing of the doorbell, which had begun to sound to him like a piece of reductionist music. The coroner's man made notes and handed him a form to sign. When he asked if there had been witnesses, Alec said there had been many witnesses, including the President and his wife and the White House chief of staff. The official nodded sympathetically. Then they put the dead man on a stretcher and departed, leaving Alec alone with Harold Grerdall, Lloyd Fisher, Avril Raye, Bud Weinberg, Wilson Slyde, Sylvia, two dozen waiters, and the pianist. Virginia Spears had departed with the medical team. Mrs. Hardenburg manned the telephone, which had begun to ring again and again.
Alec stood alone staring at the front door. He heard voices outside. The doorbell dueled with the telephone; but at last the back doors were open arid a warm breeze moved gently through the rooms. He realized he was sweating and straining to see beyond the closed door, where the reporters were clamoring for attention, a noise like the growl of animals. Of course they were furious at being eft outside while their more esteemed colleagues had been invited in, an obvious competitive advantage; and to a degree the witnesses were also accomplices to the events, whatever the events were. An outline was already being composed, Alec was certain of that. No one quite knew how they went about things, selecting quotations and slices of what they called color, and texture to go with the color, and context to go with the texture, all of it supported by the unruly facts that gave their work its authority. No wonder they called the finished product "pieces." He remembered Axel watching the election returns in Springfield, 1952, and remarking that it was like watching the invention of gunpowder.
Alec was blinded when he opened the door. One microphone brushed his chin and another his ear. A camera's lens was a foot away, and then a second and a third. One of the reporters cursed loudly when he was elbowed aside in the crush. The lights were so bright, Alec could not see beyond the immediate vicinity, but he imagined he was looking into the nucleus of an atom, all swirling particles, some magnetic, others electric; they only wanted to coalesce. He waited until the reporters stopped shouting and then told them what had happened inside, ending with the observation that the President and his wife and the chief of staff had returned downtown. The news was no longer at Echo House; try the White House. When he paused for breath, the questions began again, the angry voices rising in the warm night air, circling and colliding, swarming. Alec listened another moment, then turned and walked back into Echo House, slamming the door behind him. The bell rang for a moment but the thumb on the button was without resolve, and in seconds was withdrawn.
"Good job," Wilson Slyde said. He had been listening with Bud Weinberg.
Alec was about to make a sarcastic reply when he saw the tears in Wilson's eyes.
"My people have respect for age," Wilson said. "And I liked the old bastard."
"Stay a minute," Alec said.
"I'll say good night," Bud put in. "Sorry, Alec. This is a terrible thing." Bud smiled wanly, a worried middle-aged man in a rumpled tuxedo. He looked adrift and aware that help would not arrive any time soon. "Strange thing was, I needed to talk to him. I needed Axel's advice."
"I know what he'd say," Alec said. "Don't let them off the hook."
"They're not on the hook," Bud said unhappily. "I am."
"They are," Alec saic. "They just don't know it."
Bud Weinberg smiled wistfully. If he had had a white flag he would have raised it. -Ie said, "For a while I thought it was anti-Semitism. It was the only explanation I could think of, and then I heard the rumors. Absurd rumors that I tried to laugh off, forgetting that in Washington you don't laugh anything off ever. In a way, anti-Semitism's a lot simpler, don't you think?" He patted Alec on the arm. "Thanks for the advice. All condolences, Alec. We'll all miss your father; one of a kind." He turned away, then paused for one last inquiry. "What do you know about Red Lambardo? He's behind it, I'm told. What's his problem? I know he was bagman for the campaign, and we've spoken once or twice on the phone. Why is he involved?"
"Maybe he has his own candidate for Paris." Certainly Red was involved. Look far enough along the Amazon of Washington gossip and Red would be lurking somewhere in the shallows, helping things along, rumor's assistant, innuendo's counselor. Alec said, "Do you want to fight?"
"My wife advises against it. She's the one who's hurt, really."
"She's a smart woman," Wilson said.
"I raised about seventeen million for them in the campaign."
"That should get you something," Alec said.
"If you were me, what would you do?"
"I'd talk to Wilson here," Alec said. "You need someone to tell your story. In a time of trouble, everyone needs a personal journalist."
"I don't know if it's worth it," Bud said.
"It won't begin and end in a day," Alec said. "A campaign of this kind, it takes time. You've got to want it badly."
"I've wanted Embassy Paris for as long as I can remember."
"Everything comes with a price," Wilson said.
"Seventeen million," Bud said.
"That's the down payment," Wilson said.
"I don't understand this town," Bud said, turning again and walking away, this time for good.
Alec watched him go, then called to the others, Outside, for a nightcap on the croquet court. He asked Mrs. Hardenburg to prepare a table, caviar, foie gras, Champagne, and Scotch. Glasses, plates, the wine in a bucket. Take the rest of the food away. Take the phone off the hook. Do the clean-up tomorrow. Everyone can go home except for the pianist. He asked the pianist to play French cabaret music, Piaf and Trenet. He filled a
glass with ice and poured Scotch over the ice. The old house seemed suddenly lighter, weightless, as if it had been relieved of a great burden. He thanked Mrs. Hardenburg and said she could go home, too.
But Mrs. Hardenburg only whispered, Oh, my goodness.
The President's wife was striding through the dining room, Agent Block at her side. She smiled archly and said she had had an argument with her husband, the thoroughly frightened President of the United States, and decided to take the evening off and return to Echo House to pay her respects. She wanted to be among friends. She hoped she wouldn't be in the way.
She said, "Make Flo a drink, Alec."
The croquet court was glossy in the moonlight, so bright that the stakes and wickets cast sharp surreal shadows. The air was very warm, with thick Southern heat boiling up from the tidewater. Alec could smell the bluegrass, freshly mown that morning, and the vaguely medicinal scent of eucalyptus. Inside, the lights of Echo House went out one by one until there was only a single lamp burning in the garden room and another upstairs in Axel's sitting room. Alec's throat caught when he remembered the rogues' firmament, Fred Greene and Marlene Dietrich, the girl on the bicycle, the dead German infantryman with the Iron Cross at his throat, and the old man himself, his helmet tilted like a fedora. This was his father's history, and now it was as extinct as he was. A shadow passed between the upstairs lamp and the window, an alarming sight; but it was only the nurse, tidying up. One door closed followed by another until at last the house was silent, except for the pianist softly playing Les Amants d'un Jour. Alec tried to remember the last time he had been alone in Echo House and could not. The old man was always in the vicinity, within earshot. Without him the mansion seemed depleted.
