An Honorable Man

by Paul Vidich

  “You still have family there?”

  “I was brought here as a child.”

  “Do you speak Czech?”

  “A few words. We spoke German at home.”

  “Now let me go back to something. The Communist Party, its front organizations and its controlled unions, has sought, since its inception, to plant within our democratic institutions its individual members, including espionage agents. I’d like to clarify one thing. The record shows that you admitted friendship with two IMF employees identified as communist sympathizers. Isn’t that a fact?”

  “I have a problem with that question, Senator, on several levels. Which men do you refer to? What do you mean by communist sympathizer?”

  It surprised no one that the hearing dragged on through the morning and reconvened after lunch, and with each hour the hectoring questions became more hostile, the lapse from fact to innuendo more obvious. Mueller stayed until the end, but only because he’d said he’d stay, and he felt it was wrong to abandon Beth, who took each badgering question as a blow to herself. She suffered badly. There was nothing civil in the proceeding, nor was there anything that Mueller could call productive. It was a small side show that seemed to have no point except to make Arnold Altman look bad and the side show wasn’t over. Adding to the indignity, he was told he would be called back for a second hearing.

  Those who knew Arnold Altman were not surprised by his impatience, nor were they surprised by his final statement, which all agreed was a direct indictment of the Subcommittee’s tactics, and did him no good. He denounced the senator’s methods, the unsubstantiated accusations, the abuse of its solemn responsibilities. His brief little speech quoted President Madison to the effect that you first enable government to control the governed, and next you oblige it to control itself. He said this in a firm, clear voice. Then “These hearings, sir, have lost all sense of decency.”

  The sympathetic applause from a few people in the room was met by boos from others, and in that moment the audience of right-wing fans of the senator and their indignant opposite on the left together formed a tarnished throng that was a version of America.

  Mueller followed the Altmans as they made their way down the mobbed aisle toward the exit, being shoved and shoving, blinded in the glare of camera flashes, and badgered by reporters’ shouted questions. Beth had her father’s arm and guided him through the crowd, making a path where there was none and wielding a stiff arm against hostile people who stepped forward. It was chaos.

  Mueller walked a few steps behind the Altmans, but still close enough to be part of the family group. His tall, thin frame, his clear plastic eyeglasses, and his sour expression made him a target for the hecklers. He ignored the whispered epithets spat by respectable-looking folks, and he kept his eyes on the goal, the exit door up ahead. He heard a fat woman accuse him of being a communist sympathizer, and he wanted to stop, shake her, shout in her face, No, this country has lost its soul. It was only a supreme act of self-control that kept him from engaging the woman in an argument. And to what end? He’d make himself feel better if he shouted what he thought of her, but no purpose would be served. It would only feed her ill-tempered accusations. This too made him yearn to be away from it all, cloistered in an ivory tower.

  Mueller pushed past the big woman, closing the gap that had opened between himself and the Altmans, who waited for him at the guarded exit. FBI agent Walker held back the heaving spectators and protected the family. “Through here,” he said.

  Walker inserted himself between Mueller and the hecklers and provided the opportunity the family needed to slip away. Mueller met Walker’s eye as he passed, and he acknowledged the help with a polite nod. “It’s not over,” Walker whispered. “Choose your friends carefully.”

  Mueller stared at the FBI agent, but the man didn’t explain himself, or elaborate, and the crowd behind them crushed forward.

  Mueller followed the Altmans through a winding maze of narrow hallways that led outside. They stood at the top of the Capitol’s terraced marble steps and there, once again, they were just ordinary citizens. Beth accompanied her father down to a waiting black chauffeured limousine. She held his arm in a charitable way while he went down the long flight of steps. Mueller remained at the top with Altman. The wind had picked up and with it the cold. The afternoon sky was a merciless, brooding gray. Altman wore dark glasses, a cashmere overcoat, and a delicate white scarf, its ends dying into the neckline. He was putting on his tan gloves one at a time, stretching his fingers deep into the leather.

  “He brought it on himself, you know,” Altman said. He turned and met Mueller’s confusion. “He chose to testify. To clear his name. The next round won’t be pleasant. They’re calling me to testify against him.”

  “You?”

  “I was there when the schilling tanked. They think, somehow, I can shed light on the whole episode, but all it will do is focus attention on me. He didn’t think about that. He is naïve.”

  And so, again, Mueller heard the son’s stubborn grievance against his father. Altman’s voice was a pleasant tenor, but it acquired a throaty bluntness when he talked about his father, which added to the impression of fractiousness.

  “Beth appreciated that you came,” Altman added. “So did I.”

  Silence lingered. Altman looked at Mueller. “How’s the leg?”

  The leg? Mueller gave a brisk smile. “You got the report?”

  “Her report.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She’s fond of you . . . who would have guessed.”

  The two men considered each other on the broad steps. Mueller was uncomfortable, perhaps embarrassed. A part of him regretted that he had not found a way to tell his colleague that he was intimate with his sister, and that Altman had to find out from her. Mueller said nothing. It would be wrong to apologize for there was nothing that required apology. Apologize for what?

  “She doesn’t know I’m with the Agency,” Altman said. “And she shouldn’t know.” Altman smiled at Mueller. “She wouldn’t understand. She has a different view of the world. My father’s view of the world, a little romantic, a little naïve. The world needs people like her to protect it from people like us.”

  Altman suddenly stretched his right arm out and shoved his hand into his glove. Gruffly he said, “I suppose you’ll be coming out to the house next weekend for the races.”

  “Am I invited?”

  Altman hesitated. “If she hasn’t invited you, consider this your invitation.”

  13

  * * *

  A WEEKEND PARTY

  JAZZ FROM a band on the lawn of a big house farther along the cove drifted on the calm evening. The bay’s water had settled for the night and the glass surface brightened the music. Unseasonably warm weather and the urge to escape the Capital’s nasty politics brought life to the weekend homes tucked comfortably into coves and inlets.

  Mueller was alone. He stood in the garden under a night sky clotted with distant stars. Amber headlights moved along the ridge and then, at different points, one by one dropped down driveways that led to the glowing homes. Voices and laughter carried across the water, clear like struck crystal. A motorboat sliced through the water on its way to somewhere.

  Suddenly he had company. The soft click of a footstep on the stone path, then Beth was at his side. She had a cotton shawl over a strapless dress and stood self-consciously in heels on the uneven surface. Their eyes met. She acknowledged him, and he her, and then he returned to his vigil. Neither said anything for a long moment and they were surrounded by the evening’s sound track of laughter, jazz, and the laboring motor of the boat.

  “Did you hear?” she said at last.

  “Hear? What?”

  “Our windshield was smashed.” There was fresh worry in her voice. “We had crank calls yesterday and the day before. Someone got our number. They would call a
nd hang up. They’d call again and say the most awful things. Terrible things. I didn’t know there were people like that.” She was calm, but her arms wrapped her chest in a protective embrace. “More than rude. Threatening. Yesterday morning we found the car. Someone climbed the gate, came down the driveway, and threw a rock. The police were helpful, but out here”—her arm made a wide arc of the bay—“we’re outsiders. To them I’m the daughter of a communist sympathizer. I mean, it’s crazy, stupid. Ignorant! Oh, it makes me mad. I don’t have all the words to express my anger.”

  “Will you go back to New York?”

  “I would when my play’s run is over. Father won’t. He says he won’t be intimidated. That’s all well and good, but it means he goes about his life and I’m left to worry. I worry for two.”

  Suddenly she cupped her hands to her mouth in a makeshift megaphone. “Stay away,” she shouted. Her voice resounded in the quiet night and startled a bird nesting in a nearby tree, which alighted in flight. “Stay away.”

  She looked at Mueller. “That should do the trick, right?” She laughed. She clutched his arm, startling him, and he felt her lean on his shoulder. “Let’s go inside,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll come in a minute.” When she stood fixed like a statue, he snapped, “Go ahead.”

  She was puzzled. She glared at him before abruptly saying, “I will.”

  When she was gone he looked back at the dark cove. The motorboat had no lights, but it was visible in the moonlight. He was curious where the boat had gone only now to return to the dock at the Soviet compound. The moon hung like a lantern in the sky and illuminated the four-masted barque moored mid-channel. Its spindly mass fused with the dark water and tiny bulbs ran stem to stern like Christmas lights.

  The evening chill drove Mueller up to the grand Victorian home. He approached the driveway, where arriving cars were met by valets and couples stepped into the evening to join the party that overflowed the open doors. A festive rumble drifted toward him. He made his way up the dark path, a moth drawn to sparkling light.

  Inside the front door he found himself in a noisy, chaotic scene. The racy adventurous feel of the party washed over him like a cleansing bath, and his restless eye found satisfaction in the constant lure of strapless women and boisterous men. He moved through the crowd, his shoulder opening a path where there was none, thinking that he’d know someone, but he didn’t, and he was self-conscious that he seemed to be the only guest not working the room. He looked from one glowing face to another, and sometimes a woman he saw returned his glance with a generous smile, but none of these single women was Beth. He sought her like a sailor sought a beacon, but the crowd was dense, the smoke thick, crews of the sailing yachts big and tall, and the party overflowed the vestibule into rooms along the hallway.

  And then a hand came down on his shoulder. Arnold Altman’s eyes were alive with enthusiasm. He wore a single white carnation on his black tuxedo. “The hearing was a success, don’t you think?” He beamed. “I made my point.”

  A success? Mueller kept his opinion to himself.

  “Someone needs to stand up to that man. Pompous, but smart, and that’s what makes him dangerous. I saw those tactics in Germany. People were afraid to speak up.”

  Mueller took his eyes off the happy woman looking at him and gave his full attention to Altman.

  “My good friend Leo Bendel,” Altman said. “He owned a tobacco business and collected art. Wonderful man. He was forced to move from Munich. He and his wife were hounded, expelled, arrested, and sent to one of those camps. I remember their friends, their German friends, said nothing. They were silent while this decent man was arrested for being a Jew. No one spoke up. No one. I have seen the evil of intolerance. When I spoke out in the hearing it was for my good friend Leo Bendel.” Altman looked at Mueller. “You were good to come. How is the leg?”

  His leg again. Everyone remembered. “It’s fine.”

  “I want to introduce you to someone,” Altman said. The host reached across a narrow opening in the crowd and pulled over a slight woman, plain to look at, in a simple pattern dress and flats. Her eyes were wide with surprise and discomfort.

  “This is Roger’s fiancée,” Altman said, proudly.

  The girl shyly put forward one hand and Mueller shook it, surprised it was limp.

  “I’m George.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Her voice was a soprano whisper. She had a frail, homey look, with freckles, and she was wary. She wanted to retreat from the introduction and return to her anonymity, but the older Altman used his arm on her shoulder to keep her from fleeing.

  George heard his name called and he looked off in the direction from which he thought the sound originated. Roger Altman had been with a group of friends, but he’d pulled away, and was coming straight to Mueller, eyebrows raised in an excited approach. Drinking, Mueller thought, but not yet drunk. He wore a tuxedo and a jolly expression flush with whiskey. His voice was exuberant and louder than usual, alive with alcohol.

  “George, I didn’t see you arrive. Glad you could come, old boy. We’re celebrating the Greek holiday of winter racing. Haven’t you heard of it? Well, neither have I. This is Emily, my fiancée. Have you met?”

  “Just now.” Mueller saw the girl plead for something, but what exactly, Mueller could not tell. She clutched her small cloth purse with both hands.

  “What do you do?” Mueller asked Emily.

  Roger answered. “She’s not much for conversation. Or for crowds. And we’ve outdone ourselves this year, don’t you think? Who would guess that putting in to fifty-degree water was so popular?”

  Nothing more was said. Roger Altman tugged his fiancée’s hand and led the docile, wide-eyed girl away through the room of drinkers.

  “A nice girl,” Arnold said. “He doesn’t treat her well. He might lose her.”

  Lose her? Mueller shook his head. “I don’t think there’s a chance of that.”

  • • •

  Mueller searched for Beth. The party was raucous and lively with old acquaintances who were at turns loud and foolish, and he steered clear of these groups. Liquor flowed freely from a bar in the dining room served by two men in bow ties. A waiter in sailor uniform passed a tray of champagne flutes and he was followed by a waitress in mermaid costume offering crudités and deviled eggs. The waiter wore white gloves and the waitress was in a sequin dress with a long dorsal fin. Mixing among the guests was a man in a pale pink chiffon toga carrying a great horn of fruit.

  This was the “casual drop-in” that Roger Altman had mentioned was their way to celebrate the start of winter sail week. Only daredevil men of the adventurous sailing community, committed to folly, earned bragging rights for braving the frigid water. It was an Ivy League crowd. Mueller recognized a man from his class at Yale, and then another, and there was a clutch of Yalies smoking in the garden.

  Mueller spotted Beth across the room. He was glad to see her face among the strangers. It was only as he pushed through the crowd that he saw two men hovering around her in animated conversation. She responded to whatever was said by throwing her head back, laughing brightly. The two men were almost twins, handsome sailors in identical uniforms, eager faces with the same predation—and it was their intensity that made Mueller jealous.

  “Beth,” he said, inserting himself, “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “For me.” Her smile vanished, eyes fierce. “Well, it was you who sent me away. And now I’m in the middle of a conversation.”

  Mueller felt slapped. He looked at the two men, his height, but strong to his thin stature. “I’m sorry,” he said. Mueller’s fingers wrapped his water glass like a chalice and he stood awkwardly, rebuked. Mueller nodded to her and to the men. “Excuse me.”

  “I will find you,” she yelled to his back.

  Momentarily, Mueller stood in the crowded hallway amo
ng lively strangers whose upbeat mood mocked his hot burn of embarrassment. Did he care that he’d offended her in the garden? It was too easy to pretend that he didn’t. He still had not perfected a polite way to have a companionable evening with a woman and not have his attention hijacked by work.

  One drinking group of Yalies came down the hall and carried the sullen Mueller into the next room, where a group of singers was gathered around a grand piano. Women stood around the edge of the room in brave dresses, their hair puffed in bizarre shapes. They looked at the singers and the room was alive with interest in the pianist as his fingers danced on the keyboard. The pianist was short, bald, with glasses, and he got the room’s attention with up-tempo music and bawdy lyrics. He welcomed new couples to the room with his tenor spoof of “Falling in Love Again.” He targeted Mueller holding back at the door, watching from his observer’s perch, with a mocking version of “Ten Cents a Dance.”

  Mueller nodded, acknowledging this attention. He had never been close to these men at Yale and saw no reason to be close now. The bald pianist kept up a monologue between songs that held the room’s attention. Floating rounds of floral-colored cocktails passed among the crowd. A momentary hush. The pianist struck a chord and held a falsetto note in his lungs for a breathless minute, and the crowd took his cue. All at once the room joined in singing the hit tune “Road to Bali.” Men and women took up the chorus: We’re poor little lambs who have lost their way . . . we’re little black sheep who have gone astray.

  Mueller slipped out during the closing verse. He found it tiresome to be sober among a room of drinkers. The foolishness of alcohol wasn’t amusing to the observer who stuck with soda water. He saw it all, and would remember it all, but the evening would be a dull hangover for the others.

  It was too late to find Beth to apologize, too early to return to his cottage, and too cold to wander the gardens alone. He found himself in the front hallway by a closed door. He tried the handle and found it unlocked. Mueller stepped into a book-lined study and was happy to leave behind the raucous party. There was a ponderous carved wood desk, a brass stand with a globe of the earth, a whiskey-colored leather sofa, and bound volumes on book shelves that rose to the high ceiling.