Echo House

by Ward Just

  Everyone had arrived except the President and his wife and the White House chief of staff. A few of the guests were from Europe and the West Coast, a few more from Boston and New York, but mostly they were Washingtonians, each now with his or her little white envelope indicating the table for dinner. There were ten tables of ten, visible now through the double doors, crystal and silver glittering in candlelight; a full moon was rising over the lawn. Envelopes were already being compared, because it was no secret who would be at the head table with the guest of honor. Yet, if one looked around at the distinguished gathering, a bad seat would be hard to imagine. Well, Harold Grendall would be a bad seat. Lloyd Fisher would be worse. André Przyborski would have his hands all over you like a teenager in heat; of course André was gone but his spirit was present. They should be sent to the children's table, where they belonged.

  "Lovely party."

  "Thanks so much for having us."

  "Hello, Alec."

  "Virginia," Alec said. He kissed her on the cheek, avoiding the aviator glasses; he noticed she was wearing a tiny gold Carrier wristwatch, the watch peeping out under Armani's creamy silk sleeve. Her voice was newly modulated, the better to butter up a microphone. She had begun to look like Katharine Hepburn. Alec said, "Do you know Avril Raye?"

  Virginia Spears nodded at Avril and turned back to Alec. "Is that Bud Weinberg, the one talking to old man Grendall and Lloyd Fisher?" She pointed at the three of them still standing in the wide archway leading to the living room. Harold was talking and the others were laughing. When Alec nodded, she said, "Will you introduce me?"

  "Sure," Alec said. "Why?"

  "I hear things."

  "It's all right," Alec said. "You can talk in front of Avril."

  "He has a son, doesn't he?"

  "So I've heard."

  "Well," Virginia said. "His nomination's kaput."

  "Planning on doing some filming?" When she smiled enigmatically, Alec added, "Quite a campaign against Bud."

  "The usual," she said with a shrug. "No surprises. Bud Weinberg's put the White House in a mighty bind, and while that doesn't bother me, it bothers them. And that makes a story for me." While she spoke she watched the three in the archway. "I heard he's a nice guy but's got shit for brains. Some after-hours irregularity, too, I hear. Never mind. I'll introduce myself." She swept a glass of Champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and hurried to the side of Harold Grendall, who stopped talking at once.

  "Watch out for her, Avril," Alec said.

  "I know who she is."

  "She was fine when she needed you but she stopped needing people a long time ago When you talk to her, have your own record."

  "I never talked to reporters," Avril said. "Iron rule, no exceptions. I'd leave instructions that I was not in, ever. And then—I don't know when this happened but it seems like yesterday—the only way I could get a message to your government was through people like Virginia Spears. No one reads their mail in this city, and if you get to see someone he's so anxious to explain how difficult his position is and how numerous his burdens that he can't listen to you. I tried to cultivate them, including that one," she said, nodding at Virginia Spears, who had her arm on Harold Grendall's arm and was looking at him as if he were the thirty-year-old Spencer Tracy, "because I had a very important message to send to your national security adviser, the usual NATO trash but it was important to us. And I thought, quite frankly, that with her there might be some female solidarity. That's what I kept reading and hearing in your glorious free press, women helping women because you never get a break with the men. And then I discovered that my time was past. I discovered that they don't want to talk to me. They won't waste their valuable time talking to me because France is not high enough on their food chain and my name hasn't been in the papers so I couldn't possibly know anything and, for me, it was simply too infra dig to tell her plainly—listen, chérie, I'm the resident SDECE here and I have some information to trade so answer your telephone and let's make the bouillabaisse."

  Alec began to laugh.

  "Virginia Spears, she's disgusting. She probably thinks I'm the embassy sommelier or the ambassador's mistress, though come to think of it, if I were the ambassador's mistress I'd be a reliable source, a middle-aged French bimbo who reads the old man's mail. And I'll tell you something else, Alec. Remember what Monsieur Jefferson said, that if he had the choice of a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter? He got his wish."

  "You can do better than her. What about Wilson Slyde?"

  "I know Wilson. I've met Wilson with you."

  "Isn't Wilson good enough for you?"

  "I've known him forever. Tell him something, he forgets it. Ask him anything, he waffles. Wilson knows what he knows but doesn't know anything else, you dig? In the old days Wilson was up to speed on everything, but he hasn't been abroad for five years and has no desire to go. He used to know more about the French Army than I did. I don't know why you can't let people be themselves, and earn a living doing what they want to do and are good at. Merde." She paused, irritated, because an unwelcome face was bearing down on them. She said quickly, "God, I'm tired of America. I've O.D.'d on the capital of the Free World. I've been here so long, I've lost control of my own slang. I can't talk to my nephew because I miss half of what he says. I know your argot better than I know my own, and if you're French there's no worse fate. I miss the theater. I miss Paris. I miss Paris more than I can say, and do you know what I miss? I miss the crowds, being carried along by them, enclosed by them, cohabitating with them on those narrow sidewalks that Americans hate so. I'm going to retire at the end of the year and return to my leet-le flat in Mont-par-nasse and spend my time on sidewalks, going with the flow. What's wrong?"

  "You remind me of Sandrine."

  "Yes," Avril said and appeared to blush.

  "Sandrine had a blue Renault. She was homesick for her car."

  "The language, too," Avril said.

  "And oysters from Normandy."

  "It was a long time ago, Alec."

  "What difference does that make?"

  She looked away and said that she had had too much Champagne.

  "It's all right," he said.

  "Not all right," she said. "I'm sorry."

  Alec was silent as one of the women in basic black approached.

  She said, "They've been delayed."

  Alec nodded. The woman was attractive. Someone had told him that female Secret Service agents strapped pistols to the inside of their thighs, but he could not see how this would be efficient, and as he looked at the agent, lithe as a fashion model, he decided that he had been lied to.

  "We had a message. They're still at the White House."

  "A crisis of the national security?" Avril asked.

  "I would not know that, ma'am," the agent said, smiling falsely.

  "I'm sure it's routine." Avril said. "It usually is."

  "He's always late, isn't he?" Alec said.

  "They're all late," she said. "All of them. Always. It's one of the things that sets them apart from you and me. They're never on time and they're never, ever early." She put her finger on the button in her ear and listened, her eyes all the while patrolling the room.

  "The many burdens of public life," Alec said.

  She nodded crisply, still listening.

  "But my father is very old."

  "Your father," she began.

  "You can tell the White House that they don't have to worry, he knows the drill. My father loves drama. And he's never on time, either." Alec leaned close to her and asked her to open the doors to the lawn. "It's stuffy in here. No air."

  She shook her head firmly. "No way."

  "Why not?"

  "Orders," she said, and moved off in response to some mysterious summons.

  "What was that about?" Avril asked.

  "Control," Alec said. "What it's always about." But on the lawn something moved, and he bri
efly saw the silhouette of a rifleman near the high hedge. That was unusual. They had not had men on the lawn four years ago. They'd had them on the roof and in the Observatory and billiards room and across the street in the cemetery and among the elms, but not on the back lawn. But four years ago it had been raining heavily and the President had only put in an appearance. Even so, they were able to open the doors. He hoped his father had not seen the rifleman.

  "Something strange here," Alec said. "Security's awfully tight."

  Avril thought a moment. "We had a report last week. We didn't give it much weight, but we passed it along like a good ally."

  Alec smiled. "Because the Times wouldn't take it?"

  "Au contraire," Avril said. "If there's something involving your interest, we get a hearing right away. We're invited straight to the seventh floor. We get coffee and Danish and expressions of gratitude and respect and a nice pat on the back before we're sent on our way."

  Alec turned to greet new arrivals.

  "Great party, Alec. Where's your father?"

  "Upstairs, Admiral."

  "Feeling shipshape, I hope."

  "Never better," Alec said as the admiral turned to shake hands with one of the service secretaries, Alec couldn't remember which service. The admiral's wife ghosted along behind him like a destroyer in the wake of an aircraft carrier. When she saw Bud Weinberg put his hand on her husband's arm, she stepped deftly between them, sweeping the admiral away with a short nod to Bud.

  "Word's out," Avril said. "Bud's persona non grata. We need another ante in the kitty. How about you?"

  Alec shook his head.

  "Paris would suit you. It's ideal for a bachelor and much happens behind the scenes. My government would approve. Would it ever."

  Alec nodded at someone across the room. In his range of vision were an anchorman, two Supreme Court justices, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an under secretary of state, the Spanish ambassador, and the Speaker of the House. Wilson Slycle was talking to the Speaker's new wife, a svelte beauty who worked for one of the newspapers. Alec was half-listening to Avril as his eyes patrolled the room. He knew he would benefit from a change of scene, a different atmosphere on a different continent, bat he could not imagine living anywhere but Echo House. Nights like this one made everyone stand a little taller. All capitals suffered by comparison; and then he remembered Constance's prediction and realized that it had come true at last. He thought that in its own way Washington was the world's subconscious, momentous and unpredictable, the uneasy presence at every table. He could not bear working in a city where he did not know the rules and the contents of the many closets. He would never live in a city where he would have to read the papers to learn the news, to voluntarily diminish himself, banished to a suburb of the world. The Speaker caught his eye and winked.

  "Admit it," Avril said. "You're bored."

  "Not bored," Alec said. "Never bored."

  "Stale, then."

  "I like it here."

  "Let me tell you a story," Avril said. "Stop me if you've heard it. But it's your sort of story. It was going the rounds of Cairo last week. True story. There was an army officer who kept pigeons. One night he heard the cat chewing under the bed and knew at once that the cat had eaten the pigeons. He was beside himself, because he loved his pigeons. He fetched his service revolver and shot at the cat, missing the animal but striking the wall of his apartment. The bullet went through the wall and into the apartment of his neighbor. The neighbor, a very old imam who happened to be blind, was taking a bath in a large porcelain basin. The bullet struck the basin, shattering it, whereupon the imam rushed into the street shouting that the world was coming to an end. Chaos theory, according to the Egyptians."

  Alec smiled. He had heard the story from Red Lambardo and he guessed that was where Avril Raye had heard it, too.

  "You heard the story," Avril said, adding a pout.

  "Only once before," Alec said.

  "Guess where I heard it?"

  "I know where you heard it."

  "Mrs. Pfister," Avril said.

  "I didn't know you were a client," Alec said slowly. "And I never would have guessed. I'm surprised that Mrs. Pfister is still alive."

  "Oh, yes," Avril said. "Very much alive. I saw her the other day. She's given up her cards and lives in Holland. They expelled her, you know. I think Axel had something to do with it."

  "Axel never had much use for seers. Events foretold or events recovered. He thought it was a form of hysteria. My mother went to her after the war. Sylvia swore by Mrs. Pfister."

  "Everybody did," Avril said. "First time I went to her, years and years ago, my first tour in the embassy, she looked at the cards for what seemed an eternity. She said, 'You are one of four children. You will never marry.' Again she was silent and I sensed she was struggling. She said she saw a body in a tiny casket, a young girl with chestnut curls. I thought nothing of that because I had no children and no one close to me had small children. And then later when Sandrine died I realized she had been talking about her. She was right about the other things, too. She had an amazing gift. Of course you had to keep an open mind. You had to be open to possibility. When I saw her yesterday she didn't look well. She's very old now." Avril was about to say something more, but Alec was turning because the woman in basic black was at his elbow with a message.

  "The President will arrive in ten minutes."

  "Crisis over?"

  But she was hurrying away toward the door. Suddenly there was purposeful movement of the women in black dresses and the men in suits; and more were moving through the doors to take up their stations here and there in the foyer and the living room; and just as suddenly they seemed to vanish through various doors, into the library and the morning room and onto the lawn, leaving the party where they had found it, noisy and filled with anticipation. Even the waiters stood at attention.

  "Mr. Behl? I'm Agent Block. If you have any questions—"

  "No questions," Alec said.

  "Sorry for all the confusion," he said apologetically.

  Alec excused himself and hurried up the staircase to the second floor. He found Axel in his wheelchair reading a book, a glass of Champagne untouched on the table next to him. His face was ashen but he mustered a smile and murmured something. He said, "Gaaard " the word so garbled that Alec did not know what it was. When the old man repeated it, Alec knew he meant Fred Greene, dead now for more than half a century.

  Alec said, "Rest in peace."

  Axel nodded, remembering.

  "Are the rest of them here?" His voice clear now.

  "Everybody and then some."

  "No," Axel said. "Them. I mean them. You know who I mean."

  "In a few minutes. The SS is sweeping the house for terrorists right now."

  "Will they find any?" He was smiling, the right side of his face drooping like a clown's. "I wish the children were here, too. They'd enjoy the commotion, the cameras and so on."

  "They're with Leila and Hugo."

  "It's Waltz Night, isn't it?"

  "Leila and Hugo never miss one and they see to it that the children don't, either. They want the children properly introduced. So they go to Waltz Night and take golf lessons at the Chevy Chase Club."

  "I guess they don't like us much. Truthfully, they chose Waltz Night?"

  "Waltz Night," Alec said.

  "Incredible," the old man said. Then, "I want you to make me a Scotch and water."

  The nurse poked her head in, frowning when she saw Alec at the sideboard cracking ice. When he looked at her she shook her head sharply and withdrew. Alec handed the old man his Scotch, then made a martini for himself, leaning against the mantel, careful not to disturb the photographs. There were half a dozen ordinary photographs in glass frames, most of them grainy and out of focus, mainly of young men, some in uniform and others in baggy suits and Borsalino hats. The old man called them his rogues' firmament. The room was quiet except for subtle vibrations from the
first floor.

  "Avril Raye's here," Alec said. "And guess who she saw the other day? Mrs. Pfister."

  "Impossible," the old man said. "She can't be alive. She's older than I am."

  "Still alive," Alec said. "Still selling snake oil." Alec told him the story of the army officer and the imam, but it seemed to lose something in translation, because the old man did not smile or give any sign of having heard.

  "Sylvia believed her," Axel said slowly. "Believed every word she said. She went once a week, first lunch, then her hair appointment, then Mrs. Pfister. She was a troublemaker. She was remorseless, worse than any Stalinist. He believed in Siberia, she believed in a deck of cards; and there was no appeal from any ruling she chose to give. So many people were going to her back in the 'forties and 'fifties that the boys got nervous; they thought she might be a blackmaler or working for the other side. So they bugged her house and in that way learned who was pregnant and who was having trouble at the office and who was having lunch with a handsome stranger. Mrs. Pfister had quite a clientele. There was a character in Policy Planning who went to her all the time for advice on the Cuban threat until he had a visit from the boys, who told him to stop. Mrs. Pfister knew more about the State Department than Foster Dulles..."

  His voice had strengthened as he talked until now he sounded like a young man. His hand was steady as he sipped his Scotch, staring at the photographs on the mantel. Suddenly he laughed, but when next he spoke it was without humor, his voice silky dry and clipped at the edges.

  "Sylvia was one of the first, when we returned after the war. She hated Washington so, its coldness and rationality. So she decided to go to Mrs. Pfister for the irrational and was eager to pass the poisoned cup to anyone who was interested, and many were, though it took a while to catch on. It took about a decade, as a matter of fact." Axel moved his shoulders left and right, settling in. "Mrs. Pfister. I haven't heard her name in years. She went out of fashion for a while and we lost interest. Then in the 'sixties people couldn't believe what was happening in front of their eyes. Nothing was working. The country was collapsing and Washington was responsible. So they turned to the spirit world. They turned to psychic mumbo-jumbo, worried about their draft-age sons and what the North Vietnamese would do next, and their own change of life. Everyone lost their nerve, chased by the past and terrified of the future, so they went to Mrs. Pfister. It was a hell of an embarrassment. We shut her down."