Echo House (42 page)

She took him to say hello to her husband. Alec remembered to thank him for the doormat, but the President only smiled suspiciously.

"My idea," the President's wife said, and they moved on.

Then Red Lambardo was at his side, asking where the guest of honor was and rolling his eyes when he was told that the old man was fortifying himself with Scotch and would be down shortly.

The chief of staff said, "It's good to be back at Echo House, the real world. It's been a while since I've seen you, Alec. Been so busy lately trying to reorganize things in the West Wing. It's been chaos. Can I put you on the list for dinner next week? It's for the German chancellor. Let me know." He was admiring the paintings, the Homer and the Hassam specifically, when he lowered his voice. "I'm glad to be here, truly. Wish the old man well. Your father's friendship has meant a lot to me over the years."

Alec thought. Everything that rises must converge. He watched the President's wife take another glass of Champagne, laughing now at something Avril Raye had said. There were half a dozen women surrounding her but the photographer had been banished to the dining room. He said, "Axel takes pride in the success of his younger friends. Always has."

The chief of staff lowered his voice still further and confided that Axel had sent him a memo on the Russian situation, superb memo that contained information he had not known. The State Department and CIA were similarly in the dark. So he was able to put the President in the picture and they were both grateful, as Alec would see when the evening commenced. Red Lambardo smiled broadly and inside the smile Alec could recollect the man in red suspenders he had met years before with Leila. Alec remembered his nonchalance describing an afternoon with "Jack" around the pool in Palm Beach, and later his mysterious Working Group. Red had implied they would overthrow Castro together. Castro then seemed a greater menace than Stalin had ten years earlier. No man had worked harder scrambling to the top of the tree, and now he was there, a loyalist whose devotion reached beyond party or institution to the President personally.

"Axel knows the country backwards and forwards," the chief of staff said. "One of the things I regret, I never traveled much. Never had the time, and I suppose Washington was always my town. The other places are just suburbs, as you've said so often. Amazing. He made his first trip to Moscow in the nineteen-thirties."

Alec said, "Care for some caviar?" Mrs. Hardenburg was hovering near them, two plates in her hand.

"No caviar, thanks. Caviar gives me gas. My doctor has me on a salt-free diet. You can't be too careful."

"Red," Alec said. He wanted to ask the chief of staff about Bud Weinberg, and if there was anything to be done and whether his own name fit into the scheme of things.

"The nineteen-thirties was an awkward time to go to the Soviet Union," Red said. "It was like Hanoi in the 'sixties, a controversial thing. Trip like that gets into your file and there's no way to get it out. He had some trouble with McCarthy, didn't he?"

"Some trouble," Alec said.

The chief of staff heard something in Alec's voice and frowned. "Strange period. Thank God it's behind us, nameless accusers, all the rest. Joe was strange. The people around him were strange. But he was a victim, too, you know. He was a victim of his circumstances."

"He was the circumstances, Red."

The photographer was maneuvering in their vicinity, setting up a shot, but the chief of staff waved her away. "True, but isn't there another point to be made here? Joe had a substance abuse problem. He had a chemical dependency. He was beaten as a child. Someone told me just the other day, he was abused by his father. And people didn't like Joe's manners. Senator Joe was a little coarse for Georgetown." The chief of staff shrugged; point made. He fluttered his hand at someone nearby, tilting his head to examine the Homer, a dory adrift on a featureless ocean. "The media didn't do its job. Of course the times were different. Different atmosphere. In some ways I prefer the media the way it was, don't you?"

Red Lambardo smiled thinly and moved closer. "Axel tried to put one over on me. Along with the memo he sent me a letter from some refugee organization that supports the Spanish exiles, 'Our Republican friends living in the vastness of the Pyrenees blah blah blah...' Christ, I didn't know any of them were still alive. Axel's comrades live longer'n crocodiles, all those Pepes and Pablos buying dynamite to blow up Franco's tomb or carbomb the king. Axel suggested a thousand dollars. But we have our own homeless, our poor Vietnam vets doing their damnedest to cope even after all these years. Who are they in the Pyrenees anyway? I don't know them. I don't give a crap about them, out of it for sixty years, singing the
Internationale
and waving the Red flag, fuck them."

"There are only a few of them left, old men and some women. Trying to get by."

"Forget it," Red said. "That kind of trouble I don't need. You've got to watch your back in this town. Particularly when you give money. God Washington's a hard place."

"Try the Pyrenees some time."

"People just waiting to slice you up when you make the wrong move." He squinted at the Homer. "You can't be too careful. That's how people get marginalized once and for all. They go off the screen. They're untouchable, more trouble than they're worth."

"Like Bud Weinberg?"

"Exactly," Red said.

"He doesn't know where he stands."

"He better find out."

"He wonders if he has any support at your place."

The chief of staff's;ghed and shook his head. "Weinberg was helpful to us in the campaign. He raised money in places we didn't expect. So we owe him. But we don't owe him as much as he thinks we do. He doesn't understand that we operate in a different reality.
This
is
the White House.
He doesn't understand the fundamentals of the world we live in."

"The rumors are false."

"I'm glad to know that, Alec. But it depends on who you talk to, doesn't it? Buddy Weinberg's got some enemies and they're smarter than he is. They threw smoke and Bud didn't stop it. He miscalculated. He said, What the hell, I'm innocent. But you know as well as I do that smoke's fire. There's no difference between them, except that in some ways smoke's worse because it's so formless, you see, like a cloud in the sky that's Abe Lincoln's beard one moment and a white bunny rabbit the next. I'm talking perception here. Bud didn't get ahead of the curve. So he's an embarrassment and he's got to withdraw, the sooner the better. Someone has to tell him that and make it stick. It's not going to be me because I don't want the White House anywhere near him. You want to?"

"Why not you, Red? You got him there."

"I never thought I'd have to draw diagrams for Alec Behl. So I'll just say that I've better things to do with my time. This is pissant stuff compared to the rest of our agenda." Now Red watched the President's wife approach with Avril Raye. He tried to place Avril and failed, a fat lady who was always around. She wasn't political; he knew that. He thought she was someone's wife but, Jesus, she needed an aerobics class or fewer cashews. "No one gives a damn about France. We could send old man Grendall to France, no one'd care. We could send Wilson. We could send you. But we're not sending Bud Weinberg, so have a word with him, Alec. Help us out. It'd be a favor I wouldn't forget." The chief of staff stepped back because the women were almost within earshot. "And drop over to the White House some afternoon; our First Lady could use some reliable company. She never sees her old friends anymore and we're not so pleased with some of her new friends. Why is it that people think they can make new friends in the White House? It's always a mistake. You have to stick with the friends you have and hope they fit in and if they don't, tough shit. Isn't that true in life generally?"

"Sorry I was cross with you, Alec," the President's wife said. She smiled dully. "I've gotten so grumpy lately."

"We all have," Alec said.

"The President's waiting," Red said.

"And I like it when you call me Flo."

"We've been friends a long time," Alec said.

"I've taken up bridge, did I tell you? I used to play bridge in Oak Park eons ago and now I'm playing again, two tables in the private quarters. We have some lunch and then we play, my buddies and me. And I see my life dribbling away around the bridge table. It's a high-stakes game but that isn't the reason. I never see my old friends anymore, so many of them are irritated at the White House, one thing and another. I can't keep the problems straight. I was explaining it to Avril. She pointed out that if you were our ambassador there'd be good reason to go to France. Can you believe it, I've never been. I've never seen the Louvre. I've never seen a château. Jackie Kennedy used to travel abroad all the time, Eiurope, the Aegean. In India she met a maharajah. I guess in the early days the White House was everything she hoped it would be; and then she needed a vacation like any ordinary person, so she went abroad. If I had an escort then I could see Louvre anc the châteaux of the Loire."

Alec nodded. Her voice had risen and he had an idea she was about to break down.

"A private visit," she said. "You could take me to the châteaux. And along the way we could lose the Secret Service. Avril could arrange security."

"Yes, of course," Avril said, her eyes worried, turning to Alec for help. A dozen people had gathered around them, listening in. They were smiling at what seemed to be repartee. Virginia Spears leaned forward, looking hard at the President's wife, knowing at once that something was not quite right. The First Lady, talking intently ;o Alec, was unaware that she was spilling her Champagne.

"We'll see," Red said quietly. He put his hand on her elbow.

"No press," she said again.

"You could go incognito," Alec said, trying to keep things light.

"A new haircut?"

The others around them began to laugh. How droll. The President's wife hadn't changed her hair in twenty years; it was a signature as distinctive as her husband's striped shirts, evidence of stability, a stubborn refusal to follow fashion.

"I thought I'd love it," the President's wife said, her voice rising again. "Who wouldn't love it? So many worthwhile things to do and all the time in the world to do them and everyone watching, inspecting you while they listen to every word. At first you love it and then you think you can't do without it and they can't either, the cameras and the attention and admiration because you're the President's wife and live in the White House and—the good you're doing, being there. You should read the letters sometime, they'd break your heart. Except when you leave, the sick are just as sick and the elderly as old and the children as famished and the dispossessed as insulted, and the flood waters are still rising. I'd thought about it so long, even in my dreams at night. I'd read everything and talked to the people I admired. Jackie was so reticent, no help at all, when I talked to her in late 'sixty-two, I guess it was. I thought she had a secret and didn't want to let me in on it. Do you think she had some private knowledge that she dared not share? Of course I was so young then, just a freshman congressman's wife, even younger than she was."

"The President's asking for you," Red said loudly. The others had begun to stir, a nervous silence becoming a kind of expectant hush that spread in the foyer, people turning their heads at Red's harsh voice.

"—and then later, after the assassination and all the stories, I couldn't bring myself to ask her again. Wouldn't it have been indecent? Jackie, how did you manage to save yourself?"

"Flo," Alec said gently, and at the name the President's wife smiled warmly, her eyes brimming.

"Well, well!" Red Lambardo cried. "And here he is at last! Here's the birthday boy, Axel himself!"

Alec looked up. The old man was gliding through the upstairs doors, the nurse behind him. He was guiding the wheelchair himself, pausing at the top of the curving staircase to observe his party. He was bathed in yellow light from the chandeliers, the scar a dark line on his cheek; but his white shirt was dazzling and he wore a red rose in - is lapel. He looked down, his eyes half-lidded, smiling crookedly. Something almost boyish about him, Alec thought, except he was not in motion as a boy would be but still as a piece of sculpture. His hands were clasped in his lap. Red began to clap. Presently the room was loud with cheers and applause, the President cheering loudest of all, then raising his glass in a toast.

"Mr. Behl?" Agent Eilock was at Alec's elbow.

"Later," Alec said. He bent to listen to something the President's wife said, but Red intervened, removing the Champagne glass from her hand. She began to clap politely as he led her away, Virginia Spears trailing close by.

"There's a lady at the door," the agent said.

"You take care of it." Alec snapped. The applause diminished. His father had a distracted look on his face, as if he were trying to remember something.

The President waited for silence. At such moments those in his vicinity believed he was nearly godlike in his ability to command a room, the great authority of the presidency merging with his own personality and becoming indistinguishable from it. They felt the spirits of Jefferson and Lincoln and FDR hovering close by, offering a benediction. Were they not in a certain sense his brothers? And Lincoln and FDR had visited this very house, drinking and dining while they settled matters of state. When the President looked left and a shadow crossed his face, only Red Lambardo knew that the Man's sense of well-being was evaporating, dying as the applause died; he had seen his wife's troubled expression, aid knew what it portended. It was so unfair, she had become such a burden, a liability all around, a threat to his equilibrium. Th ; President had expected things to be perfect, and now they weren't.

It was time to speak but still the President waited. The chief of staff knew that he intended to reprise the career of Axel Behl, no easy task, since so many of the old bastard's contributions to the life of the nation were sub rosa, made many years before and dubious even then, not precisely illegitimate but surely on the margins of the law. No one now living, not even the Venerables, could say with absolute confidence exactly what these contributions entailed, except that everyone had been talking about them in the abstract for years, praise for a long-retired conductor whose most brilliant performances had never been recorded. So the President faltered, his celebrated fluency collapsing under the weight of uncertainty; and those in the room would call him to account for any error of fact or judgment. He was fond of enumeration, four-point programs, three-stage negotiations, two-step solutions, always upbeat; Lambardo watched the Man's face grow dour and knew now that his own ass was on the line, for failing to prepare a proper speech. Of course Red assumed he'd know, a figure as celebrated as Axel Behl. But summarizing the career was like describing an iceberg, seven-eighths below the surface. Red had no idea of the shape of things in the darkness and the cold. So much of what Axel represented seemed to be personified by the grandeur and formality of Echo House and its many ghosts, along with the eminent living now gathered in the foyer in a spirit of comradeship and celebration. If only the American people were as good and competent and compassionate as their government, Red thought but did not say.