Echo House (16 page)

"The philosopher?"

"No, the editor. Monsieur Straddle."

"He skipped."

"Where did he skip to?"

"Normandy. We know where he is. But what can you do? It was too much for him, poor bastard."

"He cost us, Ed."

"I know that, Axel. But it wasn't so much, and we learn from our mistakes."

Axel nodded sympathetically. Monsieur Straddle was a journalist who had spent the war in Paris maneuvering his newspaper around the Germans, Vichy, and the Resistance. He invented an icy prose of obfuscation and ambiguity and was so successful at it that when the war ended he was unable to adapt. He did not understand that the world had moved on. He had lived in his half-light for so long, he could not imagine another environment; and he was certain that one or another of the authorities he had annoyed would invade his apartment and seize his wife and children. He was recruited on a visit to Washington, invited for a drink at Echo House, and offered a subsidy for his newspaper. He agreed at once, all the while admiring Axel's art and the Persian carpets on the floors and the taste of the twelve-year-old Scotch. Of course he hated the Reds and would bring all his rhetorical powers to bear against them. His subsequent editorials were masterpieces of feint and wry indignation. He still feared the jackboot and the knock on the door at midnight, or the summons to the Conciergerie. Circulation fell and the subsidy went to a tiny property near Ivry; and one day the newspaper ceased publication and Monsieur Straddle and his wife and children fetched up at the farm, where the editor was now writing his memoirs of wartime Paris. Axel remembered him as an anorexic middle-aged Frenchman with a facial tic that grew more pronounced with each swallow of Scotch. He was an editor who had learned to live happily in no man's land, between the lines. His French was beautiful to listen to, as soothing as a lullaby.

"So we're in a little bit of trouble, Axel. We need a watchdog."

"An accountant to watch the accountants."

"An accountant with corkscrews," Ed said. "Maybe someone at Treasury."

Axel shook his head

"Well, then," Ed said. "It's only a matter of time before we're blown. And then we get the works, a congressional investigation, political trouble. They'll put us out of business."

"You want a private banker," Axel said. "You want someone who can get your money from Washington or New York to Copenhagen or London and then to Málaga or Trieste with a minimum of fuss and delay. You want funds on hand in a dozen cities, greenbacks when you need them. You need a private bank and a banker who'll know the questions to ask, a banker who has connections abroad, meaning an organization in place. You'd take a piece of the bank as a silent partner. The books would be very carefully kept and cooked if need be, in the very unlikely event of an outside audit. But you'd always know the balance sheet. And there would be a section of that bank dealing with your interests and that section would be separate and staffed by your people with full security clearance. Each disbursement would require two signatures. I know the bank you want. You want Jimmy Longfellow's bank."

"The ambassador?"

"Our soon-to-be man in Lisbon."

"I didn't know he was a banker."

"His father was a great friend of my father and of Curly, too. You remember him, old David Longfellow. The Longfellows have owned the bank for a hundred years. Cousins and in-laws, nephews. There are probably a couple of godsons in their somewhere. They look after kin. They're honest but inattentive, so the bank's not profitable. They don't work hard at it. They're not
avid.
It's a bank filled with Sunday golfers and their stupid children." Axel shifted in his seat and began to massage the small of his back. "People have to look after themselves."

"I can see the advantages."

"Jimmy wants out," Axel said. "He has his new wife and his embassy. He wants to get Gladys out of New York. He thinks she knows too many people in New York."

"And you think he'd sell."

"He already has. I bought his stake."

"You own the bank?"

"A minority interest, so far."

"This is a creative idea, Axel. It solves all our problems. Trouble is, it's against the law. We can't own and operate a bank. We can buy airplanes but we can't buy an airline. We can buy an editor but we can't buy a newspaper. We can buy weapons but we can't buy Remington. The Treasury can print money and give us some of it but we can't buy a bank to put it in. We have to operate according to the established procedures. And this isn't an established procedure. This is outside our charter."

"Procedures can be changed," Axel said blandly.

"It's a beautiful idea," Ed said.

Axel watched a page enter the gallery and scan the spectators, a worried expression on his face. Axel snapped his fingers, and the boy nodded, relieved, and hurried to his side.

"Mr. Behl? The senator wanted me to give you this."

Axel took the folded piece of paper from the boy's hand, looked at it, and carefully wrote two words in block letters.

"Take this back to the senator with my compliments."

"Yes, sir," the boy said, and was gone.

"What was that about?" Ed asked.

"A note from Alfalfa Bob. The note said, 'Fuck you, Axel.' My note was shorter. Watch."

Ed Peralta heard an animal enthusiasm in Axel's voice and leaned forward to peer into the Senate chamber. The senator was sprawled in his chair, listening to the debate. He smiled when the page approached, but the smile vanished when he looked at Axel's note. He carefully tore it in halves and in quarters and moved to pitch the bits into the spittoon at his feet; then he changed his mind and put them in his pocket, all the while staring bleakly at the surface of his desk. When he touched the white handkerchief peeping from his breast pocket, Ed chuckled.

"That was quick. What was in your note?"

"A man's name," Axel said. "A man who's a great friend of Alfalfa Bob. He didn't know that I knew that. But now he does."

"An inconvenient friend," Ed said.

"Very inconvenient."

"No speech then," Ed said.

"No speech," Axel said. "We can go now."

"You make a bad enemy, Axel."

"I look after my friends," Axel said. "Jimmy Longfellow's a friend. The Man in the White House, he's a friend, too. So if I can make a difference by writing a note, I write the note."

"And they're grateful," Ed said.

"They'll never know. What they will know is that I said I'd help Jimmy and I did, no broken dishes, no commotion. No tie to
them,
do you see? That's the way to do things, if you can afford to."

"Like the bank," Ed said. "But we've never done anything like that."

"Fact is," Axel said, "you'd be saving the taxpayers money. If you set up the bank as a proprietary, and got serious people to run it, you'd make money as a matter of course. You'd make money the way Morgan's makes money.
You'd make a profit on the legitimate operations,
real estate in the beginning, other investments later. So we'd have our own funds, for the contingencies, the usual unforeseen emergencies, and so forth and so on. Given the uncertain and illiquid world we live in."

"It would be self-sustaining then," Ed said.

"More or less, yes. In part. In a manner of speaking. With serious people in charge, people who have your confidence. People who understand banking. And you've got them, too. You know who they are."

"Who are the other partners?"

"Various Longfellows."

"And you think they'd sell?"

"If the price was right," Axel said. "If we promised to keep the name."

Ed smiled. "Do we promise to keep the in-laws and the cousins and the nephews and the godsons also?"

"There are one or two that we would want to keep."

"The smart ones," Ed said.

"Not necessarily," Axel replied. "Do you want me to look into it?"

"Do," Ed said after a moment. "Of course—you'd want to keep your stake."

"Of course," Axel said.

"And there's no conflict there," Ed said.

"Why would there be a conflict? Where do my interests conflict with the government's interests? If I can be helpful to my government's intelligence service, why shouldn't I be helpful? It's symmetrical, Ed. There's no conflict."

"I imagine you have a man at Longfellow's. Someone who looks after your interest."

Axel said, "You know him. He worked for us in the old days. Carl Buzet."

"Carl Buzet," Ed said. "I know the name but I can't place it."

"He worked for Harold Grendall," Axel said. "He was Harold's paymaster. Carl Buzet managed the accounts and managed them well. They were difficult accounts. He's thorough and has a head for figures. Not for much else."

Ed Peralta was staring into the middle distance, his eyes half-closed. "Wasn't Carl Buzet in some trouble?"

"Nothing serious," Axel said.

"No, I remember distinctly. There was some trouble."

"He had a divorce," Axel said.

"An ugly one," Ed said. "His wife was unpleasant."

"She was Czech."

"She hated Carl because he was a Jew."

"Carl loved her," Axel said. "God knows why."

"She went with other men."

"That's right, Ed."

"I remember it now. He shot one of them."

"It was an accident,' Axel said.

"He shot him in the face," Ed said.

"Drop it, Ed."

"And you're satisfied with Carl?"

"Very," Axel said.

"All right," Ed said. "He's your headache."

"That's correct," Axel said.

On the floor, the president pro tem banged his gavel. Ed said, "I've got to be getting back."

"I'll make the necessary inquiries into Longfellow's."

"Can we discuss it at lunch on Wednesday? I want Harold and Lloyd on board."

"Of course," Axel said. Then he put his hand on Ed's arm. "I think they're about to vote on Jimmy's nomination."

"Without a debate?"

"Looks like it," Axel said.

"Where's your man? I don't see him."

"Alfalfa Bob left the chamber a moment ago," Axel said. "He yielded back the balance of his time."

A moment later James T.C. Longfellow became ambassador to the Republic of Portugal, by a voice vote.

They were friends from OSS days, now back in government and happy to assemble once a week at Echo House to discuss the situation in their beloved Europe, miserable and worsening. They gathered in the dining room below the forbidding portraits of Adolph Behl and his whiskered father, and Constance in an unlikely blue gown, a brooch at her throat, diamonds circling her wrists, an ardent smile on her powdered face. She could be said to preside at these weekly luncheons, peering severely over Axel's right shoulder; and "meeting" would be a more accurate word, since the food was indifferent and merely an accessory to the conversation. Carafes of wine rested here and there on the wide table. Axel used his best crystal and china and saw to it that each man had an ashtray and a silver cup of cigarettes. Various Cognacs and eaux de vie waited on a side table. If the day was warm, the windows were thrown open to the weather, bright belts of yellow sunlight lashing the table, the room redolent of Behlbaver roses and freshly mown grass. These arrangements never varied, except if the weather was foul, when the windows were closed and the sconces lit, making the room as faded and cheerless as a barracks.

Mrs. Johnson retreated as soon as lunch was served. Axel sat at the head of the wide table, flanked left and right by Ed Peralta and Harold Grendall. Lloyd Fisher was next to Harold and André Przyborski was next to Ed. André was one of the many Polish patriots who had emigrated to America rather than remain in London or return to the tortured continent, overrun with Reds and their surrogates. André received his paycheck from a Chicago congressman, on whose staff he was listed as legislative liaison.

The first part of the lunch was always concerned with personalities, the latest rumors about the evenings of poker and bourbon at the White House and who was up and who was down at the State Department and the various military services, and the implications for the budget. The weather was fine this noontime and the talk relaxed—until Axel made a remark about the
Iliad,
his current bedtime reading, war as a contagion, war begetting war, war so total and pervasive and strenuous and intoxicating that no combatant could remember how or why it began and could foresee no end. War was life's constant, as reliable as the tide tables. Peace was out of the question, not on the table, given the determination of the Adversary and the incomplete memories of everyone else.

The men nodded grimly and agreed that the West was in for a long winter, one that would last for decades, a modern ice age. The trolls were gathering under the bridges of Europe, Ed Peralta said, remembering the story he had read to his six-year-old the previous evening. The old windbag Bernard Baruch had coined a useful term only the other day: Cold War. Cold War benefited the Reds because Cold War was war in the shadows, war under the skin, a war for souls, a war of feint and duplicity that suited a dictatorship, where there were no legislatures or courts of law, no free press, and if you spoke your mind they sent you to Siberia.

No public opinion, Harold Grendall said.

Plenty of public opinion, Ed Peralta corrected. You just can't say it out loud.

They want democracy, Harold said.

They like democracy, all right, Ed said. They're not opposed to it. They want the right to vote and the rule of law and the right to travel and speak up and read the books that interest them. They'd like a chicken in every pot. They'd like to own a car and watch a soccer match on Sundays and enjoy some vodka with their meals. They just don't like capitalism.

Ed Peralta observed that he had not read the
Iliad
since college and now he had no time to read anything at all, except reports from his men in the field. The reports made your hair stand on end, the organizational skills of the Kremlin were formidable, and terror had as much to do with it as money. They're disciplined people and they know what they want. There were Red cells in every government in Western Europe, with new ones added every day, led by some of the best educated men on that side of the ocean, men who
believed.
Some of them were like the early Christian mystics talking about the divinity of Christ and the Virgin and the pervasiveness of the spirit of God, an inescapable spirit that one day would transform the world. They've seen the socialist system, they know what it does, and still they believe.