Echo House (18 page)

Axel sat in the Adirondack chair under the big elm, tapping his cane on the toe of his shoe and watching two robins chase each other on the croquet court; and while he sweated in the humid electrical atmosphere and watched the birds cavort he thought about what had been said over the vichyssoise and cold chicken—Ed Peralta's enthusiasm, Harold Grendall's caution, André Przyborski's passion, Lloyd Fisher's cynicism. In their personalities they resembled the nations of Western Europe and were just as competitive, except for Lloyd, who was on the margin now and knew it. Lloyd was Switzerland, an inconvenient country that no one would think to visit, but a country with certain advantages of distance and discretion. Lloyd wanted to stay in the game and would meet any ante required, even as he knew that the deck would be cooked and the deal irregular; that was part of its appeal. Llovd was very brave and very able, and one of the best interrogators they had; a shame to lose such a man to a city as transparent as Chicago. But there were ways and means to keep Lloyd active.

Axel removed his coat and loosened his tie and lit a cigar, blowing a thick smoke ring in the direction of the robins. The heavy air carried it away intact and then it slowly broke apart. The city was lethargic, owing to its Southern climate, its torpor reflected in the Senate and elsewhere. The country would be a different country if its capital were located in Boston, San Francisco, or Chicago, brawling immigrant cities quick to lose patience, quick to anger, quick to act, quick to claim credit and demand their rightful place in the scheme of things. In Washington a man was wise to seek the shade, to dwell in the dark seven-eighths that supported the sunny eighth. The hard, dangerous work went on in the shadows. That was where it belonged, away from public view, because so much could be misunderstood. Europeans knew this instinctively, ingeniously concealing their fortunes and the influence that went with them. Your reward and consolation was knowing that the work was thrilling and of consequence. The darker the shadows, the more consoling and rewarding it was.

The United States faced an emergency. That was the simple fact, and Axel was prepared to intervene as the Rothschilds had done in Denmark and France and Britain and Austria and Italy, at various times and for various reasons. Fundamental to all the reasons was equilibrium, statecraft's golden mean. Naturally this assistance could never be eleemosynary; you made a profit so that you could live to intervene again. You could collect wine or old masters or butterflies or women, but your reputation would rest on your service to the nation. This much was also true: you bought yourself a measure of safety.

Axel and Carl Buzet moved rapidly and by the end of the year Longfellow's had doubled its assets and expanded rapidly overseas. Axel's lawyers had devised a corporate structure with one board of directors and one set of books for the American bank and another board of directors and another set of books for its European subsidiary. An asset on one set of books might be a liability on the other. It was not clear whether the American bank owned the European bank or vice versa; it was very clear that the European bank acted on behalf of private clients whose identities could not be disclosed for reasons of confidentiality. A dedicated investigator with subpoena power, unlimited funds, and a sly turn of mind could follow a paper trail to a Delaware concern, American Summit, Incorporated, which listed as its assets a portfolio of blue chip securities along with a partnership, Group ABCB, Axel Behl chairman, Carl Buzet president.

Axel now had four rooms on the top floor of the building at Farragut Square. He was careful to stay current with the bank's many footings but took no part in operations except to answer an occasional inquiry from the Treasury and (once) from the Internal Revenue Service. Now and then he personally undertook missions of particular subtlety, payments to a finance minister, army general, parliamentarian, trade union official, or newspaper publisher. Axel was in no way formally affiliated with the American government, merely a knowledgeable and public-spirited citizen troubled by the issues of collective security—he called it "equilibrium." And weren't the scales balanced by a kind of benign socialism, indistinguishable in important respects from American capitalism? In other words, European wine in American bottles.

So it was only a matter of time before the wretched Committee on Un-American Activities was looking into his affairs: who was Axel Behl anyway and who were his sponsors? He ran in the same Georgetown crowd that included Alger Hiss. His former wife was a nutcase; and her father gave money to dubious causes. When you asked Axe. Behl what he did, he said "investor" and dared you to contradict him ... This was one of the unfortunate consequences of exaggerating the enemy's evil. You were obliged to exaggerate your own virtues as well. To counter the enemy's fiendish subversion, you wielded a blunt instrument of righteousness. And then you got a congressional committee of yahoos with subpoena power and God on their side. Too bad you couldn't leave it in the hands of professionals, but that wasn't the way the system worked; you needed money, so you went through the appropriations process, and testimony leaked in unpredictable ways. If only, Axel thought. If only they weren't so god damned dumb. They weren't dumb in his father's day.

Returning to his office each day after lunch, Axel placed a telephone call to Carl Buzet, then leafed through his messages. They were his link to the world and he always returned them in order of receipt; no exceptions, not even the President. He swiveled his chair so that he could see out the big window into Farragut Square, talking into the telephone while he watched people go about their ordinary business, hurrying to a doctor's appointment, waiting for a bus, buying a hat. His conversations on the telephone affected them mightily, usually in ways they would never understand. So Axel observed them carefully as they hurried or strolled, looking into store windows while they waited for the light to change. At these moments, seated behind his father's old desk, disposing of the messages, Axel thought of himself as a builder of bridges.

He saw his chores literally as bridges, elaborate spans of iron and cable soaring into the sky as gracefully as a hawk in flight. A bridge took you from one frontier to another. Axel identified with the agile and imperturbable New York Indians, the Mohawk who balanced on the footwide beams, a thousand feet to the treacherous river below, ambling with perfect equilibrium or swinging lazily in the iron basket held by ropes and pulleys, placing the rivets just so, welding them into place, scratching your own signature on the underside of the beam where no one would ever see it. Such work called for more than brawn and an inactive imagination. It called for strength of character and the sort of nerves that were wired into the genes, not learned or acquired but present from birth. Such men were not afraid to look down but seldom bothered, because their eyes were fixed on the work at hand and when their attention wandered they looked skyward to the heavens.
Ad astra per aspera.

Their work was done in the clouds, hidden from view. Who noticed the Mohawk balanced on the topmost beam, his hands at his side and his face washed of all expression? No one. No one on the ground could see him, and if by the merest chance they caught a fleeting glimpse, looked up from the traffic light or the hats in the store window, they turned away terrified and faint-hearted at the prospect of an accident owing to the wind or a sudden tremor or a misstep or moment of confusion. If you were successful, your labor and the elegance with which you went about it were noticed only by your fellow aerialists, those who shared the heights. The danger was a given. And the danger was not the point. The bridge was the point, and the applause, when it came, would never be heard by the spectators below. That was its value.

E
LECTION NIGHT
in the governor's mansion. Each campaign was unique, and each died on election night. Axel prowled listlessly from room to room, observing the last hours of their civilization. Phoenicia or Pompeii before the eruption. He had been on the telephone all day, calling friends in a dozen states, the question always the same: What do you know? And the excited answer: the vote was heavy everywhere, all states, all regions. The mood in the mansion was cautious, everyone prepared for defeat, accepting and allowing for it while retaining the knowledge that the country was very large and often erratic. No one knew what voters would do in the privacy of the booth because voting was never truly private. People walked into their polling places with a multitude of voices competing for attention. Vote your heart, vote your wallet, vote your hopes, vote your fears, honor thy father.

Confounding experts is the national sport, Lloyd Fisher was saying. Let's wait for the hard numbers. Remember 1948. "What do you think, Axel?"

They turned to him, the scarred square-faced man in the double-breasted suit, the deep-voiced one who was always so direct, dark eyes unreadable under black brows, huge hands resting atop
his cane.
Everyone knew stories about Axel Behl, but Axel was silent now because his thoughts were private. He wanted to remind them that they were all fish swept along in the same current. The current came from the past and flowed into the future. You did not choose the current. Adlai was unlucky because he was forced to struggle against it, while the general was able to give himself over to it until at last they were indistinguishable, the general and the current.

"I don't believe in experts," a young woman threw in.

"Very sensible," Lloyd said. "What do you believe in?"

"That it will be a long night and the Guv will win because—he has to. He must. Do you think it will be a long night, Mr. Behl?"

"No," Axel said. "I don't think I do."

"Axel's our Gloom) Gus," Lloyd said. "It's because he lives in Washington and doesn't get around the country much. He can't listen to the heartbeat of the nation. We'll see about it, when the hard numbers come in. Connecticut should be any time now."

Axel listened to Lloyd a moment longer, then turned away. Nervous chatter bored him and he could not shake the blues. The girl was exceptionally pretty, though, with a complexion by Renoir and a body to match. She did not seem attached to anyone but was entirely at ease in their company, leaning forward now and laughing at something Lloyd said; so perhaps she belonged to him. Leaning heavily on his cane, Axel limped into the empty study off the living room and eased himself into the big armchair by the window. The Lincoln Hotel was only a block away, and he sourly imagined the scene in the bar, Republicans celebrating twice over—Ike would be in Washington and Adlai out of Springfield.

He watched a car pause in the street, the occupants peering up at the mansion. And then a hound began to howl outside, a specific domestic interruption signaling that ordinary life went on after all; it went on willy-nilly despite a presidential election. The howling ceased abruptly and then, faintly from the next room, Axel heard a commotion and the young woman's nasal Racquet Club voice,
Oh my Chroist.
Hard numbers at last, Axel thought, and from the sound of things they were not encouraging.

He was content waiting in the study for Alec, due any moment from the airport. The boy hadn't wanted to come, pleading football practice, pleading overdue papers and general midterm funk, but Axel insisted. One day this would be his son's world, too, and it was necessary that he know the moral architecture of things, Washington and Springfield along with Pompeii and Phoenicia. This was knowledge that did not come from books. On the whole, defeat taught harder and more durable lessons than victory—no matter how fond you were of the loser, and he loved Adlai Stevenson like a brother. But that was personal and you had to put it to one side in order to see things whole, the volcano, the drought, the plague, the mystery of the current. The most he could do for his son was introduce him to public life so that he could see things at first hand. You had to know what was real before you could identify the propaganda. You had to know how men talked to one another, and then you could begin to understand why one man reacted one way and another man another way to good news or bad. You tested a wooden nickel with your teeth, and character the same way. So he had arranged for the Cessna and told Alec to be on it.

Axel watched his son alight from the cab and reach in to pay the driver, explaining something with an embarrassed turn of his shoulders; no doubt an explanation why he was visiting the governor this night of all nights. Alec was tall, all sinewy arms and legs, dressed in gray flannel trousers and a tweed sports jacket, no topcoat even though it was cold. His face was as transparent as glass, his emotions instantly readable—boredom, anger, elation. The hound had begun to howl again, and Alec looked around him, patting his knee. When the dog didn't come, he gave it the finger, picked up his duffel, and walked up the sloping driveway to the entrance of the mansion. Axel heaved himself to his feet and walked to the top of the stairs.

He said, "Nothing solid yet."

"Is he going to win?"

"I don't know," Axel said. "I don't think so. How was your flight?"

"All right," Alec said. But he had found it unsettling, trying to read his history text and looking down every few minutes to watch America slip past, the land in places so worn and monotonous that it seemed stationary. Once past the Hudson River there were no landmarks and he realized he could be flying anywhere. He had no interest in this part of the country and did not imagine it as different from any other part. The terrain resembled the average middle-aged face, wrinkled rivers here, knobs and bald spots there, eye-shaped ponds. Alec had no interest in travel, believing that his parents had done all the traveling that needed to be done in one American family.

"How did you like the plane?"

"It bounced around a lot."

Then the governor was in the room, smiling, shaking hands, accepting praise for the campaign he had waged. The news from Hartford was bad, but Bridgeport was still to come. Be of good spirit. The governor made his slow transit of the room, exuding a host's warmth. His bald head reflected the glare of the electric lights and he looked much older than his pictures. He had a private word with Axel, speaking in a voice so low it could not be heard two feet away, giving a little weary shrug at the end of it. Axel gripped the governor's elbow in a rush of emotion. Tears jumped to his eyes and his voice was gruff as he introduced Alec. The governor asked after Sylvia, remarking that he had not seen her in many years. Alec thought the governor had an actor's mobile face, soft now from exhaustion. Give her my best when you see her, the governor said. Is she still writing? He took time to ask Alec what he was studying in college and what he intended to do when he graduated.