The Second Saladin (29 page)

“We better get out of here,
patrón,”
Roberto said.

“Who is this crazy American anyhow?”

“He just showed up one night. Asking questions. His friend got killed. At your place. Oscar’s place, now. He fired me. He fired all your old people. He’s a big man.”

“I’ll throw him in the sewer one day, you’ll see.”

“Can’t you shut up? I mean,” Trewitt bellowed in moral outrage, “
just shut up!”
in English.

Ramirez looked over at the trembling American, then at Miguel.

“Who’s this kid?” he asked.

“Just some little snotnose with the American.”

“We better get out of here,” said Miguel.

“At least he’s making some sense,” said Ramirez. “You got a car, Roberto?”

“Yes,
patrón
. The gringo’s. How do you feel?”

“Those whoresons hit my face pretty hard. And my chest is on fire. But I don’t feel as bad as the Madonna. Jesus,” he called to the corpse, “Ugly Woman, you saved my life.” He turned back to Roberto. “I never seen such an ugly woman. Ohhhh! Ugly!”

Roberto led Trewitt to the car. Trewitt sat in back, groggily. He still held the pistol in his hand.

“Somebody better take that pistol,” Ramirez said, “before the American shoots somebody else.”

The gun was pried from Trewitt’s fingers.

They all got in and Roberto began to drive down the
twisting hilly road. Twice he hit garbage cans and he killed a chicken and just missed some kids.

“Where to?” Roberto asked.

“Ask the American
patrón
here, the American boss,” said Ramirez.

“Oh, Christ,” said Trewitt, whose mind was too fogged to bother with the Spanish, “don’t ask me.”

Y
ost Ver Steeg would catch Ulu Beg in Dayton and be the hero. Yost! So hard for Miles to see him in a heroic light—or in any light.

Miles nursed his grudge bitterly, and under careful tending it became a fearsome thing, providing him huge amounts of energy. He hated them all: Yost and his chum Sam, Harvard buddies, watching out for and helping each other, without regard for him; and on the other side, Chardy, from another tribe altogether, jock, all heat and rage and power, who wouldn’t even see the slight Miles, he was so busy gazing into the mirror admiring his own heroism.

Miles hated them, but this turn of events had its curious benefits. First, he was amazed at how totally Yost had committed to Dayton. A slipup could spell massive disaster; then bye-bye Yost, and there’d be nothing Sam could do to help. But, secondly, Yost’s absence had a positive side: it gave Miles a taste of responsibility. Back in Rosslyn, people now reported to him. Sullen Chardy, though that was worthless. But others too, though they clearly didn’t enjoy it. Miles didn’t care what they enjoyed.

The wizard, for one, who’d come down from Boston for the day with reports on the surveillance of Johanna,
and was astonished to find Ver Steeg gone. He sat in the office now, eyeing Miles uncomfortably, as Miles paged through the transcripts.

“I’ve marked the potentially significant ones,” the wizard said.

“Fine,” Lanahan said abstractedly. The exchanges were so boring, so banal. He tried to act them out in his head.

But he could not bring them to life. They lay beyond his capacity to imagine, his realm of interest.

“She’s not cheating on him, shaking up on the side, anything like that?”

“Uh-uh,” the wizard said. “Or if she is, the phone transcripts don’t show it. Look at May twenty-sixth.”

Lanahan found it.

“Who is this guy?”

“A boyfriend. An ex-boyfriend.”

Lanahan read:

Lanahan smiled. This David wanted Chardy out of the picture and himself into her bed, that’s what he wanted. “I just want you to be happy.” Lanahan shook his head again.

At twenty-eight, he was as cynical as a Roman whore. In all human behavior he recognized but two motives: What’s in it for
me?
And, what can I keep
you
from getting?

“So she’s clean? She’s okay?”

The wizard backed off immediately. He was an older man, plateaued out, stuck in Technical Services. He’d go nowhere, he’d been nowhere. He swallowed, a little uncomfortable on Lanahan’s spot.

“I just record it,” he said. “I don’t judge it. That’s for the analysts.”

“But you’re an old pro, Phil,” he said. He thought the name was Phil. “You’ve been around. Off the record. She’s clean. Come on. For me.”

The wizard tried a joke. “You’re not recording
me
, are you?”

Lanahan laughed. But yes, in a sense, he
was
recording him, if only in his head for possible future use.

“Of course not, Phil.”

“It’s Jay, Miles. But she’s clean. Or she’s got an operation going that’s so deep cover even
she
don’t know about it.”

He offered another smile, but Lanahan didn’t respond, noting the grammatical error under stress, figuring the man’s true origins had just shown. Working class, just like me. Only he stayed there; I transcended.

“How about visual surveillance?”

“It’s way off. He cut us way back. Mr. Ver Steeg.”

“He wanted people to take to Dayton with him,” said Lanahan.

“I stop by the house every third or fourth night and pick up the tapes. Then I have a girl transcribe it.”

“But there could be up to a three- or four-day lag?”

“That’s right, Miles. It’s the way he wanted it.”

“He smells the Kurd in Dayton,” said Lanahan. “He smells a deputy directorship.”

He scanned routinely through the transcript, seeing nothing beyond the mundane.

“Okay, well—” he halted.

He looked again, more closely.

Goddamn! he thought.

“You see this?”

“Huh?” The wizard rushed over, transfixed in the terror of having made a big mistake.

“Oh,
that,”
he said with relief, “sure, I
saw
it”—he had to make that point—“but I didn’t see anything in it.” He laughed. “So Chardy’s nephew in Mexico needs a few bucks? It didn’t seem to me—”

“No, you’re right.” Lanahan had always known how to lie smoothly. “Look, give me a few more minutes with this stuff, okay?”

“Sure, Miles,” he said, and left.

Lanahan leaned back in the immensity of his victory. A great excitement raced through his limbs.

What was his next step?

Tell Ver Steeg?

No, the hell with Ver Steeg. Tell Melman? Go straight to Melman, secret lord in all this? Should he go straight to Sam, who already liked him? His imagination inflamed suddenly. Here was a ticket up another step. Up,
up!
Briefly he saw himself on the deputy director level by thirty.
Thirty!
Youngest in history by seven years (he’d once checked) and the only Catholic to have risen that high. The image pleased him. He toyed with it, turned it in his mind, savoring its hues. He was not given to daydreams except on the topic of his own career, whose secret rhythm and contour he loved. He saw himself with power, prestige, respect.

He picked up the safe phone to call Melman.

“Operations.”

“DD’s office, please.”

“One second.”

“DD’s office.”

“This is Miles Lanahan. His Eminence available?”

“He’s on another line. Can you hold?”

“Yes, I can,” remembering her vaguely as a severe single woman.

In the dead silence of hold, he turned it over in his mind.

Trewitt alive in Mexico. Chardy was running him.

What the hell did it mean? First, he was amazed. Chardy that devious? Chardy, sour, touchy jock, cowboy, sap for women? What could he be up to? What game is this?

Lanahan turned it over and over.

Was Chardy working on his own? Did he have secret communications, connections, links? Or could the whole thing be innocent?

Nothing was innocent. Ever.

Could Trewitt have set Speight up?

Could Chardy be working for the Russians?

This idea did not disgust him at all; in fact, it thrilled him. It filled him with wonder and amazement, almost awe. God, could he go to town on that! Jesus, he could build an empire off that. The guy who had nailed Philby had eaten free lunches off it for years.

Miles considered it more carefully. The Russians had had the guy for a week, worked him over bad. In fact, had cracked him wide open, had turned him inside out, the clear implication of the Melman report. Then the Agency had tossed him out.

And maybe in his seven long years of exile he’d hardened and bittered. Perhaps he’d come to hate those who let him languish in that cell in Baghdad, while the Russians worked him over. What did he expect, an airborne assault to free just one man? Chardy just wasn’t being realistic, a common flaw among cowboy types. But in his exile, his bitterness, he’d come to hate his own people. Lanahan could understand the psychology of it: he was another outsider, with the stink of dark churches and novenas and holy mumbling about him, and was short and splotchy and damp and unlovable, and the patricians who ran the agency would always look upon him with distaste. Lanahan could imagine Chardy, among those kids, at that bleak school, surrounded by crucifixes of the faith that had failed him in the clinch, turning blacker and blacker by degrees until the only conceivable course would be betrayal, treachery….

And in a flash Lanahan saw the end game: the Russians would set up the Kurd for Chardy, who’d blow him away. He’d be a hero again, the resurrected man, would be readmitted to the inner circle, on the way up again. Giving the Russians what they’d always wanted, what they’d never been able to get, a man up high on the inside.

Lanahan’s heart thumped.

“Melman.”

“Ah. Oh, Sam.”

“Yes, what is it, Miles?” Melman’s voice was crisp and driving and its suddenness scattered Lanahan’s thoughts.

“Ah,” he fumbled, “did those reports of the security setups for Boston reach you, Sam?”

“Yes, they did. Just this morning.”

“I was just checking. I wasn’t sure if Yost had sent them on before he left.”

“Yes, it’s here, it looks good.”

“Is there anything from Dayton yet?”

“They have several reported sightings. The reports I get are optimistic. He’s got the bus stations, the railway stations, all of it closed up.”

“Good.”

“Incidentally, how’s Chardy doing?”
Tell him
, he thought.

“Complains a lot. Wanted to go to Dayton.”

“That sounds like Chardy.”

“He sits around over there at Danzig’s just like you wanted.”

“Good. That’s where he’s needed.”

“I’ll see that he stays there.”

“You’re running things in Boston?”

“Yessir. It’s only a weekend thing. Up Friday night, back Sunday morning. No sweat. I’ve got Boston PD cooperation, I’ve hired some private people. Everybody involved is cooperating.”

“It sounds good, Miles. I’m sure you’ll do well.”

“Thank you, Sam,” Lanahan said. Tell him.
Tell him
.

“Was there anything else?”

“… No.”

The line clicked dead.

Now why hadn’t he said a thing?

I didn’t have enough dope. But in subtle issues like these there’s never enough dope.

Because even now I can’t believe such deviousness in Chardy?

Perhaps.

Because something was wrong? Somewhere, deep inside, Lanahan was puzzled. Something was wrong and he didn’t know what to do about it.

C
hardy knew it was a bad idea but he couldn’t help himself. He was so close and Danzig was in his room safely, snoozing away on creamy Ritz sheets, and he told her he’d try to make it and the cabby smiled when he said Cambridge and now here he was, $8 the poorer, heading up the walk of the hulking old house. He buzzed in the foyer and she let him in and he bounded up the dark stairs with energy that seemed to arrive in greater amounts the nearer he got. He plunged down the old house’s hall, not caring that he thundered along like a fullback, and saw her door open.

“You made it,” she called.

“Even Danzig sleeps. He’s got a busy day tomorrow. He checked in early.”

He embraced her; they kissed in the doorway. “I’m so glad.”

“Jesus, I’m beat, Johanna, I’m so
old
. Look at me, an old man; I can’t take this running around.”

He went inside. He could see that she’d been working on her book at the typewriter, where books and manuscript pages were collected. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer can and popped the top. He swilled
half of it down, then paused long enough to shed his jacket and fling it to the couch.

“A pistol?”

“They want me to carry it. Johanna, how are you? You’ve been working, I see. Did you get a lot done on the book? I want to read it. I bet it’s good. I bet it wins prizes. Let’s just sit and talk like we’ve been married for fifteen years and bore each other to death. Come on, tell me everything. Tell me everything you’ve stored up. It’s—”

“Paul, that gun really bothers me.”

He realized suddenly she was upset. It hadn’t occurred to him; he’d been full of his own joy at seeing her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize they bothered you. Let me dump it someplace.”