The Second Saladin (48 page)

In the train tunnel there was a walkway, gated off from the platform with a N
o
T
RESPASSING
sign. Ulu Beg climbed quickly over it and began to walk the catwalk along the tracks into the tunnel. The darkness swallowed him. A few lights blinked ahead. He reached a metal door set in the wall. It said, 102 E
LEVATOR
.

It was padlocked. He removed the key from his pocket and opened the lock. He stepped into the corridor, found the ladder, and began to climb down to the tunnel.

Keeping the Ingram securely wrapped in his jacket, Chardy walked for a block or two until he was sure he had lost Leo Bennis. Then, certain, he stepped again into the busy street to snag a cab. He stood in the brown light until one at last halted for him.

He climbed in.

“Where to?”

Chardy had a great advantage over Leo Bennis and the others of the Bureau in the matter of Danzig’s destination.
He knew now the secret of it. Since the object of the Russian operation was to protect the identity of a highly placed CIA officer working for them, it followed that the Russians operating in Washington did so with the special benefit of this man’s knowledge. In short, they would be aware of and could take advantage of CIA arrangements.

So Chardy did not have to penetrate the Russian mind, on which he was no expert, but only to consult his own memory. He knew, for example, of five crash safe-houses, in the jargon, where an agent in trouble might head for safety if a D.C.-based operation went badly wrong. He reasoned that if the Russians wanted to lure Danzig into circumstances where the killing could be accomplished with a minimum of interference, a maximum of control, then certainly they would select one of the five.

But which?

Two were houses—old estates out in NW, spots private enough, except that both were heavily wired with recording devices so that nothing could transpire without leaving its traces. Clearly no good here.

Of the remaining three sites, one again was a sure no-go: the basement of a strip bar in the smutty Fourteenth Street area—its purpose was to offer refuge to an agent should some sex-related burn blow up in his face and necessitate a place to hide from the cops fast. But Fourteenth Street would be jammed with Johns and hustlers this time of night.

This left, really, only two choices.

The first was an apartment on Capitol Hill—but chancy, chancy: the Hill always had lots of people roaring around, and this was a Saturday night anyway, party night up there, with horny aides and pretty women and drunken congressmen all over the place.

It was a possibility. The apartment was on an out-of-the-way street and had a separate entrance—but …

“Where to,
mister?”
the cabby said again.

The last possibility was the fourth level, the lowest, of the parking lot under Kennedy Center. It was a deserted arena, unwired, with three or four no-visibility approaches, reserved for VIPs so they wouldn’t have to mingle with the common people. He knew that even six years ago when they were building the Metro system there’d been a plan to run a tunnel from the Foggy Bottom Station a half-mile down New Hampshire Avenue through to the fourth level.

Chardy looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. “Kennedy Center,” he said.

“You must be wrong, mister,” said the cabby. “It’s dark by now. The shows are all over. It’s all closed down.”

“I think I’ll go anyway, if you don’t mind,” said Chardy. He could feel the cool grip of the machine pistol under the coat. His show was just about to begin.

It was a short directory. The codes fled by Miles’s eyes in a green blur. Suddenly he hit an end.

No Mo
, the machine said: no more.

He went uneasily up through what he’d already slid down through. It was all nonsense, random letter groupings.

ABR………2395873

TYW………3478230

Codes, all codes, letters and numbers, in all maybe fifty of them. He could call each one up and see what it said, but that would take hours.

One of them meant something.

Twice, security monitors had wandered by to peer at him.

Miles stared at the letters. It was gibberish. He was guessing.

He hunted for a
shoe
of some sort in the three letter groupings—a SHO or a SHU or even another HSU.

Yet there wasn’t any.

He stared blankly at the letters.

Come on, think, he told himself. Frenchy wants it found, wants Paul to find it. He tried to guess how Frenchy might have gamed it out. Frenchy was off on a job that involved the betrayal of his oldest friend, his brother of a hundred narrow scrapes. Frenchy for some reason felt he
had
to do it; the offer was too good to say no to. Frenchy was getting old; he was worried about losing his job, about ending up on the outside at fifty with no marketable skills, no resume, no anything. So, yes, he’d sell Chardy out. But the loathing, the guilt, must have chewed him up. So he decides to hedge his bet. Chardy at least deserves that. He passes to Chardy the clue that will bring him here, to this chair, to look at this directory. It’s a funny thing to do, isn’t it? Or is it? Chardy had said only, “It’s a thing an old agent would do.” What did he mean? Then Lanahan knew what he meant: if Frenchy got fouled up on this job, if the job came apart, and Frenchy with it, knowing that he’d left his message back home for Paul would be helpful. To Paul? Not really. To Frenchy. It would help him die.

Lanahan saw now how Frenchy had doped it out. It was a way to face the chopper with some measure of peace.

He wants you to find it! He wants you to find it!

His eyes scanned the letters.

BDY………578309

BBB………580093

REQ………230958

Come on, Miles thought, come on! He felt his limbs boil with a tremendous restlessness. He wanted to walk, to run. If only he could get a drink of water.

Shoe? Would Frenchy stick with the shoe gimmick? It had gotten him this far, hadn’t it? Or would Frenchy have switched to something else?

Think, think!

Frenchy wants it found. Frenchy Short, all those years ago, sick with grief at what he’s about to do, probably not understanding it all himself, but imagining reaching out to Chardy with this last gift, this expiation.

Was Frenchy Catholic? He certainly had the Catholic sense of guilt, binding and cruel, and the huge need to confess.

Lanahan was Frenchy’s confessor. He sat in a dark booth and listened to Frenchy through the screen.

Forgive me, Miles, for I have sinned.

Make a contrition, son. Confess your sins.

Yes, Father, I will say a hundred Hail Marys.

No. Tell us your secrets. Your deepest, your darkest secrets.

But Lanahan drew back. He was no priest. He was an ex-computer analyst who’d bluffed his way into the pit and was trying to dig out a traitor.

Maybe I ought to say a hundred Hail Marys, he thought, for he had no other plan.

He looked at the codes.

Frenchy wants Paul to see something. Frenchy has planned it so that Paul will look at this list of letters and see something. Yet what? There are no words, for if there
were words,
anybody
could see them and Frenchy’s worked it out so that only Paul can see them.

What is there about Paul that’s unique? What would give Chardy an advantage, looking through this list of codes? What would Chardy see that no other man would?

He felt he was getting close. He sat back, tried to concentrate on Chardy, call up and examine his components. Chardy, hero, special-operations cowboy, toting guns and gear around the dusty corners of the world. Chardy, athlete, banging through jump shots and driving lay-ups. Chardy, fool, cuckolded and used cruelly by a woman. Chardy, suicide, tendencies toward self-destruction. Chardy, Chicago boy, coming off the same streets Miles came off of, attending the same parochial schools, going to the same churches. Chardy, Irishman, moody and sulky and brutal. Chard—

Then Miles had it.

Danzig stood at the bottom of the stairwell. He opened the door and looked into the parking garage and felt a sudden, suffocating loss of confidence. Enormous weight seemed to crush down on him; he could not breathe and just for a moment he thought he might be having a heart attack.

Yet it passed. Still, he felt almost physically ill with fear, in a blasphemed place. He could not go back; he was terrified to go forward. He could feel the sweat damp and heavy in his shirt and was aware with what great difficulty the air came into his lungs. At last he stepped through the final door.

It was so simple. Frenchy, you’re smart. No matter what you did, Frenchy, no matter what you became in your weakness, let no man ever say you are not smart.

What would Chardy see that no other man would?

Chardy would see Hungarian. Chardy was half-Hungarian and had grown up with a mad Hungarian doctor for a father, a raving anticommunist with a failed practice and a one-bedroom apartment on the North Side of Chicago.

Lanahan swiftly ended the directory. He looked behind him, down the rows of cubicles in the dark space. At last he saw a free machine on a different system. He rose, walked through the darkness to it. He could hear the other operators clicking away, each sealed into his machine, each fighting his private little war.

Miles sat at the empty machine, which was linked into a different computer system, and quickly punched:

Fe Lan

There rose before him a language directory. He filed down through the listings until he reached HUNG.

Fe Hung
, he ordered.

A concise word-list and phrase catalogue of Hungarian—placed in the machine’s memory in case an analyst who didn’t speak the language came across a word in it and needed translation fast—sailed up before Lanahan. He looked at it quickly, then clicked the machine off.

He walked back to his own terminal. Why did he feel he was being observed?

He was so close now; if he could just bluff it through another two or three minutes.

He sat back at his own terminal, called up the SHU directory and looked again at the code groupings.

Fe Egy
, Miles ordered.

Egy:
one.

Another directory rose.

Miles glanced through it until he found the proper code.

Fe Ketto
, he ordered.

Fetch two.

Another directory.

Fe Harom

Another.

Fe Negy

Another.

FE OT

One, two, three, four, five. He was in the fifth directory now. Where would it end? He was within a directory within a directory within a directory within a directory within a directory. Was this a Möbius strip of a code, an Escher drawing of a code, that would go on forever, twisty and clever?

The screen went blank.

The machine stared at him, mutely stupid.

Long moments lagged. Had the whole thing collapsed? He knew he’d have no time to dig this deep into it again.

The screen’s emptiness mocked him.

Then a message with a long tail dragged into view:

In all his hours before the screen, Miles had never seen a communication like this one. Service Level Designator? Now what the hell did that mean? Priority Code, Category Code?

But he knew he’d tapped the mother lode.

Enter six-letter security code here

He stared at it. Another hurdle, a last one. Oh, come on, Frenchy, Jesus, Frenchy, you hid it so good. God, Frenchy, you must have been a clever bastard. Miles reached across the years to love Frenchy Short, who was so smart. Burying it so deep, so well; and now there was only this last obstacle.

Enter six-letter security code here

Oh, Frenchy. Miles stared at it. Six letters between himself and Frenchy.

He tried to concentrate.

Was it SHOES, or some variation on the HSU-SHU axis? No, not enough letters, unless you rolled them up into one.

He instructed the machine:

Fe Shuhsu

His fingers stroked the send command button, but he did not depress it.

Do it, he told himself.

But he could not.

If he was wrong, he might lose the whole chain, he might be back up top, back up at HSU again. He might be forced to dig through all the levels. And also, suppose—it was a good supposition—suppose there was some sort of alarm mechanism built into the system? That is, if you tried to penetrate this final level and displayed a kind of tentativeness, an awkwardness, a hesitancy, suppose the machine was programmed to recognize these inadequacies for the profile of a thief, recognize your guilt? The machine was notoriously literal-minded: it had no imagination, no capacity for sympathy; its ethics were coldly binary. It would blow the whistle on you.

Sitting there, Miles knew the machine would betray him if he disappointed it.

This awareness almost paralyzed him. He suddenly hated the thing. He stared at it and was afraid.

Enter six-letter security code here?

“Mr. Lanahan?”

He looked up, startled.

It was Bluestein.

“How are you coming?”

“Ah, oh, all right. Surprising how long it takes you to get it back, though.”

“I’m afraid we’re going to pull that disc pretty soon. The other systems are beginning to top up and the stuff from upstairs is really pouring in. We need the system space. You know how it is.”