The Second Saladin

by Stephen Hunter

  I suppose.

  Is he that guy you’d never tell me about? The guy you met overseas, when you were in Iran? The spook?

  David, I have to go.

  Johanna, I just want to make sure you’re happy. Are you happy?

  I am, David.

  Good. Then I’m happy too. It really makes me happy that this guy has brought you out of your funk.

  Thank you, David.

  If you ever want to talk, to chat, just shoot the breeze, or if you’re ever lonely or need somebody to see a movie with, you know where I am. Okay?

  Okay.

  I just want you to be happy. That’s what I want.

  Thank you, David.

  Okay. Goodbye.

  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 week
end 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.

  30

  Chardy 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.”

  “Paul, not the gun itself, gun as object. Guns don’t scare me. Paul, that gun. It’s for shooting him.”

  “Johanna, it’s a sidearm issued for an Agency security operation. They want me to wear it; they expect me to wear it. It’s that simple. Nothing has changed.”

  “Paul. You were going to help. You said your first allegiance—”

  “I’m on a security detail. They expect me to carry a gun. They expect me to protect him from Ulu Beg. If they feel I’m not willing to do that, then they have no more use for me. They’d get rid of me and I couldn’t do anything.”

  “I hate it. Take it off—hide it. I don’t want to look at it.”

  “Okay, sure.” He peeled off the complicated holster, a harness of elastics and leathers and snaps, a mesh of engineering surrounding and supporting the automatic, and tucked the whole ungainly thing under his coat.

  “Better?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s not. I can see.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I’m sorry. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s really hopeless, isn’t it? We’re just pretending? It’s gone too far; there’s nothing we—”

  “No.” He went to her and took her shoulders in his hands. “No, we can bring it off. We just need that first break. I have to be able to get to him. If I can talk to him, reason with him, explain things, then I can go to them. I can get them to help me set up a deal. I’ll go to goddamned Sam Melman; I’ll crawl to him, if that’s what it takes.”

  “We haven’t brought anything off. We’re just sitting here.”

  “They think he’s in the Midwest. Somebody stole his money, they think. I’ve been trying for a week to get them to send me out there.”

  “So they’re closing in, and here we sit. Talking.”

  “I’ll make something happen, I swear it. I’ll go to Sam on Monday, soon as we get back. I’ll tell him the whole story. I—I just can’t offer more than that, Johanna. I don’t have anything more than that.”

  “Somehow it’s just not working out. They’re closing in, you’re spending your time with Joseph Danzig a thousand miles away, I sit around working on a book that I can’t finish, that I can’t make good, and—and we’re just not in control. It just isn’t working.”

  “Johanna, please don’t say that. It’s working perfectly. I’m getting them to like me; I’m getting some influence. You just watch. And they’re not going to catch Ulu Beg in Dayton. He’s too smart. For Christ’s sake, I trained him. He’ll be all right. Johanna, I think he’ll be out here within the month. I know he’ll get in contact with you. Or with somebody who knows you. He’ll have thought it all out; he’ll be very careful. Johanna, we’ll bring it off, I swear we will.”

  “I’m sorry, Paul. I went for a walk down by the river today. A helicopter, one of those traffic things, came screaming over the trees. It spooked me—it really did. I told you I was a little nuts. Oh, God, Paul, I get so scared sometimes.”

  “Okay, okay, I understand. I understand.”

  But she had started to cry.

  “You’ve never seen me like this, Paul. But I can just crash for days, sometimes.”

  “Johanna, please. Please.” He tried to comfort her.

  “We’re just not doing anything,” she said. “We’re just sitting here. The whole thing is falling apart. It’s just no good.”

  “Please don’t say that. It is good. We will get it done.”

  “Oh, Paul. Since I got back, I’ve just become a basket case. I have a terrible darkness inside me.”

  “Johanna, please.”

  It terrified him that he could not reach her, that she was sealed off.

  “Look,” he said, “would this help? I think I could get by, late tomorrow. Danzig’s got some kind of party not five blocks from here, on Hawthorne. It’s with old colleagues, faculty people. It’s not on any itinerary. I know I can skip out, about eleven o’clock. Would that help? And then Monday I’ll go to Sam. Shit, I’ll go all the way to the DCI. I’ll get the whole thing changed around, all right? I’ll get all the guns put away. We’ll work a deal of some kind, I swear it.”

  “Oh, Paul.” She was still crying.

  “Is that some kind of help?”

  She nodded.

  “Here,” he said. “Just let me hold you for a while. All right? Just let me hold you. We’ll get through this. I swear we will.”

  He felt her warmth and thought he loved her so much he’d die of it.

  She was not sure when he left finally; she drifted off and he had not awakened her. When she finally did awake it was around five; and he had covered her.

  The television was still on, and she recognized the movie, White Christmas, with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The scene involved a reunion among some ex-GIs at some hotel in Vermont that a general owned. It seemed a ridiculous movie to run in Boston in the spring.

  But she did not have the energy to turn it off. She felt almost ill, feverish at the very least. She did not feel like doing a single thing and wondered again about her strength, her sanity. She tried to lock her mind up in White Christmas: idiotic Danny Kaye raced around; Bing just stood there and sang. Who were the women? Rosemary Clooney—whatever happened to Rosemary Clooney? Vera-Ellen. Did Vera-Ellen have a last name? Was it Ellen? Ms. Ellen? Johanna had seen the movie years ago on a giant screen; she remembered it now. The theater had been air-conditioned. The movie was Techni
color. She saw it with her big sister, Miriam, who was killed in a car crash, and her brother, Tim, who was now a lawyer in St. Louis. All this had been years ago, epochs ago, in the Jurassic of the ’50s. She remembered it with brutal clarity and had no urge to fabricate it, to make myths out of it. Miriam had been very pretty and bright, but she’d left them, Johanna and Tim, all alone, because she’d snuck off with her boyfriend, whom Mommy and Daddy didn’t want her to see anymore. Miriam was bad. She was fast. There was no controlling her. She had the hots. She had lots of boyfriends and worried Mommy sick. She was always in trouble. She was beautiful and bright and wicked and when she’d died her freshman year at Vassar in a car crash with a Yale football player (who survived) nobody was surprised. Johanna remembered that somebody whispered that Miriam got what she deserved. She was a bad girl. She deserved it.

  Johanna started to cry again. She cried for Miriam, of whom she’d not consciously thought in years. Poor Mir. She was so bright and pretty and not until Johanna was in her twenties did she know what she should have said to anybody who said Miriam deserved it. She should have said, Fuck you. Miriam deserved the world. She was bright and pretty and good. Miriam was good. She was so good.

  I am bad, thought Johanna. I’m the bad one.

  She shifted her position slightly, with great weariness. Paul had sat there. And he was the man she loved. She would give herself to him. She would do anything for him, anything he wanted. She loved that chalky, locker-room body, that Catholic’s body, with its slight coating of fat under which there was great strength. It was a big, loose-limbed, hairy body (Paul had hair everywhere; he left a trail of hair), a scarred and hurt body. But she loved it. He was not brilliant and she loved that too. She’d known brilliant men her whole life and now she hated them. Clever, wicked, tricky, cunning bastards. Intellectuals, geniuses, artists. Great scholars, predatory lawyers, egomaniacal doctors. She was tired of brilliant, interesting men without guts. All the trouble in the world came from brilliant, interesting men without guts who loved to hear themselves talk. They were all babies. They were the real killers of this world.

  She reached and touched the rumpled fabric where he had sat. It was not at all warm. He must have been gone for a long time. Her fingers lingered against the material; she sat up, shook her head, and reached across the coffee table to where a rumpled issue of the Globe lay. Chardy’s feet had even touched it. She picked it up again—as she had a thousand times before—and opened to the metro page.