The Second Saladin

by Stephen Hunter

  FIRE GUTS MIDEASTERN RESTAURANT

  A three-column headline over a ten-inch story explained in the mundane voice of daily journalism how arson was suspected in a blaze on Shawmut Avenue in which a restaurant called The Baghdad had burned down.

  Noon of the second day after the fire, you will pick him up across from the restaurant, they had told her. The technical term for this kind of arrangement was a blind link, and it was the most secure, the most sure method: no phone contact, no dead-letter boxes, nothing by mail, nothing at all. It’s for operating in an enemy country.

  Tomorrow, noon tomorrow. She would pick up Ulu Beg. Here, in Boston, ten thousand miles from the mountains. And Joseph Danzig would be that same night only five blocks away, unguarded.

  She’d gotten Chardy out of there now. She’d done half the incredible. If she could get Ulu Beg in, she’d have done the other half.

  She was not as he remembered; she’d been a hard, youthful figure then, boyish and strong and active; a part of Jardi and very much not a part.

  Now, in the automobile, she was nervous and plump and dry-lipped and pale.

  “Your trip. Hazardous?” she asked.

  “Somebody stole my money.”

  “Yet you got here so much faster.”

  “A fine lady drove me. A fine black woman.”

  “There was trouble at the border.”

  “What? Oh, yes.”

  “They know you’re here. They’ve guessed what you’re here for.”

  They drove in bright sunlight through sparkly Boston streets. Everything here was made of wood. There was so much wood, wood in abundance. Wood and automobiles: America.

  “How?” he said finally.

  “The bullets from your gun. They traced them to nineteen seventy-five.”

  He nodded. Of course.

  “You should have brought a different gun.”

  Yes, he should have. But they had insisted, hadn’t they? It had to be this gun. They had given him this gun. This would be his gun.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “They’re convinced you’re in Ohio still. That’s where they’re looking for you. We have an incredible chance. The best chance we’ll ever have. You would say it’s all written above.”

  She told him about Danzig and the party that night, that very night. She told him how relaxed they’d be, since the party was a private thing, among old friends. She told him she had gotten the university faculty guide and found the address of the one member of Danzig’s old department that lived on Hawthorne. She could take him there late tonight and point him. She told him that the only man who could recognize him would not be there.

  “Who?”

  “Chardy.”

  His face did not change. In many ways it was a remarkable face; the nose was oversize, like a prow, and the cheekbones high and sharp. The eyes were gaudy blue, small and intense. In the mountains he’d worn a moustache, huge and droopy, but now he was clean-shaven. He looked almost American. He did look American. She was astonished at how American he’d become, in blue jeans, with a pack, a tall, strong man who could have been a graduate student of athletic bent, an adventurer, an outdoorsman, any vigorous thirty-five-year-old American, and the streets were full of them, fit, lean joggers, backpackers, professional vacationers.

  “You are his woman again?”

  “It seems so.”

  “He is with us, then?”

  “No. He doesn’t know. He came back into my life because of all this. I realized at once that I had to become close to him again. I could learn things from him, and through him I could convince important people that I was harmless.”

  “But you are his?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “But you are?”

  “Yes. He’s a different man too. They were very hard on him. His own people. And the Russians tortured him horribly. They burned his back with a torch. He’s a very bitter man, a hurt man. He’s not the same Chardy at all.”

  “He works for them again?”

  “He does.”

  “I will never understand Americans.”

  “Neither will I.”

  “You will betray him?”

  “Yes. I have thought about it. I will betray him. The political is more important than the personal. But I ask a condition. It’s very important to me.”

  “Say it.”

  “There will be other people there. People from the university. They are innocent. You must swear not to hurt them. To kill Danzig is justice. To kill these others would be murder. I can’t commit murder. I saw too much of it committed myself.”

  “You Americans,” Ulu Beg said. “You make war, but you don’t want there to be any bodies. Or if there are bodies, you don’t want to see them or know about them.”

  “Please. Swear it. Swear it as a great Kurdish fighter would swear it.”

  “I can only swear what I can. But what is written, is written.”

  “Still. Swear it. Or I can’t help. You’ll be on your own. And we’ve both figured out long ago that on your own you have almost no chance.”

  He looked at her. Was she insane? He saw it now: she was crazy; she had terrible things in her head. Who could keep promises with bullets flying?

  “Swear it. Please.”

  “On my eyes,” he said.

  “All right.”

  They pulled into a parking lot a few minutes later.

  “Here.” She handed him a key. “It’s a motel. I’ve rented you a room at the far end. Go there; stay inside. Clean up. There’re some clothes in the room, American clothes. I hope they fit. I’ll pick you up at ten. He said he’d come to my place at eleven. We’ll wait outside until we see him leave. Then I’ll help. I’ll help you get inside. I’ll help with the other business too.”

  She fumbled with her purse.

  It was a small, cheap revolver.

  “I bought it in the city.”

  “I have a weapon. I don’t want you there with a gun.”

  He turned to leave, but she reached for his arm.

  “I’m glad you came. I’m glad it’s nearly finished.”

  “Kurdistan ya naman,” he said.

  31

  Only Chardy and Uckley, the security man, remained. They stood discreetly in one corner of the living room in their lumpy suits. Lanahan was off somewhere playing Napoleon, and the private detectives engaged by the Agency had not accompanied Danzig from the television studio.

  Dramatic people swirled about, bright and glittery, and in the center of it all sat Joe Danzig. In point of fact, at no time in their brief association had Chardy seen him quite like this: a sheen of perspiration stood out on his forehead and upper lip and he held a half-empty scotch glass almost like a scepter. He knew everybody here—or most of them—and he had taken his coat off and loosened his tie and collar, an absurd costume, since he still wore his vest. They came to him, the younger ones with some respect, the older ones out of camaraderie. Chardy was surprised to see so many kids. He thought kids hated Danzig, architect of bombing in Vietnam; but no, they did not, or these kids did not. Danzig listened earnestly and awarded the brightest with a smile or a nod which pleased them immensely. And the women: the women especially were drawn to his preposterous, rumpled figure. They crowded around him, touching and jostling. Even in these clever precincts? Chardy had no idea what being on television meant, what celebrity meant.

  “They love him, don’t they?” he said to Uckley.

  “They sure do, sir,” said Uckley.

  The room had jammed up and become bright and hot with people. It was not so much furnished as equipped, largely with spacey-looking hi-fi components, a jungle of plants and books. Somebody loved books, for they were ceiling to floor on three of the walls and the other was bare brick. There were little steel spotlights mounted on racks on the ceiling, throwing vivid circles of light on Japanese prints and twisted modern paintings. It was like some kind of museum; somebody had spent a lot of money turning this living room int
o a museum. Chardy was catching a headache and all the noise and smoke pitched it higher. It looked like Danzig would be here for hours—until the dawn, among the horde of intellectuals.

  Not all, but most, most had the same look: the high, pale foreheads, the glasses covering wasted eyes, the delicate wrists. They all had weak hands and looked sick. Funny, after the Marines, Chardy knew a uniform when he saw it, and here were uniforms: suede shoes, baggy chinos and plaid shirts, and an occasional little off-color tie. Everybody was drinking wine; everybody was talking, gesturing with unfiltered cigarettes. A woman drifted by in leotard and tights, smoking a cigar. She had a slightly crazed expression on her face and was made up like an Egyptian goddess.

  Chardy checked his watch. It was 11:20.

  “Have you seen Lanahan, Sarge?”

  “No, sir,” said Uckley.

  Chardy hunted through the mass of bodies and at last spotted Miles sitting by himself in a corner. He turned back to Uckley.

  “Look, do you think you can handle this?”

  “There’s nothing to handle, sir.”

  “I’ll stay if you’d prefer.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I may be back in a little while.”

  “Take your time.”

  Chardy shook himself free of the wall and edged through the crowd. Lanahan sat disconsolately by himself.

  “Not your crowd, Miles?”

  Lanahan looked up, but did not smile. “I don’t have a crowd,” he said.

  “Look, would it be a big deal if I slipped out a little early?”

  “It would be a very big deal.”

  “Well, I’m going to do it anyway. Why don’t you talk to somebody, have a good time? Meet some people. You look like the village priest at the great lord’s manor for the first time.”

  Lanahan looked at him through narrow dark eyes in a field of skin eruptions. Flecks of dandruff littered his small shoulders.

  “You shouldn’t joke about priests, Paul.”

  “Miles, I’m going. All right?”

  Lanahan didn’t say anything.

  “Come on, Miles, cheer up.”

  “Just go, Paul. You don’t have any responsibility; you can sneak off. I’ll stay. I’m expecting a call from Yost anyway.”

  “Be back shortly,” said Chardy. He fought to the hall, squeezed down it to the door, where an older woman stood talking to several others in the overflow.

  “Leaving so early? Did you have a coat?”

  “No, I’m all right.”

  “Glad you could come.”

  “I had a wonderful time,” he said.

  He stepped out the door, went down three steps, and followed the short walk to Hawthorne Street.

  “There he is,” she said.

  They watched Chardy pick his way down the steps, pause at the sidewalk for just a second, and then head down the street. They watched in silence until he disappeared.

  “Just Danzig. Nobody else. Please, you swore.”

  He turned and looked at her with a cold glare.

  “Please,” she said. “You promised. You swore.”

  “I go now.”

  “I’ll come too.”

  “No,” he said. “I can go alone. Many people, no guards. People come and go. America is open, they told me.”

  “Please. I—”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be here then. To drive you away.”

  “No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I get away. Get away yourself, now. Cross that border now, Dada Johanna.”

  He climbed from the car and strode across the street, a tall, forceful figure.

  She watched him move. A pain began to rub inside, between her eyes. She sat back. She could not face the future, the explanations, excuses, attention. It all seemed to weigh so much. She thought of it as weight, mass, as substance, a physical thing, pressing her down. She fought for breath. She thought of facing Chardy in the morning. She thought of the pain her parents would feel. She could not imagine it.

  She watched. Ulu Beg knocked on the door. She could not see his gun; he’d hidden it, probably under the tweed sport coat.

  The door opened. She could see them talking. What would he say? She wanted to cry. She was so scared.

  Chardy knocked on Johanna’s door.

  There was no answer.

  “Johanna?” he called into the wood. “Johanna?”

  Now what the hell was going on?

  32

  Trewitt’s fever rose and rose and rose, pulling him through an absolute kaleidoscope of discomforts, each spangling and fanning into something more unbearable, and since his imagination—the basic stuff of this journey through the fever zone—was prodigious to begin with, the trip was incredible. His fantasies were built of gore and sex and they centered on the body of the woman lying in her own blood. But soon they began to lessen in intensity. Gradually, by the second night, his head began to clear somewhat. It was very cold. The air hurt to breathe. He pulled something about him, a thin blanket that offered no protection.

  On the third day he awoke to find himself in a stone shack with no glass in the windows, a stove that burned only junk wood, and a dirt floor across which there scampered a flock of chickens herded by a couple of listless mutts. He felt as though he’d come to in the middle of a movie and looked about for stock figures. But no: only the titanic figure whom he now understood to be Ramirez, in his (Trewitt’s) yellow pants with his (Trewitt’s) Beretta in the waistband, reading a photo-novel whose Spanish title translated into “A Smart-Alecky Young Miss Gets Her Comeuppance,” while munching on a greasy drumstick from El Coronel (Sanders, of Kentucky; Trewitt could see the striped barrel on a shelf), his cowboy boots up on the table.

  Trewitt hauled himself up, wobbling the whole way.

  “You want a wing? We got a wing left,” was Ramirez’s welcome-back to the man who’d saved his life.

  “I feel like shit,” said Trewitt groggily, in English.

  “You look like shit,” said Ramirez, also in English.

  Trewitt moaned. Somebody had looped a metal band around his forehead and was tightening it with great strength and dedication.

  “Where are we?” he finally asked, shivering and noticing that his breath soared out from his lips in a great billowing cloud.

  “Hah!” howled Ramirez in great delight. “Jesus Mary, they really give it to this girl!” He looked at the comic with warmth and enthusiasm. “She’s a real stuck-up princess. They give her a smack on the bottom with a great big paddle. You’re in the mountains, my friend. Way up high. A long way from the city.”

  Trewitt twisted so he could see out the window. In the distance, glittering in the sun, stood a ragged line of peaks. The haphazard up-and-down of the composition could have been a graph of his fortunes these last several days.

  “Reynoldo was born down there,” Ramirez said, “in the village, before electricity. He used to come here to hunt.” He smiled, exposing two gold teeth which Trewitt had not noticed before. Gold teeth? This was getting to be like a movie.

  “Who were those men? The killers,” Trewitt asked in his Spanish.

  “Who knows? It’s a big mystery. Mexico is full of mysteries. It’s a land of mysteries.” Ramirez laughed.

  “Gangsters? Pimps? Dope runners?”

  Ramirez finished the drumstick and threw the bare bone across the room into a corner, where a dog scuffled after it, and wiped his hand on his pants. Trewitt was beginning to feel as if he’d awakened in the cave of the Cyclops.

  “They make pretty good chicken,” said Ramirez. “That Colonel. I bet he’s a rich man.”

  He yawned, then looked over at Trewitt. “Mister, I’ll tell you something. A man has to piss, somebody gets wet. Do you understand?”

  “Ahh—”

  “Oscar Meza, he get wet. The Huerras of Mexico City, anybody. It could go back years and years.”

  Shakily Trewitt stood, discovering as he unlimbered from the skimpy blanket that he was now in ch
eap cotton trousers, the trousers of a rural peasant. He went to the doorway. Outside he saw a goat pen, a trash heap, a dirt road falling away rapidly, and a brown surge—scabby, scaly, dusty, stony-cold, and silent—of peaks.

  “Where the hell are we?”

  Below he could see a flash of trees and valley, and some cultivated land. But this was wild country, raw and high and scruffy.

  “Near El Plomo. In the Sierra del Carrizai. Due west of Nogales. About sixty miles.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “Down below. In El Plomo. This is a big adventure. The little one, he cry for mama last night. But now he’s okay.”

  Trewitt nodded, hurt. Poor little guy. Why the hell hadn’t they let him go? Now he was God knows where, involved in this.

  “They’ll be here soon. But, hey, mister. Who are you?” The Mexican watched him carefully.

  “Just some guy who got mixed up in some stuff,” was Trewitt’s lame response. “I was looking for adventures too.”

  “Crazy people want adventures. Reynoldo wants to die in a nice bed somewhere. With a bottle of beer and a nice soft fat woman who don’t give you no trouble.”

  Trewitt, leaning in the rough doorway, looked down the little road for the yellow rented car. Boy, was he going to have a bill!

  “At least,” he said, “we’re safe. This is a good place to lie low.”

  “Yes, it’s real safe up here,” Ramirez laughed. “Yes, it’s real safe.” The grin radiated blazing humor.

  “What’s going on? What’s so funny?”

  “The answer is I called my good friend Oscar Meza from El Plomo. I told him all about this wonderful, safe place.”

  Trewitt stared at him. At first he thought he’d discovered an unusually perverse sense of humor in a surprising locality. Only when the man’s fiery, crazed grin did not break into something softer and wittier did Trewitt acknowledge what had been laid before him, and its force struck him with a physical blow.