The Second Saladin

by Stephen Hunter

  “No, Miles. You’re the one who has to talk.”

  Miles said, “I can’t tell you anything about computers. All that stuff is highly classified.”

  Leo said, “I can still shoot him up.”

  “No,” Chardy said, “we need him sober.”

  He turned back to Miles.

  “Miles, we’re very close to something very big. And it’s come to pass that you’ve got the key.”

  Miles just looked at him blankly.

  “The files. All on computer discs, right?” Chardy asked.

  Miles answered with silence. But his eyes must have signaled yes, for the conversation continued. But he wasn’t sure where this computer angle had come from all of a sudden. It seemed to come from nowhere. Or maybe it had been there all along, and he just didn’t know.

  “Harris got the contract, didn’t they?” asked a new voice. “The fifteen-hundred line of terminals in the pit. They bump ’em up to seventeen-fifties yet?”

  An expert. They had an expert.

  He said nothing.

  “Mr. Lanahan, if you want I can show you photocopies of the contract. We’re on pretty solid ground.”

  “Paul, why are you doing this to me?”

  For the first time Chardy showed his temper.

  “Look, nobody’s done a thing to you. People are dead on account of this business, have died horribly, pointlessly. People were ruined, people were destroyed—”

  “Paul—” Leo was trying to hold him back.

  “That’s the way it’s played, that’s how rough a game it can be. And you still don’t have a clue. Nobody’s ever even breathed hard on you. So don’t tell me you’re having troubles, Miles, because I just don’t have time to listen.”

  He’ll make you choose, Sam had said. Sam had known. Sam must have had his suspicions all along, had it doped out, tried to warn him, give him some strength. Sam had known it would fall this way: Sam and Paul locked in it for Miles’s young soul.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” said the expert. “If you can fly the fifteen-hundred you can fly the seventeen-fifty. It’s keyboarded up the same, has the same command vocabulary. It’s just bigger, more flexible, and has a much faster response time, which can be important if you’re in a rush.”

  “I’m not sure the seventeen-fifties have gone on-line,” Miles finally said. “They were slated to go in earlier this year, but that stuff is always behind. I’ve never worked at a seventeen-fifty. In my time in the pit, we were fifteen-hundred all the way. If you know so much, then how come—”

  “Okay, Miles, fair question. Here’s the answer. We think there’s a piece of information buried in the Langley computer memory. And we—”

  But Lanahan, computer genius himself, instantly saw the flaw in the supposition and could not hold himself back.

  “That’s crazy,” he said in utter indignation. “That’s the largest, the most carefully tended, the best system in the world. It’s limited access all the way; it goes off of generators on-site. There’re no lines into it, no lines out of it. You couldn’t possibly tap into it, or tuck something into it.”

  “The guy who buried this item buried it a long time ago, back in the first days, when the system was being set up. He worked there for a little while. And he buried it very carefully.”

  “Tell him,” Lanahan petitioned the expert, “tell him that the capacity of the Langley computer is two billion bits. You can’t imagine a number that big. That’s all the libraries in the world; that’s a trillion words. And it’s all broken down into individual units or entries called slugs and the slugs are in directories. And there are directories inside of directories. You fetch a directory by its code. It’s got ten thousand coded entries. One, just one of those, gets you another directory. Same thing again. You’ve got codes inside of codes, combinations. It’s the biggest combination safe in the universe. First”—he looked around desperately—“first you’ve got to have access to a terminal in the pit. I mean, physically you have to get into the goddamned building, past all the checkpoints, ride the elevator down, and get a terminal, and the terminals are always busy, every morning, every night, every afternoon, every second of the day.”

  He took a deep breath and saw that he was not impressing them.

  “Then,” he went on, “then you’ve got to have the right code, or code sequence. I mean there’s no dial-information to help you. You’ve got to know it, know it cold. And it can be anything—the different directorates have their different styles. It can be letters; it can be numbers; it can be a sequence of both, a combination; it can be—” He paused again. Damn them, when would they be impressed?

  “The whole thing is built so that only a guy who knows exactly where he’s going has a chance. It’s built to keep people from stumbling into things. You have to know. You’ve got to go from directory to directory, from slug to slug. It’s not the sort of system you can browse through. It’s a labyrinth. Paul, forget it. I worked in that room for two years. I was a champion down there. It can’t be done. We used to try and figure out just as a joke how you could crack the system, but it can’t be done. Paul, I know. That was my war. I never lost.”

  He looked beseechingly over at the expert.

  “Tell him,” Miles said.

  “We need that information,” was all the man said.

  A moment of silence came to the room. Somebody snorted; somebody coughed. Miles had a feeling of loss, of hopelessness. He was so alone. He felt like a martyr, trussed for a chestful of pagan arrows.

  He now saw what they expected.

  “Forget it,” he said. “Paul, just get it out of your head. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  He stopped, breathing hard.

  But Chardy was just looking calmly at him.

  “It’s academic, Paul. Even if I got in, even if I got ’em to plug in the right disc, even if I got a terminal—even if I got all that, I still wouldn’t have a thing without that code. You can’t even—”

  “Miles—”

  “You can’t even begin to think about it without that code. It would be like walking into the biggest library in the world and randomly pulling volumes off the miles of shelves—”

  “Miles—”

  “—in search of an index card somebody once taped to a page. It’s—”

  He ran out of words.

  “Miles,” said Chardy, “we’ve got the code.”

  Lanahan was suddenly cold. He shivered. When had he gotten so cold? He rubbed his dry lips. How could all this be happening so fast? Father, help me. Father, tell me what to do. Father—

  “Give me a break,” said Miles.

  “I can’t give you a break, Miles. You’re our break.”

  Miles said nothing.

  “The thing we’re looking for was put in place by a guy named Frenchy Short, an old Special Operations Division cowboy who spent six months in Computer Services, right when Harris got the contract and the new system was installed. Frenchy left me a message right before he went off on a solo job to Vienna, where he got killed in a bad, bad way. It’s the sort of thing an old agent would do, and Frenchy at one time was one of the best. Frenchy left me a message with his wife; she was supposed to tell me if he got killed. But things happened, and I didn’t get to see her for six years. Finally, a month or two ago, I got that message. Fetch the shoe that fits, Frenchy told Marion to tell me, Miles. Fetch, these FBI geniuses say, is the key. It’s a computer command; it’s how you order the computer to bring something up out of its guts so you can look at it. The code is the shoe that fits, Miles. It’s H-S-U. That’s pronounced shoe in Chinese. So it’s H-S-U or S-H-U or something like that. A smart operator, they say, with just that much, could probably dig it out.”

  Miles looked at him. He was so damned cold.

  “What’s down there? What are you fishing for? What’s the shoe that fits?”

  “The reason why poor Frenchy sold me—sold Saladin Two, sold the Kurds—to the Russians. To a KGB officer named Speshn
ev. The reason why he blew us. And the man for whom he did it.”

  “Paul, I—”

  “Miles, haven’t you caught on yet? To what this is all about? You’re a smart guy. I’m surprised you’re so slow.”

  “Paul—”

  “Shhh, Miles. Let old Paul tell you why. Miles, the Russians are going to a great deal of trouble to eliminate Joe Danzig, because when he gets to a certain section of his second volume of memoirs he’ll be the first man in history to look carefully at the operation we called Saladin Two, the operation in which we channeled arms and ammo to Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq from nineteen seventy-three to nineteen seventy-five. You see, somebody in the Agency, one of Danzig’s fans, has slipped him, among a lot of other stuff, the operation files. And when he looks at it carefully, analytically, as he’s sure to, because a lot of his reputation depends on how he justifies it, he’ll see that according to our own files, the Soviet helicopter ambush was sprung in the middle of the afternoon of the sixth day after I’d been captured. But the Russians didn’t crack me until the evening of the sixth day.”

  “They had it set up,” said Miles.

  “That’s right. They had it beat from the start. They knew it all—the codes, the frequencies, everything. They got it from Frenchy Short, in Vienna. But what they needed to hide the fact they’d gotten it from Frenchy was somebody to take the blame. That’s why it was so important to Speshnev to crack me open. He already had the script. He had a voice expert do me reading the phony stuff to Ulu Beg—that’s how well set up it was. Then that night, I read the same words into a dead mike.”

  “Paul—” Miles wanted to stop the terrible onrush of information.

  But Chardy wouldn’t let him off: “Frenchy sold us out on orders, Miles. Somebody didn’t like the way it was going in Kurdistan, and what it would do for the careers of the people involved, especially Bill Speight’s. So he sent Frenchy to blow the operation and clear out fast. But Speshnev was too smart; he caught Frenchy and took him into a cellar and broke him down with the torch. And he found out who’d sent him, and why. And then he owned that man, Miles. He owned him.”

  “Paul—”

  “Miles, don’t you see it? Don’t you see what this is all about?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Miles. “The Russians have a man inside.”

  51

  Ulu Beg sat by the pond watching the swans. They were curious creatures, elegant, savage, evidently brainless. He watched the necks, so sleek and graceful, and the quick thrust of the head, a snapping, biting strike, when a bigger one would drive a smaller one squawking from his mate.

  There was an old Kurdish proverb: The male is born for slaughter. Its grimness seemed confirmed in the ugly drama on the placid pool.

  He lay back, depressed. Beyond the marsh he could see a boat on the bay; behind him was the great house. And he knew that nearby, like discreet shadows, the two security men sat. Their patience, their willingness to endure excessive idleness, seemed to him a particularly Russian trait. Russians could watch ice melt, flowers grow, clouds pass.

  But he did not really care about Russians. Dreamless days evolved into dreamless nights to become dreamless days again. The weather held fair; the bay, the blue of the sky, the dun of the marsh, the birds—these were the constants of his life now. He had not thought of Chardy, of any of it, for a week now, ten days. A gull fluted in the air, spiraling down, then lunging up. The sky against which it performed had epic space to it, vast and oceanic, with a few clouds near the horizon to give it scale. He would sleep, he thought. He had not prayed in days. There seemed no point. He thought of Leah occasionally.

  Yet at that lazy, drifting moment a man approached from the trees. He looked beyond Ulu Beg, up the lawn, and the Kurd turned to follow his gaze. He could see the figure—white, he wore some kind of white suit—of Speshnev coming down the lawn from the house, leading a retinue of aides.

  “How are you?” asked the Russian.

  “I am fine.”

  “All rested now? They tell me you pass peaceful days, nurturing your strength.”

  “Yes. I feel good.”

  “Strong? Strong as a horse?”

  “Yes, strong.”

  “You were watching the swans?”

  “It’s a pleasant spot.”

  “Well, I’ve got news. Excellent news. Come on, let’s walk.”

  They walked along the edge of the pond.

  “First. From Mexico. I’m anticipating certain developments. A troublesome loose end has finally been dealt with. Your old friend, the fat Mexican. Remember him?”

  “Yes.”

  “They have him cornered on the mountain. He cannot hurt us. When he dies, all record of your connection to us dies.”

  “Good.”

  “Necessary. Awkward and risky, but necessary. But there’s more.”

  “Yes.”

  “Real news. We’ve been at rest for so long because our quarry was at rest. The man Danzig, under great strain in Boston, had retired to his house. He was beyond our—your—reach.”

  “And this has changed?”

  “Yes. Information has reached us that he’s left his house. Not officially either. He’s escaped his own bodyguards, fearing them because of his mental imbalance. He’s out in the world, on his own.”

  “And Chardy?”

  “Chardy’s in the hospital. Badly beaten during a child’s game. An excessively violent man, Chardy. Always in some kind of trouble or other. His own people distrust and detest him.”

  “But what good can this do us? The Americans can organize a huge hunt for this man Danzig as soon as they see he’s gone. They’ll catch him soon: a fat old man, trying to evade his own police. He’s no trained man. We cannot hope to rival them in this search.”

  “Ulu Beg,” said Colonel Speshnev, “we have an extreme advantage over the Americans in this matter. We know where Danzig is going. We sent him his instructions.”

  52

  Thank God for baseball.

  Danzig could hear the volume of the television set rising through the back stairwell. The agents talked animatedly among themselves. The system was breaking down: its vitality was spent; its energy had leaked away.

  Suppose Ulu Beg had come here? What would these men have done? Where was their commander, the altar boy whom nobody liked, the dreadful little Lanahan. He certainly could not be here, for whatever his flaws, his individual failures of taste, he ran a taut ship; but now the agents clustered in the study, gathered around the game on television. Orioles against Yankees. Baltimore and hated New York. The provinces against the imperial city; of course. A natural, rich in drama.

  Danzig paused in the littered kitchen. His housekeeper had left for the night. The agents had disturbed her by turning the kitchen into a sty. Empty Coke cans, sacks of cheese snacks, pretzels, crackers, everywhere. It was like a fraternity house.

  Hoots rose from the study. Something important must have happened, but Danzig slipped into his backyard. Shouldn’t there be a man back here? It terrified him that his escape from his supposedly impregnable house was progressing so smoothly. It occurred to him that the mandate of these men had been to keep others out, however, and not him in; thus their defense would be calibrated for the perimeter, not the interior. He walked into the cover of the grape arbor and disappeared in the complexities of his garden. Yet he knew the way. He found the gate and paused, waiting for a challenge. Down the way in the dark alley he could see the glow of an orange cigarette tip.

  So there was a man.

  Then he heard a voice.

  “Tango Bum, this is Foxcroft. Tango Bum, do you copy?”

  A pause.

  “Hey, Charlie, Yanks score? I heard you guys shouting. Twice? Off Palmer? Christ, that showboat. Okay, thanks.”

  The cigarette arched out and bounced in the gravel of the alley. He could barely make out the shape of the man, visible against the lights out on the street, who walked to the cigarette butt and disgustedly ground i
t out.

  Danzig stepped out and walked in the opposite direction, staying close to the wall. He passed swiftly to his neighbor’s backyard, where huge bushes overhung a low fence, and against them he felt safe. He walked swiftly on. He had escaped.

  One alley led to another until he reached Thirty-second Street, which he followed to Wisconsin Avenue, there disappearing in the crowd that had begun to gather in the warm spring night. He stopped at a drugstore to buy a pair of $5 sunglasses—they cost him $10, of course—with which he hoped in some way at least to stall the recognition process, if not actually halt it. They were vulgar things—gold, swoopy, a Phantom pilot’s glasses that mocked the shape of angel wings or teardrops; the surface of the lenses was a mirror also, very much the style. If the clerk noticed him, he did not give it away; perhaps he was jaded by important government types slipping into the store at all hours to make degrading purchases—the Supreme Court justice who loads up on laxative, the famous hostess who buys a strawberry douche, the senator who purchases a salve for his hemorrhoids—or perhaps he simply did not recognize the former Secretary. It puzzled Danzig, who was used to being recognized, who expected it. Yet as he moved out of the store and into the crowd, sporting the ludicrous goggles, a feeling of curious invisibility began to seep through him. He had wondered, as he engineered his getaway, how he would handle what he expected to be the most difficult of all problems, the gawkers, the tourists, the autograph hunters, the flesh-pressers, all of whom, he supposed, would be drawn to his famous face, sunglasses or no. Yet he now slid through the crowd, down the jammed avenue, past the smart shops, virtually unnoticed.

  It occurred to him that celebrity was largely trappings; that is, in a limousine, at a dinner party, at a meeting, a press conference, a seminar, people were prepped for him, expecting him, ready to genuflect to the heat of fame. Out here in the spontaneous world, it was every man for himself in a battle for sidewalk territory, for space near the windows full of fabulous swanky goods. His famous face on a magazine cover demanded respect; on a plump body clothed in nondescript polyester sport clothes, animated by a frantic awkwardness, among the many, it received only indifference. Though once or twice police cruisers prowled by, leaving him uneasy. Yet, he counseled himself, they had not in all likelihood discovered his absence; perhaps they would during a seventh-inning stretch. And again, what crime had he committed? None. What law had he broken? None. And therefore, what recourse had they? The answer was the same: none. Yet he knew legal niceties would not stop them; in his (or their) best interest they would snatch him from any public thoroughfare.