The Second Saladin (34 page)

“You were watching her.”

“Intermittently. She’d been investigated and declared clear. The officer in charge made a grave error. He made several grave errors. He has been removed to other duties.”

“Yet this Kurd and this girl had enough know-how to outwit your professionals.”

“They were also exceedingly lucky. Don’t forget that. They had Chardy in their pocket. They had you in Boston. And still they failed.”

“They got a good deal farther than luck can explain.”

“Dr. Danzig. I say again, we have no information to suggest that this is anything more than it seems. A conspiracy of two people.”

“Somebody’s pulling the strings. No matter what your information says or doesn’t say. Somebody’s … and I want to know who.”

But Melman said nothing, until after several seconds.

“Dr. Danzig, I think you’ve been reading too many thrillers.”

Not long after, Chardy returned to Danzig’s life, in a new suit. If Danzig expected contrition he did not receive it. Contrition is bullshit, Danzig’s most important employer had once observed, and the man Chardy exemplified this principle to the utmost. He looked a little thinner
in his new clothes. All that exercise? But he had that same shambling reserve, a quiet, athletic containment. Yet he had recently lost a lover, who had in turn betrayed him and, most cruelly, made a fool of him, had he not? He should have been destroyed, fired at the least. A failure of judgment, calculation, sheer common sense, of the highest order. Danzig had seen the reports and was aware, where Chardy was not, of the considerable emotion of an anti-Chardy faction among senior Agency personnel. How headquarters people loved to see a former glamour boy brought low! Danzig had observed this principle where it applied to himself; he was not surprised to see it at play in the issue of Chardy. The man Ver Steeg was behind some of it; before his reassignment he had attempted desperately to place all blame on Chardy. He had lobbied feverishly, calling in old favors, bending the ears of old acquaintances. His rage found willing ears; ripples of discontent spread through the Agency and the larger government of which it was ostensibly a part. The story of Chardy’s cuckolding by the idea of murder for vengeance against Joe Danzig spread and spread; even the President might have heard of it. At the end of his string, the desperate Ver Steeg, on whom full blame was decreed to fall for his commitment of resources in the Dayton area, had even said Chardy was a part of it: the three of them, working together, Chardy, the girl, the Kurd.

But it had been Danzig himself who demanded that Chardy not pay Yost Ver Steeg’s price.

Danzig wondered about his own motives. A curious question for him: why this thing for Chardy? Was it that he felt a kinship with Chardy, casting himself in the ex-champion’s role that so many seemed to reserve for Chardy? Or perhaps also it was that Chardy had a simplicity to him that Danzig had not encountered among the sophists of his many circles. And certainly another part of
it was Chardy’s aloneness, which by itself recommended him to Danzig, who in an untoward moment of self-acuity admitted to a ferocious Italian interviewer that he enjoyed acting alone and knew that Americans were drawn to the spectacle of the lone fellow performing great deeds. Cowboys. So in this way, as a pure reflection of certain of his own aspects, was Danzig attracted to Chardy. There was also the fellow’s lip; he was a great and furious retorter, a man of fierce pride, a real fighter, which engaged Danzig.

Chardy also had no grief; he was a mighty represser, goal-oriented, who hammered his feelings deep inside himself and would admit no weakness. Danzig knew this to be dangerous—indeed, almost self-destructive—but also the only way really to accomplish things. Chardy had exiled his feelings from his body; his face was blank and a trifle dull, as usual. If the dead woman had been and still was, by some sadomasochistic twist in personality, dear to him, he would not show it. It was quickly and smoothly business as usual. The events, bloody and horrible, of the week past, seemed not to have happened at all for Chardy.

“You said he’d never get close, Mr. Chardy. He got to within fifteen feet while you yourself were off in pursuit of dubious pleasures.”

Chardy nodded.

“I was no good guessing the future. Poor Uckley had to pay for it.”

“Uckley was a professional. He knew the risks. A sizable sum was settled on his family. It is exceedingly dispiriting to be shot at. Tell me—you are said to have some expertise in this matter—does one ever
adjust?”

“Never,” Chardy said.

“But we seem to have survived again, haven’t we?”

“Thanks to the vest.”

“Do you know, I’ve been wearing it so long I’d forgotten about it? Forgotten absolutely. I thought he had me. It
must have been ten seconds—which can be an eternity—before it occurred to me I would not die.”

Chardy had no response.

“Is there news?”

“No, sir. Nothing.”

“I’m not leaving this house until they catch him.”

“That makes sense.”

“Will they catch him?”

“They say they will.”

“I know what they say. They say it loudly and often. Yet I sense a certain softness in their position. Their performance so seldom lives up to their promise. What do
you
say?”

Chardy thought for a second. Then he said, “No. Not for a time. What they keep forgetting is that I trained him.”

“An ego, Mr. Chardy? How pleasant. That makes two of us.”

L
anahan’s rise was sudden and wondrous: he reported directly to Melman. He called Melman “Sam.” There was no Yost between them; it was as if a generation had been sliced out of the hierarchy. That is, Yost, the bishop, was gone; Lanahan reported directly to Sam, the cardinal. He had responsibility, control, power. He had people. He had nice little perks—a driver, a girl, a coffee cup that miraculously never seemed to empty.

“And they seemed to be getting along?” Sam asked in his mildly interested way, referring to Chardy and Danzig.

“Yes, Sam.” Miles rubbed his chin, where a pimple had burst that morning. “For some reason Danzig
likes
Paul. My people can’t figure it out.”

Melman sat back. “There’s an attraction to Paul, without a doubt.”

“Yes.”

“He has a certain World War Two glamour. Some of the older men, the old OSS types, had it too. And a few of the Special Operations people too. But only Paul, these days. It can be very exciting stuff.”

“Well”—not that Lanahan would disagree with Sam on anything of consequence; still, he’d throw out an occasional inoffensive counterpunch so as not to be thought
the total yesman—“to a certain juvenile turn of mind, yes. Poor Trewitt loved Chardy, and look what it got him. It surprises me,” he blasted ahead confidently, “that a realist like Danzig could fall for a bullshit artist, a cowboy, like Chardy.”

“He’s scared, Miles. That’s the psychology of it.”

“I suppose.”

“You’re monitoring them? I mean, without being overly obvious about it?”

“Yes, Sam. Of course.”

“Anything else?”

Ah. This looked to be a good moment to lay on Sam the story of Trewitt in Mexico and the secret link to Chardy via Resurrection, which Lanahan had been storing away for just the right moment. He took a quick look about Sam’s bright office, and leaned forward as if to begin to speak.

“Now there is one thing, Miles.” Sam cut him off. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about this. I foresee one potential problem. I’ve already run into traces of it in Danzig.”

Was this a test?

Miles said nothing. He still felt as though he’d blundered into an audience with the cardinal.

“Miles, both these men—Danzig and Chardy—have tendencies toward paranoia. Well-documented, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

“What bothers me is that if their bond becomes too close, there’s no guessing what they might concoct. And certain ideas can be very dangerous to our line of work. Remember the great double-agent scare of the mid-seventies? No, of course not, you were just starting. And you don’t remember the fifties either, when
I
was just starting.
At any rate, this sort of thing can wreck a division, a whole directorate. The whole shop. Do you follow?”

Sam peered at Miles intensely. He had pale, shallow eyes. Sam was a handsome man. Smooth, brilliant Sam. Everybody wanted a little of Sam’s famous calm charm.

“Yes, sir,” said Miles.

“Let’s declare a first operating principle. A bedrock, a foundation. And that’s that this is first of all a security job. A matter of protection. Perhaps even protecting Danzig from himself. As long as you see it in those terms, and remember that the enemy is Ulu Beg and Danzig’s own paranoia, you’ll be able to keep your bearings.”

What was Sam warning him against?

“Miles, you’re doing well. You’ve managed, early on to get into a crucial position on an important operation. You realize there are men around here who’ve tried for
years
to get where you are, and have never made it?”

Melman smiled, showing white, even teeth. His charm, remote from public view, was well known in the Agency. It was not a pushy charm, or flamboyant; rather it was a warm thing, enveloping. He had a way of including you in a pact against the world: you, he, united, would stand in tight circumference against the outsiders.

While yielding fully to it, Lanahan at the same time acknowledged it for what it was: a treatment, a technique of manipulation. But he had an immense urge to give Melman something for the privilege of being included. He felt in the presence of a charismatic priest, a great priest, and wished he had a sin to offer up so this man could forgive him.

Trewitt in Mexico.

“Sam—”

“Wait, Miles. Let me finish.”

He fixed Miles in his calm gaze, seeming to draw him in, to make him absolutely his. “Paul hates us. You have
to understand, though I wonder if you’re old enough, the kind of man he is. The kind of grudge he’s capable of manufacturing. A certain kind of mentality can tighten, can fix, on a situation and turn it inside out. And come to believe—genuinely
believe
—his own version of it. It’s a lesson in the human capacity for self-deceit, the power of will over reality. Chardy has this talent; it’s a characteristic of the fanatic and it’s what makes them such potent, such powerful, such astonishing men. In a way I admire it, and wish I had a little of this power for myself. For these men, to admit any but their own vision is to doom themselves. Their strength is their will, their absolutism; their weakness is their inflexibility.

“Miles”—he looked especially hard into Miles’s dark, small eyes, nailing him back against the chair—“you’ve seen his file. The Russians turned him; they broke him in two. He gave them the Kurds, and the woman he loved, driving her from him forever, turning her against him in the cruelest of ways. And make no mistake, love is a very powerful, an almost magical force for a man like Chardy. You’ve no idea how a man like him needs it. So God knows what kind of construction he’s put on his own betrayal; and God knows what her death has now done to him.”

Miles nodded. He felt curiously full of faith; in his own Church, in the Agency, and in Sam. Some of Sam’s wisdom entered his soul, as if Sam had willed it there.

“Miles, there’ll come a time when he’ll test you. He’ll demand you make a choice. A choice between himself and us. And I warn you, he can be very attractive. He has that rough grace that commands. In a crisis he radiates energy and purpose. You’ll see it in his eyes. I’m convinced that the reason Speight was killed and Trewitt is missing is that they exceeded their instructions from Ver
Steeg and were off on some crazy mandate from Paul. You saw what it brought them.”

Tell him, thought Miles. Tell the priest. Confess. He was in a dark booth and could only feel the power of the man’s love, his warmth, his infinite wisdom through the screen. He ached to tell. Tell him: Trewitt’s alive. He’s still on the case. You’re right, Sam Chardy the treacherous is working something.

“Miles, Chardy is not stupid. He seems stupid, he can play dumb better than any man I’ve ever seen. If you read through the transcripts on the Saladin Two inquiry, you’ll think you’re seeing a stupid man, a man so shocked and addled and fatigued that he is unable to defend himself. But I never laid a glove on him. It was a brilliant performance. I never got inside him. There’s something in that head of his, something he never even let us see. And now he’s got Danzig; he’s made some sort of pact with Danzig. The whole thing troubles me immensely. Yet I can’t get rid of him, as I’d want to. He bungled it terribly in Boston, walking out like that. I’d love to ship him to the North Pole, and I would too; but I can’t, because of Danzig. So Miles, only this warning: Watch Chardy, watch him carefully. All right? He’s much more than the man he’s letting you see.”

Miles nodded reverently. Yet he was befuddled by the passion in Sam. He felt he’d missed something somewhere; he was a little frightened. He realized now that Melman hated Chardy. Hated him, feared him: weren’t they the same?

Tell him, Miles thought. You have it in your power to please the cardinal, to bind him to you forever and ever. He will give you the Church; he will make the Church yours. You will move through its halls, through its hushed and purple rooms, to its most privileged sanctums.

Miles wished he could genuflect.

Yet he saw also there was a secret and dangerous game between Melman and Chardy—a game whose stakes were so high neither man would speak of them directly.

“Sam,” he heard himself saying, “you can count on me.”

W
hen would the boy return?

“He should have been back hours ago,” Trewitt said irritably.

“He probably stopped to steal a chicken,” Roberto said. “The little snotnose.” Roberto had taken over the Beretta, his proudest possession. He sat under a scrub oak polishing as obsessively as he’d once polished the glasses behind the bar at Reynoldo’s. He had already fired three of the remaining seven bullets for practice.