The Second Saladin (38 page)

His eyes adjusted. The room, large, was cased in books. Files lay all around, sheets of paper, index cards, clipped articles, photocopies. Two card tables stood inundated in paper. Two desks against a far wall bore heavy loads as well.

“Sit down. Over there.”

Chardy walked, slipping once on a pencil. Cups, glasses with a few stale ounces of liquid in them, were everywhere. He sat gingerly on a folding chair.

“What time is it?”

Chardy smelled something sour as he turned his wrist to see his Rolex. “Nine,” he said. “In the morning.”

Danzig, unshaven, sat across from him in a bathrobe. His hair swirled about his head, unwashed. The odor was from him.

“They say this room isn’t wired,” Danzig said.

“I don’t think we wired anything,” Chardy said.

“Where have you been?”

“I had to go home. I was only gone a night.”

“You look tired.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

But Danzig wasn’t interested in Chardy’s sleep. Now, with an almost comically exaggerated look of conspiracy, he seemed to swoop in on Chardy, his features enormous, rabbinical, his eyes quite mad. His odor was overpowering.

“It’s all a setup, isn’t it? It’s completely phony—it’s a scheme, isn’t it? Or are you part of it? They tried to ruin you, you know. When you came back from prison. Then just weeks ago after the shooting. I saved you. I intervened. Chardy, they want you dead. They hate you too. They hate me. For something I did, something I know. And it’s all part of—”

He stopped suddenly and began to weep.

Chardy was embarrassed for him. He watched silently.

“Chardy. Help me,” Danzig said. “Don’t let them kill me.”

“If you stay here, you’ll be all right. Just stay here—you have nothing to fear from these men downstairs.”

A sudden spurt of energy jerked through Danzig; he
lurched up, twisting away, staggering through stacked books and sheets of paper and files, slipping, knocking them aside.

“You and I are natural allies in this thing. We are. We’re the same man, really. Yours the physical component, mine the intellectual. Help me, Chardy. You’ve got to promise; you’ve got to help me. They’re trying to get rid of
both
of us, don’t you see? You and I, we’re linked. Somehow.”

Chardy watched him stagger through the room.

“Do you swear to me, Chardy? You’ll help me?”

“I—”

“The Kurd is a triggerman. Don’t you see? Perhaps
he
doesn’t even know the real reason behind all this. The woman was another pawn. Perhaps you are still a third. It’s a plan, a plot, a design only
they
know. Why? I have to know. Why?”

Chardy said, “They tell me only that it’s as straightforward as it seems. That Ulu Beg is here for vengeance, because he feels we—you—betrayed his people and let the Russians kill them.”

“Do you believe that? Chardy, look at me. Do you believe that? Really, deeply, do you believe that?”

“I don’t know,” said Chardy. “I just don’t know.”

“It’s phony. And I’ll prove it.”

“How?”

“The answer is here. In this room.”

Chardy looked around the dishevelment. Yes, somebody had been looking.

“Do you know what I’ve got here? I’ve got a duplicate set of the Agency operational reports for the years during which I was Secretary of State; I’ve got the records; I’ve got the secrets; I’ve got all the analyses, the—”

“How the fuck did you—”

“I’ve had it for years. I had my friends in the Agency
too, you know. For some time there was a considerable Danzig faction. I used a lot of the material for my first book. It’s in here, in these records. I’ll find it. But I need time. And they
know
I need time.”

“I just—”

“Chardy! Listen!”

Danzig had closed in on him and stood inches away. His eyes gleamed; he seemed on the verge of a seizure. He touched Chardy.

“Chardy. This man is a foreigner. He’s six feet two inches tall and probably doesn’t know the difference between a nickel and a dime. He doesn’t know what a hamburger is. Tell me this: Why hasn’t he been caught? They said it would be days. It’s been weeks. They’ve got him somewhere. They’re manipulating him into place.”

“Just stay here. Stay in this room. Don’t leave this room unless I tell you to. You’ll be all right. You have nothing to fear.”

“You’ll get me my time?”

“You’ve
got
your time. Trust me.”

Trust Chardy? Trust him? That was the core of the problem: trust whom? Trust Sam? Trust this dreadful altar boy Lanahan? Trust the renegade Chardy?

Danzig sat back. He was into the second week of a headache. His chest still hurt. Chardy had gone.

“I won’t be around today,” he’d said. “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Where are you going?”

“You check your files, I’ll check mine,” Chardy had said.

Danzig sat back in the chair. He was afraid he might start hyperventilating again. He tried to escape his memory of the Kurd and his weapon and that terrifying moment when the molecules seemed to freeze and the man
stood there fifteen feet away, about to fire, and Danzig knew he would die. He remembered the eyes, blazing, set. Something vivid and graceful about him, strong. The terrifying thing about it all was that it fascinated him. That’s the Jew in me, he thought. I can talk it out, think about it, compare it to a thousand books and essays, examine its themes and motifs, its subtextual patterns, make epigrammatic witticisms about it, and yet I cannot do one thing to survive it.

He considered himself by way of contrast and the contrast was bleak. For fifty-six years he had not paid the slightest attention to his body. He abhorred exercise. He looked down at his belly, a slack mass protruding from his robe. Too much weight, too weak, too slow. He imagined himself scrambling up a hill or down an alley, the Kurd after him. He would slip and scrabble. The Kurd would come on in huge athletic strides. Danzig had nothing, nothing to fight him with. All his brains, his glory, his power: nothing.

What would he do? He knew the answer. He would die.

His headache leaked down his spine and into his back. A Jew in an attic, hiding. The same old pattern, ceaseless. Centuries of attics. It came down to this, finally, didn’t it, this game they play when they are bored. The game is Kill the Jew. Kill the stinking kike, boys, kick him in the stinking teeth, kick his stinking ass. Kill the Jew, boys, kill him.

He shook his head. Madness stalked him—he knew it. History haunted him. It had been said of a dreadful king once that he was at his best when things were easiest, and Danzig had always loathed him for it. Other images came before him: Jews marching into ovens, slaves politely assisting their traffickers, Christian martyrs smiling in the flames or animal pits. The weak perished: another law, as binding as that of entropy and, in a certain way, related.

All right, he told himself: to work.

He rattled through the papers before him, various drafts of ideas, theories of conspiracy, lists of men and organizations that could benefit by his death. The list was impressive.

Maybe you
are
the fool, he thought, and issued a joyless laugh at the absurdity of his own predicament. Maybe you are just another crazy Jew; go on, go to Miami Beach, relax.

But a step creaked and he knew it was an Agency security man with an Israeli submachine gun and an earplug and he went back to work.

The promotion sat like an anvil on Lanahan, bending him to the earth. His small eyes were even shiftier than normal and he was breathing raggedly and too hard. He would not let Chardy alone, had followed him through four rooms now.

“What did he say, Paul? Did he say anything about me? Did you calm him down? You know he said I was working for the Russians, he really did. Paul, he’s crazy. Paul, is he settling down? He said he was going to call reporters. Oh,
Christ
, can you imagine if—”

Chardy had seen it before: the brilliant underling who knows 3 percent more than any man who ever gave him an order finally gets the chance to give a few himself and is destroyed by it. He who talked so loud behind the backs of others is now devoured by imaginary conversations behind his own; he trusts no one, wants to know everything.

“I think he’s calmer now. He had a bad night.”

“I always did think he was a little manic-depressive; you could see it even when he was in his prime. What’s his beef?”

“The standard. Conspiracies, secret plots, that kind of stuff. Nothing you haven’t heard before. He’s finally realized
he might catch one in the back of the neck. It’s tearing him apart.”

“Okay. I want you around. In case he throws another one of those horror shows.”

“He’s all right now. He just wants to go through his files.”

“Still, you stay here. It’s what Sam wants; it’s what I want. Just in case. You can reach him. Nobody else can. It’s that—”

“I’ve got something to do, Miles.”

“Chardy—”

“Sorry.”

“Chardy.”

“Fire me, Miles. See how that goes over with Danzig. See what he does then. See if you make archbishop then, Miles.” Chardy smiled. “Be good, Miles. Don’t forget late mass.”

He turned and stepped out the door into the bright Georgetown morning.

Chardy made the Chevy in the traffic of Colesville Road, out near the Beltway. It was green, with a high aerial. Nothing ever changes, does it? You’d think they’d get new cars, but they were always dark Chevys. He slowed, it slowed. He sped up, it sped up. He pulled into a station, it pulled to the side of the road.

He filled the tank and paid the kid.

“Isn’t there a town called Columbia around here?”

“It’s out further. Straight out. About ten more miles.”

“Thanks.”

He pulled back into the lane of traffic and the Chevy moved to join it too. Chardy lagged a little, and cars started to honk behind him, then swing by him. Several people cursed as they wheeled past. He was going about twenty in a thirty-five zone, and stopping occasionally
with indecision. Suddenly there were no more cars behind him except the green Chevy, which could not pass. In his rearview mirror he could see two grim young faces staring fixedly ahead. He stopped for a light.

When the light changed, Chardy dropped into reverse and hit the accelerator. The two cars met with a huge smash that whipped Chardy back against his seat. He shook his head clear for just a second, came up to first, and fired out of there. As he drove away, he could see the smashed grille of the car behind him, and a pool spreading under the engine block. One of the agents was out, screaming.

“Chardy, you motherfucker!”

Chardy sped down Colesville.

He paused. So unlike D.C. or any eastern or midwestern city. Perhaps something of California or an easterner’s dream of California. Chic wood houses, fading fashionably from brown to gray; windows full of ferns; sensible cars like Volvos and Rabbits; loopy, winding streets that led nowhere except back to their own beginnings. He’d wandered in the rolling, hilly utopia for an hour now, searching out a fanciful address: 10013 Barefoot Boy Garth. Could there really be 10,000 houses with 10,000 Volvos and 10,000 ferns on this garth? And what the hell was a garth, anyway? But at last he’d connected. He’d found the garth—it was just a street—and come to a grouping of mock-Normandy farmhouses whose numbers were of the proper dimension. He tracked as he traveled, until he saw it, on a circle linked to the main road, a solid place. He pulled in, noting a child’s plastic trike on its side, bright orange and slung low. So maybe there were kids. Or maybe the guy she’d married had them. He got out, stepped over the trike, and headed up a short walk.

He knocked. Suppose she wasn’t there and he’d wasted
this long drive? He should have called first. But suppose she didn’t want to see him? You could never tell; perhaps in the aftermath she’d thought the better of stirring up the old memories.

A muffled voice came from behind the wood.

“Who’s there, please?” A little fear? Did people worry out here in paradise too?

“Marion, it’s Paul Chardy.”

The door shot open.

“Paul, my God!”

“Marion, hi. I should have called. Something brought me out here and I thought, what the hell?”

“How did you find me? Nobody can find
anything
in Columbia the first time.”

“Lucky,” he said, sparing her the tale of his lost hours.

“Come in.”

He stepped into a hall and she took him down a step into the living room, which was cream-colored, filled with plants and light and spare, clean furniture.

“It’s very nice.”

“Sorry about the mess. My husband’s kids are with us this month.”

“Don’t worry about it. You ought to see
my
place.”

“Sit down, Paul. Can I get you some coffee?”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”

She went to the kitchen as he sat down on the sofa.

“Paul,” she called, “it’s so nice to see you.”

She came back with two cups.

“I remember that you drank it black.”

“I haven’t changed. Remember that night in Hong Kong? Frenchy and I were just in from Vietnam. You met us at the airport. ’sixty-six or ’sixty-seven?”

“Nineteen sixty-six.”

“’sixty-six, yeah. And how we celebrated that night?
We went to that place out in Happy Valley. The Golden Window, I think it was. Right next to the furniture plant, and you could smell the lacquer and hear the buzz saw next door. Remember that place had all those fish, six tanks of them? They glowed? Jesus, and we got drunk. Frenchy and I did anyway. And we were supposed to check in with Cy Brasher the next day at oh-eight-thirty. And you had that taxi driver find a place that was open at about five. And you ordered coffee and made us drink it. Black coffee. And wouldn’t let us go back to the hotel. You really saved our tails that night, Marion. Do you remember?”

“Yes, I do, Paul.”

Chardy sat back, took a drink of his coffee. “That was some night.”

“And wasn’t there a girl who wouldn’t leave you alone? At the Golden Window. And then you disappeared on us for three days after you got through the thing with Cy Brasher.”