The Second Saladin (43 page)

Ramirez began to speak.

“He wore a cream suit. He try to kill me. He get me
here,”
and he pulled open his robe to show them the recent wound. “He and another little pig, a fat pig who didn’t say much and needed a shave.”

“Probably Sixto. They worked as a team in Nicaragua.”

“What happened, Mr. Ramirez? This is a very dangerous individual.”

“I shot him in the guts and his friend twice—in the head. With a little Colt I used to keep at the register.”

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

“Jesus Christ,” somebody finally said. “Did you hear that?”

“Is he lying?”

“Leo, we get no increase in respiration.”

“He got ’em both? Jesus, Leo, can you believe that?”

“I know,” said Leo. “They didn’t even bother to hire anybody. They went after him themselves, with their best people, right from the start.”

“That would make those guys Chardy wasted on the mountain part of that crack
Cinco de Julio
commando brigade that raised so much hell in Angola.”

“They really went after him with the cream, Leo. They wanted him greased something bad.”

“Christ,” said Leo, “wait till Chardy hears his friend Mr. Ramirez took down a full colonel and a major in Cuban Military Intelligence.”

T
he nun smiled and said that yes, Mr. Chardy could have visitors, at least until four, when the hospital would be cleared. There were visiting hours again at six, until eight.

“Thank you, Sister,” Lanahan said—at his most charming. “And how are you?”

“I’m fine, young man,” she said.

“I’m so glad to see you Ye still in the habit, Sister. You don’t see it so much anymore. I don’t care for these new uniforms. Some don’t even wear uniforms, which is quite a bit too far out for my taste. The habit communicates such seriousness, such dignity.”

“That’s the way we feel, young man.”

“Goodbye.”

Miles, warmed by the conversation, rode the elevator up four stories and turned down one hall and then another, tracking room numbers. His soles clicked crisply on the linoleum. He walked through doors and along corridors, surprised that the place was so huge. Crucifixes adorned every wall, and pictures of Jesus and Mary. He smiled at the nuns. It had been—how long since he’d been in an exclusively Catholic institution? So long. Too long. He thought of asking where the chapel was, and stopping for
a moment. The warmth and love of the place embraced him. And pleased him; Chardy, in a place like this? It would be good for him. At last he found the wing.

N
EUROLOGICAL
, the sign said. It figured. Chardy, the nut-case, in the loony department. He stepped through double doors. No nuns or priests here, not even a doctor in this bleak green corridor. He paused, counting the room numbers.

C
HARDY
P
AUL
, read the typed card framed next to the doorjamb.

He paused again. The door was closed. What crawled on his spine? A feeling of things wrong, dead wrong, all about him. His profession, however, inclined him to paranoia, and one succeeded in it by virtue of controlling these devouring sensations. Yet still he felt sucked in. Gray light came through the window just down the way at the end of the hall, displaying a slice of the panorama of the city, though one without monuments.

Lanahan’s attack at last quelled itself, and he felt okay again, ready to check in on Chardy, to see him with his own eyes, to
know
that everything was all right; and then to have it out with him, the whole thing, who was boss, the cavalier attitude, his whole rotten
bad
attitude that had poisoned things since the very beginning; and then finally to the business of Trewitt, which he meant to pop on him by surprise to break him down with; and then to call Sam, make a fresh start. And therefore spare himself any further rites of terror such as the one he’d undergone at the Ops meeting yesterday.

He knocked.

“Yeah?”

It
was
Chardy.

“Paul, it’s Miles,” he called, and sailed in. “Paul, I—”

When Miles came at last to reorient himself, he was astounded to discover that through some Alice in Wonderland trickery or illogic,
he
had become the patient. He had a terrible, a profound sense of a fundamental change in the fabric of his reality, as if in stepping through the door he’d exchanged one universe for another, fallen down the rabbit hole.

Several men stood around him, and were not friendly, among them Paul Chardy, dressed, sporting no trophies of a beating. If anything, Chardy had
done
some beating recently, for the knuckles of his right hand wore a blazing white gauze strip.

“Paul, what the—”

“Just relax, Miles.”

“Paul, this—”

“Miles, be quiet.” Chardy’s teacher voice, Chardy’s teacher look, authoritative, unarguable. What Chardy was this? A Chardy in command? What the hell gave Chardy the right?

But Miles shut up. He’d been deposited firmly into a straight-back chair, trussed not by bonds but by the weighty presence, the will, of others. Who were they? What kind of hospital was this, anyway?

“Miles,” Chardy said, “we start with one question. One important question.”

“He’s not wired yet,” somebody said.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Chardy.

“Hey, Paul, this—”

“Shh now, Miles. Shhh. Trust me.”

Chardy solicitous? What kind of new Chardy was this?

For yes, this was a new Chardy. Had he found his religion, or lost it? He’d never seen a calmer Chardy, a less hostile Chardy. Where had Chardy’s chip gone, the one that weighed a ton that he carried around on his
shoulder? Where was that ex-jock’s snarl, that willingness to punch out, fuck the consequences? It was as though he’d had a face-lift or a brain-lift or something.

“Look,” Chardy began, almost pleasantly, “one little question. Help us, okay? We know you were monitoring me; we know you had guys on me; we know that guy in Boston who was recording Johanna was reporting to you. So you saw the wiretap transcripts. Right?”

Lanahan looked sullenly at Chardy.

“Sure you did, Miles. You wouldn’t have missed a chance like that. Now here’s the big question. A call came to me. From Illinois, from Resurrection. From a nun. You may remember helping her find me. Anyway, she read me a telegram. Okay?”

“Okay, Paul.”

“Did you see it?”

A moment of triumph. Lanahan could not help the little smirk.

“Yes,” he finally said.

“I knew you would. Didn’t I say so, Leo? Miles is very, very smart. Here’s the tough one. Let’s take it another step, and we need the truth on this, Miles. I’ll have them blast you full of sodium p if I have to.”

Somebody looped a strap across Lanahan’s chest and drew it tight. Another man leaned over him, pushed his sleeve up, and bound onto his arm an elastic band.

“Hey, you have to have my permission to polygraph me,” he said.

“Now, now, Mr. Lanahan, let’s just be patient. He’s all set. Let me get a control reading here. Is your name Miles Lanahan?”

“Miles?”

Lanahan was silent.

“Come on, Miles, play the game. Answer the man.”

Miles looked at the ceiling, at the men in the room, so many of them.

“Who are these guys, Paul? Just what the hell—”

“I’m Leo Bennis of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Lanahan. These people are on my staff. They’re all professionals, and they all have high-level security clearances. All right?”

But Lanahan shot a look of horror at Chardy.

“Feds! Jesus Christ, you went to the feds. Oh, Paul, I’m so disappointed in you. Oh, Jesus, Paul, Sam is going to
screw
you, he’s going to—oh, Paul, that’s just the worst—”

“They’ve been on this thing for a little while, Miles. And they listened You guys wouldn’t. Nobody else would. So I had to go play with them. It’s their ball. Come on, Miles, let’s get going. Give the man your name so we can get the game started.”

“Paul, you—”

“Miles, this wouldn’t be going on if we didn’t think it absolutely fucking had to.
Had to
. Come on, Miles. Come on.”

Miles looked around again. It was said that Chardy had been worked with blowtorches before he finally cracked. But that had been different, a kind of war. He’d had time to get ready; he’d been trained. Miles looked around the room, then back to Chardy, whose glare leaned in to him. He broke away from it, looked elsewhere. But there was no mercy for him anywhere in this room.

“My name is Miles Lanahan.”

“Where do you reside?”

Miles gave the address.

“What’s your mother’s name?”

Miles answered.

“Okay,” the technician said. “It would be better if he
wasn’t so excited, but I guess that can’t be helped. I’ve run them on jumpier guys. Go ahead, Chardy.”

“Okay, Miles. What did you make of the telegram?”

Miles took a deep breath. Here was a test he was going to pass.

“You’re running Trewitt. In Mexico. Trewitt’s alive.”

“See, Leo, I told you he had a nose for this stuff. He’s sharp; he can do an awful lot with very little dope. Okay, Miles. Here’s the last big one. Who did you tell?”

“Paul, these guys are just using you. They don’t give a shit; they’re just conning you. They love to scramble the Agency. Paul, you’re going to get in so much trouble. Paul, this isn’t—”

“Shoot him up, Leo. Miles, I have to know. It’s very important.”

“Don’t stick me, goddammit. Keep that thing away.”

He looked around the room, finding it surprisingly big. He saw that once upon a time it had been an operating room: high ceiling, bright yellow walls ribbed with pipes. Now it was—what? HQ for some weird fed operation, Judas Chardy up there rubbing asses with G-men.

Sam’s words came to him, delivered only days ago, clear and penetrating: He will make you choose. He will tempt you, test you. He’s clever, smart. You’ve never seen the man he really is.

“Miles, let’s go. It’s confession time. Who’d you tell?”

“Nobody.”

“What kind of reading you get?”

“Respiration’s flat. No jump. Unless he’s stoned on downers or a real pro at riding these things, which he might be.”

“I was never on one of these things in my life,” Lanahan said irritably, offended at the notion.

“Why, Miles? Why didn’t you tell Sam? It was a big scoop. It was your ticket to the top.”

“Because I couldn’t read it. I played it over two hundred ways and I still couldn’t read it. I wanted to develop it, or hold it in reserve, and pull it out when it really counted, or when it took me someplace.”

“You played it just right, Miles. We’re very lucky nobody in that outfit is quite as bright as you.”

“Good old Miles,” Leo said.

Miles saw that the tension in the room was considerably released. Now what the hell?

“Trewitt got a guy out of Mexico—yeah, Trewitt, Dreamer Trewitt—that a lot of people want dead. But somehow Trewitt did it. It only cost his life. A Mexican smuggler and vice lord who brought Ulu Beg across the border back in March. He’s in the room next door, under my name, right now.”

“I don’t—”

“This fat slob had one secret and one secret only. Not that Ulu Beg was in America—we knew that. But that the Cubans were running interference for him, backtracking to wipe out his tracks.”

“Jesus, Paul, what would the Cubans—”

“Come on, Miles. The Cubans are acting for the Russians. This means Ulu Beg isn’t here on his own, but as the final part of a Soviet Intelligence operation.”

“They should know that at the Agency. We should tell them that at the Agency.”

“No. Because if they know that at the Agency, the Russians will very quietly put a bullet in Ulu Beg’s skull and back off. We’ve got to let them push it the last step, so that we can flip it over on them.”

Miles said nothing.

“All right, Miles,” said Chardy. “Now I’m going to
tell you how you’re going to stop them. Stop Ulu Beg and a Russian named Speshnev, who’s running their op, who thought it up. Miles, you’re going to be a cowboy. A computer cowboy.”

D
anzig sat in his office, amid the litter, the empty cups, the craziness. The room seemed full of black bats, broken glass, the stage props of melodramatic insanity; on the other hand, it also seemed just a dirty room, a room in which once a book had been written but which was now a mess. He sat inertly. He could hear,
hear
the slow drain of time slipping away: most peculiar. The world is made of atoms, as we know, and even smaller particles; what can this thing we call
time
be, except the passing of one particle, then another, as they transform themselves into another dimension?

Crackpot stuff, of course. Yet lately he’d been taking refuge in the crackpot, the harebrained, the addled, the twisted, the hopelessly banal
stupid
ideas of this world. The Bermuda Triangle, for one, held a great fascination for him, as did this notion of Chariots of the Gods. Can Aliens in pre-Biblical times really be responsible for this lurid thing we call civilization? Can an Alien influence, a Martian shadow, be divined in his current predicament, rich as it is in literary irony? Are moonmen behind it all?