The Second Saladin Page 30

  “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.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Chardy said.

  “And of course we knew where you’d been.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Chardy, leering as if he remembered the tart. And then he did, a Eurasian girl. She lived in a crappy little apartment in the city with three children. She’d given him a dose, too. And Frenchy had her, but that was on another trip, when Marion wasn’t around.

  “Marion, I just can’t get it out of my head. We really had some times in those old days.”

  “I used to think about it too, Paul.”

  “But you quit? God, how? I’m still stuck back in the sixties.”

  “You were very young then. That was your youth. You always remember your youth. And for me I suppose it had to do with starting a new life. A new family. New friends. You just have a different circle.”

  “But you must miss him. The Frenchman. I miss him terribly.”

  “I do, Paul. Of course. Frenchy was one in a million. I miss him all the time.”

  “Old Frenchy. He taught me so much. Oh, he taught me a lot.”

  “But Paul, it can be dangerous back there. I never told you this—or anybody this. But after Frenchy died, I had a very rough time. I had to go into a place for a while. And they made me see how he was killing me. And I had to let him go. I had to let it all go, and move ahead.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “You can. Frenchy always said you were the strongest.”

  “Ah, Frenchy. The old bastard. Marion, where did they put him? I’d love to go see him. Just once, for old times’ sake.”

  “He’s in Cleveland, Paul. A very nice place. He was cremated, and he’s in a vault in a nice cemetery outside Cleveland.”

  “Maybe I’ll go there sometime,” Chardy said.

  “Paul, have you been drinking?”

  “Not enough,” he said, laughing loudly.

  She nodded, disturbed. She was still a pretty woman; or rather he could still see her prettiness underneath her age, her thickness. She’d seemed to turn to leather. She was so tan she glowed. Her legs were still slim and beautiful. She’d been a stewardess, he seemed to remember. Yes, Frenchy always had a gift for stewardesses; they responded to him somehow.

  “I’m just so mad he was dead all that time and I didn’t even know. The bastards could have told me that, at least.”

  “I never liked the secrecy. I hated all that.”

  “Ah, they don’t know what they’re doing.” He dismissed them with a contemptuous and exaggerated wave of his hand. He laughed loudly, threw down some more coffee. “Christ, the bastards,” he said.

  Marion watched him. “You have been drinking.”

  “A bad habit. Nothing serious. I drink, I shoot my mouth off. I make enemies, I take afternoons off. I get sentimental, look up old friends.” He laughed again. “Look at me now. Chasing ghosts.”

  “Paul, you need help.”

  “No, no, Paul’s fine. Old Paul, the strong one. He’s the strong one. Frenchy really said that?”

  “He did.”

  “I loved him. Marion, I have to know. What did they do to him?”

  She seemed to take a large breath. She stood at the window. She looked out upon other Normandy-style mock farmhouses.

  “It’s such a pretty neighborhood, Paul. It’s so leafy and bright. It’s a wonderful place to raise children. They have pools all over the place and playgrounds they call ‘tot lots.’ They have little shopping malls they call ‘village centers.’ It’s a wonderful place. I’m so happy here.”

  “Marion. Please tell me. I have to know.”

  “Paul, I don’t want to go back there. I had so much trouble. You don’t know how much trouble I had. I think it would be better if you left. This just isn’t working. I can’t go back there. Do you know how hard I had to work to get to this place, Paul? To have this life? This is the life I wanted, Paul, I always wanted.”

  “Help me, Marion. Please help me. I need your help.”

  “You’re not here for the old times, Paul. You’re not here out of love or loyalty. You’re still in it. I can smell it on you, Paul.”

  She stood by the window.

  “It’s so important, Marion.”

  “It really was awful, wasn’t it, Paul? All the things you and Frenchy did. You thought you were such heroes, such big men, flying all over the world. Your duty, you called it. You were fighting for freedom. You were fighting for America. But you were just thugs. Gangsters. Killers. Weren’t you? Maybe that’s the shoe that fits.”

  “I don’t know, Marion. I don’t know what we were.”

  “Frenchy told me, years later he told me, that in Vietnam accidents happened all the time. The wrong people always died. And in South America the soldiers you worked with were brutal men, who hated everybody. There was just too much violence sometimes, it couldn’t be controlled. It just slopped all over the place.”

  “Terrible things happened. That’s what it was about.”

  “‘Hairy.’ Isn’t that the word? That was Frenchy’s favorite word. ‘Very hairy, babe,’ he’d say when he came back, just before he drank himself insensible What it means, though, is that a lot of people had just gotten killed in some terrible and arbitrary way, for no reason. Isn’t that what it means?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you know, Paul, that Frenchy didn’t make love to me for the last five years of his life? Tried, tried hard. He just couldn’t do it. The war was eating him up. It
was destroying the great Frenchy Short. He was trying to get out before it killed him and he knew he wouldn’t make it. He knew. That last trip, he knew.”

  “He knew?”

  “Here they come, Paul. Look.”

  Beyond the yard, beyond the fence, two boys and a girl in bathing suits and sneakers were running down the street, the smaller boy way ahead, running crazily, chugging like a cylinder, the second boy too cool to notice, the girl taking up the rear, laughing.

  “They’re good kids, Paul. So good. I only have them a month and five or six weekends a year, and they didn’t come out of my body but, Jesus, I love them, Paul. Oh, Jesus, I love them.”

  She turned; he could see she was crying.

  “Paul, you’d better go. I really don’t have the energy to make introductions. All right? Just go; just get out of here.”

  “Marion. Please help me. How did Frenchy die? Go back, just one time. It’s so important. You have no idea how important it is.”

  She started to sob. He went quickly to her, but when he touched her she recoiled.

  “I’m all right,” she said fiercely. “I’m fine.” Her face had swollen; her eyes were red and wet.

  “Did he drown?”

  “That’s what the Austrian death certificate said. But—”

  “Yes?”

  “Paul, when they were getting him ready for cremation, I got a call at the hotel. This was in Cleveland. It was the mortician. He asked me to come by. I drove over in the rain in a rented car. He was an old man, the only one there. He said he was sorry to bother me, he didn’t want to make any trouble. The instructions said closed casket. But somehow something had happened in the mortuary. The box had been opened by mistake. He wanted to know if I wanted to make any kind of inquiry. Something was wrong; I should know about it. He was just trying to protect himself, he said. So I said, what is it, what is wrong?

  “Paul, he took me back and he showed me. I had to look at it, Paul.”

  She paused.

  “How did Frenchy die, Marion?”

  “They killed him with a blowtorch, Paul. My beautiful, beautiful Frenchy. They burned him to death, slowly. They burned his face off.”