The Second Saladin Page 33

  Miles’s tiny hands formed fists. Why had those guys let Chardy get away! How could he be expected to run things with third-raters like those two! It wasn’t fair. He shouldn’t have been responsible for both Chardy and Danzig. It was too much, especially with Danzig acting up too.

  Far East had the floor. A rear admiral—though he’d worked in the Agency for years now, he still wore his uniform, his vanity—he spoke in austere, oblique phrases, reading through half-lenses from a typewritten page before him on a topic so obscure Lanahan had no chance of comprehending. Yet almost as he began, he finished, and sat back blankly.

  “Discussion?”

  “Walt, on the Hong Kong apparatus? Are those the same people Jerry Kenny used back in ’fifty-nine?”

  “Some. Old Li, of course—he’s been around since the war. But the real energy is from the younger people, the post-Chiang generation.”

  Who the fuck is Jerry Kenny? Lanahan wondered.

  “Okay. Just wanted clarification. I don’t think Jerry was terribly fond of Li.”

  “Li has his uses.”

  “I suppose.”

  “More?”

  Oh, Lord, Lanahan thought; and then he thought, Chardy, you motherfucker—and was astonished at himself for uttering, even in his own mind, such a filthy word.

  “Sam. Aren’t you next?”

  Melman was talking. He had them, Lanahan could tell. He had them, was lulling them, rolling them this way and that: the operation in synopsis, high points, low points, fates of some long-gone participants, status of the survivors, constant flattering references to his Number 1 right-hand man and field supervisor, Miles Lanahan, at which Miles could only nod and smile tightly.

  He’s setting me up, Miles thought He knows I’ve screwed up—he must have his sources; he’s just setting me up.

  Miles patrolled tongue along lips again. Oh, Christ, it was hot. He hoped the perspiration hadn’t beaded up on his forehead; he wished he could get to the John; he was dying for a sip of water.

  Where was Chardy?

  Why didn’t I give him to Melman earlier. I had a scoop, good stuff. I had to play it too fine, push it too hard, shoot for an even bigger …

  He could still hand over Chardy. It wasn’t too late. He owed Chardy nothing. He remembered guys like Chardy from high school and college: jocks, heroes, they thought they owned the world; they thought they deserved more space. The priests loved Chardys; they’d barely nod to a bright but tiny boy like Miles. Chardy carried the glory of the faith; Miles only did his job.

  Where was Chardy?

  He’d had a team there all night. Nothing. He now had people at police stations, at hospitals. They could reach him still, in seconds, even though he had only seconds remaining until he was up, only seconds—

  The hell with it, thought Lanahan.

  He took a swallow of water, and another; it was gone. He’d finished it in one shot. He could feel horrified eyes on him; had he made some gross gulping noise? Had a tradition been shattered, his career ruined? It turned on such small things, after all: not on who your dad was or where you went to school, but how much water you drank and whether your socks were right and did you know when to laugh and what to laugh at?

  He rubbed his nose, where a blemish throbbed.

  “Miles?”

  “Ah!”

  Not listening.

  “Your status?” Sam looked at him with great kindness and expectation.

  “Well”—his voice a pitch too high; he brought it down—“well, Sam and gentlemen”—the wrong note, didn’t mean to seem obsequious; the trick here was presence—“it’s currently a holding situation. Dr. Danzig is to some degree cooperating with us by staying put, and we’ve got that house sealed up.”

  “Miles, what kind of liaison are you working with the FBI?”

  “Extremely low-level. One of their supervisors offered me a blank check but I thanked him and backed off. I didn’t see any point in involving them any more than necessary. They wanted to ship over bodies, but you never know who is reporting to whom.”

  “What about Secret Service?”

  “I consulted with them on setting up my perimeters; they were quite helpful. But they didn’t offer people and I didn’t ask for people. We’ve got our own men in the house and grounds; in addition, we’ve got vehicular patrols orbiting the house, as well as an emergency CP in a house down the block. It’s very tight. They almost arrested me.”

  “They did arrest me,” said a well-known acquaintance of Joseph Danzig’s, to much laughter.

  Miles began to hope that—

  “And what’s Danzig’s status?”

  “Ah. He’s under great strain. It’s a very difficult time for him, and for us. He’s bearing up, although not without his little outbursts.”

  “How are your people doing?”

  “I’ve no problems to report. They seem to be doing well. They’re professionals; they know what’s expected.”

  “Anything else, Miles?” asked Sam.

  “That’s it. Nothing more to say.”

  “Well, unless there’s any discussion—”

  “Isn’t Chardy on this one?”

  “Yes,” said Miles.

  “Now, Paul was a fieldman. Talk about pros. One of the real cowboys.” The voice was warm with nostalgia, with dewy memories for what some of the men in this room must have thought of still as the Good Old Days.

  And fuck him. Fuck him to hell. Out of nowhere, out of a sweet weakness for a dreadful past, had Chardy’s ugly name come up and onto the table. Miles looked quickly to the far end of the room but could not identify the speaker. They all looked the same anyway: gray, pleasant, bland men in suits, vaguely aloof, prim smiles, calm eyes.

  “Danzig likes him, I’ve heard,” somebody else said curiously.

  “He seems to have conceived an affection for Chardy. The strain, I suppose,” said Miles. “I don’t think it’s—”

  “Didn’t Chardy do some time in a Soviet prison? Miles, do you think it wise, considering—”

  But Melman cut in swiftly:

  “David, we’re all aware of Paul’s flamboyant—and checkered—past. It was my decision to bring him into this, because he was linked to Ulu Beg. In all frankness, one of our first thoughts was that he would be the Kurd’s target; we wanted to make him more visible, in that case. It didn’t work out. Now he’s important because—”

  “I know he’s important. Is he reliable?” The voice was ugly.

  “It’s a risk I think we should be willing to run. We are monitoring him carefully.”

  “I say any man who beat up Cy Brasher deserves a medal,” somebody new said, again to a great chorus of laughter.

  “I’m not shedding any tears for Cy Brasher, Sam, but that’s exactly the kind of wild-eyed, out-of-control behavior that this Agency can no longer afford. That’s why I ask if he’s reliable. And that’s why—”

  “So far, Paul has done his work diligently,” said Sam.

  “Except for Boston,” said David, whoever David was. “If I read those reports right, if he’d stayed on station, the whole mess—”

  “Or again, it might have been worse. And if he had panicked, and not thought to move that suicidal woman’s body away from the scene, a minor catastrophe might have exploded into a major scandal. Paul cuts both ways. He can help you in a way nobody else can, and he can hurt you to just the same extent. So you’ve got to keep him on a very short chain. Miles wouldn’t have the job he’s got if I weren’t satisfied he’s a good man with a chain. Miles, what have you got him doing now? Is he still at the house?”

  Sam certainly had mastered the techniques of blandness. This was the question that would destroy Miles right now, before all these division heads, and it had been asked in the softest, the most reasonable tone Miles had ever heard. Sam sounded again like a cardinal.

  “Well, he’s—” Miles began, wondering where he would end, at the same time enchanted, fascinated, by the catastrophe of the moment. B
ut exactly as his mind purged clean of words, some factotum—Miles hadn’t ever seen him enter—leaned and placed before him a message, which Miles proceeded to read in a confident voice as though he’d known it all along, despite the fact that he was as amazed as any of them to discover that late last night Chardy had been playing basketball with some inner-city kids on a lit playground in Anacostia and some rough words had been exchanged and poor Paul had been beaten rather severely.

  “He’s in Saint Teresa’s, in Southeast.”

  He smiled at Sam.

  “Is there any more water?”

  47

  Now they had him in a far city and a secret place. He had been tended and cleaned and cared for. He had expected a trial to begin soon and knew that he was guilty. It didn’t matter the crime, he’d committed so many. Jail held no terror—he’d been there and knew he’d flourish if his health held—but he missed his dry heat and his beer and his girls and his food. He missed the Madonna even, old ugly cow. At least he’d escaped the Huerras. It would be nice to head back to Mexico City when this was all over and cut the old man’s throat. He’d flop like a fish when he bled. But Ramirez knew he’d never get close enough. Still, in this cool, dull American room it was a pleasant thought to fill his head until the trial. He wondered if they’d give him a lawyer; they’d already given him a doctor to fix his three gunshot wounds and his broken nose. He never knew it worked like this. He thought maybe they’d broken a law too, but he also realized that in this world, if you were strong and bold and well equipped, there were no laws.

  But there was no trial. And the Americans were not interested in his crimes. They didn’t care for the drug-smuggling, the illegal-running, the whoremongering. They cared for only one thing: pictures.

  “Pictures? You bring me all this way to look at pictures? Pretty strange.”

  “We have.” His interrogator spoke Spanish. Tape recorders whirred, the lights were bright, some kind of apparatus had been strapped around his chest and arm, and tense men huddled about his bed. Whatever he knew must be pretty important.

  “Show me pictures, then. What the hell? I want you to be happy.”

  “Look carefully at this one, Señor Ramirez.”

  He squinted through his swollen eyes.

  “Jesus Mary. He didn’t have no beard,” Ramirez said in his border English. “And he was dressed regular, like some kind of norteamericano. I thought he was. But that face.”

  “You brought him across the border?”

  “Sí.”

  “And there was shooting.”

  “I shoot no one. That one done the shooting. I swear it. I shoot no one. I didn’t even have no gun. He took my gun before. He’s a very smart hombre, I’ll tell you. He came to me in my place and say, ‘Hey, mister, you take me to Los Estados, I pay you good.’ And I tell him—”

  “All right, Mr. Ramirez. We’re very short on time. Here, look through these. I have here over two hundred photographs of men. I want you to look at them closely. You tell me if you’ve seen any recently.”

  The faces flicked past. A dreary group—out of focus, blurry. Men in uniforms of strange countries, men photographed at long distance, men in cars or the rain. Most had hard features, the sharpness, the seediness of Europeans; only a few were Latino.

  A familiar set of features suddenly were before him. He studied hard.

  “Leo,” somebody said, “the needle just jumped through the roof.”

  “That one, Mr. Ramirez?” Now he knew why he was here.

  “Never seen him.”

  “Leo, the needle’s still climbing. It’s going into orbit.”

  “Mr. Ramirez, our machine tells us you’re lying. You have seen this man before.”

  Ramirez settled his vision in the far distance. Wire mesh ran through the windows—so he was in a prison then, was he? They really had him.

  “Mr. Ramirez, we’re not here to prosecute you. You are not part of any legal proceedings. Nothing you say will be held against you. In point of fact, officially this is not happening. We need your cooperation.”

  Ramirez sat and stared placidly ahead.

  “Mr. Ramirez. Look on it as a debt of honor. The United States, your friendly northern neighbor, sent a young man to save you from your enemies. Then a helicopter. Your life was saved twice. It seems to me you owe us. It’s a debt of honor. I know how important your honor is.”

  “Is no debt,” said the Mexican. “The debt was made no good when the man with the dark beard hit me in the nose. I want some money. Is no honor here. Your people, they have no honor.”

  “Now that’s a mentality we can deal with,” somebody said.

  “Okay, Sal, cut the smart stuff,” the one called Leo said. “All right, Mr. Ramirez, how much?”

  “I want,” said Ramirez, “two hundred dollars.”

  “Two hundred dollars?”

  “Two hundred, U.S. In cash.”

  “I think we can afford that,” said Leo.

  “Now,” said Ramirez.

  Leo reached into his wallet, counted out some bills. “I have only twenty-three dollars on me now. And some change.”

  “How much change?”

  Leo searched his pockets. “Sixty-three cents.”

  “I take it all. You get the rest later.”

  “Twenty-three dollars and sixty-three cents, here you are,” Leo said. “Haggerty, make a note of that, okay?”

  “Sure, Leo. We won’t stiff you.” There was some laughter.

  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.”

  48

  The 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 l
ove 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.

  NEUROLOGICAL, 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.

  CHARDY PAUL, 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.