The Second Saladin Read online

  “We are here,” said Lanahan, “because it’s Saturday night. And every Saturday night, this studious intellectual lady, this gifted, brave, strong woman”—Chardy’s words, thrown back at him—“comes here, or one of several other similar institutions, and finds a man and leaves with him.”

  “Last weekend she didn’t get home till Sunday afternoon,” said the driver, a wizard from Technical Services.

  Chardy wondered if that was a smirk on Lanahan’s lumpy little face in the red glow of the neon. He felt like smacking him, but then the impulse vanished. Lanahan was nothing to him, not worth hitting.

  “Nobody from Harvard would come way out here,” said the man up front. “They stick to Cambridge and snottier places like The Casablanca or Thirty-three Dunster Street. This place is too tacky, too crass, your suburban crowd, polyester.”

  “She’s in there now,” Lanahan said. “That’s her car.” He pointed to a green VW parked nearby.

  The wizard said, “She always goes for the same type. I’ve seen three of them now. Dark Irish. Big, six two, two hundred pounds.”

  “She’s looking for some others off your assembly line,” Lanahan said. “She’s looking for you.”

  “That’s shit,” Chardy said.

  “We shall see. You all set? You ready? You still think you can handle it?”

  “Uh-huh,” Chardy said.

  “You don’t sound so convincing. Look, there are other ways of handling this.”

  Chardy thought, you little bastard.

  “Chardy. I have to answer to Ver Steeg on this one. Don’t fuck it up, all right? Just play it cool, don’t come on too strong. Don’t spook this girl. You do it wrong, she goes to the newspapers, makes a big—”

  “I can handle it.”

  Chardy slid the van door open, stepping into the chilly, damp evening.

  Spring had not yet reached Massachusetts and he walked through the ranks of cars in a fog of his own breath. At Timmothy’s a short line formed and he ducked into it. They were all so pretty: the boys in their twenties had expensive haircuts, parted in the middle, that fell in glorious layered cascades; they wore rich, dark clothing, European almost. The girls all seemed small and dark and jocular and somehow Catholic; they would wear crucifixes on their delicate throats and not really believe what they were here for. He felt like some kind of grown-up among them, stiff and stupid, for he was easily a decade beyond the next oldest person in the line. He waited patiently in his drab suit for almost ten minutes, until at last he reached a set of doors that were opened to admit him. He took a last look at the van, far off, under a tall light, its windows impenetrable, and knew that Lanahan was watching, and by extension Yost Ver Steeg and the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Entered, the bar was really a collection of bars, each to its own motif, each equally fraudulent. It took him a while to move through all these variations—each big room was jammed—but just as he was beginning to grow panicky, he found her.

  She sat at a table with some guy. The room was tonier than the others, fashioned after the Victorian age, if the Victorians had discovered plastic. Chardy felt he’d stumbled on to a movie set. But there was Johanna, her flesh, her face, with some man: as the wizard had said, a big man, Chardy’s size or larger, in a three-piece suit.

  Chardy squeezed in at the bar a discreet distance from them and ordered a beer. He could see her in the mirror, but just barely, for smoke hung in the dark space near the ceiling like a rain squall. She was so intimate with this man. She touched his arm. She laughed at his jokes and listened with rapturous attention to his anecdotes. Sheer jealousy almost crippled Chardy. He watched as they ordered another round—bourbon for the man, white wine for Johanna.

  Chardy watched, mesmerized. When was the last time he’d seen her? He could call it back with surprising accuracy, even now, even here. It had been the day of the ambush, the day of his capture. She’d dressed after the Kurdish fashion, a gushing print peasant’s skirt, a black vest, several blouses and scarves, and her hair wrapped in a scarf. But not now. Now she wore dark slacks, a turtleneck under a tweed jacket. Her biggest glasses, to soften the slight angularity of her face. Her tawny hair pulled backward, though a sprig of it fell to her forehead. And when she smiled he could see her white teeth.

  Chardy thought: Oh, Jesus, you look good. He could not take his eyes off her. If he had a plan in his head it abruptly vanished. He had some trouble breathing; she robbed him of air. Her hands were white and her fingers long and she reached and touched the man on the hand. He laughed, whispered something. They finished their drinks. They stood.

  Chardy stood.

  They walked through the crowd into the hall. The man had his arm around her. They got their coats from the checkroom and stepped out the door. Chardy followed and caught them in the parking lot under a fluorescent light as the man fumbled with the keys to his Porsche.

  “Excuse me,” Chardy said.

  She turned, recognizing the voice instantly but perhaps not quite believing it.

  “Johanna?” He stepped into the light so that the man could see him. “I’d like to talk to you. It’s important.”

  “Oh, Paul,” she finally said. “Oh, Paul.”

  “Do you know this guy?” the man asked, stepping forward.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Chardy said.

  “Oh, it doesn’t?” he said, taking another step forward. He turned to her. “Do you want to talk to this guy or not?”

  She could not answer but only looked furiously at Chardy.

  “Look,” the man said, “I don’t think this girl wants to talk to you. Why don’t you just go on and get out of here?”

  “Johanna, it’s really important. It really is.”

  “Just go away, Paul,” she said.

  “Paul, you better get on out of here,” the man said.

  Chardy felt electric with sensation. So much current was whirling through him he thought he might blow. She was so close. He wanted to touch her. He felt physically weak, but he could not draw back. Terror also gripped him. He knew he’d done this all wrong, coming on like this.

  He stepped forward another step. “Please, Johanna.”

  The man hit him in the ear, a sucker punch. He twisted his leg as he fell back on the asphalt. He felt for an instant as though a steeple bell had gonged through his skull, and found himself sitting oafishly in a puddle. He looked up, and murder boiled through his brain; but the man who’d thrown the blow looked absolutely stunned that he’d done such a thing.

  “I didn’t mean to,” the man said. “But I told you to stay away. I warned you. You asked for it. You really did. You asked for it and I gave it to you.”

  Chardy climbed to his feet. “That was a stupid thing to do. You don’t know who I am. Suppose I had a gun? Suppose I knew karate or something? Suppose I was just tough?”

  “I-I told you to leave.”

  “Well, I’m not going to. You better not try that again.”

  “Wally,” Johanna said. “It was stupid. He’s a kind of soldier. He probably knows all kinds of dirty tricks. Anyway, I hate it when men fight. It’s so pointless.”

  “Just don’t hit me again, Wally,” Chardy said, “and you’ll come out of this okay.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Wally said. “Are you leaving with me or not?”

  “Oh, Wally.”

  “You certainly changed your tune in a hurry. Well, fuck you, and fuck your crazy boyfriend too. You two have fun; you really deserve each other.” He climbed into his car, pulled out, and roared away in a scream of rubber.

  “Johanna,” Chardy said.

  “Paul, stay away. Stay the fuck away. I don’t need your kind of trouble.”

  He watched her walk away, through the pools of light in the parking lot.

  “Johanna. Please.”

  “Paul.” She turned. “Go away. Stay away. I’ll call the police—I swear I will.”

  “Johanna. Ulu Beg is coming.”

  They sat in
her Volkswagen near a park. He could see the deserted playground equipment, a basketball court empty and dark, through some trees. He drank from a can of beer—he’d told her to stop at a grocery store and she’d silently obeyed—his third in twenty-five minutes. The car ticked occasionally and it occurred to him that this American thing, sitting in a car with a woman on a quiet night near a park, was as exotic to him as a Philippine courtship ritual. Moisture beaded the windshield, fogging it; the air was damp and the trees clicked together in a breeze. She had not yet spoken and then finally she said, “You’re working for them, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Temporarily.”

  “I thought they fired you.”

  “They did. They needed me back.”

  “You said in that letter you’d never work for them again. You said you were all done with it. Were you lying then too?”

  “No. I came back because I didn’t feel I had a choice.”

  “Because of the Kurd?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it a little late to be paying off your debts?”

  “Maybe it is. I don’t know. We’ll see, won’t we?”

  “How can you do it? Work for them? How can you stomach it?”

  “If I didn’t there’d be another man here. He wouldn’t care about you. He wouldn’t care about Ulu Beg. These are cold people, from the Security Office. They want him dead.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “They think he’ll come to you, because he has no other place to go. Or so they say. I’m not sure what they really think. But that’s the official line. So I’m here to get your help.”

  “There was a time when I would have killed you. I thought about it. I thought about flying to Chicago, going to your door, knocking, and when you answered, shooting you. Right in the face.”

  “I’m sorry you hate me so much.”

  “You were part of it.”

  “I never—”

  “Paul, you’re lying. It’s part of the fiber, the structure of your life. I’ve done some research on your employers: they train you to lie without thinking about it. You can do it calmly and naturally, as if you were discussing the weather.”

  “Agency people are just people. Anyway, I never did lie to you. The lying goes on at higher levels. They have specialists in it.”

  He emptied the beer can and reached into the sack for another one. He wished he’d gotten another six-pack. He popped the new top, took a long swallow.

  He finally said, “There probably hasn’t been a night in seven years that I haven’t thought of you and hated what came between us. That’s not a lie. But if you love him—and I think you do, and I think you should—then you’ve got to help me. Or he’s dead.”

  “Don’t overdo the nobility, Paul.”

  “Don’t overdo the betrayed woman, Johanna. While you’re busy feeling sorry for yourself, they’re going to put a bullet in his head.”

  “Paul,” she finally said, “I lied too. I said I loved you. I never loved you.”

  “All right. You never loved me.”

  “I loved the idea of you. Because you were fighting for the Kurds, and the Kurds needed fighters.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was so impressed with force. I thought it was a great secret.”

  “It’s no secret at all.”

  “Do you know what happened? To us? After your mysterious disappearance?”

  “Yes.”

  “You lie!” she screamed. “Goddamn you, you lie. Again. Again, you lie. You don’t know. Nobody knows except—”

  “A Russian told me. He doesn’t run with your crowd.”

  “The details?”

  “No. This Russian doesn’t bother with details. He’s too important to bother with the details. He told me the numbers.”

  “Well, I think it’s important that you know the details. So that you can carry them around upstairs in that cold thing you call a brain.”

  Johanna was beautiful in the dark, now, here, after so much dreaming of her. He ached. He wanted her, wanted her love or her respect. So many things had come between them.

  “Come with me.” She got out.

  He followed her. They crossed the street and stood before a big dark house. She led him up the walk into the foyer. She opened a second door with a key and they climbed three flights of stairs. He heard music coming from one of the floors. They reached the top, turned down a short hall. She opened another door. They stepped into her apartment.

  “Sit down. Take your coat off. Get comfortable,” she said coldly.

  He sat on a couch. The apartment had high ceilings and tall old windows and was modestly furnished in books and potted plants and odd, angular pieces. It was white and cold. Johanna went to a table and returned with a thick sheaf of paper.

  “Here,” she said. “My memoirs. It turns out I’m not Lillian Hellman, but at least it’s the truth.” She paged through the messy manuscript and peeled off a batch of pages. “The last chapter. I want you to read it.”

  Chardy took the chapter from her and looked at the first page. It bore a simple title: “Naman.”

  “You didn’t tap it?” said Lanahan in the van outside, looking at the hulking old house.

  “I couldn’t, Miles,” said the wizard, irritation in his tone because an old hand like him had to show deference to someone as young and raw as Lanahan. “Yost won’t let me. You get caught doing something like that and you got all kinds of troubles.”

  “I don’t know how he expects us to bring this off if we can’t play it hard,” Miles said bitterly. “What about the other units? Are they in touch? Can we get in contact with them?”

  “They’re here, Miles. At least they should be. We’ve got Chardy nailed. But I didn’t think we ought to have a radio linkup in this van. We knew we were going to be carrying Chardy around in this van. I bet if you wandered up the street you’d spot them.”

  “Just so Chardy doesn’t spot them,” Miles said.

  “He won’t. They’re good boys, ex-cops, private eyes. I set it up just the way Yost says. Yost says keep Chardy in a sling, and in a sling he goes. If that’s what Yost wants, that’s what I’ll give him.”

  “Screw Ver Steeg. Ver Steeg is so small he doesn’t exist. He’s a gofer. We’re working for Sam Melman and don’t you forget it.”

  Chardy read:

  I did not have a great deal of time to feel grief over the sudden disappearance of Paul, because almost immediately our bad situation became much worse: we came under shell attack. In my seven months with Ulu Beg and his group we had never been fired upon. I had seen bombed-out villages, of course, but I had no experience to prepare me for the fury of a modern high-explosive barrage. There was no way to take cover and, really, no cover. Ulu Beg had made his camp in a high, flat place under a ridge. The black tents were lined up under the mouth of a cave. The explosions were so incredibly loud and came so quickly that in the first seconds I became totally disoriented. A few people made it to the cave but most of us fell to the earth. I have never been so scared. In the few seconds between the blasts I would look around and try to squirm into a safer position but it was very difficult because there was so much smoke and dust in the air.

  I thought the shelling lasted for hours. When it let up I felt dizzy and disoriented. Additionally, I had breathed a lot of smoke. I could not stop trembling, and though I had seen many wounded men in my times in the mountains, nothing could prepare me for the shock of a firsthand view of what a high-powered shell can do to the human body. They could destroy it utterly.

  I struggled to get some grip on myself, but even before the dust had settled Ulu Beg was running about. I had never seen him so desperate, yelling at people to move.

  We ran chaotically through the dust. We ran up the sides of the hill and found a path along a ridge and ran along it, all of us, soldiers, their wives, all their children. I can still see that sight: over 100 men, women and children fleeing in abject panic. It looked like a scene from the beginnin
g of World War II when the Germans bombed refugee columns in Poland. The women’s dresses and scarves stood out gaudily in the clouds of dust and I could see the turbans of the men, and their khaki pantaloons billowing over their boots. Most pathetic, along that lonely track, were the children, several of whom had been separated from their parents (if indeed their parents had not been killed in the shelling).

  That night we hid in caves but were afraid even to light fires. We tried the radio, using the special channel as Chardy had instructed. But there was nothing. I even tried, thinking my English might be recognized by listeners back in Rezā’iyeh, but there was nothing at all. We felt alone in the world. I looked at the mountains in new fright. They had been so beautiful to me once, and now they scared me. If the Iraqis closed in we could hardly defend ourselves. If snow came and sealed us in a pass, we would certainly starve, for we had no food except what we could carry. And several people were badly hurt, including the wife of Amir Tawfiq, the man who commanded after Ulu Beg.

  We saw Iraqis the next morning but they were far beneath us. Still, Ulu Beg believed it to be a large formation in pursuit of us. He said it would take them hours to reach us, but by that time we’d be gone.

  “Gone to where?” asked Amir Tawfiq.

  “To the border,” Ulu Beg said. He said the Shah would give us safety.

  Amir Tawfiq spat into the dust. The cartridges on his chest rattled. He was about 25. Amir Tawfiq said that the Shah was a black pig who suckled jackals. Ulu Beg told him we had no choice, and that was the end of the discussion.

  We marched through the mountains for four days. Twice more we were shelled. The first shelling was the worst and three of the group were killed and several more wounded. They screamed to go along with us. But we had no choice. We had to push ahead.

  My memories are quite indistinct. At one time Russian jets seemed to hunt us. We crouched in a long ravine and hid behind rocks—over a hundred people. We could see the shadow of the airplane passing over the ground and hear its roar, but could not see it because the sun was so bright. Apo, Ulu Beg’s oldest boy, hid with me.