The Second Saladin

of an important operation suddenly achieved.

C: But what about the Kurds?

M: I’m sorry. The scope of this inquiry doesn’t include the Kurds.

The last details are remote, Trewitt knew. Nobody has ever examined them, no books exist, no journalists have exhumed it. Only the Melman report exists, and its treatment is cursory. Joseph Danzig himself has not commented yet. In the first volume of his memoirs, Missions for the White House, he promised to deal with the Kurdish situation at some length; but he has not yet published his second volume and somebody has said he may never. He’s making too much money giving speeches these days.

The fates of the three principals were, however, known: Chardy, captured, was taken to Baghdad and interrogated by a Russian KGB officer named Speshnev. His performance under pressure, Trewitt knew, was a matter of some debate. Some said he was a hero; some said he cracked wide open. He would not discuss it with Melman.

He was returned to the United States after six months in a Moscow prison.

Johanna Hull showed up in Reza’iyeh by methods unknown in April of 1975 and returned to the United States, and her life at Harvard. She had lived quietly ever since. Except that three times she had tried to commit suicide.

Ulu Beg, one source reported, was finally captured by Iraqi security forces in May of 1975 and was last seen in a Baghdad prison.

The fate of his people — his tribe, his family, his sons — was unknown.

“Lights,” Yost said.

Trewitt fumbled a second too long for the switch but finally clicked it on.

The brightness flooded the room and men blinked and stretched after so long in the dark.

Yost stood at the front of the room.

“Briefly, that’s it,” he said. “I wanted to keep you informed. Chardy arrives tomorrow.”

“Lord, you’re bringing him here?”

“No, not to the Agency. We’re running this operation out of a sterile office in Rosslyn, just across the river from Georgetown.”

“Yost, I hope you can control this Chardy. He can be a real wild man.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Miles Lanahan said.

He smiled, showing dirty teeth. He was a small young man with a reputation for ruthless intelligence. He was no sentimentalist; the “old cowboy” stuff wouldn’t cut anything for him. He’d started out as a computer analyst working in “the pit,” Agency jargon for the video display terminal installation in the basement of Langley’s main building, and worked his way out in a record two years. Everybody was a little afraid of him, especially Trewitt.

“All right, Miles,” said Yost, “that’s enough.”

Down, boy, thought Trewitt.

But Miles had one more comment.

“The plan,” he said, “is not to control him.”

5

Chardy sometimes thought only the game had kept him sane. At the end of Saladin II, the worst time in the cellar, he thought not of Johanna or the Kurds or his country or his mission; they’d all ceased to sustain him. He thought of the game. He shot imaginary jumpers from all over a huge floor and willed them through the hoop. Magic, they floated and fell and never touched metal. The game expanded to fill his imagination, to push out all the dark corners, the cobwebs, the spooky little doubts. Later the game had become, if anything, bigger. Into it he poured all his energy, his natural fierceness, his frustrations and dissatisfactions, his resentment: his hate. The game, more loyal than any human or institution on this earth, absorbed them — and him.

And now, on the night before what he knew was the most important day of his life, the game was especially kind to him. For of late his shots would not fall, his legs had been thick and numb, his fingers clumsy. But all that was a memory: tonight he could not miss. From outside, inside, but usually from the baseline with no backboard for margin of error, he shot, the ball spinning to the rafters and dropping cleanly through. It was only a Y-league game, mostly ex-college jocks like himself, or black kids with no college to go to; and it took place in a dim old gym that smelled of sweat and varnish and sported a shadowy network of old iron girders across the ceiling.

But for Chardy there was nothing but basketball court, no outside world, no Speights or Melmans or Ulu Begs. It was an absolute place: you shot; it went in or it didn’t. There was no appeal, no politics, no subtle shading of results. It was a bucket or it wasn’t.

Toward the end even the cool black kids were working the ball to him, just to watch it fall.

“Man, you hot,” one called.

“Put it down,” another yelled.

He hated to see it end, but it did. The team he played for, which represented a manufacturer of surgical instruments, easily vanquished a team that represented a linoleum installer; the margin was twenty-eight points and could have been greater. A buzzer sounded and the bodies stopped hurtling about. Somebody slapped him on the ass and somebody clapped him on the back and somebody shook his hand.

“You had it tonight,” somebody said.

“Couldn’t miss, could I?”

“No way, man, no way.”

Chardy took a last glance toward the floor — two other teams, the Gas Stations and the Ice Cream Stores, were warming up. It meant nothing, but Chardy hated to leave it. A ball came spinning his way and he bent to scoop it up. He held it, feeling its skin springy to his fingers. He looked at the hoop and saw that it was about fifty feet away.

Shoot it, he thought.

But a black man came galloping up to him and without a word Chardy tossed him the ball, and off he went. Chardy pulled on his jacket and headed for the doors and what lay beyond.

6

He stared at the picture. Yes. Ulu Beg. Years younger, but still Ulu Beg.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Good. Getting it was no easy thing,” said Trewitt, the young one, a wispy pseudo-academic type who was tall and thin and vague.

“Once upon a time,” Chardy said. “Years and years ago.”

“Okay,” said Trewitt. “Now this one.”

The projector clicked and projected upon the screen on the wall of a glum office in Rosslyn a plumpish face, prosperous, solid.

“I give up,” said Chardy.

“Look carefully,” said Yost Ver Steeg. “This is important.”

I know it’s important, Chardy thought irritably.

“I still don’t — oh, yeah. Yeah.”

“It’s an artist’s projection of Ulu Beg now. Twenty years later, a little heavier, ‘Americanized.’”

“Maybe so,” said Chardy. “But I last saw him seven years ago. He looked” — Chardy paused. Words were not his strong point; he could never get them to express quite what he wanted — “fiercer, somehow. This guy was in a war for twenty years. He was a guerrilla leader for nearly ten. You’ve got him looking like a Knight of Columbus.”

A harsh note of laughter came from the other young one, Miles something-Irish. It was a caustic squawk of a