The Second Saladin

“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