The Second Saladin

“First, of course, your cooperation. That is, your silence. If the whistle is blown, if the media are brought in — God only knows what sort of a circus this thing could become. And it wouldn’t make you any the safer. In fact, it might put you in more danger.”

Danzig could see it: pools would be formed all across America, especially in the liberal areas, though also in the South and the Southwest, where he was also hated. When will the Kurd get Danzig? Money would be wagered. It would end up on the nightly news.

“Yes,” he said.

“Good. Then, most importantly, we’ve got to cut down his access to you. If you stay still, you can be protected. If you don’t, then you can’t. You’ve got to cut down on your activities.”

“I make my living that way. I’m booked for months. For years.”

“Dr. Danzig, it’s—”

“Yes, I know. Of course I’ll cut down. I have to. But there are certain commitments that — damn, why did this have to happen?”

“Then, of course, beef up your security.”

“Yes.”

“And lastly—”

“Yes?”

“Well, we do have something of an advantage in this matter. We happen to have a man who knows this Kurd, who worked closely with him in fact. He even trained him. He was the Special Operations Division officer who went into Kurdistan in ’seventy-three.”

“Yes?”

“His name is Chardy. He—”

“Chardy? My God, Chardy! I remember. He was captured, spent some time in a Soviet prison.”

“Yes.”

“Chardy,” Danzig said again, turning the name over in his mind.

“The fact is, Chardy knows Ulu Beg, how he looks, how he thinks; that makes him immeasurably valuable. And he used to be a pretty good officer in a shooting situation.”

“Well, I certainly hope this doesn’t come to that. Is he going to run the effort to capture this Kurd?”

“Not exactly. He’s no policeman. No, we had something else in mind for Chardy, something to take greater advantage of his knowledge.”

“Yes?”

“We want to place him with you.”

“Good God!” Danzig coughed. “With me? I just don’t believe this is happening.”

15

They discovered quickly that he was dead. Reynoldo Ramirez, killed by assailants in his own establishment in the prime of life, the newspaper said. What assailants? The newspaper was silent; so was the Departamento de Policia.

“They’ve been paid off,” Speight said ominously.

Come on, thought Trewitt, but he didn’t say anything. He had taken an almost instant dislike to Nogales — to Mexico. Blue and pink slum shacks hanging on the stony hillsides over a cheesy turista section of souvenir stalls, bars, dentists’ offices and auto-trim shops. He hated it. A different quality to the air even, and the jabber of language that he could only partially follow did not ease his anxiety. Trewitt just wanted to get out of there.

But Old Bill sniffed something.

“I want to see Reynoldo Ramirez’s grave,” he said. “I want to know the man is dead.”

Oh, God, thought Trewitt.

But they had hailed an Exclusivo cab and journeyed to the grave site. The place nauseated Trewitt. No clean Presbyterian deaths in Mexico: the cemetery was a kind of festival of the macabre, primitive and elemental. Crosses and sickly sweet flowers and hunched, praying Virgins painted in gaudy colors. And skulls.

Trewitt shuddered. He’d never seen the naked thing before, and here it was lying in the dust. Or rather, they: bones and heads everywhere, spilling out of vaults in the dusty hills, clattering out of niches and trenches. A wind knifed across the place, pushing before it a fine spray of sand that stung Trewitt’s eyes and whipped his coat off his body like a flapping cape. He leaned into it, tasting grit.

“There it is,” shouted Bill.

They stood by the elaborate marker, even now buried in dusty flowers. A weeping Virgin knelt over her fallen son amid the weeds. Trewitt was standing on a femur. He kicked it away. Looking out he could see scabby Nogales, hills encrusted with bright shacks, sheer walls over bendy little streets; and beyond that the fence of the border, like a DMZ line cutting through a combat zone; and beyond that, American Nogales, which was a neat and pretty town.

Trewitt looked back. In stone the marker read:

REYNOLDO RAMIREZ

MURIO EN

1982.

“There it is,” he shouted. “Dead end.”

Speight studied on the thing, looking it over.

“Wonder who brought the flowers?” he said.

Who cares, thought Trewitt. It would be dark soon; he wanted to get out of there. He looked across the boneyard to the Exclusivo cab awaiting them, its driver perched on the fender.

“Look, it’s all over,” said Trewitt. “He’s gone. There’s no link back to the night Ulu Beg came across. Let’s get out of here.”

But Speight stood rooted to the ground.

“Anybody could be down there. Or nobody,” he finally said.

Trewitt didn’t say anything.

“Maybe we ought to check out that joint of his,” Speight finally said.

“Mr. Speight, we’re not even supposed to be here. Now you want—”

But Speight did not seem to hear him.

“Yep,” he said, “I think that’s what we’ll do.” He started toward the cab, full of purpose.

Trewitt watched him go, and then realized he was standing alone in the cemetery and went racing after.

Several hours later he found himself undergoing a most peculiar torment: a deep self-consciousness, an acute embarrassment, a sense of being an imposter, all cut with a penetrating and secret sensation of delight.

The girl kept rubbing his thigh, the inside of it in fact, with her palm, dry and springy, knowing, educated in a certain way, and was simultaneously whispering of intriguing possibilities into his ear in Pidgin English.

“You got some nice money?”

“Ha, ha,” laughed Trewitt uneasily, sipping gently at what was supposed to be a margarita but was most certainly warm fruit juice and ginger ale at eight bucks a crack, gringo rate. Other girls worked the floor of what was now called Oscar’s. They were all tarts, but this one — Anita, just like in West Side Story — was all his, or he hers, as if by treaty or diplomatic agreement. No one impinged and he was trying to draw this out as long as possible, while Speight made inquiries. It occurred to him that maybe he ought to be asking the questions; after all, it was he who had unearthed this Ramirez, had unearthed this whole Mexican thing. He looked about uneasily, however, over fat Anita’s shoulder, and saw in the darkness a sleazy room full of American students and Mexican businessmen. His loafers stuck to the