The Second Saladin

Near dawn he sought shelter in a structure whose purpose he could not quite divine. Its main recommendation was that it was deserted. He tried to get some sort of grip on himself. He was shivering miserably, almost sniveling (it was so unfair, it always had to happen to him) when a boy found him.

“Who are you?” the boy asked. He wore dirty jeans and black gym shoes and a dirty white T-shirt whose neck was all stretched out.

“A crazy gringo,” Trewitt answered in Spanish. “Go away or I’ll give you a smack.”

The boy’s scrawny chest showed in the exaggerated loop of the shirt’s neck.

“This is my mama’s.”

“Where’s your daddy?”

“Gone to America to be rich.”

“You want to be rich?”

“Sure. In U.S. bucks.”

“I need a place to stay. No trouble. Something quiet.”

“Sure, mister. You kill some guy in a fight?”

“It’s nothing like that.”

“You can stay here.”

Trewitt looked around without much enthusiasm. Bales of hay stood against one wall and shafts of sunlight fell through chinks in the roof. The place was built of corrugated metal. It smelt dusty and shitty all at once. Chickens wandered about, pecking at the ground.

“You got a bath in the house? A shower?”

“No, mister. This is Mexico, not Los Estados Unidos.”

“I noticed. Look, it’s a big secret, okay? Don’t tell anybody. Big secret, you understand?”

The boy vanished quickly and returned with his mother, a huge, ugly woman with eyes of brass and a baby in her arms.

“I can pay,” Trewitt said.

“Ten bucks, U.S.”

“Ten’s fine. Ten a week.”

“Ten a night. Starting last night,” she said, her brass eyes locking on to his. The baby began to squeal and she gave it a swat on the rump.

“Ah, Jesus,” said Trewitt.

“And no cursing,” she said.

Mamacita came with the meal — cold tripe in chili sauce. He fought the gag reflex; he could see the brown sauce crusting on the loops of gut. But it was better than yesterday’s fish-head soup.

“Money,” she said.

Trewitt forked over his last ten.

“How’s my credit?” he asked.

“No credit,” she said, handing him the plate. “Tomorrow you get some more money or you go.”

He attacked the food ravenously, because he had not eaten since yesterday.

What now? Trewitt contemplated alternatives. Could he find a way to make contact? Take a chance, ring up the people at headquarters? Maybe then somebody could bring him in — somebody good, somebody who’d been around, a Chardy? But he knew the waiting would kill him. It had already been two weeks since Bill got killed. So should he try the other alternative: take the risk, try and bust the border himself? It was a fairly simple proposition, a tollbooth plaza, like the George Washington Bridge. Just an easy stroll; head for the gate. It was wide open, no Berlin-style Checkpoint Charlies, no Cold War wall to cross like some existential husk of an agent out of Le Carre. For Christ’s sake, you just walked up, following the sign. Entrada en Los Estados Unidos. What could be easier?

But then he remembered Bill Speight in the sewer. He remembered he was being hunted.

He rolled over and faced the scabby tin wall, waiting for inspiration. He had to do something. His mind was full of bubbles — a good deal of commotion and light and very little substance. He had a sudden blast of insane, giddy optimism. But it collapsed almost as quickly as it peaked and the downward trip was a crusher.

He heard a noise and turned.

“Oh,” he said glumly, “it’s only you.”

The boy eyed him from the doorway, unimpressed. Trewitt had the terrible sensation of failing another test. Yet the boy liked him and in the two weeks Trewitt had spent in the barn, on most days the boy had visited him.

“You sure never kill no one in no fight,” the boy said.

“No, I never did. I never said I did. Go away. Get out of here.”

“Hey, I got some news for you.”

“Just get out of here.” It occurred to him to take a swat at his tormentor, but he didn’t have the energy.

“No, listen, man. I tell the truth.”

“Sure you do.”

The truth, Trewitt knew, was bleak. He had failed utterly in his dream of unearthing information on Ulu Beg’s journey through Mexico, in finding out whether the Kurd came alone — or with others. What he had succeeded in doing was inserting himself in the center of a Mexican mafia war.

Unless the one was part of the other.

Trewitt’s mind stirred for just a second.

But he had to face reality. Reality was that he now had to turn himself in to the Departamento de Policia. The whole story would come out. CIA AGENT NABBED IN MEX, the headlines would say. Phone calls, official protests and denials, embarrassments, awkwardnesses of all kinds.

“I found him,” said the boy.

Trewitt could see Yost Ver Steeg. He could imagine himself trying to explain.

See, we thought we found the guy who brought the Kurd across. We thought we could learn from him if —

Ver Steeg had no capacity for expressing emotion. The rage would be inward. Trewitt would sense it in constricted gestures, tightly held lips, a cool handshake.

You went into Mexico?

Uh, yes.

He could blame it on Old Bill.

See, Old Bill said that —

But Ver Steeg would have a hundred ways of letting him know he’d screwed up.

What were you doing there?

Well, uh —

Didn’t you cover Speight?

No, I sort of lost track of him.

And Chardy would look and see a hopelessly incompetent kid. And Miles, that seedy little dwarf, would glow. Another rival x-ed off the list, another potential competitor screwed, shot down in flames. Miles would smile, showing those brackish teeth, and clap his tiny hands.

“You found who?” Trewitt said.

“The guy.”

“What guy?”

“You know.”

“I don’t know a goddamn thing. Who, you little—” He lunged comically at the boy, missing. The boy laughed as he danced free.

“Him, man. Him. The bartender, Roberto.”

“Roberto?”

“Roberto, the bartender. Who would not shut up. Remember?”

Sure, Trewitt remembered. What he couldn’t remember was laying his sorry story on this kid here.