The Second Saladin

Beg,” he finally said.

“Something like that.”

“Chardy, it’s all nonsense. That’s a silly notion, a schoolboy notion. It’s full of romance, myth. It’s full of bullshit. Ulu Beg is being hunted by men armed with computers, sophisticated electronics and optics. And manpower. Carte blanche. All they want. Bodies and more bodies. A whole agency full of bodies. You make him sound like Geronimo. He can only be caught by the righteous. It’s out of the last century, which, in case you hadn’t noticed, ended some time ago.”

“Okay, Miles. Don’t say I didn’t tell you. I almost like you, Miles. You want into the big time so bad.”

“Just leave it alone, Paul.”

“You want in. You want buddy-buddy with the Harvard boys.”

“Just forget it, Paul. I have to tell Yost where you are. You better get where you’re supposed to be.”

No, Chardy would not tell Miles about Trewitt. Because Trewitt had no brief for Mexico, because there would be all sorts of problems if Trewitt was suddenly operating in Mexico, which Yost had specifically forbidden.

And it also meant one other thing, which may have pleased Chardy the most and explained his decision the best: for the first time he knew something they — all of them — didn’t.

Let Trewitt have some time, some space. Maybe he could come up with something. But what, or who?

Chardy smiled.

I just put some money on Trewitt, he thought. Dreamy Trewitt, preppy kid, all eagerness and sloppy puppy love, full of insane, ludicrous notions of adventure. Weighted with legends, inflated with heroes — a fan really, as far from shrewd, grim, pushy little Miles as you could get.

Chardy thought of the good men he’d backed and who’d backed him in his time, heroes from Frenchy Short on down; and here he was with his chips on Trewitt.

“What’s so funny, Paul?”

“I don’t know. It all is, Miles. You, me, all of it.”

But Miles wasn’t smiling.

“You better get going, Paul. The great man is waiting. And you better get ready to move this weekend. There’s a job coming off.”

Chardy turned, stung.

“I thought he was staying put—” He’d had plans for the weekend.

“It just came up. But maybe Yost will get lucky before then.”

“He won’t.”

“Don’t worry, though. You’re going to Boston.”

25

Her name was Leah; she never asked him his. After the first day she began to call him Jim. He never questioned it.

She was a tall, strong woman with furious wide eyes and a flat nose and long fingers that were miraculously pink inside. Her hair was cut short as a boy’s and she had three wonderful wigs — red, yellow and jet black — which she wore depending on her mood. Her skin was brown, almost yellow, and she was a proud woman with a grave and solemn air until she had a few glasses of wine, which she did every night, when she laughed and giggled like a loose-limbed girl. She worked in the basement of a place called Rike’s and he never understood what Rike’s was, except that it had to do with clothes because she brought him some: a suit like an American businessman’s, a raincoat, a dapper hat.

“They for you, baby,” she said.

He looked at the clothes. He could not have clothes, a wardrobe, because he had to move quickly. He could have no luggage, no luxuries. Wealth was of no interest to him. He turned to look at the black woman, whose face was eager.

“They are beautiful, Leah. But I cannot wear them.”

“But why, baby? I want you to look good. You a fine- looking man, tall and strong.” She’d had several glasses of wine.

“Leah,” he said. “I cannot stay much longer. I have to go on.”

“Why you in such a hurry, Jim?”

“Ah.” He was evasive. He almost thought he could trust her but he knew he’d never be able to explain. It would take so long and go back so far. “I have a special place to go. Someone special to see.”

“You up to something,” she said, and laughed explosively. “You up to something sly. I seen that look before. I been seeing that look for years and years and years. Somebody ’bout to take something from some other body. Just you don’t git caught, hear?”

That was Leah: she would not judge. He fit into her life as smoothly as if she’d practiced all this, as though she’d taken bleeding men home time and time before. She asked nothing except his company, and if he never went out, if he had no past and would not speak of the future except in the most guarded and general terms, then she would accept that.

“Why, Leah? Why you help me? I can give you nothing.”

“Baby, you remind me of somebody. ‘Dey take my wallet’” — she imitated his voice — “and up that hill you go, like to get yourself killed dead. And one minute later you comes down. Never seen nothing like it since my brother whipped Sheriff Gutherie’s boy Charlie back in nineteen fifty-eight in West Virginia. Everybody says, ‘Bobby, he’s going smack you, boy.’ Bobby, he just say, ‘He took my money,’ and Bobby go on up to the house and he kick that boy bad and he get every last cent back. Nobody seen nothing like that ’round there in years and years.” She laughed again at the distant memory.

Bobby sounded like another Jardi.

“A brave man. A soldier, this brother Bobby?”

“Oh, Bobby, he was somethin’. He won the West Virginia High School four-forty-yard dash in ’fifty-seven. My baby brother, oh, he was somethin’. White people say he robbed them. He got sent to prison, up in Morgantown. Somebody stick a knife in him. He wasn’t in that place no more than three weeks when they killed him.”

“A terrible thing,” said Ulu Beg. He had been in a prison in Baghdad for a long time, and knew what things happened in prison. “God have mercy on him.”

“Mamma died after that and I came to Dayton and here I been ever since. I been at Rike’s twenty years now. It ain’t the life I wanted, but it sure is the life I got.”

“You must be strong. You must make them pay.”

“Make who pay, Jim? Can’t make nobody pay nothin’.” She took some more wine.

The apartment was small and dark, in an old building with garbage and the smell of urine in the halls. The lights had all been punched out and people had written all over the bricks. Ulu Beg had recognized the English word for freedom scrawled in huge white letters. Everybody who lived there was black; when he looked out the window he could only see black people, except occasionally in the police cars that prowled cautiously down the street.

“Don’t worry none about them, baby,” she had said. “They ain’t comin’ in here.”

“Say, Jim,” she said now, “just who are you? You white? You look white, you walk white, you talk funny white. But you ain’t white. I can tell.”

“Sure, white.” He laughed now himself. “Born white, die white.”

“But you ain’t no American.”

“Many peoples come to America. For a new life. That’s me — I look for the new life.”

“Not with no gun, Jim. I looked in your bag.”

He paused a second. “Leah, you shouldn’t have.”

“You on the run? Running to or running from, Jim? It