“DD’s office.”
“This is Miles Lanahan. His Eminence available?”
“He’s on another line. Can you hold?”
“Yes, I can,” remembering her vaguely as a severe single woman.
In the dead silence of hold, he turned it over in his mind.
Trewitt alive in Mexico. Chardy was running him.
What the hell did it mean? First, he was amazed. Chardy that devious? Chardy, sour, touchy jock, cowboy, sap for women? What could he be up to? What game is this?
Lanahan turned it over and over.
Was Chardy working on his own? Did he have secret communications, connections, links? Or could the whole thing be innocent?
Nothing was innocent. Ever.
Could Trewitt have set Speight up?
Could Chardy be working for the Russians?
This idea did not disgust him at all; in fact, it thrilled him. It filled him with wonder and amazement, almost awe. God, could he go to town on that! Jesus, he could build an empire off that. The guy who had nailed Philby had eaten free lunches off it for years.
Miles considered it more carefully. The Russians had had the guy for a week, worked him over bad. In fact, had cracked him wide open, had turned him inside out, the clear implication of the Melman report. Then the Agency had tossed him out.
And maybe in his seven long years of exile he’d hardened and bittered. Perhaps he’d come to hate those who let him languish in that cell in Baghdad, while the Russians worked him over. What did he expect, an airborne assault to free just one man? Chardy just wasn’t being realistic, a common flaw among cowboy types. But in his exile, his bitterness, he’d come to hate his own people. Lanahan could understand the psychology of it: he was another outsider, with the stink of dark churches and novenas and holy mumbling about him, and was short and splotchy and damp and unlovable, and the patricians who ran the agency would always look upon him with distaste. Lanahan could imagine Chardy, among those kids, at that bleak school, surrounded by crucifixes of the faith that had failed him in the clinch, turning blacker and blacker by degrees until the only conceivable course would be betrayal, treachery….
And in a flash Lanahan saw the end game: the Russians would set up the Kurd for Chardy, who’d blow him away. He’d be a hero again, the resurrected man, would be readmitted to the inner circle, on the way up again. Giving the Russians what they’d always wanted, what they’d never been able to get, a man up high on the inside.
Lanahan’s heart thumped.
“Melman.”
“Ah. Oh, Sam.”
“Yes, what is it, Miles?” Melman’s voice was crisp and driving and its suddenness scattered Lanahan’s thoughts.
“Ah,” he fumbled, “did those reports of the security setups for Boston reach you, Sam?”
“Yes, they did. Just this morning.”
“I was just checking. I wasn’t sure if Yost had sent them on before he left.”
“Yes, it’s here, it looks good.”
“Is there anything from Dayton yet?”
“They have several reported sightings. The reports I get are optimistic. He’s got the bus stations, the railway stations, all of it closed up.”
“Good.”
“Incidentally, how’s Chardy doing?”
“Complains a lot. Wanted to go to Dayton.”
“That sounds like Chardy.”
“He sits around over there at Danzig’s just like you wanted.”
“Good. That’s where he’s needed.”
“I’ll see that he stays there.”
“You’re running things in Boston?”
“Yessir. It’s only a weekend thing. Up Friday night, back Sunday morning. No sweat. I’ve got Boston PD cooperation, I’ve hired some private people. Everybody involved is cooperating.”
“It sounds good, Miles. I’m sure you’ll do well.”
“Thank you, Sam,” Lanahan said. Tell him.
“Was there anything else?”
“… No.”
The line clicked dead.
Now why hadn’t he said a thing?
I didn’t have enough dope. But in subtle issues like these there’s never enough dope.
Because even now I can’t believe such deviousness in Chardy?
Perhaps.
Because something was wrong? Somewhere, deep inside, Lanahan was puzzled. Something was wrong and he didn’t know what to do about it.
30
Chardy knew it was a bad idea but he couldn’t help himself. He was so close and Danzig was in his room safely, snoozing away on creamy Ritz sheets, and he told her he’d try to make it and the cabby smiled when he said Cambridge and now here he was, $8 the poorer, heading up the walk of the hulking old house. He buzzed in the foyer and she let him in and he bounded up the dark stairs with energy that seemed to arrive in greater amounts the nearer he got. He plunged down the old house’s hall, not caring that he thundered along like a fullback, and saw her door open.
“You made it,” she called.
“Even Danzig sleeps. He’s got a busy day tomorrow. He checked in early.”
He embraced her; they kissed in the doorway. “I’m so glad.”
“Jesus, I’m beat, Johanna, I’m so
He went inside. He could see that she’d been working on her book at the typewriter, where books and manuscript pages were collected. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer can and popped the top. He swilled half of it down, then paused long enough to shed his jacket and fling it to the couch.
“A pistol?”
“They want me to carry it. Johanna, how are you? You’ve been working, I see. Did you get a lot done on the book? I want to read it. I bet it’s good. I bet it wins prizes. Let’s just sit and talk like we’ve been married for fifteen years and bore each other to death. Come on, tell me everything. Tell me everything you’ve stored up. It’s—”
“Paul, that gun really bothers me.”
He realized suddenly she was upset. It hadn’t occurred to him; he’d been full of his own joy at seeing her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize they bothered you. Let me dump it someplace.”
“Paul, not the gun itself, gun as object. Guns don’t scare me. Paul,
“Johanna, it’s a sidearm issued for an Agency security operation. They want me to wear it; they expect me to wear it. It’s that simple. Nothing has changed.”
“Paul. You were going to help. You said your first allegiance—”
“I’m on a security detail. They expect me to carry a gun. They expect me to protect him from Ulu Beg. If they
