But did he have a choice? Of course not. Which perhaps was Melman’s real message in sending this awful kid.
He thought of Johanna and his promise to her. Was it invalidated by her treason? Or Ulu Beg? What did Chardy owe the Kurd, who had made him a brother? He wondered about all sorts of things too: why was Melman so desperate to have him back? Why had Melman been so driven to destroy him seven years ago? Who really was running Ulu Beg? And what about pitiful Trewitt, stuck out on his secret limb in Mexico?
He knew that whatever the answers were, they would not be found on a playground.
“Let’s go, then, Miles,” he said.
36
Danzig sat in his bathrobe out back, by the garden. There were at least seven men around, three of them with radios. And beyond, in the thickets, still more men. Government cars orbited the block too: nondescript Chevys with two men in suits and Israeli submachine guns. And helicopters? Perhaps even helicopters.
“You certainly appreciate
Sam Melman laughed.
“With all the taxes you pay, you deserve something a little special,” he said. “How’s the chest?”
Danzig winced. The Kelvar vest had stopped all three slugs and diffused the impact; still, they’d cracked two ribs and left him nearly immobile, with bluish bruises running from inside his arm across his chest to his stomach. He’d been kept sedated much of the past few days, the pain had been so acute, and he remembered it only vaguely. His wife had appeared heroically at his bedside and gone on television shows with communiques; she seemed to enjoy the process and it gave her something to
“My chest is splendid,” said Danzig. “It’s wonderful.”
“I saw the medical reports. I bet it hurts like hell.”
“It hurts terribly,” Danzig said. “Please spare me any witticisms. Laughter would kill me.” He looked off glumly into the garden, a full green universe by this time. “I suppose if it took you three days to find Chardy, your own man, who was not even hiding from you but was playing basketball in a public park not three miles from here, you haven’t had much luck with the Kurd.”
“No. But the troops are out now. We are optimistic. It’s wide open now, so perhaps it all worked out for the best. Now we’ll get him. It’s really all over.”
“It certainly didn’t work out for that poor girl.” Danzig could remember watching her die. He could place the exact moment: a certain sloppy repose slid through her limbs and her head fell back spastically. A beautiful woman held herself with a certain discipline and pride; it was a universal. And when he saw that go, he knew she was finished. There was blood on her everywhere. Later he found out a ricochet had torn through her aorta. Curious and frightening, the ways of this world: from fifteen feet a man had fired a sophisticated modern weapon at him and, because of a trick of technology, failed to harm him seriously; this poor woman, whose only crime was to be present, had paid with her life, falling victim to a missed bullet that had deflected off of something. Their parallel fates were an accumulation of statistical improbabilities that were astonishing.
“It’s tragic, yes,” said Melman. “Tragic and pointless. But we didn’t bring the Kurd. The Kurd came himself.”
“Still, you can’t be pleased with the Agency’s performance.”
“Of course not. But steps have been taken to prevent a recurrence.”
Danzig nodded, but what had really happened was that the system had broken down. Entropy again, the factor of disorder and randomness. They’d had him in a net tight as a drumskin for weeks, but gradually it had worn down of its own volition, and the Kurd had slipped through. And no amount of precaution could prevent it from happening again.
“Here, Dr. Danzig.” Melman handed him something. It was a mashed piece of copper. “That one would have killed you. That’s the one. Thank God for the vest.”
Danzig preferred to thank the Secret Service and the U.S. Army whose Natick Research and Development Laboratory had developed Kevlar for his early trips to the Middle East.
“I’m not sentimentally attached to little souvenirs,” he said. “Is it of any significance?”
“No. We’ve a dozen more.”
Danzig stood and awkwardly threw the bullet into the lawn; the pain came in a sudden wave, but watching the thing disappear into the grass gave him a kind of pleasure he felt even as he doubled over, wincing and grunting. He wished he could make all the bullets in the world disappear.
“All right, Sam,” he said, turning, “tell me. Who’s trying to kill me?”
Melman studied him with some detachment. A cool customer, this Melman. No wonder he was doing so well now. A faint smile crossed Melman’s well-bred face.
“A Kurd. They’re a violent people. They don’t appreciate the subtleties of your strategic thought.”
“Please. I’m not a stupid man. Don’t address me as one.”
“Dr. Danzig, we have no information, not the tiniest scrap, to suggest anything other than—”
“Who recruited the woman, the Harvard instructor? The one who so conveniently has committed suicide and is therefore beyond our questions?”
“She was with Ulu Beg in the mountains for over seven months. They endured the collapse of the Kurdish revolution together. Perhaps they made an agreement then. He simply got to her and—”
“You were watching her.”
“Intermittently. She’d been investigated and declared clear. The officer in charge made a grave error. He made several grave errors. He has been removed to other duties.”
“Yet this Kurd and this girl had enough know-how to outwit your professionals.”
“They were also exceedingly lucky. Don’t forget that. They had Chardy in their pocket. They had you in Boston. And still they failed.”
“They got a good deal farther than luck can explain.”
“Dr. Danzig. I say again, we have no information to suggest that this is anything more than it seems. A conspiracy of two people.”
“Somebody’s pulling the strings. No matter what your information says or doesn’t say. Somebody’s … and I want to know who.”
But Melman said nothing, until after several seconds.
“Dr. Danzig, I think you’ve been reading too many thrillers.”
Not long after, Chardy returned to Danzig’s life, in a new suit. If Danzig expected contrition he did not receive it. Contrition is bullshit, Danzig’s most important employer had once observed, and the man Chardy exemplified this principle to the utmost. He looked a little thinner in his new clothes. All that exercise? But he had that same shambling reserve, a quiet, athletic containment. Yet he had recently lost a lover, who had in turn betrayed him and, most cruelly, made a fool of him, had he not? He should have been destroyed, fired at the least. A failure of judgment, calculation, sheer common sense, of the highest order. Danzig had seen the reports and was aware, where Chardy was not, of the considerable emotion of an anti-Chardy faction among senior Agency personnel. How headquarters people loved to see a former glamour boy brought low! Danzig had observed this principle where it applied to himself; he was not surprised to see it at play in the issue of Chardy. The man Ver Steeg was behind some of it; before his reassignment he had attempted desperately to place all blame on Chardy. He had lobbied feverishly, calling in old favors, bending the ears of old acquaintances. His rage found willing ears; ripples of discontent spread through the Agency and the larger government of which it was ostensibly a part. The story of Chardy’s cuckolding by the idea of murder for vengeance against Joe Danzig spread and spread; even the President might have heard of it. At the end of his string, the desperate Ver Steeg, on whom full blame was decreed to fall for his commitment of resources in the Dayton area, had even said Chardy was a part of it: the three of them, working together, Chardy, the girl, the Kurd.
But it had been Danzig himself who demanded that Chardy not pay Yost Ver Steeg’s price.
