The Second Saladin

began to descend the dirt road.

“Shoot! Shoot the whoreson. I cannot see him,” commanded Ramirez from his cover.

“What?” Trewitt said.

“Shoot him! Mother of God, shoot!”

Without thinking, Trewitt brought the rifle to his shoulder, throwing the bolt. He felt the press of the stock against his shoulder, the weight of the rifle in his hands. His eye went naturally to the scope and after a moment of blurred dazzle in which nothing made sense, he caught a glimpse of the gray car as it plummeted toward safety. Against the cross hairs, through the rear window, there now appeared, almost magically — a head. A man’s head, held low as he hunched in terror behind the wheel, holding the car in a straight line for the turnoff, gathering speed.

Trewitt readied himself.

“Shoot! Shoot!” Roberto commanded.

Only seconds remained until the car reached the turnoff and would be gone. Trewitt took a whole breath, released half. The head lay in the foreshortened reality of the scope, just beyond the muzzle. He felt he could touch it.

Shoot, Trewitt told himself. The 7-millimeter would burn into the skull, exiting, hugely, through the face, taking features and bones and eyes and brains with it, spraying them indiscriminately against the windshield. Trewitt felt a split-second’s nausea at what he was about to do. He took the slack out of the trigger —

“Shoot!” Roberto hooted.

The car swirled around the turnoff in a great rooster-tail of dust, and was gone.

“What is wrong with you? Are you sick, man?” asked Roberto.

“I–I didn’t have a very good shot,” Trewitt said. “I couldn’t see wasting a bullet.”

“You should have shot anyway.”

“Well, I didn’t want to throw a bullet away.”

The youth looked at him suspiciously.

Trewitt sat back.

“I don’t know why he shot that guy,” he said to nobody. “I don’t see what that accomplishes.” Oscar Meza lay a hundred or so yards down the slope on his stomach. Trewitt could now see that he was wearing an expensive suit and fine boots. He was a curiously formal figure in the litter of the yard.

“That son of a bitch kick me out of my job,” said Roberto.

But Trewitt now had to think about the boy. What about the boy?

“They’ll kill him now,” he said.

“Kill who?” Roberto asked.

Trewitt’s desolation was total. It became rage. He wished he’d shot the man in the car, blown his fucking head to pieces. “The little boy. Miguel.”

“He should have stayed with his mama,” said Roberto.

Trewitt sat back against the tree, the rifle next to him. Around him the bleak mountains lay in dusty splendor. He looked for the hawk but it had vanished. He looked about: he seemed to be on the face of the moon.

“Hey, patron,” Roberto called to Ramirez, who ambled toward them, “the norteamericano wants to go down the hill for the little snotnose kid.”

“You just get killed, mister. Hey, how come you didn’t shoot? You should have shot him.”

“I couldn’t see him very well,” mumbled Trewitt.

“That’s a fine telescope on that gun. You should have been able to see him real good. Maybe you weren’t working it right.”

“He’s just a kid!” Trewitt screamed, leaping to his feet. “Come on, we can’t stay here. Let’s get going. Maybe it’s not too late.” He began to stride manfully down the slope. He turned when they did not move and fixed them in a steely glare.

“Let’s get going,” he commanded icily.

“You must be a real crazyhead,” said Ramirez. “Go down there? They just kill you. They’re going to kill you anyway, but why rush it?” He laughed. “I’m hungry. Let’s get some food. They’ll be back pretty soon.”

“We’ve got to save that kid!” boomed Trewitt again.

“He is a crazyhead, patron,” said Roberto. Wonder filled his eyes.

The two Mexicans, laughing between themselves, walked past him to the shack.

Trewitt stood alone, the rifle tucked against his hip. He watched the fat man and the youth. They stepped over the body of Oscar Meza and ducked inside.

Then Trewitt started down the hill to the shack for some tortillas too.

39

Chardy was made uneasy by the approach of night. He had a history of unpleasant evenings, for during them, late, when he was alone, the things that he could not control by sheer will crawled out to harry him. And when he had found Johanna in her car, across from the blinking police lights, the rushing officers and medics, the gathering crowd, he was aware that in some strange way a trap had been sprung in his mind. He had stared at her, knowing exactly what had happened, and why, and how: he saw it now. A pain came and took his breath away and almost knocked him to the sidewalk.

He had thought he heard somebody tell him to be reasonable.

The memory would not die; it had increased the next several days, all through his time as athlete, among the postman and his friends.

Be reasonable, somebody was telling him.

The voice was sane and calm; it was almost compassionate.

“Paul. Be reasonable.”

Chardy was alone in his little Silver Spring apartment, on the night after he returned from Danzig’s. A baseball game was over on the tube, it was that late. He’d had a few beers. He’d laid out his new suit, a clean shirt, and his shoes for tomorrow. He felt like another beer, but realized he was now out and wondered if it made sense to dress again and drive around until he found an all-night liquor store or a bar with package goods.

Be reasonable, he told himself.

But the voice was not his. It was affable, pleasant, colloquial, American. It was the voice of a pudgy man, about fifty, with merry, alert eyes and thinning blond hair, almost white. He wore a Soviet major’s uniform, army, with artillery boards and insignia, but he was KGB all the way. The uniform made this point explicitly: no Soviet military careerist would be seen in a Third World country in such a disgraceful uniform, rumpled, spotted, humorously impressed. An orthodox man could not wear such a uniform under pain of instant censure and discipline; thus the wearer was not an orthodox man. He enjoyed special privileges. He was permitted his eccentricities.

“Paul,” he had said, “come on. Let’s be reasonable, shall we?”

Chardy’s Arabian Nights, which were not 1001 in number but only six, were beginning to reassemble in his mind this night in his little apartment.

“It’s so difficult, this business,” said Speshnev. “I’d much prefer to be your friend. I really would. Will you please talk to me? Please, Paul.”

But Chardy would not talk. He remembered instructing himself: don’t give them anything. If you start, you will not stop. Don’t give them anything. The first surrender is the only surrender; it is total, it is complete. Time. Play for time.

He studied the cell. Down here, the walls sweated. The air was moist, almost dense. This room had probably been cut from living stone a thousand years ago, by slaves. Who knew what pains it had witnessed? Had it always been a torture chamber?

“Paul, let me explain how it works. I’m going to have them burn a hole in your back. The pain will be — well, it will be indescribable. But I think you can get through it. You are a very brave man. I think you can get through it.