They took him up several floors to some kind of operations center. He sat at a Soviet artillery radio, an older model. It had evidently already been adjusted to proper frequency. Several technicians hovered about and he could tell that his condition shocked them. He almost passed out twice. The radio crackled.
“What do you want me to say?”
Speshnev told him about the helicopters, and Chardy told Ulu Beg, and then they gave him some more pain- killer and he went to sleep.
He awoke in a hospital room, on his stomach, in the presence of two Soviet Marines with AK-47s. He was much improved, though groggy. Bright sunlight flooded in through the window, and beyond he could make out the city. They brought him a glass with some high-protein concoction in it, mostly egg and wheat, and he sucked it down.
The door flew open and the Russian came in.
“How are you, Paul? How are you?”
Chardy had no answer and looked at him stupidly. He could only think that he had just begun a day where there would be no torch.
“We broke it, Paul. Yes, we did it. I did it, Paul. Broke it, broke the revolt. We broke the Kurds, Paul. All American advisers have been ordered back to Reza’iyeh. The mission there will be closed down. The Shah has arrested the Kurdish emissaries in Tehran, and closed the border. It’s all over.”
He looked carefully at Chardy.
Chardy had trouble concentrating. Even now his memories were beginning to jangle on him, to mix and twist and fabricate themselves. His back felt numb. He’d been jacked up to his eyeballs on narcotics. He could hardly remember his own name.
He looked away. Stupidly, he lurched from the bed. One of the Soviet Marines grabbed him, but he pulled away and stumbled to the window. He looked across Baghdad from a fifth or sixth story and saw a filthy sprawl of stone slums and crappy modern buildings spilling to the horizon. A sluggish bluebottle struggled against the dirty glass. The sun was shining, though a hump of clouds gathered in the distance, over the mountains far to the north.
“A wonderful city, eh, Paul? Beautiful Baghdad, storied Baghdad, city of princes and miracles. Beautiful, isn’t it, Paul?”
Chardy said nothing. He sensed the Russian beside him.
“Ah, Baghdad! Do you know in my last post I had a fine view. I could see a river, a giant old Ferris wheel, white baroque buildings. Europe. Civilization. Perhaps now I will be going back there.”
“The girl,” Chardy said. “Johanna. Please?”
“Well, Paul, the news is optimistic. We believe she got out. We have examined the bodies and hers is not among them. Unless she was killed earlier, of course, in which case of course I can take no responsibility. But —”
“Bodies?” Chardy said.
“Yes, Paul. We killed them. We killed them all.”
Chardy fell to his knees. He began to weep. He could not stop himself. He sobbed and gagged. He tried to hide his face from the Russian towering above him.
“You are truly a broken man, aren’t you, Paul? I wonder if you’ll ever be any good again? At anything? I hope when you get back you can find this woman and get her to marry you. You’ve certainly paid a dowry. Perhaps the highest in the world. You can marry her and live in the suburbs and work for an advertising agency. Tell me, Paul. Was it worth it?”
That night, on the flight to Moscow, Chardy managed to open both his wrists with a broken glass. He bled considerably, but they caught him and would not let him die.
Chardy blinked awake in his apartment, alone in the cold night.
Be reasonable, he told himself.
He rolled from the bed, went to the refrigerator. There was no beer; he had not gotten any. Was it too late? He badly needed something to drink. He looked at his Rolex and discovered it was the hour of four. He stared out the window above his sink. A sprawl of streetlights lay beyond the filthy glass.
Chardy stood barefoot in the kitchenette. He got himself a lukewarm glass of water in a plastic glass and was too spooked to chase down ice. He thought of Johanna, who was dead, and Ulu Beg who soon would be. He thought of Speshnev too, and even thought he heard the Russian’s voice now, lucid, full of reason and conviction. Speshnev said, and Chardy heard it as if the man were here, now, in this room: “In my last post I had a fine view. I could see a river, a giant old Ferris wheel, white baroque buildings.”
Chardy could see nothing. This was the suburbs; there was nothing to see. Chardy thought of the Russian looking at his white baroque buildings, and marveled that in the man’s mind there was room enough for pleasant views and baroque architecture and the theory and practice of the torch.
He shook his head, took another sip of his water. He looked at his watch, to discover that only a minute had passed since he’d last checked. He knew he’d never get back to sleep. He looked again into the darkness and at that instant, that exact instant, it hit him with such force as almost to drive him through the linoleum that in only one city in the world could there be such a congruence of rivers, Ferris wheels, and white baroque buildings. He’d been there himself.
The city was Vienna, where Frenchy Short had been found in the Danube after a solo job.
40
The strange patterns of fortune that swirled through it all disturbed him, made him deeply suspicious: things were always baffling, always astonishing, constructed as if with an Arab’s cunning. The curious passage by which, as Chardy left the arena, Ulu Beg entered — as if it were written above that their meeting be postponed for a different day. Then again, the Kurd reflected, the play of whatever force had kept the fat Danzig alive. From fifteen feet he’d fired, seen the clothes fly as the bullets hit, seen the man knocked down. He’d seen it, with his own eyes. Then by what magic did Danzig survive?
DANZIG SHOT AT CAMBRIDGE PARTY
FORMER SEC’Y IN ‘STABLE CONDITION’
Was it some American trick, whose subtle purpose no mind could divine? Or had he in fact failed?
He had read the newspaper until he came to an explanation.
A vest to stop bullets!
A vest! And then, when he thought he was done with surprises, he’d turned a last page and found still another, a familiar face gazing at him from under another disturbing headline:
She was dead. Two strangers also. Two ex-brothers, one hunter, one hunted, pass in the night. And after it all, this Danzig still lived.
Ulu Beg sat back wearily and rubbed his hand across the stubble of his beard. He was tired, his eyes raw. He’d been on the move now a week since it happened and he was running low on money. He needed a shave, to wash, to rest.
He looked about him. The train station was crowded, even at this late hour. Outside it was raining. America was supposed to be full of miracles, and yet this train station smelled of the toilet and was dirty and hot. It was also full of peculiar people: madmen, old ladies, mothers with wild children, sullen soldiers, rich dandies; in all, a much stranger range of passengers than the buses. Or maybe it was his desperate mood or his fatigue, and the knowledge that his chances were growing more slender each day; he would never reach Danzig; he would be caught.
