The Second Saladin

Chardy thanked him and went to the door. He knocked.

“Chardy?” The whisper was ominous.

“Yes.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

Locks clicked and tumbled; the door cracked open.

“Quick.”

Chardy slipped into the twilight. The shades drawn, all lights off. In this darkness Chardy stood, momentarily paralyzed. Behind him the door clicked shut.

His eyes adjusted. The room, large, was cased in books. Files lay all around, sheets of paper, index cards, clipped articles, photocopies. Two card tables stood inundated in paper. Two desks against a far wall bore heavy loads as well.

“Sit down. Over there.”

Chardy walked, slipping once on a pencil. Cups, glasses with a few stale ounces of liquid in them, were everywhere. He sat gingerly on a folding chair.

“What time is it?”

Chardy smelled something sour as he turned his wrist to see his Rolex. “Nine,” he said. “In the morning.”

Danzig, unshaven, sat across from him in a bathrobe. His hair swirled about his head, unwashed. The odor was from him.

“They say this room isn’t wired,” Danzig said.

“I don’t think we wired anything,” Chardy said.

“Where have you been?”

“I had to go home. I was only gone a night.”

“You look tired.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

But Danzig wasn’t interested in Chardy’s sleep. Now, with an almost comically exaggerated look of conspiracy, he seemed to swoop in on Chardy, his features enormous, rabbinical, his eyes quite mad. His odor was overpowering.

“It’s all a setup, isn’t it? It’s completely phony — it’s a scheme, isn’t it? Or are you part of it? They tried to ruin you, you know. When you came back from prison. Then just weeks ago after the shooting. I saved you. I intervened. Chardy, they want you dead. They hate you too. They hate me. For something I did, something I know. And it’s all part of—”

He stopped suddenly and began to weep.

Chardy was embarrassed for him. He watched silently.

“Chardy. Help me,” Danzig said. “Don’t let them kill me.”

“If you stay here, you’ll be all right. Just stay here — you have nothing to fear from these men downstairs.”

A sudden spurt of energy jerked through Danzig; he lurched up, twisting away, staggering through stacked books and sheets of paper and files, slipping, knocking them aside.

“You and I are natural allies in this thing. We are. We’re the same man, really. Yours the physical component, mine the intellectual. Help me, Chardy. You’ve got to promise; you’ve got to help me. They’re trying to get rid of both of us, don’t you see? You and I, we’re linked. Somehow.”

Chardy watched him stagger through the room.

“Do you swear to me, Chardy? You’ll help me?”

“I—”

“The Kurd is a triggerman. Don’t you see? Perhaps he doesn’t even know the real reason behind all this. The woman was another pawn. Perhaps you are still a third. It’s a plan, a plot, a design only they know. Why? I have to know. Why?”

Chardy said, “They tell me only that it’s as straightforward as it seems. That Ulu Beg is here for vengeance, because he feels we — you — betrayed his people and let the Russians kill them.”

“Do you believe that? Chardy, look at me. Do you believe that? Really, deeply, do you believe that?”

“I don’t know,” said Chardy. “I just don’t know.”

“It’s phony. And I’ll prove it.”

“How?”

“The answer is here. In this room.”

Chardy looked around the dishevelment. Yes, somebody had been looking.

“Do you know what I’ve got here? I’ve got a duplicate set of the Agency operational reports for the years during which I was Secretary of State; I’ve got the records; I’ve got the secrets; I’ve got all the analyses, the —”

“How the fuck did you—”

“I’ve had it for years. I had my friends in the Agency too, you know. For some time there was a considerable Danzig faction. I used a lot of the material for my first book. It’s in here, in these records. I’ll find it. But I need time. And they know I need time.”

“I just—”

“Chardy! Listen!”

Danzig had closed in on him and stood inches away. His eyes gleamed; he seemed on the verge of a seizure. He touched Chardy.

“Chardy. This man is a foreigner. He’s six feet two inches tall and probably doesn’t know the difference between a nickel and a dime. He doesn’t know what a hamburger is. Tell me this: Why hasn’t he been caught? They said it would be days. It’s been weeks. They’ve got him somewhere. They’re manipulating him into place.”

“Just stay here. Stay in this room. Don’t leave this room unless I tell you to. You’ll be all right. You have nothing to fear.”

“You’ll get me my time?”

“You’ve got your time. Trust me.”

Trust Chardy? Trust him? That was the core of the problem: trust whom? Trust Sam? Trust this dreadful altar boy Lanahan? Trust the renegade Chardy?

Danzig sat back. He was into the second week of a headache. His chest still hurt. Chardy had gone.

“I won’t be around today,” he’d said. “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Where are you going?”

“You check your files, I’ll check mine,” Chardy had said.

Danzig sat back in the chair. He was afraid he might start hyperventilating again. He tried to escape his memory of the Kurd and his weapon and that terrifying moment when the molecules seemed to freeze and the man stood there fifteen feet away, about to fire, and Danzig knew he would die. He remembered the eyes, blazing, set. Something vivid and graceful about him, strong. The terrifying thing about it all was that it fascinated him. That’s the Jew in me, he thought. I can talk it out, think about it, compare it to a thousand books and essays, examine its themes and motifs, its subtextual patterns, make epigrammatic witticisms about it, and yet I cannot do one thing to survive it.

He considered himself by way of contrast and the contrast was bleak. For fifty-six years he had not paid the slightest attention to his body. He abhorred exercise. He looked down at his belly, a slack mass protruding from his robe. Too much weight, too weak, too slow. He imagined himself scrambling up a hill or down an alley, the Kurd after him. He would slip and scrabble. The Kurd would come on in huge athletic strides. Danzig had nothing, nothing to fight him with. All his brains, his glory, his power: nothing.

What would he do? He knew the answer. He would die.

His headache leaked down his spine and into his back. A Jew in an attic, hiding. The same old pattern, ceaseless. Centuries of attics. It came down to this, finally, didn’t it, this game they play when they are bored. The game is Kill the Jew. Kill the stinking kike, boys, kick him in the stinking teeth, kick his stinking ass. Kill the Jew, boys, kill him.

He shook his head. Madness stalked him — he knew it. History haunted him. It had been said of a dreadful