Arizona, a freeway for illegal immigrants and dope traffickers, whose ease of transit this new installation had been built to impede. An American flag hung limp against a bright blue sky. Away from the Quonsets and cinderblock sprang brown sandy hills, a little spiny greenery, and rocks. Chardy had been here before too, a thousand times: a little jerry-built outpost where men occasionally died.
He looked back to Trewitt, now a form under a blanket on a stretcher beside the quiet helicopter.
“Coffee, Paul?” asked Leo Bennis. “Or iced tea? We’ve got some iced tea.”
“No.”
“Jesus, I don’t know how he lasted so long with a bullet through him there.”
“I guess he was a tough kid,” Chardy said.
“He did okay. He did fine.”
“Hey, mister?”
It was the Mexican.
“Hey, you cannot do this. Take me from my country. You must take me back.”
Chardy didn’t say anything to the man. Shouldn’t somebody be looking after him?
“You’ll be taken care of,” said Leo. “Don’t worry.”
“It’s going to cost plenty, I tell you that now. Plenty, huh?” He smiled. Then he said, “Hey, that boy, crazy boy, he don’t know nothing. You got to wipe his nose for him. I thought all gringos was big men. Ain’t you got no better guy than this?”
He smiled, showing his bright teeth.
Chardy smiled back, then hit him in the nose, feeling it smash as the man went heavily down into the dust. He would have killed him too, except that Bennis and ultimately several others held him back.
46
Lanahan’s moment of terror was approaching fast now. He ran a raspy tongue across leather lips; he looked at his watch, the water glass before him, then at Sam Melman’s water glass across the table. His mouth and throat begged his brain for water, but he had sworn to himself to yield nothing to the men in this room — all of them older by at least ten and more likely fifteen years, none particularly friendly, the Operations Directorate elect at the weekly division-head meeting at Langley — and so he would not take any more water than his mentor over there. But Melman had a notoriously high discomfort threshold and could do without water for hours. He had not touched his, not at all. The guy next to him must have blown a couple of networks to the Russians that very morning, because he’d already tossed away a glass and a half. And there had to be bad news due from Soviet Bloc too, because that man was really sucking the fluid down while looking about with a kind of abstracted horror seen only in meetings — a wash of pallor and a mad flittiness of the eyes, a radiant and all-encompassing fear.
But Sam, across the table, sat in calm splendor. He reached across the polished wood, showing a quarter- inch of cream-colored French cuff, and idly caressed the glass. Lanahan watched his fine fingers on the cool vessel, then diverted his gaze to his own glass, just a few inches from his fingers. It stood under a rectangular fluorescent light whose glow made the glass seem impossibly vivid.
Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink. The line rattled around in his skull idiotically, something remembered from parochial school; it would not go away. He concentrated to drive it out.
At the other end of the table a studious fellow off the European desk was detailing at tedious length a recently completed transaction with a Soviet naval attache in Nice. It was a pointless and self-serving narrative, full of allusions to people and events Lanahan had no knowledge of. Hearing classified stuff like this had long ago lost its titillating charm and the speaker’s loquacity was agonizing; for Lanahan knew that after Europe stood down, it was Far East’s turn; and then came Special Projects. And Melman, among so many other things, was Special Projects. He looked again at the agenda in pale, blurred mimeograph before him as if to make certain and saw, yes, yes, under the Special Projects rubric, it was still there:
Danzig Update (Lanahan sup’v.)
He reached and touched the glass. He touched it with one stumpy finger, felt its smoothness. He knew mystically, out of a private bargain with himself, that if he gave in to the temptation and drank the water, catastrophe would follow inevitably. It was foreordained; ii was certain. Yet, suicidally, that only made the water more attractive. His throat ached for it. He looked at his watch. Thirty seconds had passed.
Lanahan was in a real jam. He could not find Chardy. Chardy had disappeared on him. He’d shaken his two babysitters and not been seen since early the previous afternoon. He had not been at his apartment. And Miles had been under special instructions to keep watch on Chardy. And he knew Melman would ask about Chardy. And that if he tried to lie, he’d blow it. And that if he told Melman that Chardy had something going with Trewitt in Mexico, he was in deep trouble. And he knew that if Chardy had gone to the Russians, he was in desperate trouble.
Miles’s tiny hands formed fists. Why had those guys let Chardy get away! How could he be expected to run things with third-raters like those two! It wasn’t fair. He shouldn’t have been responsible for both Chardy
Far East had the floor. A rear admiral — though he’d worked in the Agency for years now, he still wore his uniform, his vanity — he spoke in austere, oblique phrases, reading through half-lenses from a typewritten page before him on a topic so obscure Lanahan had no chance of comprehending. Yet almost as he began, he finished, and sat back blankly.
“Discussion?”
“Walt, on the Hong Kong apparatus? Are those the same people Jerry Kenny used back in ’fifty-nine?”
“Some. Old Li, of course — he’s been around since the war. But the real energy is from the younger people, the post-Chiang generation.”
Who the fuck is Jerry Kenny? Lanahan wondered.
“Okay. Just wanted clarification. I don’t think Jerry was terribly fond of Li.”
“Li has his uses.”
“I suppose.”
“More?”
Oh, Lord, Lanahan thought; and then he thought, Chardy, you motherfucker — and was astonished at himself for uttering, even in his own mind, such a filthy word.
“Sam. Aren’t you next?”
Melman was talking. He had them, Lanahan could tell. He had them, was lulling them, rolling them this way and that: the operation in synopsis, high points, low points, fates of some long-gone participants, status of the survivors, constant flattering references to his Number 1 right-hand man and field supervisor, Miles Lanahan, at which Miles could only nod and smile tightly.
He’s setting me up, Miles thought He knows I’ve screwed up — he must have his sources; he’s just setting me up.
Miles patrolled tongue along lips again. Oh, Christ, it was hot. He hoped the perspiration hadn’t beaded up on his forehead; he wished he could get to the John; he was dying for a sip of water.
Why didn’t I give him to Melman earlier. I had a scoop, good stuff. I had to play it too fine, push it too hard, shoot for an even bigger …
He could still hand over Chardy. It wasn’t too late. He owed Chardy nothing. He remembered guys like Chardy from high school and college: jocks, heroes, they thought they owned the world; they thought they deserved more space. The priests loved Chardys; they’d barely nod to a bright but tiny boy like Miles. Chardy carried the glory of the faith; Miles only did his job.
He’d had a team there all night. Nothing. He now had people at police stations, at hospitals. They could reach him still, in seconds, even though he had only seconds remaining until he was up, only seconds —
The hell with it, thought Lanahan.
