The Second Saladin

to their knees and suck off the actors every four or five minutes. The acting was amateurish — organ size was evidently the only criterion for casting on this production — and film technique nonexistent. The music was banal; only the photography had been first-rate.

At last he breathed in the air, cool, made clean by the rain which had now stopped. He cut quickly across M Street and headed down a street that he knew would take him to the river’s edge. Then, really, he had but to walk a mile along the river — away from the police, who surely sought him now, away from prying eyes. It could be dangerous, the bleak streets of the city down by the river. Still, what choice had he? He loved the sense of danger in one respect: he approached it rather than letting it approach him, like an animal in a slaughterhouse pen. He walked on, a pudgy figure, pushing into the night.

At last Lanahan was alone with the machine. In its unlit screen he could see the outline of his own figure, shadowy, imprecise, bent forward with monk’s devotion. Around him he could hear the hum of the fans and the strokes of the other operators.

The Model 1750 Harris Video Display Terminal was twice the size of the earlier model he’d worked with in the pit. It looked to the uninformed eye like a cross between a television set and an electric typewriter, clunky and graceless. But it was his access to the brain, the memory, of Langley.

If he had the codes.

He flicked the machine — curious, in the jargon they’d never become known by their proper designation, VDT, or by anything reasonable. Rather, to them all, atavistically, they were simply Machines.

The machine warmed for twenty seconds; then a green streak — the first stirring of creation — flashed at light-speed across the screen; then a blip, a bright square called a cursor, arrived in the lower left corner: it was the machine operator’s hand, the expression of his will.

Miles stared at the rectangle of light gleaming at him in the half-dark. His fingers fell to a familiar pose and he felt the keys beneath them.

He typed:

Fe Hsu, meaning, fetch the directory coded HSU.

Immediately the machine answered.

Directory Inactive

All right then, you bastard.

He thought for a moment. He’d taken the easy shot, and lost. But let’s not panic. Let’s dope this thing out. We are looking for something hidden years ago. Hidden, but meant to be found if you knew you were looking for it. And meant to be found if you were Paul Chardy. This guy Frenchy Short was said to be smart. And he must have known the machines, the system, if he’d been able to tuck something away.

A play on shoe. The shoe fits. Chinese spelling. He’d tried it, it hadn’t worked. But let’s not forget shoes altogether; perhaps one still fits.

Fe Shu, Miles tried.

The machine paused. No answer.

Christ, suppose it was a secret directory, and when tapped it signaled a security monitor? Such directories were rumored to exist, yet no analyst had ever found one.

The screen was blank.

Then:

Improper Code Prefix

Damn, wrong number.

He had a headache now, and an eruption on his forehead throbbed. Miles rubbed at it with a small finger. Already his back ached; it had been a long time since he’d made his living in a machine cubicle. He’d been in daylight too long, ruining his machine vision.

Think, damn you, think.

FE SHU, he tried again, making certain to leave only one space between the command and the code, for in a moment of rush or confusion he thought he might have left two — or none — the first time through, and the machines — this is why he loved them so — were monstrously petty and literal and absolutely unbending and would forgive no breach of etiquette.

The directory began to scroll up across the screen.

Danzig could see it now — ahead, along the water, beyond the neo-baroque mass of the Watergate buildings. He was alone on an esplanade at the riverbank. Across the flat calm water lay Theodore Roosevelt Island; above its trees he could see Rosslyn skyscrapers. He looked ahead; could he see a flicker on a hill that would be Kennedy’s grave site, a memento mori for the evening? Or was it his imagination? He hurried through the night, on a walk by the water, among trees.

The rain had stopped and back where the river was wider, near the arches of the Key Bridge, the lights from a boat winked. Danzig could not but wonder who was out there. He’d patrolled the Potomac occasionally with a neurotic chief executive — much liquor and endless, aimless, righteous monologues, lasting almost until dawn. But Danzig’s thoughts turned quickly from history to — for the first time in many weeks — sex. He had an image of a beautiful blond woman, elegant, a Georgetowner of statuesque proportions and great enthusiasms — just the two of them alone aboard a mahogany yacht in the Potomac, setting the boat to rocking with their exertions. He paused; from behind a shredding of the clouds came the moon, its satiny light playing on the river. A scene of astonishing allure for Danzig: black bank, black sky, silver moon on the water — a Hollywood scene. He paused, then halted.

He had many years ago abandoned all belief in the unearthly. Man was too venal, too evil. Reality demanded fealty only to the here and now. Yet this sudden image of sheer, painful beauty, coming as it did immediately after visions of the sexual and the historical, placed before him at the ultimate moment of his life: surely now, this meant something.

But even as he paused to absorb it, it began to fall apart. The clouds reclaimed the moon; the glinting sea returned to a more authentic identity as a sluggish river; the yacht under the bridge resolved itself, as he studied it, into a houseboat.

Danzig checked his watch. He had plenty of time. Chardy was probably already there.

He rushed through the night. On the other side of Rock Creek Parkway he could see the white edifice looming up, something on the Egyptian scale, arc-lit for drama, like a monument. Its balcony hung almost to the river, over the road. He hurried along, amazed at how dark and silent it all was.

He passed under the balcony, and felt indoors. He continued to the midpoint of the building where a door had been cut in the blank brick of the foundation, recessed in a notch in the wall. Danzig crossed the parkway and climbed three steps to the door. He paused.

Suppose it was locked?

No, Chardy said it was open.

Danzig’s hand checked the handle.

He pulled it open and stepped inside.

Their efficiency never astonished Ulu Beg. They could do so much; they knew so much. He took it by now as second nature, simply accepted it. It was as if he were operating in their country, not in America.

He had gotten off at the Foggy Bottom stop. But he had not left the platform, hurried up the steps to the way out with the other passengers. He paused, on a stone bench. He was in a huge, honeycombed vault that curved over his head. It blazed with the drama of lights and shadows. Shortly, another train came along. A few people got out; a few got on. That was the 11:45 from Rosslyn; it was the last train. Ulu Beg took a quick look through the vaulted space. People paraded out. Nobody paid him attention.

He walked quickly to the end of the chamber, to the sheer wall into which the tunnels were cut. He looked back and saw nothing. A few people lingered on the balcony above, but they were a hundred feet away and moving out toward the door.

In the train tunnel there was a walkway, gated off from the platform with a No TRESPASSING sign. Ulu Beg climbed quickly over it and began to walk the catwalk along the tracks into the tunnel. The darkness swallowed him. A few lights blinked ahead. He reached a metal door set in the wall. It said, 102 ELEVATOR.

It was padlocked. He removed the key from his pocket and opened the lock. He stepped into the corridor, found the ladder, and began to climb down to the tunnel.