The Second Saladin

19

It was one of those curious events that briefly unite a dozen separate worlds, whose representatives, forced awkwardly to confront each other, stood around in stiff, silent groups. Several generations — contending generations, in fact — were there: the old warriors, ex-OSS types; and Chardy’s bunch, Cold War and Vietnam hell-raisers; and the later, ascendant Melman crowd, drones, realists, the computer brigade. Speight had known and been known to them all. And outsiders, youngsters, presumably junior members of the administration of the moment, and maybe a staffer or two from House and Senate intelligence committees; and maybe some neighbors; and family.

Chardy, standing apart from the surprisingly large crowd ranged around the grave site and across the soft slopes of Arlington — Washington, falsely bright in the spring sun, gleamed across the river, through the dogwoods — saw with surprise that the family was young. Speight had married late then; or was it a second marriage? He didn’t know. Speight had never said. At any rate, the widow in black, veiled and weeping, stood next to Yost Ver Steeg, and nearby were three little boys, Sunday-dressed, hurt or baffled.

Yost stood as though dead. The widow leaned on him, but Chardy guessed the strength was cold, not warm. This wouldn’t be a Yost Ver Steeg scene; he’d play it badly, although as Bill’s last field supervisor, protocol mandated that play it he would. His dignity was not so much serene as merely placid; he radiated no calm into the chasm of grief. Bill’s boys did not like him, Chardy could tell, and even as the ceremony demanded their attention, they shifted and fidgeted with repressed energy. Yost stood without rocking, knees locked, hands clasped dryly together. His crisp hair was short and perfect; a glare caught on the surface of those glasses again, blanking out the eyes. He looked like the lone executive at a miner’s funeral.

Blue soldiers from a famous Army unit handled the ceremony, which was built around the folding of the flag until it resembled a tricornered, starred hat. It was presented to Yost, who presented it to the woman; she in turn gave it to the oldest boy, who’d seemed to figure out what was going on. Three crisp volleys rang out, echoing in the trees. A bugler issued taps.

Bill Speight, dead in a foreign sewer alongside a whorehouse. The Agency could or would say nothing about it, except in the form of an official presence at this ceremony and, Chardy hoped, an indication to the widow that Old Bill was on an op down there and not off whoring. Or would they even say that? Perhaps only silence was offered at this stage; you never knew how they figured these things on the upper floors.

Chardy looked around as the crowd broke. Wasn’t that Miller, now a writer with two awful novels and a memoir to his credit; and that O’Brien, said to be drawing down half-a-mil on Wall Street? And he thought he recognized Schuster, the German, in this country so long now he’d almost lost his accent, recently an insurance salesman. Jesus, there were others, too: all these men, survivors of the hot ’50s and ’60s, of the Cold War in Europe and stations in sweltering deltas all across Asia. You could build a pretty good operation out of the talent just standing around here, Chardy thought. But of course nobody would.

“Poor Bill,” he heard someone say. “Poor Old Bill.” A thousand times he’d heard someone say it, two thousand. “Poor Bill,” Bill, so much promise, such a comer once, such a bright hope; now this. “Poor Margaret, you mean,” somebody else, a woman, said, “with those three boys.”

Funerals unhinged Chardy, this one more than most. Though the sky was blue and the sun bright and the grass blinding spring-green, and the markers white, row on row of them like an image from a bitter Great War poem, he shuddered. Hated funerals, always had. So hushed, creepy. So Catholic, the faith he’d flown. Must be the Irish half of him, his mother’s half: weepy at all the cheap theatrics, the tooting horns, the flappity-flap flags, the widows, the little boys. Chardy felt a black spell of brooding coming across him, enervating, ruining. Something bitter leaked into his blood; he’d be worthless for hours. A headache was due in shortly, and one of those awful sieges of self-loathing. All his sins and failures would come marching across his mind like these pretty blue soldier boys, Old Guardsmen, cadence perfect, bayonets gleaming in the sun. And just for a second the torrent of people before him parted and he saw a perfect tableau: the widow, head bent, weeping silently; beside her the three brave boys; and beside them all, holding her hand and seeming to encompass all their grief, Sam Melman.

Chardy had not seen him in almost seven years, since the hearings. Sam had aged well. Dressed in a dark suit, he was a man for helping widows and surviving sons over their grief, where poor Yost was not. It was a talent of his, the knack for the right word, for knowing how to handle unpleasant situations with dignity and aplomb. He was speaking to them all. Chardy could hear him in his mind: Just call me if you need anything. We’ll be happy to help. We know how rough it is on you. We’ll do our best. There’ll be money.

Would the widow know that Bill and Sam were almost perfect contemporaries and way, way back were seen by many as potential long-term rivals for important jobs coming up in the future? No, she would not; Bill wasn’t the type to take the office home with him.

Chardy turned away furiously. Melman had not seen him, but surely must have figured he’d be around. And just as surely wouldn’t care. Chardy knew it would be no embarrassment to Melman to see him; there’d be no awkward look away, no shuffling of the feet. Sam would look him right in the eye, perhaps even smile. “Hello, Paul,” he’d say, leaving awkwardnesses of the past far behind, “how are you? Are you doing all right? I hear you’re on a contract now. Glad to have you back.” And he’d mean it too, for in his own righteous way he’d have no doubts about his decisions in the hearings, and it would never occur to him that Chardy could bear him ill will. Perhaps he’d even have a little fondness for a maverick like Chardy, an old cowboy, a relic, like Bill, of a flamboyant past.

Chardy wished he had Johanna at that moment, something to cling to against the rage. With hands jammed deep into his pockets he began to climb through the shadows, away from the mob, thinking he would walk hard for half an hour, burn off some of his anger. He couldn’t afford it, he had to be in top form, for tomorrow he met the Great Man himself.

“Paul? Paul, is that you?”

The voice was a woman’s, familiar. He turned. She was plumper now — had not aged as well, nearly, as Sam Melman. She seemed smaller too, certainly less attractive, for once she’d been a beauty.

It really was an afternoon for ghosts, for the dead. Am I that much older now too? he wondered.

“Marion,” he said, trying to fabricate some spontaneity, knowing at the same time that if he’d seen her coming, he’d have changed direction immediately. “God, it’s been so long.”

“Hasn’t it? My God, nearly eight years.”

“I’m sorry about Frenchy, Marion. I only found out a few weeks ago. I was sort of put into storage. I should have called or something.” He felt terrible. He wanted to flee this failure. He owed Frenchy, he owed his widow, and he’d failed both of them.

“Paul, it’s all right. You always took things so seriously.” She smiled her wrecked smile, too tight, and he felt as though he should touch her. “It was all so long ago. And I heard about your problems. Nobody is supposed to talk, but it always gets out. Walk with me, will you? Let’s talk. I saw so many people today that I once knew. But I didn’t want to talk to any of them. But then I saw you.”

He fell into step beside her. They were on a path, under trees, on a hill. It was bright and he wanted to put on his sunglasses. Washington, like a white, phony, movie-set Rome, lay straddling the horizon. Chardy pinched the bridge of his nose because his head was beginning to hurt.

“It’s terrible about Bill, isn’t it?” Marion said.

“Poor Old Bill. But he lasted longer than most,” Chardy said, and almost instantly regretted it: Bill lasted longer than Frenchy, floating in the Danube.

But she seemed not to have heard.

“What are you doing now?” he asked.

“I’m married again. My husband teaches English at a branch of the University of Maryland, out near Baltimore.”

“Sounds great. A nice, calm life. I guess after the Frenchman—” He let it end, a wild memory of Frenchy Short swirling in his head. Frenchy had cheated on her horribly, every chance he got, but who could hold anything against the Frenchman? She’d probably known, and forgiven him. Everybody forgave the Frenchman — it was one of his great gifts. He was irrepressibly childish, charming as black sin, without scruple, maliciously clever, magnificently brave. He was one of those rare men built for combat and his joyous ferocity, his sheer heat, always left Chardy feeling pale in comparison. Frenchy had taught Chardy everything and Chardy owed him a lot. Frenchy also invented jams and wiggled out of them, coming most vividly alive in the violent moments of extrication.

“Even the Frenchman was slowing down,” Marion said. “Near the end.”

“I can’t imagine a slowed-down Frenchy,” Chardy said. He didn’t really want to think about it. Though it was true Frenchy also had a down phase, a real killer of a crash, when he could hardly make himself leave his bed.

“I don’t know, Paul. He’d mellowed, or burned out. Maybe he was just tired of it all.”

“Occupational hazard,” Chardy said pointlessly. He was trying to remember about kids. Frenchy never talked about kids, he was always too self-involved. Were there kids, little Frenchys, to feed and care about like the three troopers Old Bill had left? Frenchy might have made a good father — but Chardy suspected he might also have been the kind of man best with other people’s children, for whom he can play hero and never have to change diapers. But Chardy wasn’t sure one way or the other — and could think of nothing to say to poor Marion.

It is always hardest on the women, he thought. We chase around the world, playing cowboy on Agency expense accounts; they stay here and get leathery or brittle and try not to resent being sealed off so completely, until one day they realize they live in an entirely different world from their husbands’. Or maybe a call comes, with inadequate details, like the call Bill’s wife had gotten or Marion. And then they get a folded flag from a stiff young Army sergeant, a few words with an oily grief merchant like Sam Melman, a little pension, and the door. This melancholy series of thoughts brought him to Johanna, for whom he still ached. He would never seal her off, he swore; finish this business, and that was it. No more secrets, no more operations. He was done with it.

Marion, meanwhile, was talking with considerable animation.

“… and I’d never seen him so fascinated, not in years.”

Now what the hell was she talking about?

“It meant some kind of security, too. Schlesinger was DCI then and he fired about two thousand people in six weeks and Frenchy was terrified he was on the next list. And he was so tired of the travel, the violence. So I think Frenchy was happiest then. I think it was his best time. He learned so fast; he was so good at it.”

“Uh-huh,” Chardy said dumbly, trying not to tip her off that he’d not been listening and had no idea what she was talking about.

“And then the Vienna thing came up. He just had to go — one last fling, I guess. But he loved those computers, he really did.”

Computers? Frenchy Short, computers?

“The computers,” Chardy said.

It didn’t sound like Frenchy. Or maybe it did. Maybe Frenchy had taken a hard look at what was coming and realized the day of the cowboy was over. The future belonged to robots: to computers, to satellites, to microwave processors, to lasers. ELINT they called it in the trade, Electronic Intelligence, as opposed to HUMINT, Human Intelligence. So Frenchy had jumped to the side of the robots, the Melmans. Curious images floated around Chardy’s head — he had no experience with computers and so to imagine Frenchy among them was difficult.

“I just can’t see Frenchy with computers,” Chardy said.

“It was the future, he said. He was tired of the past.”

“He was thinking of you, Marion, I guess.”

“It’s nice of you to say that, Paul. We both know better. The Frenchman never thought of me.”

“Marion—”

“No, it’s all right. It doesn’t matter. Don’t apologize. But he was thinking of you, Paul. Before he left. You were in the Mideast or someplace. You two went back so far.”

A jet filled the sky, a 727 roaring down the Potomac toward National Airport, its noise burying their words. The great silver craft banked as it sped by, close enough to be touched. Its landing gear locked down. They had climbed and now stood atop one of the hills across which the cemetery spread, and it all lay before them, the white markers spilling into the valleys and the clumps of dogwood, and beyond that a band of highways, a sluggish brown river, and finally a blazing white city. It looked even more like a movie Rome from here.

“I hate Washington,” said Chardy. “I hate the people, the newspapers, the pretty women. It’s no city for guys like Frenchy and me. I just hate it.” His own sudden passion amazed him. But he did hate it.

“It’s just a place,” Marion said.

A cool wind whipped the leaves, chilling Chardy. He’d left his overcoat in his car, from which he was now, in his wanderings with Marion, a mile distant.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I interrupted you. I’m not much company today, I’m afraid.”

“Funerals depress everyone. Please don’t worry about it, Paul.”

“Thanks.”

“I was telling you that Frenchy was thinking of you at the end.”

“That’s right.”

“He had a message for you. He told me especially to tell you. But then he died and it was a difficult time and then I didn’t see you and I started another life. The years went by. But now I remember. Seeing you, standing by yourself up on that hill with your new beard, I remembered.”

“A message?” said Chardy, curious.

“ ‘Marion,’ he said, ‘Marion, when Paul gets back, tell him to fetch the shoe that fits. Got that? Fetch the shoe that fits? He’ll know what I’m talking about.’”

Chardy couldn’t keep a sudden cruel grin off his face.

“What does it mean, Paul?”

“Oh, Marion, it goes back so far, to another time. A terrible time. I hate to tell you.”

“You can tell me, Paul. I’m a big girl.”

“When we were running our missions into the North up around the DMZ with the Nung people, there was a Chinese opium merchant in the area named Hsu. H-S-U. Pronounced ‘shoe.’ Anyway, one of our patrols got bounced bad, and we just got out of there with our hides. It was a bad, bad time. And then somebody told us this Hsu was working for the North Vietnamese. He was their agent; he’d infiltrated our area to get a look at our operations. He was a very bad guy, it turned out. Well, we had our contacts too. We set him up. We let it be known that he’d done some work for us. His bosses didn’t see the humor in it. The guy was found floating in the river in oil drums. Several of them. And Frenchy said — we were drunk at the time; you have to understand that — Frenchy said, ‘Well, Paul, we proved the Hsu fits.’ It seemed very funny at the time.” She didn’t say a word.

“Marion, you’re horrified. Look, we were in the middle of an ugly kind of business. People were getting greased left and right. It had come out that up north they’d put out a fifty-thousand-piaster bounty on our heads. You never knew which way was up and you went out on these long patrols with the Nungs and you never knew if you were coming back. It was a hard time, a difficult time, and nobody knows or cares about it anymore. And a lot of things seemed funny then that don’t now.” He was irritated that she seemed so offended. What did she think Frenchy’s job was all those years?

“I had no idea it would be so cruel.”

“I’m sorry, Marion. I didn’t mean to wreck your illusions.”

“I can be an awful prig, can’t I? It’s not your fault. As you say, it was a different kind of time. But what about the ‘fetch’?”

What about it?

“I just don’t know what he was thinking about with that. I think he meant ‘remember’ or something. He was saying, ‘Remember the times we had.’”

“Oh, it’s such a strange world you and Frenchy had, Paul. I’m so glad to be out of it. Look, here’s my car.” They had reached a low brick wall that separated the cemetery from Fort Myer. Just beyond, in the Army parking lot, was a dirty yellow Toyota.

She smiled, her features briefly lighting. She’d really been a beautiful woman once, where Frenchy had always been especially ugly, and Chardy had always been impressed with his ability to earn the loyalty of such a lovely woman.

“It was so good to see you again, Paul. I’m so glad I came to this. It was nice to step into the past again. I really do miss him, Paul. I really do.”

He thought she might cry, and said quickly, “Yes, I do too, Marion.”

“Call me sometime, if you’d like. My husband’s name is Brian Doelp.” She spelled it. “We live out in the suburbs, a place called Columbia. Halfway between Baltimore and Washington. It’s very nice.”

“I will, Marion. It was nice seeing you too. It really was.” He bent and kissed her on the cheek.

“Can I drop you somewhere?”

“No, my car’s just over there,” and he pointed vaguely in the direction of Maryland and the North Pole.

“Bye-bye then.”

“Goodbye, Marion.”

She climbed into the car, started it quickly, and disappeared into the traffic of Fort Myer.

Chardy walked back through the boneyard, a tall man, bearded, hunched against the wind, his hands in his pockets. He put on his sunglasses. The cemetery was empty now, except for a few tourists, and he walked among the American dead, thinking of his own losses.