The Second Saladin

33

When he reached the door he had no idea what to say, no plan.

He knocked on the door, wondering what God willed for the next few minutes.

The door opened and he found himself face to face with a woman of advanced years who wore a look of great, eager American friendliness and who said only, “Helio.”

“Yes, hello, how are you?” he replied.

Something he did — he’d never know what — must have perplexed her.

“Yes? Are you here for the party?”

He had no idea what to say. Beyond the door lay a dim corridor and at its end a brightly lit room choked with smoke and people. He could sense them crowded in there; the noise was intense and laughter bellowed heavily in the air.

“Yes?” she repeated. She wanted to help him. He could tell.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, “you must be Dr. Abdul.”

“Yes. Dr. Abdul.”

“It was so nice of you to come. Joe admires your work intensely, even if he doesn’t quite agree on Egyptian hegemony.”

“I look forward to talk.”

“Come in, of course. Let’s not stand here. Oh, you’re so tall, I had no idea.”

“Yes. It is a gift from God.”

“Yes, I suppose so. How long will you be with the department? Do you return to Cairo at the end of the term or in the winter?”

“Term.”

“Oh, I hate those short appointments. Jack and I were in Munich, but the grant only lasted eight months. You can’t get a real sense of a culture in less than two years. How do you like America?”

“Ah. I love it.”

“Good. Go on in. Jack is over by the wall at the bar. He’ll get you a drink. And if you can fight your way to Joe, say hello to him for me. I haven’t said two words to him since he arrived.”

“Ah. Thanks.”

He stepped by her and walked down the hall to the noise. A few couples talked privately, lovers perhaps, in the darkness. He edged by them and stood in the room, at the edge of the crowd.

Danzig knew she was his. She was beautiful too, and very young, exotic. She may have been mulatto even, or a Eurasian, or some odd mix of Filipino and Russian. She had not yet spoken to him but she was staring at him. He knew it was a preposterous idea and that the technical problems — how to get her back to the hotel, how to get her back from the hotel — were immense. Yet he wanted her!

She’d come with a man probably. But who? That tall dramatic one staring furiously from the doorway? Perhaps, but Danzig, who was by this time quite exhausted with conversation, and not a little drunk, decided to risk it anyway.

“Ah, miss?”

“Yes?” Faint accent.

“Ah, I couldn’t help wondering. Are you a student at the university?”

“No, Dr. Danzig. My husband is an associate professor in the physics department.”

“Oh, how pleasant. I’m sure I couldn’t begin to understand the first thing about his work. He must be very brilliant. Is he here?”

“No. I came with my lover.” She said it quite matter-of-factly, but clearly to shock him, to see something register on the famous face. “You spoke with him earlier. He’s that brash younger man in political science. Jeremy Goldman.”

Danzig vaguely remembered somebody who might fit that description, but the details were hazy.

“Yes, yes, he made a number of interesting points. A very interesting man, as I recall. I don’t think he cares for me.”

“Oh, he loathes you. He loathes everybody. But he’s fascinated.”

“May I ask … pardon me if I seem forward, I really mean no harm and am an extremely harmless man” — the famous Danzig self-deprecation, charming and cruelly vain — “but do I fascinate you?”

“Well,” she said, pausing. Her face was beautiful, witty: very thin, with high, fiercely chiseled model’s cheekbones, the eyes vaguely Oriental, the lips full as plums. “I would say — a little. Yes. A little.”

“Well, what an excellent compliment. How nice you are to an old and rather vain man. May I ask further — again, I don’t mean to be forward and please stop me if in any way I am intimidating you—”

“Oh, I’m not intimidated.”

“Well, may I ask then, is he around? And do you plan to leave with him? I’m sure you do; I don’t mean to press you.”

She made a cool pretense of looking around the room.

Chardy! Danzig realized suddenly that Chardy could drive them back to the hotel and then take her on to her place. But would he mind?

Of course not. He’d better not mind. He looked too, but for Chardy.

Ulu Beg could see him now. He looked thicker than in pictures, the hair flecked with gray, the eyes beady behind the thick glasses, the stomach plump and straining in the vest. He leaned over a bit, his ungainly body slightly atilt, talking earnestly to a woman. Twice, in fact, he’d looked at Ulu Beg directly, freezing him. But the eyes quickly returned to the woman; he spoke in a low insistent voice.

Ulu Beg edged through the crowd. He bumped somebody.

“Excuse me,” somebody said.

“Well, I—”

“Who’s the—”

“Well, sorry, I seem to—”

“Oh, are you trying to get—”

At last he was sixteen feet away. He reached back under his coat and felt the Skorpion. He cautioned himself to draw it slowly and steadily and to fire with both hands. His fingers touched its hardness, its metal.

Yet he hesitated.

A fat man talking to a pretty girl in the middle of his civilization.

He’d killed a hundred men, but all were soldiers and would have killed him. He tried to think of his sons, one dead, one so hideously wounded that he himself had done the final act out of mercy and love. The memory flooded over Ulu Beg and the stench of burning fuel seemed to come alive in his nostrils and he could feel the dust heavy in the air from the rotor blades and the bullet strikes.

Someone jostled him.

“Sorry, old man,” said a man in a sweater and a pipe.

Ulu Beg turned. The woman was laughing at something Danzig had just said, and the man himself was smiling, chatting confidently.

“Drink?” somebody asked Ulu Beg. He turned to look at him in astonishment. He had no sensation of removing the weapon.

“He’s got a gun,” somebody was screaming. “Oh, God, he’s got a gun!”

Ulu Beg pivoted, raising the weapon with both hands until the fat man on the sofa filled the sights.

The noise rose, a light fell, shadows reeled in the room.

Danzig stood in stupefied terror and raised his hands.

Ulu Beg fired.

Glass everywhere. Chips of wood, pieces of table, ruined books. Danzig lay on the floor. He could see the carpet. Somebody was still shooting.

Make it go away.

Oh, God: Make it go away.

The girl was crying, “Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, Jerry, oh, Jerry, Jesus,” and bled badly, all down her front. She was on the sofa. He could not — would not — move to help.

Danzig lay still. Uckley had fired at least twice before the tall man had killed him.

“Where is he? Where is he?” The boy Lanahan, the Agency man, a pistol in his hand, danced in fury and terror.

“Oh, Christ,” someone shouted, “oh, Jesus Christ, he had a gun, a gun.”

Sirens.

Sirens: somebody had called the police.

Danzig would not look up. The tall man. Had he left? God save him from the tall man.

He lay on his stomach curled up behind the couch. Three times he’d been hit, maybe a fourth, knocking him backward. Where was the doctor? Please let there be a doctor. He thought his heart would explode. He needed a pill.

Danzig began to cry. He wept uncontrollably. His chest hurt awfully. He had wet himself in fear and didn’t even care. A great, furious self-pity welled through him. He had figured out that he would not die. The vest — the material was called Kevlar, very expensive, spun steel and high-density nylon, developed for his trips to the Middle East — would stop the bullets. But what if it hadn’t? Why did his chest hurt so? He could not stop crying or shaking.

“My God,” somebody was still shrieking, “he had a fucking gun.”

Chardy heard the sirens. He started to run down the hall. By the time he got outside at least three squad cars had sped by. Chardy ran after them. Across from the house he found her, in the car. The muzzle blast had blackened the side of her face and her eyes were closed. The pistol was still in her hand. Across the street, police cars and ambulances with their flashers all squirting red and blue light into the night had gathered, but Chardy didn’t even look. He opened the door, laid her gently on the other seat, and got in, turned the key, and drove away.