The Second Saladin

37

Lanahan’s rise was sudden and wondrous: he reported directly to Melman. He called Melman “Sam.” There was no Yost between them; it was as if a generation had been sliced out of the hierarchy. That is, Yost, the bishop, was gone; Lanahan reported directly to Sam, the cardinal. He had responsibility, control, power. He had people. He had nice little perks — a driver, a girl, a coffee cup that miraculously never seemed to empty.

“And they seemed to be getting along?” Sam asked in his mildly interested way, referring to Chardy and Danzig.

“Yes, Sam.” Miles rubbed his chin, where a pimple had burst that morning. “For some reason Danzig likes Paul. My people can’t figure it out.”

Melman sat back. “There’s an attraction to Paul, without a doubt.”

“Yes.”

“He has a certain World War Two glamour. Some of the older men, the old OSS types, had it too. And a few of the Special Operations people too. But only Paul, these days. It can be very exciting stuff.”

“Well” — not that Lanahan would disagree with Sam on anything of consequence; still, he’d throw out an occasional inoffensive counterpunch so as not to be thought the total yesman — “to a certain juvenile turn of mind, yes. Poor Trewitt loved Chardy, and look what it got him. It surprises me,” he blasted ahead confidently, “that a realist like Danzig could fall for a bullshit artist, a cowboy, like Chardy.”

“He’s scared, Miles. That’s the psychology of it.”

“I suppose.”

“You’re monitoring them? I mean, without being overly obvious about it?”

“Yes, Sam. Of course.”

“Anything else?”

Ah. This looked to be a good moment to lay on Sam the story of Trewitt in Mexico and the secret link to Chardy via Resurrection, which Lanahan had been storing away for just the right moment. He took a quick look about Sam’s bright office, and leaned forward as if to begin to speak.

“Now there is one thing, Miles.” Sam cut him off. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about this. I foresee one potential problem. I’ve already run into traces of it in Danzig.”

Was this a test?

Miles said nothing. He still felt as though he’d blundered into an audience with the cardinal.

“Miles, both these men — Danzig and Chardy — have tendencies toward paranoia. Well-documented, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

“What bothers me is that if their bond becomes too close, there’s no guessing what they might concoct. And certain ideas can be very dangerous to our line of work. Remember the great double-agent scare of the mid-seventies? No, of course not, you were just starting. And you don’t remember the fifties either, when I was just starting. At any rate, this sort of thing can wreck a division, a whole directorate. The whole shop. Do you follow?”

Sam peered at Miles intensely. He had pale, shallow eyes. Sam was a handsome man. Smooth, brilliant Sam. Everybody wanted a little of Sam’s famous calm charm.

“Yes, sir,” said Miles.

“Let’s declare a first operating principle. A bedrock, a foundation. And that’s that this is first of all a security job. A matter of protection. Perhaps even protecting Danzig from himself. As long as you see it in those terms, and remember that the enemy is Ulu Beg and Danzig’s own paranoia, you’ll be able to keep your bearings.”

What was Sam warning him against?

“Miles, you’re doing well. You’ve managed, early on to get into a crucial position on an important operation. You realize there are men around here who’ve tried for years to get where you are, and have never made it?”

Melman smiled, showing white, even teeth. His charm, remote from public view, was well known in the Agency. It was not a pushy charm, or flamboyant; rather it was a warm thing, enveloping. He had a way of including you in a pact against the world: you, he, united, would stand in tight circumference against the outsiders.

While yielding fully to it, Lanahan at the same time acknowledged it for what it was: a treatment, a technique of manipulation. But he had an immense urge to give Melman something for the privilege of being included. He felt in the presence of a charismatic priest, a great priest, and wished he had a sin to offer up so this man could forgive him.

Trewitt in Mexico.

“Sam—”

“Wait, Miles. Let me finish.”

He fixed Miles in his calm gaze, seeming to draw him in, to make him absolutely his. “Paul hates us. You have to understand, though I wonder if you’re old enough, the kind of man he is. The kind of grudge he’s capable of manufacturing. A certain kind of mentality can tighten, can fix, on a situation and turn it inside out. And come to believe — genuinely believe — his own version of it. It’s a lesson in the human capacity for self-deceit, the power of will over reality. Chardy has this talent; it’s a characteristic of the fanatic and it’s what makes them such potent, such powerful, such astonishing men. In a way I admire it, and wish I had a little of this power for myself. For these men, to admit any but their own vision is to doom themselves. Their strength is their will, their absolutism; their weakness is their inflexibility.

“Miles” — he looked especially hard into Miles’s dark, small eyes, nailing him back against the chair — “you’ve seen his file. The Russians turned him; they broke him in two. He gave them the Kurds, and the woman he loved, driving her from him forever, turning her against him in the cruelest of ways. And make no mistake, love is a very powerful, an almost magical force for a man like Chardy. You’ve no idea how a man like him needs it. So God knows what kind of construction he’s put on his own betrayal; and God knows what her death has now done to him.”

Miles nodded. He felt curiously full of faith; in his own Church, in the Agency, and in Sam. Some of Sam’s wisdom entered his soul, as if Sam had willed it there.

“Miles, there’ll come a time when he’ll test you. He’ll demand you make a choice. A choice between himself and us. And I warn you, he can be very attractive. He has that rough grace that commands. In a crisis he radiates energy and purpose. You’ll see it in his eyes. I’m convinced that the reason Speight was killed and Trewitt is missing is that they exceeded their instructions from Ver Steeg and were off on some crazy mandate from Paul. You saw what it brought them.”

Tell him, thought Miles. Tell the priest. Confess. He was in a dark booth and could only feel the power of the man’s love, his warmth, his infinite wisdom through the screen. He ached to tell. Tell him: Trewitt’s alive. He’s still on the case. You’re right, Sam Chardy the treacherous is working something.

“Miles, Chardy is not stupid. He seems stupid, he can play dumb better than any man I’ve ever seen. If you read through the transcripts on the Saladin Two inquiry, you’ll think you’re seeing a stupid man, a man so shocked and addled and fatigued that he is unable to defend himself. But I never laid a glove on him. It was a brilliant performance. I never got inside him. There’s something in that head of his, something he never even let us see. And now he’s got Danzig; he’s made some sort of pact with Danzig. The whole thing troubles me immensely. Yet I can’t get rid of him, as I’d want to. He bungled it terribly in Boston, walking out like that. I’d love to ship him to the North Pole, and I would too; but I can’t, because of Danzig. So Miles, only this warning: Watch Chardy, watch him carefully. All right? He’s much more than the man he’s letting you see.”

Miles nodded reverently. Yet he was befuddled by the passion in Sam. He felt he’d missed something somewhere; he was a little frightened. He realized now that Melman hated Chardy. Hated him, feared him: weren’t they the same?

Tell him, Miles thought. You have it in your power to please the cardinal, to bind him to you forever and ever. He will give you the Church; he will make the Church yours. You will move through its halls, through its hushed and purple rooms, to its most privileged sanctums.

Miles wished he could genuflect.

Yet he saw also there was a secret and dangerous game between Melman and Chardy — a game whose stakes were so high neither man would speak of them directly.

“Sam,” he heard himself saying, “you can count on me.”