The Second Saladin - Страница 29

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.”