The Second Saladin - Страница 74

“My God,” said Yost. “He’s still alive. We better get some medical people here, Paul—”

“Oh, he’s fine. He’s not shot. I hit him. I have a terrible, terrible temper. Did I ever tell you about the time I punched Cy Brasher? It was like that: I just let go. Oh, Christ, I’m in trouble. Jesus, he could have me sent to jail. It was so stupid of me. Why do I do these stupid things?”

Chardy looked over.

Yost had picked up the Skorpion.

“Be careful, Yost. It’s loaded; it’s cocked. Those things are very dangerous.”

“I know about guns, Paul. I was in the Delta during Tet.” He pulled the bolt back a hair and looked into the breech. “I can see the gleam of the brass cartridge in there.”

“Put it down. You could hurt somebody. Jesus, I hope Danzig doesn’t press charges. Do you think you could put in a good word for me when he comes to? I’d really appreciate it.”

Yost had the Skorpion pointed toward Chardy.

“Sorry, Paul,” he said.

“Hosepipe Three, this is Hosepipe Nine — do you read?”

The man in front picked up the mike.

“I’m reading, Hosepipe Nine.”

“Who the hell is Hosepipe Nine?” Lanahan asked.

“One of our other cars, out looking for Danzig,” somebody said.

“Three, I’m on Rock Creek Parkway by the Roosevelt Bridge, and I received that transmission loud and clear. From Hosepipe One, I mean.”

“Thank you, Hosepipe Nine. We copy.”

“What’s that near?” Lanahan asked.

“State Department. Lincoln Memorial. Watergate. Kennedy Center. It’s right in the middle of—”

“Kennedy Center!” shrieked Miles. “It’s an Agency safe-house — the lower floor of the parking garage. You got a siren on this thing? Come on, hit it.”

The siren began to wail and a portable flasher was clamped atop the sedan as it began to accelerate down M Street.

“Come on, hurry,” Lanahan urged them again, and licked his lips out of fear. For now he knew what Chardy was up to.

“He’s playing cowboy again,” he told them.

Chardy looked at Yost. Yost wore his pinstripe suit and glasses. He was about fifty. He had sandy thin hair. As always he was controlled, quiet, calm. He betrayed no unsteadiness.

“It was just like you said, Yost,” Chardy said. “Sam’s ambition, Frenchy’s betrayal, Speshnev’s fast footwork. Except all the way there was one other character. It was you. You were Sam’s brains.”

“He’s not very bright, Paul. He doesn’t have a first-class mind. He’s very smooth and charming, but he’s just not very bright.”

“You sold him on blowing Saladin Two. And you went to Frenchy. And you sold Frenchy, offered him the big upstairs job. And when Speshnev cracked Frenchy, it was your name he coughed up. And it was you Speshnev nailed.”

“What could I do, Paul? He had me.”

“And when I’m in the cell and Speshnev can’t break me and he’s getting desperate until he tells me he knows about Johanna and he’ll lay her head on the table, it’s you he learned it from. And when Sam crucifies Bill Speight and me at the hearing, it’s because you’ve done his staffwork for him. And up he goes, and up you go. And all those years you’ve been working for him and everything he knew you knew and it went straight to Speshnev. And when you set Danzig up in Boston and everybody thinks you’ve fucked up, he finds you a new job in Satellites. But Satellites are ten times more important than anything in Operations. You’re right in the center. And if Sam should make DCI, he’ll take you along. And if something goes wrong, if somebody thinks there’s a double, and they begin to backtrack, the trail leads straight — to Sam. Sam takes the heat. Everybody watches Sam, not you. And during all this, it’s Sam I hate, Sam I’m trying to screw, Sam who drives me crazy. Not you. I don’t even know you. I never even heard of you.”

“Paul, it’s time. Speshnev had planned to do this himself. It’s time to end it. Sorry.”

He held the machine pistol in both hands and fired.

The bolt jammed halfway forward.

“I turned the first shell around in the clip,” Chardy said. “You should have looked more carefully.”

Chardy took the Ingram out from under his coat.

“This is how you fucked up. Because you underestimated everybody. Each step of the way, and by only a little bit, you underestimated everybody. You thought we were such losers. Old Speight did pretty good down in Mexico. That dreamy kid Trewitt did even better. And Miles, even little Miles came through when we needed him. Everybody was there when we needed them, Yost. And Frenchy: Frenchy was there too. You underestimated Frenchy the most. Frenchy left me a message, buried in an old computer disc, because he didn’t trust you. Miles bluffed his way into the pit this evening and dug it out. A minute before you arrived he reached me on this” — he pulled out the radio unit — “with your name.”

He paused.

“Yost, I ought to blow you the fuck in half for all you’ve cost me.”

At the far end of the garage, a vehicle careened down the ramp and sped to thm. Before it had even halted, tiny Miles was out.

“Good work, Paul,” he called. “We’ll take him now.”

Another car arrived in the next second, and then several others.

A team of medics had taken Danzig off, bleeding, his face swollen. He had not looked at Chardy. The body of Ulu Beg, too, had been removed, after a ritual of crime-site photography that Chardy could not watch.

Miles meanwhile moved among the various groups of officials who’d arrived at the scene and took it upon himself to represent the Agency’s interests until a higher-ranking officer was located. A Deputy Director was due shortly — Chardy guessed it would not be Sam Melman — and the DCI himself had been awakened and briefed and was now on his way to Langley for an emergency session. It was also said that the President had been awakened, as had members of the National Security Council and the Senate and House Intelligence Oversight committees, each of which had dispatched a man or men to the fourth level.

Chardy stood apart from all this. He drew on a cigarette deeply — he had not smoked for years and at first he coughed. But now he had it down again. He finished the cigarette, tossed it away.

“Got another, Leo?”

Leo Bennis handed him another.

Miles was suddenly there, and as Chardy lit up, Miles whispered to him, “Paul, we can really run with this. You and I, if we play it right. All right?”

“Sure, Miles. We’ll be big heroes. I’ll tell ’em you were in on it from the beginning; you were calling the shots. I’ll tell ’em you were the guy who caught the double.”

“Paul, I’d really appreciate—”

“Forget it.”

“Right.”

Miles bobbed away, disappearing among a group of men in suits who were asking questions.

They were about to lead Yost off. He had been weeping. His face was ruined, his hair messy, his eyes swollen. He could not control himself and nobody had thought to give him a handkerchief. Yet now, sensing Chardy’s gaze on him, he looked over.

It was hard for Chardy to feel anything. He thought he’d see Sam being led off; he’d hated Sam all those years. Yost. Who was Yost? He felt he’d been denied something he’d earned. Ulu Beg was dead. Johanna was dead. And somebody he’d never heard of, or really even known, was behind it all.

They took Yost to a van, surrounded by FBI personnel. Miles had tried to get him released to the Agency for debriefing, but the FBI pulled rank. Still Miles insisted on knowing exactly where they were taking him, who was in charge, and began to establish groundwork for the future.

“Maybe you’ll be big in the Agency now,” said Leo.

“No,” Chardy replied. “I never wanted that sort of thing. I just wanted—”

He stopped suddenly.

“I know where Speshnev is,” he said.

“What?”

“Yost said, ‘Speshnev had planned to kill you himself.’ He did. Leo, get a car, get it fast. Clear these people out of here. Where’s that Ingram? Come on, Leo.”

“Paul!”

Chardy found his weapon — it had been impounded by the FBI and Chardy unimpounded it with a quick threat of violence — and ran for the car, inserting a new magazine as he ran.

He leaped in and turned to Leo as the car peeled out of the garage.

“There’s a last wrinkle. There has to be. To bury Saladin Two forever, to seal it off from living memory.”

“Paul—”

“At the hospital. Speshnev. He has to go for me.”

The car squealed as it accelerated up the ramp, up four levels, and turned onto the parkway, siren wailing.

“He’ll get in too. He’ll find the wing, the room.”

“All our people are gone now,” said Leo. “They all hit the street after Danzig.”

“God help him,” said Chardy, for now he saw what must happen. “God help Ramirez.”

56

It was a strangely quiet night, the strangest, the quietest since he had come north. It was a night for escape, but Ramirez felt so tired. They were putting something in the juice, he figured. His limbs weighed a ton; his vision was blurred, his mind working slowly.

Or maybe Reynoldo Ramirez is slowing down with age. All men must. Why would the dark angel spare you, Reynoldo? You do not even pray except when somebody is shooting bullets at you and in this hospital in the far north among pale, bloodless, calm norteamericanos, nobody would fire bullets at you.