Chardy considered this.
“Who’s running the show. Melman?”
“Melman’s a big man now. Didn’t you know? He’s Deputy Director of the whole Operations Directorate. He’ll be Director of it someday, maybe even DCI if they decide to stay in the shop.”
Chardy snorted at the prospect of Sam Melman as Director of Central Intelligence, with his picture on the cover of Time and Newsweek as had been Helms’s and Colby’s and Turner’s.
“We’re not even running this thing out of Operations, Paul. We’re running it out of Management and Services, their office of Security. So—”
“What the hell is this ‘Operations’?” Chardy asked suddenly.
He really had been out of touch, Speight realized.
“I’m sorry. You were in the mountains, I guess, when they reorganized. I didn’t learn until later myself. Plans is now called Operations.”
“It sounds like a World War Two movie.”
“Paul, forget Operations. Forget the old days, the old guys. Forget all that stuff. Forget Melman. He was just doing his job. He’ll be a long way away from you. Think about Ulu Beg in America.”
“All the stuff about Ulu Beg is in the reports, in the files. The reports of the Melman inquiry. Tell them to dig that stuff out.”
“They already have, Paul. Paul, you know Ulu Beg, you trained him. You fought with him, you know his sons. You were like a brother to him. You—”
But talk of Ulu Beg seemed to hurt Chardy. He looked away, and Speight saw that he’d have to play his last card, the one he didn’t care for, the one that smelled. But it had been explained to him in great detail how important all this was, how he could not fail.
“Paul—” He paused, full of regret Chardy deserved better than the shot he was about to get. “Paul, we’re going to have to bring Johanna Hull in too.”
Chardy said, “I can’t help you there. I wish I could. Look, I have to take a shower.”
“Paul, maybe I’d better make myself clearer.” He wished he’d sucked down a few more rum-and-Cokes. “These are very cold people, Paul, these people in Security. They’re very cold about everything except results. They’re going to have to bring Johanna under some kind of control — and they want you to do it — because they think Ulu Beg will go to her. She’s about the only place he could go. But if you don’t do it, believe me, they’ll find somebody who will.”
Chardy looked at him with disgust.
“It’s gone that far?”
“They’re very frightened of Ulu Beg. They’ll play rough on this one.”
“I guess they will,” Chardy said, and Speight knew he’d won his little victory.
3
He assumed they would be hunting him, but it did not matter and did not particularly frighten him. He had been hunted before — by Iraqi soldiers and policemen, by Arabs, by Iranians, by Kurds even. Now Americans.
But what could they do? For he was in the mountains now. Ulu Beg felt almost comfortable here; he knew this place. He had been born and raised in mountains and fought in mountains and these, though in many ways different, were in just as many ways the same as his own.
They were known as the Sierritas, ranging northward from the border for twenty or thirty kilometers before panning out into cruel desert plain on the way to the American city of Tucson.
These mountains were perfect, a wilderness of bucking scrub foothills shot with oaks and bitter, brittle little plants poking through the stony ground; until, reaching the altitude of 5,000 feet, they exploded suddenly into stone, a cap, a head of pure rock, bare and raw and forbidding. The saying went, “Each mountain is a fortress,” and he felt the security of a fortress up here.
Let them come. He’d learned his skills in a hundred hard places and tested them in a hundred more and would set his against anybody’s in mountains. But he doubted Americans would try him. They were said to be a people of pleasure, not bravery. Still, suppose they had a Jardi to send against him?
The Kurd paused on a ledge, staring at the peaks about him, dun-colored in the bright sun. Everywhere he looked it was still and silent, except for a push of wind against his face.
What if it were written above that a Jardi would be sent against him? What if that were God’s will?
Who knew the will of God? What point was there in worrying about it? Yet, still …
But there was another advantage, beyond security, to the solitude in the higher altitudes. And that was privacy: he could still think like a Kurd, move like a Kurd, be a Kurd. There wasn’t the press of maintaining a fictitious identity, which was as hard as anything he’d ever done.
“You must be one of them,” he had been instructed. “But it won’t be hard,” they assured him. “Americans think only of themselves. They have no eyes for the man next to them. But of course, certain small adjustments must be made in your natural ways. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” he said. “Teach me. I will make any sacrifice, pay any cost. My life is nothing. It has no meaning other than as the instrument of my vengeance.”
“Excellent,” they complimented him. “Your hate is very pure, and to be nourished. It will sustain you through many difficulties. Some men must be taught to hate. You come to it with a gift. You are holy. You make a holy war.”
“This is not holy,” he had said, glaring, and watched them show their discomfort at the force of his glare. “It is a blasphemy. I must defile myself. But it is no matter.”
He moved northward through the mountains slowly, enjoying his journey. He crossed a dirt road late in the night in a low place. He skirted campsites, places where Americans came to play. The sky was fiercely blue, angrily blue, and in it a sun of almost pure whiteness, a radiance, beat down. The clouds were thin and scattered. At the top of one mountain he could see nothing but other mountains. One spine of crests gave way to another. There was dust everywhere, carried by the wind, and even patches of snow, scaly and weak, that gave when he put his American boots through them. At twilight the mountains were at their richest and in the shadows and the soft air they seemed almost kesk o sheen, a certain blue-green shade close to the Kurdish heart which spoke of spring and, more deeply, of freedom to travel the passes, to move through what they held to be theirs by right of two thousand years of occupation: Kurdistan.
At one point he saw a vehicle. He ducked back, for just a second, terrified. The thing lurched up a gravel track, an ungainly beast. Something in the way it moved: sluggish yet determined. He felt his body tensing, and a feeling of nakedness — the nakedness of the prey — overwhelmed him.
The vehicle pulled to a level stretch. He saw it was almost a bus, gaudily painted, an expensive thing. Bicycles were lashed to its rear and the top was bulky with camping gear. He sat back, watching the thing move. It was obviously some kind of vacation truck for rich or fancy Americans, so that they could tour the wilderness in high style, never far from showers and hot water.
He watched it poke along beneath him, pulling a trail of dust, glinting absurdly, its bright colors flashing in the sunlight. It was almost a comical sight, a preposterous American invention. No other country but America could have produced such a thing. He wanted to smile at the idiocy of it.
America!
Land of wealthy fools!
Yet he continued to breathe heavily as the machine passed from view. Why? What frightens me about this monstrosity? You’ll be among them soon, if things go well. Is this how you’ll perform, frozen with terror at the sight of the outlandish?
You’ll never make it.
I must make it.
But it had been terror in his heart. Why?
Was it the shooting at the border? Would there be a huge manhunt for him? Would his mission be endangered? These things troubled him, but not nearly so much as the killing of the two men.