“Five more minutes, Miles. Goddamn you, they said you were a prick!”
He rushed off into the dark.
Miles turned back to the screen. He could not escape it.
Enter six-letter security code here
Frenchy, you son-of-a-bitch. You old bastard.
Old Frenchy. Smart old Frenchy.
Then it arrived, from nowhere.
He commanded:
Fe Cowboy
He could see a labyrinth of pillars and acres and acres of the rawest space under a low ceiling. It was an abstraction too, an infinitely open-ended maze. Tunnels and chambers and warrens spilled everywhere in gloomy subterranean abundance. Every fourth or fifth pillar had its own lighted EXIT arrow, stenciled orange, three-quarters of the way up. Did Borges invent this place? Did Kafka? Did Beckett? No, of course not. It was any underground parking garage anyplace in America any time in the ’60s or ’70s or ’80s.
No trace of human motion met his eyes as they probed the aisles and ranks, though in any of a hundred or a thousand dark places, in shadows, in vent openings, in ducts, in stairwells — in any of them — a man could hide.
Danzig’s fear blossomed anew, exotic, an ice-blue orchid inside his chest. It seemed a phenomenon of his gastrointestinal system, crippling and weakening his own interior ducts and vents. He wanted to be sick and could feel bile in his throat. His heart was running hard. He fought for air and found it foul with ancient auto exhaust. He steadied himself. He wished he did not have to be so brave.
The first theory of modern statecraft — so basic, really, it never saw print — was that you paid people to be brave for you. A class of man existed for just such exigencies. Yet here was Danzig, no longer bold by surrogate, required himself to step into the arena.
I am not brave; few enough are. Soldiers sense this intuitively, as if they can sniff it. Civilian, they sneer in contempt, meaning: coward. Meaning also, in his case: Jew. Kike. They were the elect: courage was their election. They held themselves apart, arrogant, hard. He’d seen the look in their eyes, in Chardy’s too; he’d been reading it in a certain Gentile set of eyes for half a century now.
Danzig stepped out, hearing the door hush closed on its pneumatic pump and click (lock?) behind him.
He stepped forward. His shoes echoed under the low ceiling.
“Chardy? I’m here, Mr. Chardy,” he called.
Ulu Beg could see him. He had a shot of close to one hundred yards, through a dozen sets of pillars, long for the pistol round that the Skorpion threw.
“You must be close,” they’d said.
He began to draw nearer. This was not difficult. The fat man was very frightened and kept yelling for Chardy and it was easy to stay in the shadows and yet feel the voice growing louder and louder. He began to count. He would count to one hundred.
55
A sheen of images rose to fill the screen. Numbers.
Service Level Directory
3839857495………2094875903
2884110485………0594847324
And on and on and on.
He hit the scroll button and the numbers rolled up, a rising tide of integers that climbed to the top of the screen and then disappeared.
He kept the button down until the numbers didn’t move.
MO, it said. More.
He commanded more:
Fe Mo
Yes, more, more. I want MO. Give me MO.
He descended through a sea of green numbers.
He felt he had to hold his breath. He dreamed he was swimming in math.
Am I going insane?
The marine imagery continued to dominate his imagination as the numbers gurgled past, and he had to FE MO into three more segments of the Service Directory.
And then it began to slow on him.
The numbers rolled sluggishly. The system was going to crash on him. The warning light would flash on, high on the walclass="underline" sorry, brain temporarily out of order. And it would all be over for Lanahan; he’d never find his way down here again.
Move, you bastards, move, come on, damn you. His finger on the scroll button was white-knuckled and taut with pain as he pressed. The numbers moved more slowly. They moved so slow he thought he’d die. He’d never make it.
No Mo
Touch down. Sea bottom. He was way, way down and he saw nothing.
Nothing, he’d gone too far. He’d missed a line, the last line from the bottom.
784092731………Shu
The shoe fits.
Miles stared elationlessly at it. A tremor raced through him.
FE he instructed, and sent the line and the screen blanked out.
He waited for what seemed the longest time. Had he lost it? Had he fucked up, blown it? Had the Security people been alerted? Yet all was silent. No, it wasn’t. It seemed silent because he was breathing so hard, was so exhausted. Yet now, concentrating, he heard the tapping of other operators on their terminals, the whine of their fans. Nobody stirred.
Words rose from the bottom of the screen, a slugline and then the message.
PAUL YOU BASTARD, said Frenchy Short, horribly dead these seven years.
I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU TO THE RUSSIANS. BUT THEN YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT IF YOU’RE READING THIS BECAUSE IT’LL MEAN I’M DEAD AND YOU GOT BACK AND YOU’RE TRYING TO PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER.
PAUL, Frenchy continued (and Miles could see him: hunched over a terminal, typing quickly, typing desperately, watching his own words traipse across the screen; he’d be terrified; he’d be almost shaking with fear, the discovery could happen so easily), HE’S OFFERED ME A DEAL. IT’S EVERYTHING. THE UPPER FLOORS. SECURITY. EASY STREET. PAUL I’M SO TIRED AND THEY’RE GOING TO GET RID OF ME. SO I’VE GOT THIS JOB AND I’M HOME FREE.
PAUL HE EVEN SAYS IT’S FOR THE BEST. BEST FOR THE AGENCY BEST FOR HIM BEST FOR ME. HE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT YOU. HE SAYS THE COWBOY DAYS ARE ALL OVER.
Miles read on, to the punchline, and found out who ordered Frenchy Short to blow Saladin II and why.
Miles stood, clearing the screen, sending Frenchy’s message back to the serene depths where it would be safe forever. He knew he had to reach Chardy now — and fast.
Danzig thought he saw something move.
His heart jumped.
“Chardy! Chardy, I’m here!”
He ran through a set of pillars, through a shadow — to nothing.
“Chardy! Chardy! Where are you, Chardy?”
His echo boomed around the chamber and back at him. His breathing was rushed and hard. The pillars offered a hundred crazy perspectives, each yielding a wall, a far-off duct, a doorway, a ramp, a shadow. Yet no human form stirred. The smell of combustion was rich and rancid and the atmosphere seemed to burn his skin. He fought for more oxygen.
“Chardy! Chardy!”
Then Danzig saw a figure half-emerge — freeze — pull back into a shadow.
At that moment the scope of his betrayal became evident. A great hate filled him — the urge to kill. Kill with his hands. But kill whom? He didn’t know. Then came the terror. It was total and almost annihilating. And next: a suffocating self-pity. He had so much to do, to give, to contribute. If only he could tell the man, make him see, reason with him.
But Ulu Beg stepped fully out of the darkness. He wore jeans and was fair and tall and seemed — strong. Danzig had no other word. The man stared at him. He had his pistol.