The Second Saladin by Stephen Hunter

You can do it calmly and naturally, as if you were discussing the weather.”
    “Agency people are just people. Anyway, I never did lie to you. The lying goes on at higher levels. They have specialists in it.”
    He emptied the beer can and reached into the sack for another one. He wished he’d gotten another six-pack. He popped the new top, took a long swallow.
    He finally said, “There probably hasn’t been a night in seven years that I haven’t thought of you and hated what came between us. That’s not a lie. But if you love
him—
and I think you do, and I think you should—then you’ve got to help me. Or he’s dead.”
    “Don’t overdo the nobility, Paul.”
    “Don’t overdo the betrayed woman, Johanna. While you’re busy feeling sorry for yourself, they’re going to put a bullet in his head.”
    “Paul,” she finally said, “I lied too. I said I loved you. I never loved you.”
    “All right. You never loved me.”
    “I loved the
idea
of you. Because you were fighting for the Kurds, and the Kurds needed fighters.”
    “Yes.”
    “I was so impressed with force. I thought it was a great secret.”
    “It’s no secret at all.”
    “Do you know what happened? To us? After your mysterious disappearance?”
    “Yes.”
    “You lie!”
she screamed. “Goddamn you,
you lie
. Again. Again, you lie. You don’t know. Nobody knows except—”
    “A Russian told me. He doesn’t run with your crowd.”
    “The details?”
    “No. This Russian doesn’t bother with details. He’s too important to bother with the details. He told me the numbers.”
    “Well, I think it’s important that you know the details. So that you can carry them around upstairs in that cold thing you call a brain.”
    Johanna was beautiful in the dark, now, here, after so much dreaming of her. He ached. He wanted her, wanted her love or her respect. So many things had come between them.
    “Come with me.” She got out.
    He followed her. They crossed the street and stood before a big dark house. She led him up the walk into thefoyer. She opened a second door with a key and they climbed three flights of stairs. He heard music coming from one of the floors. They reached the top, turned down a short hall. She opened another door. They stepped into her apartment.
    “Sit down. Take your coat off. Get comfortable,” she said coldly.
    He sat on a couch. The apartment had high ceilings and tall old windows and was modestly furnished in books and potted plants and odd, angular pieces. It was white and cold. Johanna went to a table and returned with a thick sheaf of paper.
    “Here,” she said. “My memoirs. It turns out I’m not Lillian Hellman, but at least it’s the truth.” She paged through the messy manuscript and peeled off a batch of pages. “The last chapter. I want you to read it.”
    Chardy took the chapter from her and looked at the first page. It bore a simple title: “
Naman.”
    “You didn’t tap it?” said Lanahan in the van outside, looking at the hulking old house.
    “I couldn’t, Miles,” said the wizard, irritation in his tone because an old hand like him had to show deference to someone as young and raw as Lanahan. “Yost won’t let me. You get caught doing something like that and you got all kinds of troubles.”
    “I don’t know how he expects us to bring this off if we can’t play it hard,” Miles said bitterly. “What about the other units? Are they in touch? Can we get in contact with them?”
    “They’re here, Miles. At least they should be. We’ve got Chardy nailed. But I didn’t think we ought to have a radio linkup in this van. We knew we were going to be carrying Chardy around in this van. I bet if you wandered up the street you’d spot them.”
    “Just so Chardy doesn’t spot them,” Miles said.
    “He won’t. They’re good boys, ex-cops, private eyes. I set it up just the way Yost says. Yost says keep Chardy in a sling, and in a sling he goes. If that’s what Yost wants, that’s