The Face of the Assassin Part 16

"I'm sorry," the man said. "You must be alone."

In a tense moment, everyone a.s.sessed the situation. Then the second man held both hands up in a placating gesture.

"It's better for her if she doesn't come," he said.

"It's okay." Susana reached out and touched Bern's chest with the flat of her hand, as if to convey the sincerity of her words. "It's okay. You heard what I said?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"You remember it?"

"Yeah?"

"No problem, then, okay?"

He was adjusting, reading between the lines of every gesture, imagining the communication in every tick of her expression.

She looked at the man with Bern. "I'll see him later, right?"

"Yeah, sure, no problem."

"It's okay, then," she said to Bern, and she backed away slowly. They waited until she turned around and disappeared around the corner, heading back the way they had come.

He sat alone in the backseat of the car, a Lincoln, like the many sitios sitios in the city. There was no effort to conceal their route, and his grim first thought was that he wouldn't be coming back, so it didn't matter. But he pushed it aside. Maybe Sabella was only going to be at this location for this one meeting. Or maybe at some point along the way, he would be blindfolded, maybe switched to another vehicle. in the city. There was no effort to conceal their route, and his grim first thought was that he wouldn't be coming back, so it didn't matter. But he pushed it aside. Maybe Sabella was only going to be at this location for this one meeting. Or maybe at some point along the way, he would be blindfolded, maybe switched to another vehicle.

For a while, he stared out the windows, letting the image of Susana walking away play across his mind. G.o.d, how final that seemed now. At that moment, he was very close to accepting the fact that he simply couldn't do this. Very close. The fact was, he just didn't have the kind of guts that this was going to take. The best he could do was just fake it. h.e.l.l, he could fake it; he could do that. Play an audacious con game, a grand charade. At least until something unraveled that he couldn't control.

They entered the dark wood of Chapultepec Park, the headlights of the cars searching through the mist and fog that enshrouded the dense forest of giant ahuehuetes. ahuehuetes. The traffic was heavy, and people waited for transit connections along the broad sidewalks flanking the boulevard. The traffic was heavy, and people waited for transit connections along the broad sidewalks flanking the boulevard.

Staying on Paseo de la Reforma, they continued into the elegant neighborhood of Lomas de Chapultepec, moving higher into the hills, until the streets grew smaller and became serpentine. This was Bosques de las Lomas, a rarefied part of the city, where business magnates and wealthy politicians with dubious connections lived. It was also where most of the foreign amba.s.sadors in the city had their homes.

They entered a section of ascending turns, the narrow street doubling back on itself again and again. Even on such a foggy night, he could make out the phenomenon for which this area was famous. Here the hills were so steep and close upon one another that girded pillars of concrete rose three, four, five stories up the hillsides in order to support plush gardens for the expensive homes that perched on the ridges. Trees and sprawling gardens, tennis courts and swimming pools-all were suspended above the city on superstructures ma.s.sive enough to support whole buildings.

The mist grew heavier and the car took a sharp turn into a steep incline, pa.s.sing through two wrought-iron gates. They turned yet again, the car's tires spinning in jerks on a pavement slick with the moist breath of fog. The headlights picked up a sheer cliff very close on the right, covered with hanging vines. On the other side, the hillside fell away and the coppery night sky of the city spread out across the valley far below.

They stopped in the circular courtyard of a two-story Spanish Colonial home. A window here and there glowed with amber light, but the exterior of the home was visible only because of the coppery glow from the valley.

As he got out of the car, Bern saw the dark silhouettes of palmettos against the building's facade, and now, too, the armed guards were visible, milling about the courtyard. Looking through a porte cochere that led into a second walled courtyard, he could see other cars and men carrying armloads of boxes out of the house and putting them into the cars.

He was escorted through the front door and into an unfurnished entry hall where voices echoed off the stucco walls and marble floors, making it impossible to tell the direction they were coming from.

They ascended a wide staircase, his two escorts having to move to one side as three men started down with armloads of laptops. Armed guards appeared in the empty entry below, speaking occasionally into wire mikes dangling from earpieces. Bern noticed that the painted plaster walls were peeling.

Turning into a barrel-vaulted hallway, they followed it to double wooden doors on the left, which swung open just as they approached. They entered a long room that looked as if it might have been a grand sala sala at one time. Here, too, men were busily working, breaking down electronic equipment and loading it into boxes that were then being carted away. French doors opened off the opposite long wall, revealing a terrace. at one time. Here, too, men were busily working, breaking down electronic equipment and loading it into boxes that were then being carted away. French doors opened off the opposite long wall, revealing a terrace.

He was quickly marched through the room and out onto the terrace, where a waiting bodyguard motioned to Bern, who followed him to a trellis-covered alcove. Three men were sitting in patio chairs in the gloamy light, and as Bern approached, one of them stood and walked out of the arbor, heading in the opposite direction.

"Judas." One of the remaining figures stood, came around the table, and extended his hand, his face now visible out of the arbor's shadow. Bern recognized Mazen Sabella from Jude's sketches. "Bienvenidas," Sabella said. He was unremarkable in either size or height, maybe thinner than Jude's drawing had led him to expect. He wore a dress shirt, sleeves rolled nearly to the elbow. He needed a shave.

Bern shook his hand, but his eyes immediately sought the other man, who was still sitting at the table.

"Judas," the other man said, and he stood also, but remained where he was. "It's good to see you again."

Though he didn't step out of the arbor, Ghazi Baida's face was visible in the reflected copper glow from the valley, and Bern looked into the face of Jude's portraits. He look into the face of a murderer, an a.s.sa.s.sin, a terrorist. He looked into the face of the man that the CIA very much wanted to kill.

"h.e.l.lo," Bern said. What the h.e.l.l else should he say? He reached over the table and they shook hands.

Baida was a nice-looking man. The light was poor, but it was good enough for Bern to see that Baida needed a shave, too, that his white dress shirt was badly wrinkled, the cuffs rolled back from his forearms with rough indifference, the front unb.u.t.toned nearly to midchest.

After hours of concentrating on Jude's portraits and studies of this man, the real thing was fascinating. Even in the coppery light, he could see how fine a job Jude had done. Still, the flesh-and-blood face of Ghazi Baida was more complicated, his features more interesting, than Jude had been able to portray. He was at once more rugged and more refined than Bern had expected.

"Please sit down with us," Baida said. There was a loud crash as something fell somewhere in the echoing rooms of the house. "We'll be gone from here shortly," Baida said, referring to the noise. "We have to make the most of our time."

Baida paused, but Bern had nothing to say. Jude would have had something to say, he knew, never having been at a loss for words. Baida considered him a moment from across the table. Games. He sat in his chair with a relaxed authority, unperturbed.

"I've been trying to make contact with you," Baida said. "But that hasn't been easy to do . . . at least not if we wanted to avoid being discovered. In the panic that followed the shooting, we lost you. But we also had someone watching Susana. When she ran out of your apartment on Avenida Mexico, we guessed that if we stayed with her, we would have a good chance of finding you."

Bern heard car doors slamming down in the courtyard, engines starting, tires rolling over gravel, and then engines accelerating as the vehicles. .h.i.t the paved drive and started down the hill. The place was emptying rapidly, but Baida didn't seem to be in a hurry. He was completely unruffled and sat in his chair as if he had the entire night to talk, as if he knew just the moment when he needed to move to avoid whatever misfortune it was that all the others were hurrying away from.

Chapter 30.

In the silence, Bern rehea.r.s.ed his role as Jude. He had just come out of hiding. He had met with his intelligence man, who had discovered that he was still alive, and then someone had shot him. A couple of kids. What would Jude have been thinking? What would Mingo's death have told him? What would Jude have seen in all of this? Would he have been thinking of anything except what he could do to save his skin?

Baida sat slumped in his chair, his right elbow on the arm of the chair while his face rested in the fingers of his hand, two fingers folded across the right side of his mouth, two fingers vertically bracing his temple. Bern noticed a black military-style watch on his left wrist. As he stared at Bern, watching him closely-did he sense something, suspect that this wasn't Jude sitting in front of him?-Baida gave off a sense of animal masculinity, which was probably one of the first things anyone would notice about him.

"Tell me," Baida said finally, straightening up in his chair, "why you were at that place in Tepito the night of the shooting."

"Khalil called me and told me to meet him there. Didn't say why. I nearly stumbled right into it."

"And how did you manage to avoid that?"

"Dumb luck."

"Did you see what happened?"

"No."

"You heard the shooting."

"Yeah, and I ran. Ran like h.e.l.l."

"Do you know what happened?"

"I heard . . . on the street, like everybody else."

Baida nodded pensively. "And why have you been hiding all this time?"

"I didn't have anything to do with what happened in Tepito that night. I just wanted to make d.a.m.n sure that the word on the street had that straight before I showed my face again."

There were raised voices in the courtyard below, and then someone was running somewhere on the second floor. Baida seemed oblivious of this, and his eyes remained fixed, boring into Bern. He appeared to have something on his mind, maybe a decision to make, and Bern could only a.s.sume it had something to do with Jude. He tried to follow the logic of it, follow it the way he thought that Jude would have, play it the way he thought Jude would have played it.

"What was Domingo Huerta doing for you?" The question came from Sabella, who had been sitting quietly, watching Bern. He had sipped once from a white demita.s.se cup. Coffee, Bern guessed.

"You know what he does," Bern said. "I went over that with you when we talked in Ciudad del Este."

"And you weren't in communication with him . . . while you were waiting waiting during these past weeks?" during these past weeks?"

"I think you know d.a.m.n well we haven't been in touch." Bern focused on Sabella. "You've been all over him, I'd guess."

"Who else does he work for?"

"He doesn't tell me."

"He works only for you."

"No. I can't afford that."

"Who else, then?"

Bern glanced at Baida, who remained quiet, watching him, then back to Sabella.

"What the h.e.l.l's going on here? What's the matter?"

"After you disappeared," Sabella said, "Domingo began looking around in places where he shouldn't have been looking."

"Shouldn't have been?"

"What was he talking about tonight when he said that he had done what you had said for him to do? That he had found a woman who 'has the thing you want'?"

Bern felt a warm flush envelope him. This was insanely beyond him. He wouldn't be able to sustain this.

"I have a client looking for a certain kind of pre-Columbian figurine. I had heard of a woman here who might have such a thing. That's what I thought he was referring to."

"What is the woman's name?"

"No, I can't do that. I don't mention your name to other people. I don't mention her name to other people. That's how I do it. That's the way I stay in business. People know they can trust that."

"Where does she live?"

Bern shook his head. "No."

Sabella didn't respond. Both men sat in the coppery half-light and looked at him. They didn't glance at each other or communicate in any way that Bern could detect, and yet it seemed to him that they were both weighing his response on the same scale, using the same criteria for finding him worthy . . . or not.

The slip of paper in his pocket burned into his groin like an ember.

"Are you sure that's what he was referring to?" Baida asked.

"I said I thought that's what he was referring to. I didn't have any reason to believe otherwise. He didn't live long enough for me to be sure."

They said nothing, watching him in silence. Bern was scared. Suddenly, what little bravery he had been able to screw together was slipping away. This is a smuggling deal, he reminded himself. A smuggling deal. Just a smuggling deal. Terrorism is not on the table.

"Look," he said. "If this isn't what you want anymore, then fine. I'm not exactly comfortable being on the edge of your f.u.c.ked-up drug deals, either. Just remember, your people came to me. It wasn't the other way around. I'm not pushing my way into your business here. I can walk away. Easy."

Bern could hear more running.

He waited for Baida's reaction, but the other man sat there like a sphinx, a handsome sphinx, a sphinx with blood on its breath, with dead souls hanging around its neck like a necklace strung with withered lives. Bern thought of the paragraphs Jude had written about him, a kind of free verse about a man who was entirely likable, a man unworthy of his own personality.

"How long has it been since you were in Austin?" Baida asked.

Bern was staggered by the question. Jesus Christ. He suddenly felt nauseated. He knew. Baida knew. Bern was not going to walk out of here alive. And then just as suddenly, he remembered: Austin was Jude's home, too, and Baida's city of fondest memories, his halcyon university days, before the world turned cruel for him.

Jude had written that Baida loved to reminisce about it, about little things he remembered, a lane, a hilltop view (was it still the same?), a bar (was it still there?), a coffee shop, a bookstore. Details. The minutiae of memory, the small things that one missed and longed for, which grew larger and larger as time pushed them further and further away.

"Three months, maybe," Bern said.

"April," Baida said, his voice actually softening. "That's a good time." Another pause, then he said, "I had a friend whose family owned a home on the lake. Lake Austin."

Bern felt faint. What was this? Did he know after all, then? Was Baida toying with him?

"I used to go to this guy's house all the time. Beautiful place. Idyllic, really. We swam off the dock and watched the people skiing up and down the lake. Those wooded cliffs. They're still there, aren't they?"

"Still there."

"This guy's name was-what was it-Holbrooke. You know any Holbrookes?"

"No."

Baida nodded, as if understanding that it would have been a fluke. He kept his eyes on Bern, but Bern had the feeling that Baida was reading his mind, that every time he elicited a response from Bern, the red needle on his bulls.h.i.t detector registered a "This is not Jude" response.

Alice popped into Bern's mind. She would be laughing her head off at his counterfeit performance. She would be making fun of him, mocking him in her Wonderland language and striking eye-rolling poses that made no bones about what she thought of his dismal imitation of a man he'd never met.

Baida fell silent. Maybe he was thinking of April in Austin, or the lake, or the wooded cliffs, or the Holbrookes. He thought about it so long that Bern began to wonder what the h.e.l.l was going on.

"We want you to get a package to Houston for us."

This time, it was Sabella who spoke. Baida continued looking at Bern. Was that it, then? Had he pa.s.sed some kind of test? Had Baida mysteriously communicated to Sabella his decision that Bern was clean enough to work with them after all? What the h.e.l.l was going on here?

Bern knew only one thing: His job was to reestablish contact with Baida, using Jude's bogus smuggling route as a lure. This was the first sign in this whole d.a.m.n nightmare that maybe he was going to have the chance to actually do that. He just wanted to get it over with. He just wanted the h.e.l.l out of this situation.

"How big's the package?" Bern asked.

"About a cubic meter," Sabella said. "Maybe twenty kilos."