The Face of the Assassin Part 21

Mondragon regarded her a moment. Had she actually been around Ghazi Baida with his new face and not recognized something familiar about him? Had she really been duped? Or was she covering for him? Would she not recognize Mondragon, then? She would have no reason to. After all, Baida thought Mondragon was dead, so if she was indeed collaborating with him, she would have no reason to think of Mondragon. The old days were just that, old and gone, never to return. Ever.

"I need to talk to this Spota," Mondragon said. "How can I get in touch with him?"

"I don't know." She paused. "He dates my sister when he is in the city. That's all I know." Another pause. "Really, I don't know," she protested.

"What is your sister's address?"

Estele was looking at him, eyes wide. She swallowed. Mondragon could see her thinking, running through her options. If Estele was completely innocent, she would give this Spota over immediately if she could. If not, she would try to play this out in some elaborate way.

"I need to see Spota as soon as possible," Mondragon said.

For once, the haughty Estele de Leon Pheres was bewildered, incapable of uttering a sentence.

"Ah, the Lebanese stick together, don't they, Estele?"

Suddenly, even through her fear, her eyes narrowed.

"Yes," Mondragon said. "I know all about the Lebanese. Are you going to help me?"

She gaped at him, unable to decide on her best course of action.

"I'm going to have my men come in here, take off your clothes, and take turns with you," he said. "And then I'll have them bring Carleta in here and take turns with her. And then I'll have your little sister, Juana, brought in here. Ah! Yes, of course," he said, noting her surprised reaction, "I know about her, too. And so many other things. Anyway, sooner or later one of you is going to tell me how I can find Senor . . . Spota."

He stood up and started toward the door, skirting the edge of the light as she followed him with her eyes. Suddenly, she stood, too.

"Wait." She was kneading her hands. "What-how do I know you will protect us?"

"Protect you?"

"You have to promise this can't be traced back to me."

He turned to her and took a step toward her. "I'm here to get information, Estele, not to offer protection, not to make promises. You have to give me what I want. Beyond that, I don't give a s.h.i.t what happens to you."

She stared at him, appalled at his crude response and at the stark hopelessness of her situation.

He walked out of the room, leaving her standing under the bleak light, alone.

Chapter 40.

Kevern didn't waste any time moving on the information Bern had given him. First, he introduced Bern to the other three people in his unit. The whole tenor of the operation had changed on a dime, and now Bern needed to start feeling as if he could depend on these people, that he was tied to them, that he was no longer out there working alone.

Then Kevern immediately called Mondragon and told him to stand down. "Just hold off doing anything until I get in touch with you again," Kevern said. "I'll explain everything later."

Kevern was pumped way past any operational high that he had ever experienced, except in a life-threatening situation. But he had his enthusiasm well under control. It wasn't hard to do. Things weren't rosy by any means. Bern's account of the events of the last twelve hours revealed the best and the worst thing that could have happened. A defection by someone of Ghazi Baida's stature would be the crowning achievement of a career. A huge, huge coup, one that would wash over a lot of past sins.

On the other hand, Susana's disappearance was a potential disaster. If she was killed, the blowback could create a s.h.i.t storm in any number of different directions. Baida's defection would have to be judged in light of the loss of a highly trained clandestine operative. Somebody would have to pay for a loss like that.

In Kevern's mind, however, Baida's defection, if Kevern could pull it off, would wash away the other disasters, if they didn't develop into anything monstrous. But if he couldn't make it work, this was the end of his life. So, in for the bet, in for the pot: He decided not to call Richard Gordon about any of this. He would play it out a little way first, see where it was going, see what his chances were for redemption.

A lot would depend on the continuing success of the long-shot role of Paul Bern. Kevern had pa.s.sed along to Gordon that Bern had successfully encountered Mazen Sabella and Ghazi Baida and was now waiting for a confirmation for a second meeting. Like Kevern, Gordon was stunned by Bern's b.a.l.l.sy drive. Mondragon's harebrained long shot had succeeded-so far.

But now Bern was going to have to keep it up, and it would be Kevern's responsibility to keep him focused. Right now, he could tell that Bern was distracted, and he knew why.

He grabbed a soft drink from a Styrofoam cooler sitting on the floor by his desk, pulled a chair over in front of Bern, and sat down. Bern was still sitting in the chair they had given him when he rushed into the room. He had just about emptied his water bottle after almost an hour's debriefing. Kevern knew that the stress of Bern's situation had to be weighing heavily on him.

Jack Petersen had gone back down to his post in the building's foyer, while Mattie and Lupe were busy with ch.o.r.es that Kevern had barked out to them earlier. Mattie was sitting at a makeshift table, poring over a computer screen, while Lupe was on the other side of the room, her back turned to them, talking into her cell phone, her voice a discreet murmur.

Kevern popped the top on the soft-drink can, tugged at the thighs of his pants, and took a sip, keeping his eyes on Bern. A soft groan that seemed to be squeezed out of him preceded his words.

"Look," he said trying to sound like he was on top of this thing, "we may not know who's got Susana, but we know she's okay, because whoever's got her wants something from us, and her continued good health is their ticket. There's not a d.a.m.n thing we can do about it until they contact us and tell us who they are and what it is they want. Then we can start working on a strategy."

Kevern saw something shift in Bern's face, an expression that reminded him of Jude when Jude thought he was about to get screwed, or slighted, or not be taken as seriously as he thought he should be. It was a look Kevern had always hated to see because it had meant that Jude was digging in. That he was circling his wagons around his team . . . his team of one. Jude had always thought that if he had to, he could fight-and win-every war by himself. When he hit that resolve, anything could happen. Kevern did not like seeing that look in the face of his twin brother.

"Go ahead," Kevern said, "spit it out."

"This will be over, sooner or later," Bern said. "Don't lie to me now, because I won't forget it. And I don't have anything to lose in this game."

"Fair enough," Kevern said. He understood. You didn't spend a few days and nights with a woman like Susana, in circ.u.mstances like these, especially if you were inexperienced in this stuff, especially if you were Jude Lerner's twin brother, and not start feeling something for her.

"But I'm not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with you," Kevern said. "This's the way it is. We've got to play this this hand. If we see an opening, we'll take it. All of us have worked with Susana before. We give a s.h.i.t. That's something you'd learn if you did this long enough. Okay?" hand. If we see an opening, we'll take it. All of us have worked with Susana before. We give a s.h.i.t. That's something you'd learn if you did this long enough. Okay?"

Bern nodded, skeptical, Kevern could tell, but that was expected. In a way, Kevern liked seeing that. Bern didn't seem to be intimidated by what he was about to do. This guy's b.a.l.l.s were the real thing, and Kevern still found it a little creepy looking at him and talking to him and knowing that he wasn't Jude. Jude'd had the biggest b.a.l.l.s-had been the most buffalo-of any guy Kevern had ever met. And here he was, sitting in front of him again, come back from the dead. Only it wasn't him, and this guy had come into this thing under the most bizarre circ.u.mstances Kevern himself had ever seen in his life, and still he was hanging in there like a pro. s.h.i.t, he admired that. He respected that it was in Bern's blood.

"Right now," Kevern said, "getting our hands on Ghazi Baida is what we're focused on. The thing with Susana is tied in with it somehow, and it'll resolve itself. We've got to play this out, and that's the hard truth of it."

Kevern upended the soda and drained it in three or four big gulps, then tossed the can into a paper sack on the floor near the window. He looked at his watch.

"We've got fifteen minutes till we can call the hospital on the schedule Sabella gave you. Any questions?"

"What if they tell me to go somewhere right now?" Bern asked.

"Do it. We're going to put a tag on you, and you're going to tell him about it. If this defection thing is for real, he's not going to be bothered by that. He'll know it's necessary, and he'll know why."

"Okay, tech's up and running," Lupe said, coming over to them and handing her phone to Bern. "Mattie's ready anytime."

Kevern checked his watch.

"We've got a few minutes," he said, examining Bern for signs of stress. He didn't see them, but he knew they were there. Operational b.u.t.terflies were a h.e.l.l of a thing. It was tough. But again, he admired the way Bern was dealing with it.

The room fell silent. Everybody had stopped. The guy they had been trying to kill for the past year was about to get on a cell phone with a dead man, and he was about to do something that would've seemed outrageous if anybody-anybody-had ever mentioned it as a possibility.

This was the goose that Lexington Kevern lived for. This was it. In this business, it always always came out of nowhere, came suddenly, came with head-spinning, disorienting surprise. And it was the sweetest feeling in the world, better than any number of things that got you high, that got you limp with bliss. Having an operation turn sweet on you was like no other accomplishment in the f.u.c.king world, and Kevern was going to relish this one more than any other sweet deal that he had ever experienced. Because the stake here was . . . everything. came out of nowhere, came suddenly, came with head-spinning, disorienting surprise. And it was the sweetest feeling in the world, better than any number of things that got you high, that got you limp with bliss. Having an operation turn sweet on you was like no other accomplishment in the f.u.c.king world, and Kevern was going to relish this one more than any other sweet deal that he had ever experienced. Because the stake here was . . . everything.

Without getting the nod, Bern started dialing. It caught Kevern by surprise, but it didn't matter. He was in the slipstream of an operation turned sweet.

When the phone was answered, he asked for the pharmacy. When the pharmacy answered, he asked for Flor. Silence. Prolonged silence. He looked at Kevern, who was listening on another phone, as was Mattie on yet a third phone. Kevern showed nothing, just sat there as if he were waiting for the information operator.

"Flor," she said in English.

"This is Luis," Bern said, expecting the woman to draw a blank and ask, "Luis who?"

Pause. "Oh, yes. Moment.i.to, por favor. Moment.i.to, por favor." Her voice was flat.

Silence. Then suddenly she was reciting a telephone number. Slowly. Deliberately. At the end, she paused, then repeated it in the same disinterested tone of voice.

"You have that?" she asked.

"Yes, I have it."

"Tomorrow morning, go to Colonia Santa Luisa," she said, again speaking very deliberately. "Go to Jardin Morena. It is a small park, and it is market day there tomorrow. There is a man there who sells old issues of comic books on the sidewalk on the north side of the park, in front of Farmacia Pedras. There is a telephone on the sidewalk by the pharmacy door. There will be a red dot by the number six on the keypad. At precisely ten o'clock, use that telephone to call the number I just gave you."

Bern was watching Mattie, who stood behind Kevern, writing furiously. She looked at Bern and nodded.

"Repeat that to me, please," Flor said.

Bern did.

"Do you want me to repeat anything?" Flor asked.

"No," Bern said. "I have it."

The line went dead.

Bern lay on one of the cots in a third room in Kevern's safe house on Plaza Rio de Janeiro. The lights were out, but as always in this city, the ambient illumination came in through the windows like an eerie twilight. He could see a couple of overnight bags on the floor, some clothes hanging here and there. He could smell perfume on the bedcovers beneath him. And looking toward the windows, he could see and hear the rising and falling language of the rain.

Sleep was out of the question, but he hoped he would slip in and out of consciousness. The others were still working in the adjacent rooms. He didn't know how they kept it up. He was exhausted, and scared. And he couldn't get Susana off his mind. He wanted to believe that Kevern was being honest with him, and he wanted to believe what he read in Kevern's body language-that it wasn't time to be alarmed yet. These things had a degree of predictability, a range of expectations. And these people were not totally without an understanding of what was happening to them.

He thought of Susana. He just wanted her to be safe, and to be with her again in a place as far away from this insanity as they could get.

He closed his eyes and listened to the rain.

Chapter 41.

When Bern finally roused himself the next morning, he felt stiff and hungover from a dearth of sleep. He looked at the window and saw that the morning was still overcast and rainy. He found everyone already back at their posts, getting ready for Bern's meeting with Baida. He poured a cup of coffee for himself from the pot on a hot plate in the corner of the room where they were working, then walked down the hall to the bathroom, where he washed his face, scrubbed his teeth with his index finger, and washed out his mouth. He did the best he could with his hair. He looked like h.e.l.l.

When he got back to the offices, Kevern motioned him over to where he was sitting on the edge of one of the folding tables, which were laden with computers, radio receivers, and other kinds of electronics whose usefulness was lost on Bern.

"Give me your belt," he said.

Bern handed it over and Kevern gave it to Lupe, who began gluing a tracer bug on the underside.

"It ain't sophisticated," Kevern said, "but it'll get the job done. Now listen. Sabella and Baida have set up this meeting the way they want it to go, to give themselves maximum protection. I'm guessing Sabella's going to jump with him."

Kevern sipped his coffee. His eyes were pinched from only a couple of hours' sleep, but Bern noticed that he was closely shaven. Military discipline. He was running on caffeine.

"The thing is," Kevern said, groaning softly as he paused, "as soon as these two guys jump ship, their lives won't be worth a nun's fart. They'll instantly become traitors, and their own men will kill them in a heartbeat. So you can bet they've gone to a lot of trouble to isolate this meeting from their guys. It's just Baida and Sabella. Which means they aren't going to have their usual protection. But they'll have something going, and they'll be as touchy as h.e.l.l. They could call it off in an instant. If that happens, don't sweat it. They'll reconnect."

Lupe Nervo came over to him, pushing b.u.t.tons on a cell phone.

"They might take this away from you immediately," she said, handing the phone to him, "but until they do, you can connect to Lex instantly by punching four, seven, star. Just slide your finger down the last three b.u.t.tons on the left side. Don't even have to look at it."

After a few more words of caution and instruction, Kevern stopped and studied Bern carefully.

"Now listen," he said, speaking more slowly and in a less operational tone, "when defectors decide to come over, they always have aces in their pockets, something juicy to sweeten their arrival. Sometimes these guys have time- critical information, some imminent action that they can tell us about that'll make them heroes.

"I'm guessing Baida's in this category. When Sabella came to you at the Palomari Hotel, he mentioned that he could spare us ten thousand lives. He was getting at something. And all that talk about the American heartland . . ." He nodded at Bern. "Okay? See where I'm going here?"

Kevern shifted his weight on the edge of the table, causing it to creak.

"As soon as you can," he went on, "you get to that. You ask him if he's bringing us time-critical information."

Bern walked out of the building on the corner of Plaza Rio de Janeiro. The rain had stopped, leaving wet sidewalks and fresh air, the usual smoggy shroud having been washed away by the night rains.

Bern half-believed that none of this was going to work. But he didn't say so. He just went along with everything as if he bought into it, just as if he believed. An atheist among the faithful, keeping his doubts to himself.

He walked up Calle Orizaba, and at Avenida Alvaro Obregon, he picked up the first taxi he saw and directed the driver to head south on Insurgentes. Colonia Santa Luisa was just off of Insurgentes, nearly to the artsy colonia colonia of San Angel. of San Angel.

Insurgentes itself was a busy thoroughfare. Though not a wide street, it was densely packed with buildings and pedestrians and b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper traffic. Progress was slow and halting, but Bern was oblivious. Block after block, he watched the traffic and the teeming sidewalks without seeing them, his mind's eye obliterating his physical vision.

He didn't give a d.a.m.n what Kevern said; Susana was in a h.e.l.l of a spot. Kevern's rea.s.surances meant nothing to him. In fact, he was furious that Kevern had even tried to downplay the serious risk in Susana's situation.

At the major intersections, newspaper vendors threaded their way through the lanes of stalled vehicles to sell the latest edition of Reforma Reforma or or El Universal El Universal or the left-leaning or the left-leaning La Jornada. La Jornada. Lottery vendors did the same, as did an occasional seller of bright plastic toys that dangled from sticks and fluttered in the wind. Lottery vendors did the same, as did an occasional seller of bright plastic toys that dangled from sticks and fluttered in the wind.

Suddenly, a little boy was at Bern's window, holding up a newspaper with screaming headlines, his urgent pleas growing faster as the traffic in front of them began to move. The boy rested the newspaper on the window frame so that the paper filled the whole s.p.a.ce, and he moved with the taxi as it started up.

The driver yelled at him to get away, and then suddenly something shot out from the newspaper, hit Bern in the side, and fell into the seat beside him. And then the boy disappeared as the taxi sped up with the traffic.

In the next few seconds, Bern's mind worked in jerky still frames: It was small and black. It was a bomb. Some kind of bomb. He was practically sitting on it. In his mind, the explosion lifted the taxi off the street in a ball of fire. He was grabbing at it. Throw it out.

And then it began to ring, and he slapped at it, and it rang again. He looked down at a cell phone. His heart stopped. Started. Stopped. Started. The cell phone ringing. Ringing. Stunned, he picked it up. He looked at it in his hand as it rang a fourth time. He opened it, lifted it to his ear, and said h.e.l.lo.

"Paul . . ." It was Susana. "Paul, listen, I'm okay. I'll be-"

Her voice broke off. He couldn't believe it. . . . What had happened? Silence, and then: "This is Vicente Mondragon. We are four cars behind you. Tell me what is happening."

Susana was with Mondragon?