The Face of the Assassin Part 29

"And he won," Sabella said.

Suddenly, Alice burst into a tantrum.

"No! No! Nononono! He's He's the who man! Just really . . . really the s.h.i.tty no man," she blurted at Bern, flinging a look at Sabella, her Asian features hardened into an indictment. " the who man! Just really . . . really the s.h.i.tty no man," she blurted at Bern, flinging a look at Sabella, her Asian features hardened into an indictment. "He's the who of the whole thing about him." the who of the whole thing about him."

Sabella flinched and locked his eyes on Alice, anger, alarm, and suspicion mingled in his expression.

Before Bern could speak, Susana intervened.

"Alice, Alice, listen to me . . . listen . . . the lights . . . the lights . . . don't worry about it . . . anytime. Just the lights. It's okay. Understand? Understand?"

Bern was caught off guard, and it seemed for a moment that Alice was, too. She looked at Susana, her eyebrows raised in puzzled fascination, and then she began to rock her head from side to side.

"You need to listen listen to me, Alice," Susana went on. "The lights . . . okay. Now! The lights now!" to me, Alice," Susana went on. "The lights . . . okay. Now! The lights now!"

"Okay," Sabella snapped. "That's enough of this s.h.i.t. You think you can do this? You think I'm an idiot, Judas? You don't have any idea what's happened to you."

Bern was dumbfounded. Sabella really thought he was Jude!

"Wait a second," Bern said, his head growing lighter, his disbelief at what was happening almost scrambling his thinking. "This is . . . insane. Look, I'm not Jude. I can prove it."

"No!" Sabella said, stretching out an arm as one of his guards handed him a small tape recorder. "Let me prove something to you. you."

He clicked a b.u.t.ton the recorder, and they listened to Mondragon's final moments in Carleta de Leon's apartment overlooking the plaza Jardin Morena.

There was a loud smashing noise as Quito and Susana burst into the room, sending Mondragon and Quito crashing into the dining room table and chairs.

"Guns on the table!" Bern yelled. Bern yelled.

"Don't do it!" Susana screamed as she swung her gun around to Quito, who was scrambling to his feet. Susana screamed as she swung her gun around to Quito, who was scrambling to his feet. "No! No!" "No! No!" But Quito brought up his gun anyway. But Quito brought up his gun anyway.

They heard the punt punt and smack of her silenced bullet blowing out the back of Quito's head. There was the sound of Bern rushing to Baida's side as he tried to stanch the hem-orrhaging wound in his neck. and smack of her silenced bullet blowing out the back of Quito's head. There was the sound of Bern rushing to Baida's side as he tried to stanch the hem-orrhaging wound in his neck.

Silence. Then: "Jude," "Jude," Susana snapped, Susana snapped, "has he talked?" "has he talked?"

"No!"

"Nothing? You don't know anything?"

"No!"

Another prolonged silence while Bern continued to stanch the bleeding in Baida's neck, and Susana had her gun on Mondragon.

"Oh! G.o.d. s.h.i.t! Good, good!" Bern said, momentarily deluded into thinking that Baida's bleeding was stopping. In fact, he was dying. Bern said, momentarily deluded into thinking that Baida's bleeding was stopping. In fact, he was dying.

Silence.

"Jude," Susana said again, trying to get his attention. Susana said again, trying to get his attention.

Sabella punched off the recorder.

Shocked, Bern and Susana looked at each other, realizing what her slip of the tongue had done to them.

Silence.

Alice, picking up on the building tension in the room, was growing increasingly fl.u.s.tered. Then suddenly her arm flew up and she pointed a finger at Sabella and began yelling.

"He's the who man! . . . The who man! . . . The who man! . . ." she chanted, her eyes flashing at Sabella. " the who man! . . . The who man! . . . The who man! . . ." she chanted, her eyes flashing at Sabella. "He's the who man! . . . The who-" the who man! . . . The who-"

Sabella's two bodyguards threw nervous glances at everyone, shifting their weight from foot to foot as if to be ready for anything, as if Alice's wailing could unleash some hidden threat.

"The lights!" Susana yelled at Alice. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, the lights lights!"

The last word hit Bern with a flash of understanding, and his thumb hit the bottom b.u.t.ton on the remote.

Instant darkness.

Alice screamed, a prolonged high-pitched shriek.

Everything was crowded into the short burst of the next few seconds.

Sabella yelled, "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"

But the bodyguards' hesitation was fatal.

From Susana's corner of the sofa, one, two, three shots blasted through the darkness, and one of the guards flew backward as the other guard lunged away, ripping off a wild burst from his weapon an instant before Susana's fourth and fifth shots blew into him, driv-ing him into a worktable and knocking over gla.s.s jars of Bern's old paintbrushes, everything crashing into the darkness.

"He's Ghazi!" Susana screamed. "He's Ghazi!"

Unconsciously, a stunned Bern was keeping track of the sounds of the ch.o.r.eography: one down, two down, the third man bolting across the paths of the other two.

Bern threw himself at Baida just as the Lebanese reached the gla.s.s wall, their momentum and combined weight exploding the gla.s.s and hurling them through the railing on the deck and over the side.

The two men embraced.

The fall lasted for days.

Bern's face was buried in Baida's sweaty shirt, and he could smell the other man's fear and his violence, and he could feel his taut muscles and energy and even the painfully slow boom . . . boom . . . boom of his heartbeat as it demanded life, even in the airy fall through the moonlight above the lake.

Chapter 59.

She lived in Tarrytown, one of the older genteel parts of Austin, its quiet streets canopied by trees as old as the neighborhood itself. Her yard and two-story brick home were shaded by an almost unbroken shelter of oaks. The only sunny spots were at either end of the half-circle drive, where two pair of magenta crepe myrtles formed brilliant arches to arrive and leave by.

Susana parked Bern's old black Triumph in front of the house, and together they walked slowly along the short sidewalk. Bern was still stiff and wanting to favor every wound, though he was determined to hide it for the next hour or so. Luckily, the scores of st.i.tches scattered all over his upper body, except the dozen crossing the bridge of his nose and sliding under his left eye, were all hidden by his long-sleeved shirt.

They went up a few steps to the front porch as blue jays and mockingbirds punctuated the rhythmic background sound of an old sprinkler in one corner of the yard. Bern had hardly made it up the last step when the front door opened and a woman who appeared to be in her late sixties came out to meet them. Her dark hair, generously streaked with silver, was pulled back in a proper chignon. Without hesitating, she approached Bern, smiling.

"Paul," she said gently, and embraced him. It didn't hurt; he didn't let it hurt. She held him close, her arms wrapped tightly around him, and he could feel her breathing, feel her wanting to absorb him, feel her reluctance to release him. But then she did, looking at him closely for just a moment. She noted the st.i.tches, but her eyes were seeing something else. Then she turned to Susana.

"Susana, I'm sorry, you'll have to forgive me." She embraced her, too, and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

She turned to Bern again, suddenly caught up once more by the presence of her son. For a few moments, she was lost in his face, and Bern knew and understood the emotions churning in her, sweeping away the logic of the moment. Then she caught herself.

"Oh, please," she said, reaching out and touching his arm, jogged from her fascination. "Come on, let's get in out of the heat."

She led them into the coolness of the house, an old and s.p.a.cious home with a living room, a staircase, a dining room, and a large kitchen, where she led them unpretentiously to a table that overlooked a back lawn, a brick-walled garden.

"Would you like some iced tea?"

"That would be great," Bern said, and while Susana helped Jude Lerner's mother, Bern stood at the windows and looked outside. There was a large birdbath, a sundial that would never tell the time in the deeply shaded yard, a patio with furniture. Jude had grown up here, in this yard, in this kitchen, with this gentle woman as his mother. The kitchen smelled of family and of memories.

For a while, they spoke in generalities. Bern told her a bit about his life, where he lived, what he did. She rambled a little, sometimes fl.u.s.tered, it seemed, by her situation, telling of Jude growing up, saying that she had not seen as much of him in his last years as she would have liked.

Bern was impatient, but he struggled not to show it. Still, he rather quickly steered the conversation around to how he had come to be in this situation, being careful to follow the parameters that Susana and Gordon had made clear to him. He told her what he knew of his past, the little that his aunt had revealed to him just before he went to Mexico City.

As he talked, Regina Lerner devoured him with her eyes; he could almost feel her gaze. It would've been disconcerting if he hadn't experienced something like this himself while living Jude's life.

After a while, Bern couldn't put off the question any longer.

"Mrs. Lerner," he said, "did you . . . do you have any idea who our biological parents were?"

She smiled, the same melancholy, understanding smile that his aunt had smiled when he visited her in Houston and asked the same question.

"Well, you should call me Regina," she said. "All right?" And then she hesitated a moment before she added, "Not for many years, I didn't know." She looked away and then down at her hands on the table. "Jude was just out of university," she said, lifting her eyes to Bern. "He knew he was adopted, but he never particularly showed any interest in his biological parents. I don't know why. So many people do. But he didn't. And he knew that we would've happily helped him find them if he had wanted. We'd always made that clear to him. But he never asked to pursue it."

She studied her hands again, smiled, and shook her head.

"And then one day-this is still so strange to me, even now-I answered the doorbell. A woman was standing there . . . and very abruptly she said that she was Jude's mother and that she would like to talk to me.

"It was a cold, drippy day, early December, and I had a fire going in the living room in there. She was chilled, and I made coffee. We sat in there and talked, a couple of hours, I guess it was. She never told me her name. I begged her . . . but she was resolute."

Regina sipped her iced tea, and it seemed to Bern that she wanted to get the words right. He glanced at Susana, who had her eyes fixed on the woman.

"She told me," Regina said, "that she had terminal cancer and that while she was still well enough to talk about it, she wanted me to understand Jude's beginnings. If I wanted to tell Jude about her and what she had to say, fine. If not, that was up to me. She just didn't want the truth of it all to die with her."

Regina sighed and began her story.

"She was from a small town in the South, wouldn't say exactly where. She said that when she was seventeen, she discovered that she was pregnant, and that the father was the son of a prominent judge in the county. The boy's family wanted her to have an abortion to prevent a scandal. But her parents-her father was a grocer-disagreed, saying they wanted the child and that they weren't ashamed of anything . . . except that the boy wasn't standing by their daughter.

"The judge then began to bring certain pressures to bear against the girl's family: Bank loans were suddenly called in; insurance policies were canceled for esoteric reasons. . . ." Regina shook her head. "A small town like that, uncommon deference to powerful men is not out of the ordinary. You can imagine. Anyway, the upshot of it was that the girl ran away, to spare her parents even more of the judge's wrath. Her parents were heartbroken, but she wouldn't reveal where she'd gone. The judge hired private detectives to try to find her."

Regina sighed again. "It was a sad and sorry story. During this time alone, running, the girl discovered that she was expecting twins.

"It seemed like too much for her to bear," Regina said, "working at menial jobs, unwed, pregnant, visiting charity Hospitals. When the boys were born-she wouldn't tell me where-she got on a bus and traveled to St. Jude's Charity Hospital in Memphis. She abandoned one boy there. Jude. That was the name they gave him there. We kept it. The other baby she took elsewhere. She didn't say where. I guess it was Atlanta, the old Lanier Memorial, as you said."

"Why in the world did she go to so much trouble to separate the babies?" Bern asked.

Regina nodded. "Well, the story of what was happening slipped out, as things like that have a way of doing, and the judge's family was shamed into changing their own story, putting a different spin on it. Now they claimed that the girl had kidnapped the children and that their son wanted desperately to have custody of what was rightfully his. The girl was obviously irresponsible. The judge hired private investigators to find her. When . . . your mother learned of this, she vowed that the judge would never have her children."

Regina looked at Bern. When she spoke, her voice was compa.s.sionate, softened by years of seeing the unfairness of life, the dangers of rushing to judgment. "You have to understand. She was young and not terribly sophisticated. She thought the judge could pull strings everywhere, not just in their small town. As she saw it, the only thing to do was to separate you. Twins would be so much easier for the judge's investigators to track down. So, different hospitals, different cities."

Bern was amazed, but he could imagine the rest of it.

"And St. Jude's' records were intact," he said. "That's how she was able to go back there and find you."

Regina nodded.

"And the old Lanier Memorial's records were fouled up somehow."

"That seems to be the way it happened." She nodded. "Yes."

"And then years later," Susana said, "when the CIA came to you for their standard interview when Jude applied, you told them about Jude having a twin."

"Yes, I did."

"Did you tell Jude about it, after our mother came here?" Bern asked.

"Yes, I did. I told him just what I've told you."

"Then he knew he had a twin."

She nodded.

"And how did he feel about that?"

"He was pretty sobered by it. As I said, the woman wouldn't leave her name, gave no information about herself. She said it wouldn't do any good. She said that I was Jude's mother and that's the way it ought to stay."

"And then she . . . just left?"

"Yes, but first, sitting there in the living room before the fire, she opened her purse and took out a small envelope. Then she took out a little pair of scissors. She cut a lock of her hair and put it in the envelope, then sealed and put it next to her cup on the coffee table. 'For DNA,' she said. 'And maybe a memory.'

"A taxi came for her. I remember standing on the front porch and watching the smoke coming from the taxi's exhaust in the cold gray air as it disappeared down the street. For some reason"-she shrugged, tilting her head to one side with a sympathetic smile-"that struck me as a particularly lonely sight."

Bern stared into his gla.s.s. He was glad to know that much at least. Regina Lerner's story was both satisfying and dissatisfying, and he decided that that's the way it would have been regardless of what the story had been. That's the way the beginning of his life was, a conundrum woven of whys whys and and if onlys, if onlys, a sort of logic worked out in the frightened mind of a lonely young girl who was trying to be wise for her parents, and for herself, and for the two little boys she didn't want to grow up in the old judge's cruel world. You couldn't blame her for being young. a sort of logic worked out in the frightened mind of a lonely young girl who was trying to be wise for her parents, and for herself, and for the two little boys she didn't want to grow up in the old judge's cruel world. You couldn't blame her for being young.

But he couldn't help but wonder if she really was terminally ill, or if that had just been a story to give them all a reason to put an end to it, to put it all to rest. Of course, if he was going to doubt that, he might as well go ahead and doubt all of it. How could he pick and choose his truths?

Regina reached out and placed her hand on his. She held it there a moment as they looked at each other, and then she removed it.

"Mr. Gordon," she said, "Richard Gordon, told me about some of what happened to Jude . . . and to you. And he told me that since Jude was nonofficial cover, or even something more . . . I don't know, more secret than that, we couldn't talk much about it."

"I guess not," Bern said.