The Face of the Assassin Part 4

After his last enigmatic statement, Kevern was silent. He leaned forward, resting one elbow on the arm of his chair. Gordon could hear him softly grunting under his breath, a big animal, forced to make nice in an environment that constrained and frustrated him. But he was calm. When Kevern was getting close to something he wanted, he became very placid. Achieving proximity to his prey was like putting him on ice. His metabolism dropped to the level of a scorpion's.

Finally, Kevern nodded. "Turn off that light," he said. "You need to see something else."

Again the screen came alive in a fluorescent haze of static. The images were indistinct at first, and this time the dateline indicated a period twenty-four hours after the first recording.

The opening images are murky and then a door is flung open to a lighted room-the same room as in the first recording, but this time the camera is being held by someone coming into the room. Khalil, the bald man, and the two Koreans wheel around in stunned surprise. The camera hurtles into the room behind the intruders, who are clad in black balaclavas. They begin firing their automatic weapons immediately, and then receive a few bursts of fire from two of Khalil's men, who rush into the room through another door. The intruders spray the room with more automatic-weapons fire, and everyone in the room is down in less than fifteen seconds. The black-hooded intruders then methodically go to each of the victims and finish them off with short bursts at point-blank range.

The bald man, still dying, is recorded up close, black-gloved hands lifting his head off the floor and holding his face straight so that he can be identified. The dead Khalil is also recorded up close for identification, as are each of the three Koreans and the two other men. Three times, a shirt is lifted and pants are pulled down to record tattoos or scars to corroborate the ID.

Someone gathers up piles of money on the table around which the men had been gathered, as well as a dozen kilo packages of drugs stacked beside the money. Then the handheld camera records the removal of the ceiling-high surveillance camera that had been secretly mounted in the corner by the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones, Agencia Federal de Investigaciones, and which had captured the previous recording. One last pan of the silenced room, and the images end. and which had captured the previous recording. One last pan of the silenced room, and the images end.

Kevern snicked off the CD player and the television.

Gordon sat in stunned silence. The entire cell they had spent nearly a year to penetrate was gone in less than five minutes.

He suspected he knew what he had just seen, but he stopped himself from saying so. He had to hear this out. He had to wait and take it as it came, and he had to read very closely between the lines. He wanted Kevern to explain every step of this, everything, especially the stuff Gordon thought he had already figured out.

He reached up and flipped on the lamp again. This time, he wanted to see everything Kevern's face had to offer, though it seldom offered much.

Kevern, grunting, sat up in his chair and leaned forward a little.

"Unlike his Muslim buds, Baida's never been squirmy about the ethics of drug trafficking to finance his operations." He nodded toward the television. "That's what Khalil was doing here. Hezbollah's accelerating its initiatives in South America. Those crumbling economies down there are like fertilizer to organized crime, and Hezbollah's sucking into that.

"My guess is that Baida's turning some of the people from those criminal organizations into surrogate soldiers. They've got the infrastructure he needs for transborder operations. They've got no national or religious loyalties. They're greedy, so their services go to the highest bidder, and with the drug money, Baida can bid high. They're ideal terrorist mercenaries."

Kevern paused. Gordon could hear him breathing, as if his lungs and throat were laboring under the compression of secrecy.

"This is our situation: Until Jude, we'd never been able to make any headway getting inside one of Baida's d.a.m.n cells because of his obsession with three things: compartmentalization, decentralized organization, and fractured communication." He paused for emphasis. "And those are exactly the things we're going to use to bury him."

Gordon wasn't sure where this was going, but he was getting an edgy feeling that they were headed toward one of Kevern's more creative enterprises. Kevern was famous in special operations for designing and executing impossible schemes that paid off beyond anyone's wildest expectations. He had engineered some legendary operations. At the same time, when one of these things went awry, someone higher up always had his head handed to him on a platter for having authorized the scheme. But somehow, Kevern always survived.

The reality was that managers and administrators could always be replaced. They came and went with inevitable regularity, like the changing seasons. But a creative operations officer who was also meticulous was a rare commodity, and every intelligence agency had to have a few men like Kevern, men who didn't mind playing the role of Satan in the complex moral drama of clandestine operations.

"We'd already doc.u.mented everyone in the cell," Kevern said. "Even the Korean guards they'd hired to provide them with protection and freedom of movement in Tepito."

Kevern tossed a glance at the television, as if reminding Gordon of what he'd just seen.

"Those were Mondragon's men who made the raid and shot the video. We got the whole f.u.c.kin' cell, roots and all."

Gordon couldn't get his breath. Good G.o.d. Even in this new terrorist-harried environment that allowed more lenient uses of lethal force, it was a dumbfounding act of preemption for an American officer to arrange the slaughter of cell members who weren't even remotely important enough to be on the Directorate of Operation's high-value target list, along with a roomful of men who were nothing more than hired local gang members. And all of this done without any directive from the DO. It was a totally independent act.

Kevern must have seen the look on Gordon's face.

"Just a second, Gordy. Listen to me here."

Kevern was the only person on earth who called him Gordy. It was a shrewd mixture of good ol' boy camaraderie and subtle derision, the difference at any given moment depending on Kevern's nuanced manner.

"Now listen, okay?" Kevern repeated. "By killing these a.s.sholes and taking the money and the drugs, we made it look like one of Baida's drug deals had gone sour. That's what Baida heard from the security guy he sent up to Mexico City to find out why he wasn't hearing anything from Khalil's cell.

"Postmortem: Baida writes that cell off to the cost of doing business. As far as he's concerned, it's a total wash. And, because there's no communication between Baida's cells, each one locked down, totally independent except for communication to and from Baida himself, Baida never learned that Jude was a spy. Khalil sure as h.e.l.l didn't report it to him. He was trying to cover it up. So as far as Baida's concerned, Jude's still clean.

"But Baida's worried: Where's Jude? He hasn't heard anything from Jude. Not a d.a.m.n thing. Baida made four calls to Jude's dedicated cell number in the five or six days following the Tepito ma.s.sacre. He wants him. He wants Jude's underground route north. The story on the street is mixed. Some say Jude was killed in the raid. Some say-a rumor we started ourselves-no, he's laying low until he figures out what the h.e.l.l happened that night. Baida's investigator takes this mixed report back to him in the Triple Border."

Kevern stopped and looked at Gordon like a challenging professor looks at his brightest student, waiting for him to see the answer ahead of the rest of the cla.s.s.

"I don't get it, Lex."

Kevern smiled. "That's the brilliant thing about this, Gordy. Neither will Baida."

Kevern got to his feet and went to the battered suitcase lying on the bed. He lifted a pile of clothes and pulled out a folder, then went back and tossed it into Gordon's lap.

Gordon saw the red border on the folder and the solid red pyramid next to the name tab. It was the coding emblem for a new category of CIA operations officer, one that was closely held by the CIA's security system. Jude Lerner was one of the few officers whose 201 file bore the red pyramid and who also had a separate red-stripe file with a "Sequestered" limited-access cla.s.sification.

But Gordon still didn't see what was coming, and Kevern could see it on his face.

"You know what's in his file, don't you?" Kevern asked.

"I know my people, Lex."

Kevern returned to his chair and fell into it with a grunt. He watched Gordon as he opened the folder and numbly began paging through it. It didn't take him long. Kevern had red-flagged the relevant doc.u.ment and had paper-clipped a sheet of handwritten notes to it. Gordon didn't even have to read the notes.

He looked up at Kevern, who wore a deadpan expression.

"You're out of your skull," Gordon said.

"Nice choice of words," Kevern grunted.

"What the f.u.c.k have you done?" Gordon asked.

"I want two things from you," Kevern said. "I want you to hold with the story that Baida's cell went down in a drug hit." His eyes were leveled on Gordon. "And I want you to get me clearance for the Bern operation. I'm already way down the road on this one, and we're just about ready to jump. I want you to make it okay."

Chapter 9.

By seven o'clock the next morning, Bern was sweating heavily. Wearing only shorts and tennis shoes, he climbed over the rocks on the sh.o.r.eline below the house, lugging heavy stones into a growing pile where he was preparing the foundation for a concrete quay at the water's edge. He had been toiling on the project every morning for two months, getting up at dawn to work for a couple of hours before showering and having breakfast.

By eight o'clock, he was at his drawing board, laying down the first contour lines of a sketch of what Becca Haber hoped would prove to be a picture of her husband's face. A little after ten o'clock, Alice and her mother arrived.

"Hey, Paul," Dana said from the head of the stairs in the studio as the two of them came in.

"Morning!" Alice said brightly, leaving her mother and taking the stairs two at a time as she breezed past Bern on her way to the gla.s.s wall overlooking the lake. She stepped outside and leaned her elbows on the railing of the deck to watch a couple of sailboats just emerging from around the point as they left the marina.

Bern met Dana at the bottom of the steps and kissed her on the cheek.

"Wow, you smell good," he said.

"New stuff." She smiled.

"It gets my thumbs up," he said. "Cup of coffee?"

"No thanks. I just wanted to say h.e.l.lo. The last couple of times I've dropped Alice off, I've just waved from the car. We haven't talked all week. You doing okay?"

"Sure, fine. Listen, yesterday when you picked up Alice, did she seem a little out of sorts?"

"Yeah, I noticed that. But gosh, Paul, you know, I've gotten so that I take most of the surprises from her in my stride. The abnormal has become normal around our house." She smiled ruefully, looking at Alice outside on the deck. Then she shifted her attention back to Bern. "Why, something happen?"

He told her about Alice's exasperation with Becca Haber, and they both laughed about it.

Dana Lau was a handsome woman, the only Chinese news anchor in the South when she met Philip in Atlanta. Bern and Tess got to know her while she and Philip were still dating, and it was the beginning of a friendship that never looked back. When Alice came, it was like having their own daughter, and it even seemed to bring them all closer together.

As Alice reached middle school, she and her friends began having slumber parties at Bern's house. Tess would take them to movies, grill burgers in the evenings on the terrace, and cook popcorn for their all-night gigglefests. They swam and played around on the little sailboat that Bern bought for them and kept in the cove. Tess adored the girls and always got a kick out of watching them stumbling through adolescence. And they all loved Aunt Tess.

After a few more minutes of visiting, Dana called bye to Alice and left, and Bern walked back to his drawing board, where Alice had already pulled up her stool and was looking at the two views of the face that had emerged from the paper in the past two hours. She was intent.

"It's a single, very purple mix," Alice said with some concern in her voice. She looked at Bern, frowning. "Why walk under a seen sky?"

"What's the matter?" he asked. He was standing in front of the drawing, while Alice sat on the stool beside him. She smelled of morning freshness and a douse of perfume.

"You're taking a lot more than a pencil would make," she said slowly, and maybe with a tinge of agitation.

Bern looked at her. She had laid her sketch pad on a nearby table edge and had put her hands between her legs on the seat of the stool, her arms locked straight as she leaned toward the sketch. She seemed to be trying to see something she couldn't quite make out, the way she had studied the drawing with the contradictory facial expressions that he had made for her the previous day. Then he saw her look at the drawing in a couple of the mirrors, as she had learned to do from him, and he saw a distinctive change in her eyes and brow.

"Something wrong with it?" he asked again. Unlike her reaction to the picture yesterday, when her puzzlement at what she saw had resulted in a calming fascination, the sketch on the drawing board had the opposite effect.

She hesitated, c.o.c.king her head another way. "In every certain way," she said carefully, "it would be crazy if you put a face on it."

The drawing was finished, although it lacked detail. It was a mistake to overrender a drawing at this point of the reconstruction process. Some things were better worked out on the actual skull. But the proportional arrangement of the different features was in place, which, for identification purposes, was the key thing. Though some individual features may be rendered entirely wrong, the face will still be recognizable if the relationship between the features, and the proportions of some of them, is accurate. It is the correct relationship of the aggregate elements of a face that is the essential ingredient in the process of recognition.

As Bern watched Alice, she slowly shrugged one shoulder defensively and unconsciously turned her head away slightly, though she was reluctant to stop looking.

"It's a black song with eyes behind," she said. "Not even the music, not even if you cry." She began shaking her head no, a little at first and then a lot, and finally she pulled her gaze away from the drawing and looked hard at Bern, her expression one of deep-seated disappointment.

"I'm not want from this. Ever. No."

She solemnly got down off the stool, picked up her sketchbook, and headed for the sofa. Bern was completely surprised at her reaction, and puzzled.

"Okay," he said, watching her as she sat on the sofa and opened her sketch pad. "You want to watch me do the clay work, then?"

She liked the clay modeling even more than the drawing because he didn't do it as often, and she hadn't seen as much of it. She knew he was already working on the skull, because she had seen it set up on the next bench, the eyeb.a.l.l.s and first strips of clay already in place around the tissue-depth markers. But she wasn't going to have anything to do with it. She didn't even respond. She had put her bare feet on the edge of the coffee table and was drawing in her sketchbook, which was resting against her slanted thighs.

Even more puzzled now, Bern sat on the stool to look at the drawings from her vantage point. He studied the face, trying to see it afresh. He was comfortable with the accuracy of the proportions. What the h.e.l.l had she seen here that had been so disturbing? After a few minutes, he gave up and set to work on the skull.

At noon, he stopped, and they drove to the Far Point Grill in the old Triumph, Alice looking like a carefree kid in her sungla.s.ses and with her Cote d'Azur smile. They did this every couple of weeks when Dana volunteered at the battered-women's shelter at Seton Hospital, as she was doing today. Alice liked watching the sailboats come and leave the marina, and the fact that she had almost been killed in a boating accident never seemed to bother her.

Katie had known Alice before the accident, too, and out of sheer compa.s.sion had quickly learned the give-and-take of Alice's nonsensical conversation. It was easier for some people than for others. There were those who still found it disturbing to have this attractive girl speaking to them in an Alice in Wonderland syntax. It required a little creativity and willingness to laugh at yourself.

They were back at the studio in a little over an hour. Alice deliberately avoided the workbench where he had been reconstructing the face on Haber's skull, returning to the sofa instead. Bern put on a Bach CD because Alice seemed in a Yo-Yo Ma mood, and within twenty minutes, he saw her put her sketch pad on the mesquite-slab table and curl up at one end of the sofa. She was soon asleep.

He had trouble with the sculpture almost as soon as the contours of the face began to emerge from the clay applications. From the very beginning, he found himself making a mistake that was common to beginning forensic sculptors-that is, projecting his own features onto the clay model. He went back to his measurements again and again to double-check tissue measurements, bone projections, and s.p.a.cing, figures that he had determined only hours before or already knew by heart.

It was particularly frustrating because he was rebuilding and reshaping on a skull that was in perfect condition. The guesswork was as minimal as it was ever going to get. Which left his judgment to consider. He wasn't arrogant, but he did have a lot of confidence in his ability to read a skull, and in his artistic skills.

But something was wrong. This thing didn't feel right at all. Each adjustment he made simply resulted in a variation on a theme. Nothing substantive actually changed in the reconstructed face, because the substantive indicators remained the same no matter how many times he measured the skull or checked the tissue charts. He was just shoving around clay.

When Alice woke an hour later, she wanted to go swimming. She went to the lower bedroom, which opened onto the terrace, and changed into her swimsuit. When she came upstairs again, Bern quit working and sat on the deck outside the studio with a gla.s.s of iced tea and watched her swim back and forth in the cove below. Once in a while, he'd glance into the room and look at the head he had sculpted sitting on the workbench. The thing was beginning to get on his nerves. He had the vague feeling that there was something about it that was familiar somehow.

Alice messed around in the water, swimming, floating on a rubber raft, letting the breeze move her around in the sunny water. When she finally climbed out of the lake about an hour later, she sat on the deck with him and ate an ice-cream bar. She was just finishing it when Dana called to say that she was leaving the shelter early and would be there in half an hour.

After Alice had dressed and dried her hair, Bern thought he would try to get her to look at the reconstructed face again, now that it was finished. He tried to coax her over to the workbench, but she wouldn't go, wouldn't even look that way. He even tried humoring her, playfully putting his hands on her shoulders and guiding her toward the bench. But she wouldn't be humored, either, and she pulled away from him, throwing him a painful look, mumbling something he couldn't hear. She returned to the sofa, where she remained absorbed in a kind of distant sadness until her mother arrived.

After they had gone, Bern poured a gin and tonic, added a big chunk of lime, and went back to the reconstructed face. He sat down at the workbench and studied what he had done. Should he photograph the head now, and then go back and put a smile on the face? Since the teeth are the only part of a person's skull that is seen by others while the person is living, sometimes showing them can be crucial to identification.

He decided against it, but he couldn't resist doing a little more detailing, articulating the individual hairs in the eyebrows, and using the tips of the bristles of a toothbrush to lightly texture the area of the face where a beard would grow. By the time the gin was gone, he felt like he had taken it about as far as he should.

It was a little after 8:00 P.M. P.M. when he finally ate dinner on the terrace outside the dining room, a light meal of warmed-up quiche and a fresh green salad. The summer days were long and it was still more than an hour before dark, though the shadows from the house and studio now stretched far out into the water and the light on the hills across the lake was taking on the amber tones of the dying sun. when he finally ate dinner on the terrace outside the dining room, a light meal of warmed-up quiche and a fresh green salad. The summer days were long and it was still more than an hour before dark, though the shadows from the house and studio now stretched far out into the water and the light on the hills across the lake was taking on the amber tones of the dying sun.

He had had a couple more gin and tonics since the first one, and now he made another as he finished putting the dishes in the dishwasher. He was feeling the drinks as he crossed from the terrace to the deck outside the studio. On the lake, the last of the sailboats were heading for the marina, which was just out of sight around the bluffs to the south, and the lake was growing still and gla.s.sy in the cove where Alice had been swimming.

As he pushed on the panel in the gla.s.s wall and stepped into the studio, the light of the reflected sunset was flooding everything inside in a honey haze. He was no more than a few steps into the room when he stopped and saw his own reflection in two of the three mirrors around the workbench.

It was odd that his image was perfectly framed in that one brief moment. Odder still was that he had caught his own reflection in a frozen moment, as in a snapshot. Profile. Frontal. His features softened in the muted honey light. It was a weird moment: The world stopped; his reflection gave no sense of movement or of life. It was as if he were looking at a wax image of himself.

Then with a sudden dizziness that he did not attribute to the gin, he realized that he was looking at the reconstructed sculpture that he had finished only hours before.

In an instant, he understood what Alice had seen in the drawing that disturbed her, why she had furiously refused to look at the sculpted head. With very careful calculation and with all of his experience and talent brought to bear on the task, he had meticulously reconstructed the skull that Becca Haber had brought him, only to discover that when the skull belonged to a living person, that person had lived with his face.

The gla.s.s slipped out of his hand.

Chapter 10.

The gla.s.s. .h.i.t the concrete floor with a sharp smack-and-shatter. Bern didn't even notice. Shards of gla.s.s crunched under his shoes as he moved past the coffee table toward the reconstructed skull as if mesmerized, his eyes fixed on the face he had made but hadn't seen. At least he hadn't seen the face within the face. He had been intimate with its technical construction but not with its spirit. It was Alice who had seen the spirit of the thing.

Focused on the sculpture, to the exclusion of all other sensory awareness, Bern went to the workbench and turned on the lights. He sat down on a stool in front of the face and looked at it, his eyes moving over the details of its features as if they were the fingers of a sightless man. Good G.o.d. It was as if he had had some kind of myopia when he was building the face, some kind of break in visual-cognitive synapse, much like Alice's disconnect from words that she had heard all of her life but could no longer comprehend.

But now, suddenly, he had been startled from a daze. He remembered that from the very beginning he had fought the tendency to reproduce his own features on the skull. What the h.e.l.l was this? What was going on here?

He moved the stool over beside the face. After readjusting two of the mirrors, he sat down beside the reconstruction and put his own face inches away from it, side by side. He looked in the mirrors.