The Face of the Assassin Part 9

As soon as he got back to the house, he parked the TR3 in the garage and went up and checked his messages in the kitchen. He took a flashlight out of the drawer under the telephone and went down the steps to the guest bedroom that opened out onto the terrace. He stood in the middle of the room and looked at the wall opposite the French doors. The garage was on the other side of the wall. That was the likeliest spot. Near the ceiling.

He dragged a chair over to the wall and stood on it. Starting at the left corner of the room, near the ceiling, he shined the flashlight flat against the wall and carefully followed every inch. And then there it was. A little smooth spot about the size of his thumbnail. Color was the same, but the texture was too smooth. Drywall texturing was hard to duplicate in a patch.

With his arms, he measured the distance from the intersecting wall to his left, and then he went upstairs and then down again to the garage. He climbed up on the workbench that was built against the bedroom wall and measured from the front of the garage. And there it was. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds hadn't even bothered to patch the hole in the garage. A hole the size of the diameter of his thumb, and next to it a shelf with cans of paint pushed to one side, where they had set something.

He looked out the garage door to the rock wall and the lake beyond. It wouldn't have been that hard at all. Easy, in fact. s.h.i.t.

Back in the kitchen, he opened a bottle of Shiner beer and made a ham sandwich. He went outside to the ter- race and sat at the table under the arbor while he ate. He gazed at the lake sparkling in the summer light and thought about what he was going to have to do.

After he finished, he put the dishes into the dishwasher and walked over to the studio. As he stepped inside and breathed in the familiar odors, his eyes fell on the partially dismantled skull of his brother.

His brother.

Would this ever seem real to him? Monozygotic. Who in the h.e.l.l had their mother been? What in G.o.d's name had happened to her that scattered them in those critical days of their infancy?

He walked over to the workbench. The weird suspicion that had gripped him last time he saw this skull-that he had some mysterious connection to it-had now been replaced with a scientific certainty. Now there a total reorientation regarding himself and this incredible relic, and he could hardly bring himself to touch it.

But more than that, he didn't want it to wear his by-the-numbers reconstruction when he knew that it should have his own face. And then an astounding thought hit him: If fate had been otherwise, if he had had the opportunity six weeks ago to reach out and touch this same human bone, he would have touched the living face of his identical twin.

It was approaching dusk by the time Bern finished thoroughly cleaning off the clay face and reattaching the jaw to the skull. Now he retrieved an old ebony box that he had bought in Paris when he was a student studying anatomy. The box smelled richly of oil paints and seemed an appropriate resting place for Jude's skull.

He dragged some old green velvet sc.r.a.ps out of a storage cabinet and cut a piece to fit in the bottom of the box. Then he set the skull inside and loosely wadded more velvet around it for protection. He put the box on a bookshelf among his art books.

He deliberately had avoided drinking while he was doing all of this, because he was thinking about what he was going to do, and he wanted to be lucid. But now he poured a gin and tonic from the cabinet in the studio, tossed in some ice and a fat wedge of lime, and took his cell phone to the sofa. He turned out all the lights so he could watch the clean arrival of night and dialed the sterile number Vicente Mondragon had given him.

The phone rang several times, and Bern tried to imagine why it wasn't answered right away. What did a man like Mondragon do at dusk, without a face?

"h.e.l.lo, Paul," Mondragon said.

"Okay," Bern said, "I'll do it."

"Good," Mondragon said quickly, although without seeming eager. "Then you can leave immediately?"

"No. I've got to make arrangements for someone to look after the house. Maybe by tomorrow afternoon. I'll try to book a flight."

"Not necessary. I'll fly you down. It's important that you arrive at Jude's place at night. We don't want anyone to see you for several days, until you've had some time to be briefed."

"How does that happen?"

"We have someone who knew Jude very well. That person will have everything you will need to be briefed. Be ready by seven o'clock in the evening. Someone will pick you up and take you to a charter plane. It's a two-hour flight. In Mexico City, someone will meet you and take you to Jude's place in Condesa."

"I hope to h.e.l.l this is something I can handle."

"We are well aware that you are not a professional, Paul. We'll do everything we can to make this work for you. Everyone is working toward the same goal."

"You want this guy to think Jude's still alive," Bern said. "You've got to know that this kind of thing can't be taken too far."

"Yes, we do know that. But we are going to take it as far as we can."

And without another word, Mondragon ended the call.

Chapter 18.

Mexico City The Dessault Falcon settled down through the clouds and floated into the light field of Mexico City's dusk. From this distance, the ancient city's lights were a dull coppery glow, a hue that added to the mystery of the six-hundred-year-old metropolis.

Bern sat forward in the cabin, ignored by two men who had entered at the last moment, walked past him without acknowledging him, and sat together at the back of the small aircraft. As the Falcon banked and descended toward Toluca, forty-two miles west of Mexico City-private and charter jets were not allowed at Benito Juarez International-the grid of Mexico City's avenues and boulevards emerged out of the light shimmer as the city became three-dimensional.

The Falcon whispered onto the tarmac at Toluca and came to rest at the dark end of a runway far from the terminals. Bern glanced back at the two men, who were now silent and staring straight at him without expression. He left the aircraft and descended the steps to a waiting Mercedes, where a door was being held open for him by a young Mexican man with a snappy suit and a ready smile.

"Mr. Bern?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Welcome to Mexico."

The young man sat on the pa.s.senger side as the driver maneuvered into the traffic, heading to Mexico City. There was no conversation during the hour's drive, but occasionally the young man spoke softly into a cell phone when it blinked at him, or when he placed a call by punching a single number.

Once they were in Mexico City, Bern gazed out his window at the famous city of contrasts. The summer-evening rains had left the streets washed and glistening, but the grime remained in the shadows, and this was a city of shadows. Beauty was a queen here, but a dying queen. This city of the twenty-first century owed much of its undeniable charm to the nearly seven hundred years of its past. The allurements and the enchantments remained, but they were dressed in melancholy.

Condesa was the gentrified neighborhood of Mexico's elite when it flourished during the l920s and l930s. It was rich in fine examples of Art Deco architecture. During the latter half of the twentieth century, it had fallen on hard times, but it was now something of a cause celebre with young artists, writers, and foreigners who had moved into the area and had begun a serious movement to save the exquisite architecture. Now the neighborhood was booming with sidewalk cafes and hip new restaurants springing up everywhere.

The heart of Condesa was the lush and beautiful Parque Mexico, which had been built on the site of a nineteenth-century racetrack. The park was oval and was surrounded by two concentric oval avenues, the innermost of which was Avenida Mexico, into which the Mercedes now turned. The car cruised slowly under the jacarandas that were planted on the outermost ring of the park and formed a canopy over the encircling sidewalk and street.

After they had gone nearly half the distance of the park's length, the driver pulled to the curb on the park side of the street. He cut the motor.

The young man who had held the door open for him now turned and put his arm on the back of his seat and looked over it at Bern.

"He lived right here"-he jerked his head toward the building across the narrow street-"the one with the leaded-gla.s.s doors."

Bern looked out the car window at the building's entryway, where a slightly amber light came through the frosted-gla.s.s panels, throwing the Deco design of the leading into clean relief. The building was narrow, three stories, its Deco facade different from its neighbors on either side.

"Second and third floors. There's no one there now," the young man said, speaking softly. He reached over the seat and handed Bern a ring with two keys on it. "Hang on to them. They are a special kind, and it'll be h.e.l.l to replace them if you lose them. The fat one is for the outside door. The other is for the front door of the apartment."

"So I go in there. Then what?"

"Someone will contact you. Don't answer the door. Not yet. People will see the lights and think that he's returned."

"They'll wonder why I'm not answering."

He shrugged. "Let them wonder."

"That's it?"

"This is all we're supposed to do, bring you here, give you the key, tell you not to answer the door, tell you someone will contact you."

Bern nodded. "Okay. Thanks."

He opened the back door of the car and got out. Avenida Mexico was little more than a narrow lane. He crossed it in a few steps, and when his feet hit the sidewalk on the other side, he heard the Mercedes start up. He didn't look back as he heard it pull into the street and drive away.

An awning made of wrought iron and inset with square gla.s.s blocks hung over the front doors, the frames of which were made of a deep amber wood. Bern put the key in the lock and went into a small entry with a tessellated floor of black-and-white tiles. There was another frosted-gla.s.s door in front of him, and to his left the stone stairs ascended sharply in a turn to the second floor.

He started up the stairs, his shoes sc.r.a.ping softly on the stones. For some reason, he counted them, but when he reached the top, he didn't even remember how many there had been. The landing was small, illuminated by the soft glow from a globed light over the door. A window looked out on Parque Mexico. There was a portrait, a pencil drawing, on the wall next to the doorbell. It depicted a young man whose hairstyle and clothes seemed to place him in the 1930s. No signature.

Bern put the second key in the door, unlocked it, and pushed the door open. He stood there a moment, looking into the darkness. The anxiety he felt had nothing to do with fear. It was the antic.i.p.ation of walking into a paradox, the life and world of a stranger he knew intimately. Already he could smell the rooms in the darkness in front of him, and they reminded him of the apartments in Paris that he had lived in, the odors of old wood and paints and canvas and cigarettes . . . and, yes, of the faint presence of women.

He fumbled along the wall and found the light switch. He was in a small entry hall, which had gla.s.s panels above the wood wainscoting. There was mail scattered all over the floor. But not enough to be six weeks' worth. Someone had been picking it up every few days, he guessed.

He closed the door behind him, stepped over the mail, and went into the front room. Comfortable furniture, the walls covered with framed pictures-drawings, oil paintings, pastels, along with some black-and-white photographs. He went straight to the artworks. They seemed to be of every age and era, but a few contemporary ones bore the signature of Jude Teller. Eagerly, he looked closely at these. Jude had been good, as Mondragon had said. His cla.s.sical training was indeed evident in the portraits, and even in the few nudes. His eye was fresh, and his style was sure and confident.

Art magazines were scattered about the room, and a few small sculptures stood here and there. One bust. Bern went over to it. Bronze. This, too, bore Jude's signature, a woman's head, as well as her neck and the tops of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. As he bent down and studied the work closely, he was surprised by the admiration, and maybe even a twinge of envy, that he felt. Jude had been very good indeed, and Bern doubted if he could have accomplished the quality of animation that this bust exhibited. Jesus.

He turned away and scanned the rest of the room. Every wall bore some kind of artwork. The room was also divided by wainscoting with gla.s.s above. On one side, a stairwell ascended, turning to the right. A short, wide corridor led past a dining room, a bathroom across the hall, and then to a large kitchen that looked out over an inner courtyard on the ground floor.

Bern returned to the front room and went up the stairs, turning on lights as he went. The stairs opened into a s.p.a.cious third-floor studio scattered about with the paraphernalia of an artist's craft and smelling of wood and resins and oil paints. A row of windows looked out over the treetops of Parque Mexico.

There was a bedroom off the far side of the studio; it was a long one, with windows on the street end that had the same view of the park as the windows in the studio. The other end of the room opened onto a rooftop terrace. This was Jude's bedroom. His clothes were in the closets. Bern checked the sizes in the suits and the shirts. Same as his. The styles and colors would suit his own tastes exactly, and they could easily have been found in his own closet.

He went to the bathroom and stood at the sink. Jude's razor was there on the marble countertop in a green gla.s.s bowl, just the right shape for it. There was a tall, cylindrical black-and-gold tin of talc.u.m powder. An amber bottle of cologne. Bern picked it up and swept it under his nose. It was the saddest fragrance he could imagine.

The place was instantly saturated with familiarity, as if he were in his own home after his own death, longing to be alive again, and sad beyond expression to have left so much behind.

Suddenly, he thought he heard the door downstairs. Startled, he held his breath and touched the sink to ground himself, to steady a slight dizziness.

"Jude?" A woman's voice. "Hey," she called, "when did you get in?"

He heard the door close and her footsteps crossing the wooden floors of the rooms. She started up the stairs.

Chapter 19.

Bern froze, looking at himself in the mirror as he listened to her footsteps ascending the stairs and growing nearer. What the h.e.l.l should he do? Her footsteps. .h.i.t the landing in the studio.

"Jude? Why did you just step right over your mail?"

He heard her starting across the studio, having seen the light on in the bedroom, he supposed. Turning away from the sink, he hurried out of the bathroom and across the bedroom, reaching the door to the studio while she was still a few feet away.

"Hey," she said, breaking into a huge smile as he stepped out of the bedroom. She came up to him and kissed him with unexpected gentleness and then embraced him tightly, nuzzling his neck.

He put his arms around her, her shape new and strange to him. He was tense, half-expecting her to recoil at any moment, realizing he wasn't Jude. But she didn't.

"It's been too long," she whispered, her face still against his neck. He could smell her hair, and he felt the softness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against him. He recognized her face from the bronze bust, and from two of the nude studies among the drawings downstairs.

There was a moment's hesitation before she pulled away and looked at him quizzically, her arms still around him, her face just inches from his.

"Are you okay?"

She was Mexican, in her early thirties. Her shoulder-length black hair was thick, parted casually in the center, and framed a noticeably asymmetrical face. Her eyes were large and black, the pigment of the surrounding flesh subtly shaded. Her lips were full and evenly proportioned, with a distinctive philtrum in the upper one that was immediately appealing. There was a very slight upturn at the outside corners of her mouth that did not suggest a smile.

All of this he captured in the brief moment that she had her arms around him, her face so close to his that his first instinct was to bend and kiss her.

"Just tired," he managed to say, again expecting to see in her eyes a startled reaction to the sound of his voice. But there was none.

"Well, let's have a drink," she said, letting her arms slide down along the sides of his body, as though she couldn't get enough of touching him. "Let's catch up on what's been happening." Her voice was in the lower registers, not husky, but mellow.

She walked across the studio. She was high-hipped and wore a knee-length charcoal skirt and a white blouse.

"I was at Claudio's all afternoon," she said wearily as she opened a wooden cabinet near the windows and took out a green bottle of gin. Next to it was a small refrigerator, from which she took ice and then dropped a few cubes into each gla.s.s as she closed the door with her hip.

"How was your trip?" she asked, sloshing some gin into each gla.s.s. She opened a small paper bag that she must have brought with her and took out a lime, which she sliced. She squeezed the two wedges simultaneously, one with each hand, into the gla.s.ses.

She turned around and held out a gla.s.s for him, shaking her dark hair out of her face. They looked at each other.

"What," she said, "is something the matter?"

This felt impossible to him, but he managed to make himself go over to her and take the gla.s.s. Who the h.e.l.l was this? Did she live with Jude? He hadn't thought to check for women's clothes in Jude's bedroom. Why hadn't Mondragon at least mentioned that Jude was living with someone?

He had to say something, for G.o.d's sake.

"And what were you doing at Claudio's?" he asked. He was so self-conscious that he thought his voice had changed. He was afraid he would start sweating.

She gave him a strange look. "What was I doing?"

s.h.i.t.

Silence. He sipped the gin. What the h.e.l.l was he going to do? Where was the person who was supposed to be here to prevent this sort of thing from happening until he'd been briefed?

She was studying him.

"The usual," she said, sipping her gin and looking at him over the rim of the gla.s.s, her dark eyes full of suspicion now, alert with caution.

"Tell me about it," he said, moving to the windows to look out, hoping to cover his discomfort.

Silence. The park was dark except for the glint of lamps visible here and there through the dense canopies of the trees. He could see the tall silhouettes of palms against the city light. Still she hadn't spoken. He turned around.

She had put down her gla.s.s and was pulling out the tail of her blouse, began unb.u.t.toning it, saying nothing as she started toward him.

Bern couldn't think fast enough.