Face, The

by Hunt, Angela

  Dr. M lowers herself into the bare wooden chair in the corner and watches me in the heavy silence. Finally, she draws a deep breath. “Tell me how and when you contacted Adolfo Rios. And why. I’m especially interested in why.”

  I blink up at the ceiling and wonder how long I can stall this conversation. For a while, perhaps, but stalling would only postpone the inevitable.

  “I contacted Rios because I wanted to know the truth about my father. I promised to give him a cutting edge truth detector if he would give me details about Kevin Sims’s death.”

  “You told him about Gutenberg?”

  “I never mentioned the name, I only described the capability. And I only offered the lie detector module after Mr. Traut told me it wasn’t the program’s major objective. An EEG lie detector was new, it had a certain cachet, and I figured Rios would want to test the loyalty of his people. As it turned out, I was right.”

  “Sarah—” Dr. Mewton gives me a brief, distracted glance and attempts to smile “—did you actually give Rios anything? Did you provide him with any part of Gutenberg?”

  “I might have, but Aunt Renee told me not to.”

  “She knew you did this?”

  Against my will, my chin trembles. “Yes.”

  “How did you contact Rios?”

  “E-mail. I took a photo of one of Judson’s Close Connection bimbos and planted the code inside it. I wasn’t sure Rios would figure out how to find the code, but apparently he did. Judson never knew anything about it.”

  “He’s innocent?”

  “Completely. I’d swear it in any court.”

  “How’d you send the e-mail?”

  “Through my own operating system. It runs beneath—”

  Dr. M holds up her hand. “Save it for the tech guys. I don’t have time to hear a complicated explanation.”

  She glances through the reinforced window of the cell, where I can see the back of the guard’s head. “Did you—” she asks, her voice strangled “—did you tell Rios about the layout of this facility?”

  “No.” For the first time I look directly at her. “I never expected them to come here. Never.”

  She lowers her head and pinches the bridge of her nose. “What do I do?” she asks, closing her eyes. “What am I supposed to do with this stubborn young woman?”

  “Nothing.” I direct my gaze to the ceiling. “I messed up, and I’ll pay the price.”

  Dr. Mewton sits without speaking, and I sense that she’s tempted to let me pay the price for everything. The CIA might forgive many things, but it does not forgive collusion with the enemy. In sending that e-mail, I not only betrayed the agency, I betrayed Dr. Mewton.

  Dr. M is many things, but she is not forgiving. I know she has invested a lot—she would say her entire life—in me, and I have bitterly disappointed her.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned me over to Mr. Traut and let him arrest me for treason.

  “You won’t have to pay the price.” She shifts in the chair and crosses her legs. “We examined the security tapes we pulled from the property where we found Renee. Espinosa ran the place. He shot your aunt.”

  My mask of indifference shatters in surprise. “But—”

  “He’s not dead. Apparently he’s one of Rios’s top men, because we saw both of them on the tape. No audio, so we’ll be a while figuring things out, but one thing is clear—you didn’t lead that commando team to the convent. Espinosa did. Or Traut did—he brought a double agent to our front door and welcomed him into the house.”

  I rise up on one elbow. “But he was transported securely, wasn’t he?”

  Dr. M shrugs. “He and Traut were as thick as thieves by the time Espinosa left here. He arrived with a bag over his head, but I’m betting Traut let the bag stay off for the return trip or Espinosa found a way to track the chopper. Either scenario is more logical than Rios tracking your e-mail. You’re too good.”

  I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I sit on my hands as I sort through my thoughts. “Rios could have received my message and sent Espinosa to scout ahead.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “And once our location was revealed—”

  “You’re not to blame, Sarah, and you’re no longer under arrest.” She uncrosses her legs and leans toward me, tilting her head to look into my eyes. “But you never should have betrayed me.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Sarah

  I lie flat on my back and press my hands to the concave flesh above my abdomen. Something in my gut hurts, but I don’t need a psychology degree to know that the pain probably has more to do with the events of the past few hours than with my internal organs. If I tell the guard I’m sick, he’ll call Dr. Kollman, who’ll insist on examining me. He’ll give me an aspirin and tell me to feel better soon.

  But he and I will both know that the burning rock of guilt in the pit of my stomach isn’t going anywhere.

  I stiffen when I hear the swipe of a key card in the scanner. The latch clicks, and the door swings wide for a wheelchair.

  I let my head fall back to my pillow. First Dr. Mewton, then Judson. Are they going to interrogate me one by one?

  Judson rolls straight into the room and lets his chair clang against the end of my cot. “Time is running out, Sarah. Two medical teams are waiting. You need to get upstairs for the transplant.”

  So…Jud hasn’t come to interrogate me, but to bully me. I sit up and set my jaw. “Why should the American taxpayer pay for my surgery? I’m as much a traitor as Espinosa.”

  “Espinosa is a murderer and he will take the fall for the security breach. Let him.”

  “Easier said than done, when you know the truth. Even Aunt Renee knew it. She knew I was guilty when she faced Espinosa.”

  “Sarah. Sweetheart.” Jud reaches out for my hand, doesn’t find it, and settles for the edge of my blanket. “Do you think she’d have written that note if she didn’t forgive you? I saw the video. I saw her sit in a chair and stare down death with a smile. She did it for you, Sarah. Are you going to let her sacrifice go to waste?”

  “I don’t deserve it.” My voice is flat and final. “I’m a monster and I always have been. I wouldn’t know what to do with a face like hers.”

  “You’ll learn.”

  “I won’t. I can never be the kind of person she was—charming, funny, sweet. I just don’t feel things like she does, I’m not like her. I’m not and I never will be.”

  Judson takes the edge of my blanket in both hands, then wads it up and throws it at me. “Good grief, kid, sometimes I think you’re the one who’s blind. Don’t you realize how you’ve been changing? Since your aunt arrived, you’ve been becoming a different person. Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, I’ve watched you go from diffident to daring, from impassive to passionate. This pain you’re feeling now? Two months ago I could have told you that your aunt had been kidnapped and killed and you would have shrugged it off.”

  “Two months ago, I didn’t know her.” I swallow the sob that rises in my throat. “None of this was happening to me.”

  “But it did happen. Renee taught you how to care—she showed you how to feel. You may think you can go back to the way things were, but you can’t, not even if you keep your old face. You’re a different person, Sarah, we all are. Like your aunt said, life is what happens to us. She came here, she affected us, and we’re different because we knew her. You can’t erase her from your life any more than I can pretend I still have eyes and legs.”

  What does he expect me to do, refute the obvious? I lean against the wall and fold my arms, wishing he’d go away.

  Jud remains quiet as I close my eyes and think of Aunt Renee—of her smile, the way the corners of her eyes crinkled when she talked about Elvis, and the way she blushed when she spoke to Dr. Kollman. Even when they were arguing about memory implantation, she never failed to glow when she looked his way. She was so alive, yet she loved me enough to come here to tell me
about my father, enough to go away and die in my place.

  Judson is right. Renee brought me far more than the promise of family. She brought the hope of a new and better life, the dream of being the person I was meant to be. What was it she said? I think we’re meant to spend every bit of our potential and die without a smidgen of promise left.

  If I don’t go upstairs, I’ll be allowing her to die with her greatest potential untapped. If I do go…part of her will literally remain alive in me.

  “I wish…” Somehow I find my voice. “I wish you could have seen her, Jud. She was more lovely than I’ll ever be.”

  “You’re beautiful, too, beneath the skin.” He turns his wheelchair toward the doorway. “Let’s go upstairs and see about getting your outside to match your inside.”

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Sarah

  Four days after my surgery, I wave the nurse out of the room and peer out of my bandages. Judson is sitting in the doorway, and I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life. The speech processor that usually hangs behind my ear has been displaced by bandages, and my jaw has been temporarily wired shut, but I’m determined to communicate with my friend.

  “Mmmmmm,” I tell him, moving my speech processor into my lap.

  “I’m going to assume that’s hello,” he says, wheeling himself into the room. “I know you can’t talk, and I also know you’re probably wild with boredom. So I’ve brought you some entertainment…and something that might prove to be quite educational.”

  “Hmm?”

  He grins as he feels his way to my bedside, then he offers me a laptop. “I know your head probably looks like one big bandage, but can you manage this?”

  “Hmmm.”

  I raise the bed until my head is elevated, then I maneuver the laptop past the processor and the IV lines. I lift the lid and click the space bar, then blink as the screen brightens.

  “Can you see okay?” Judson asks.

  “Hmmm.”

  “In a lot of pain?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  He grins. “Don’t worry. This will take your mind off things.”

  I look at him, understanding for the first time how much I’ve missed by not being able to communicate with a face. If my head weren’t swathed in bandages, and if he could see, I could say so much with a single look….

  Aunt Renee certainly spoke volumes with this face.

  “We’ve had a field day in your absence,” Jud says, folding his hands. “Mr. Traut and I have uncovered all your little cameras, and he’s given me his blessing to tune in for an interview he’s about to conduct in Mewton’s office. He’s been busy, too, going through all the data we recovered from the Saluda operation. He’s reviewing the case with Dr. Mewton now.” He nods toward the computer in my lap. “You know what to do, kid. Tune in any time you’re ready.”

  Moving gingerly so as not to disturb the wires and tubes that surround me, I type in the command that will log me into the subnet surveillance network, then select the proper outlet. The camera in Dr. Mewton’s office activates and focuses on a dark head: Traut’s. He’s sitting in Dr. M’s chair; she’s standing on the other side of the desk. His pipe is smoldering in an ashtray; her face is tight and unyielding.

  Not wanting to miss a word, I move my speech processor closer to the computer.

  “Taking over my desk,” Dr. Mewton says, “is premature, even for you.”

  “Is it? I think we both know you’re overdue for a transfer.” Mr. Traut picks up his pipe. “By the way, how is our patient this afternoon?”

  Dr. Mewton shrugs and sinks into the chair. “Some swelling around the visible stitches, but that will subside within a week. We expect the sutured areas to heal completely within ten or twelve days.”

  “Are you worried about rejection?”

  “Not at this point. Sarah and Renee shared the same blood type, so they’ll be more compatible than most. We’ll still put her on an antirejection regimen, but I don’t think it’ll be long-term.”

  Traut tastes his pipe again, but this time the barest nip. “Prognosis?”

  “Good—she’ll not have much feeling in the new tissues for a few months, but as the nerves and blood vessels grow together, any residual numbness will disappear. In a year, eighteen months at the outside, no one looking at Sarah will know she’s had any plastic surgery.”

  “And, finally—your opinion as to the procedure’s feasibility for our purposes.”

  Mr. Traut is always thinking of the company.

  Dr. Mewton shakes her head. “The procedure should be contemplated as a last resort, and only as an answer to injury.”

  “Why not consider it as a permanent means of disguise? Once the procedure becomes streamlined—”

  “Because the cost is too high.”

  He harrumphs. “Money is not a factor.”

  “I was speaking of the emotional and psychological cost. Trauma. Even in cases of natural death, the family pays a high emotional price.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.” Mr. Traut picks up a folder. From this angle I can see the cover, stamped TOP SECRET.

  “Now,” he says, tasting his pipe again, “on to the other matter. You realize, of course, that this facility has been compromised. Langley has given us three months to clean house and transfer personnel. Until then, unless prevented, your people will continue to operate from the secure level. Guards at all posts will be doubled.”

  Dr. M presses her hands together. “We have been operating under high alert since the intrusion. I only wish we could have contained the leak. We might be able to salvage the convent.”

  Traut flips through the pages in his folder. “Impossible. When Saluda’s lowliest henchmen know that the Convent of the Lost Lambs is really a CIA black site, it’s time to move out.” He turns another page, then lifts a single sheet. “I believe you’ll be interested in hearing what the extraction team discovered in the house where we found Dr. Carey.”

  Dr. M shoots him a twisted smile. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “I assume you saw the video.”

  “I’ve watched it several times.”

  He takes another puff on his pipe, then props it in the ashtray. “Don’t think you saw the folder, though.”

  Her smile stiffens. “What folder?”

  “Seems that Rios left a file containing photos and several pages of information on Kevin Sims.” He peers at her over the top of the page. “You do recall the name?”

  “Of course. Sarah’s father.”

  My body tightens when he nods. “Sims, as you may remember, was tasked with approaching Saluda with a modified strain of heroin. Trouble is, someone tipped off Rios’s men before Sims arrived. They were waiting for him…and they weren’t happy.”

  He pulls a glossy black and white from the folder and slides it across the desk. Dr. Mewton pulls her reading glasses from the chain around her neck and peers at the photo, then turns away. “You didn’t have to show me that.”

  “After our officer expired,” Traut says, “Rios’s men placed Sims’s body in his car and drove it off a bridge. After a payment to the proper authorities, the death was ruled accidental. But you already knew that because you had his daughter here in your hospital.”

  Dr. Mewton pulls off her glasses and uses her sleeve to wipe a smudge from the lens. “Is this supposed to be news? I saw the official report on Sims’s death after it came in.”

  “This isn’t the official report—it’s a statement from Saluda’s files. Adolfo Morales y Rios, you see, runs a tight ship. Everything on Sims’s death is here, including the name of the informant who burned Sims. But you don’t need me to tell you the name…because it was you, Glenda.”

  Even in the security of my hospital bed, I feel myself falling as black emptiness rushes up like the bottom of an elevator shaft.

  Judson leans closer. “You okay, kid?”

  I reach for his hand and clench it as the scene continues to play out on my comput
er.

  “Why’d you do it?” I hear Traut’s tinny voice, but I cannot see him through the tears that have blurred my vision. “Why did you betray Kevin Sims?”

  I blink and swallow to bring my heart down from my throat. The image on the laptop is hazy, unfocused, and I want to see this—I need to see this.

  By the time my vision has cleared, I can see Dr. M staring at Traut. “Does the reason matter now?”

  “To me, yes. And maybe to those who will hear your case. If there’s any hope for leniency…”

  “I don’t expect leniency…or forgiveness. It’s enough that I was able to protect Sarah.”

  Beside me, Judson squeezes my hand.

  “Kevin Sims was going to take Sarah back to the States for surgery,” Dr. Mewton says. “He was convinced she should take her place in society, but I knew what a move like that would cost the child. Little girls who are different don’t have an easy time of it. Even when they appear to fit in, they know the truth. They know they’re misfits.” She pushes her glasses back onto her nose and stares at her hands. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, especially not Sarah. She had no mother to protect her.”

  “So you had her father killed?”

  “I didn’t order a hit, if that’s what you’re implying. But I did arrange for Rios to learn that a certain Crescent Chemical employee was an officer of the CIA.”

  “So—” Traut’s voice tightens “—over the years, how many times have you betrayed our agents? Once Rios knew he had you in his pocket, I can’t imagine him letting you climb out again.”

  Dr. M looks away. “Holding him at bay wasn’t easy.”

  “How did you communicate? If all electronic communications are monitored—”

  “Really, Jack.” Laughter floats up from her throat. “There’s something to be said for old-school tradecraft and coded messages. Every month Sister Luke picked up her copy of La Hora del Rezo. The magazine that helped establish my alias also kept me in touch with Rios.”

  “How many other agents did you burn?”

  “I didn’t keep score.”