The Face of the Assassin

by David Lindsey

  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 damn 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 circumstances 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 screwing with you,” Kevern said. “This’s the way it is. We’ve got to play this hand. If we see an opening, we’ll take it. All of us have worked with Susana before. We give a shit. 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 balls 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 balls—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 circumstances Kevern himself had ever seen in his life, and still he was hanging in there like a pro. Shit, 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 butterflies were a hell 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 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 fucking 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. Momentito, 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 hell.

  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 hell. 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 buttons 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 buttons 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 Obregón, 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 of San Angel.

  Insurgentes itself was a busy thoroughfare. Though not a wide street, it was densely packed with buildings and pedestrians and bumper-to-bumper 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 damn what Kevern said; Susana was in a hell of a spot. Kevern’s reassurances 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 or El Universal or the left-leaning 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.

  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 space, 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 hello.

  “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 Mondragón. We are four cars behind you. Tell me what is happening.”

  Susana was with Mondragón?

  “What the hell’s going on?” Bern asked. “Those were your people who took Susana?”

  “Yes. Tell me quickly what is happening,” Mondragón insisted.

  Bern’s thoughts swarmed. Kevern said that there would be demands. Whoever kidnapped Susana would contact them and tell them what they wanted in return for her safety.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Bern said, “what are you doing? What’s this all about?”

  “I want to know where Ghazi Baida is. That’s what we’ve all been doing for over a year.”

  “You’re still trying to find Baida?” Bern asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I was with Kevern when he called you, told you to hold off. I heard him tell you to wait until he got in touch with you again. What’re you doing?”

  “Oh, yes, he did tell me that,” Mondragón said, sounding amused that Bern knew this. “And just why did he do that, Paul?”

  Bern was tired, confused. He didn’t trust anyone anymore except Susana, and he really believed that there was a good chance that this freak he was talking to was going to kill her.

  “What I want to know,” Bern said, growing heated, pissed at Mondragón, pissed at Kevern, pissed at all of it, “is what in the hell is going on here with Susana? What are you up to?”

  “It’s not important,” Mondragón said. “It’s a little matter of insurance.”

  “Insurance? Insurance against what?”

  “I need to be sure you will cooperate with me in whatever way I need,” Mondragón said.

  “Well, what do you need?”

  “Right now, Paul,” Mondragón said slowly, trying to get past Bern’s confusion and panic, “I need to know what is happening. I need to know where you are going and why. Do you understand that I need to know that? Susana’s life depends on it.”

  There was a pause while Bern locked onto this last remark and processed it. For all the gravity of his mission regarding Ghazi Baida’s defection, the foremost concern in his mind was getting Susana away from Mondragón. It happened in an instant.

  “Baida wants to defect,” Bern said.

  This time, the hesitation came from Mondragón’s end of the line.

  “To defect?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “He doesn’t suspect that you are not Jude?”

  “No, he doesn’t suspect anything,” Bern said.

  “How do you know he doesn’t suspect you?”

  “Goddamn it! He doesn’t. I’d sense it. I’d know. He doesn’t!”

  “Where are you going now?”

  “Colonia Santa Luisa. There’s a little p
ark there, Jardin Morena. I make a phone call from there.”

  “And then what?”

  “Somebody tells me what to do.”

  “To make the arrangements for his defection?”

  “That’s my guess. Just make the call, he said, so that’s where I’m going, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Will he be at Jardin Morena?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why is he doing it like this?” Mondragón asked, talking to himself as much as to Bern. He sounded suspicious, either of Bern or of Baida. Then he said, “Listen to me carefully, Paul. I will say this only once. I know you must have a way of communicating with Kevern. Do not tell him that we have spoken. Do not tell him that I am still looking for Ghazi. Now that I have found you, I will not let you out of my sight. I have people in front of you, and now I’m going to send others to Jardin Morena. They will be everywhere around you now, all the time.

  “Three things you have to remember to stay alive: Do not tell Kevern what I am doing. Do not even mention my name to Ghazi Baida.”

  He stopped, waiting for Bern to ask the question.

  Bern obliged. “And the third thing?”

  “If you are lying to me,” Mondragón said, his voice reflecting a chilling lack of passion, “Susana is fucked.”

  Chapter 42

  When they heard the phone ring, the three of them exchanged puzzled glances. They were gathered around a receiver and a digital recorder, watching the lime green display numbers flying by as if they were comprehensible words.

  “Cabbie’s phone,” Mattie conjectured.

  “No, he’s not answering it,” Lupe said.

  “Well, it’s not Bern’s cell,” Mattie countered.

  She and Kevern were sipping soft drinks. Lupe was still nursing a cup of coffee. All three of them were sitting on chairs, leaning over notepads on the table in front of them. Lupe was doodling, drawing caracoles, three elaborately spiraled snails.