The Face of the Assassin Part 24

"He's taking too long," Quito said, referring to Bern talking on the pay phone. He was sitting in Mondragon's Mercedes, around the block from Jardin Morena. Susana was in the backseat with Mondragon, and Quito was sitting beside the driver, working the radio equipment that was keeping him in touch with his men on the plaza. "He's talking to Kevern or Baida, telling them what's happened."

"I don't know," Mondragon said. "Baida's plan will be very elaborate, complex. He will want to give himself plenty of room to check and cross-check."

"He's not writing anything down," Quito said.

"Baida wouldn't let him do that," Mondragon replied. "Bern could be memorizing the route, the time sequence. Maybe repeating it back to Baida, rehearsing it."

"Or he could be spilling his guts," Quito insisted.

"You know," Mondragon said, "Jude might have done that. He was just crazy enough to take the risk that we wouldn't shoot her. But Bern's not that tough, doesn't have that kind of discipline."

"But he's taking too long," Quito warned.

In truth, Mondragon was uneasy about the amount of time Bern was spending on the phone, too. Quito was probably right, d.a.m.n it.

"Where's Kevern now?" Mondragon asked, spritzing the front of his head.

"They've just pa.s.sed Parque Hundido."

"Perfecto," Mondragon said. "Wait until they are approaching the on-ramp to the circuito circuito and do it there." and do it there."

"Judas," Sabella said, breaking the silence. "Stay where you are. I'm going to be off the phone for a few minutes, but I'll be back."

"What? Wait!"

"Just stay where you are. Stay on the phone. Talk to your man. I'll be back. Do it."

Bern couldn't believe it. "He just left the phone," Bern said to Kevern.

"Left the phone? Whatta you mean?"

"He left the G.o.dd.a.m.ned phone. Said for me to stay on the phone. Not to leave the phone."

"s.h.i.+t, he's running," Kevern said. "He's running, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!"

Mondragon's man inside the pharmacy could see Bern through the front window. He kept one eye on him as he milled around the rows of shelves in the small shop. There was no one there at first, and then a young woman came in with a child, one of those children who simply stared at you in sober silence and could not be charmed into any kind of reaction at all. And yet she wouldn't stop looking at him. Gave him the creeps.

The store was L-shaped, so he went around the corner into another row of shelves to get away from the kid, although still keeping Bern in sight. Good, magazines. He looked for some s.e.xy covers and picked up one of them just as another woman entered from the back door of the shop, which opened into a typical courtyard.

The woman was nice-looking, late thirties, her dark hair done up quickly. She wore a blue s.h.i.+rtwaist dress that b.u.t.toned up the front. The top b.u.t.ton was undone, exposing a very nice set of chichis. chichis. He glanced at Bern. He glanced at Bern.

The woman came right at him, apparently interested in the magazines, too. But she seemed to want to see the ones on the other side of him. Gathering her skirt delicately, she begged his pardon, and he stepped back to let her by. For one sweet moment, they were face-to-face as she slipped past him, her eyes modestly averted as her bosom wafted by right under his nose. On the other side now, she turned her back to the front of the store, Bern behind her, and bent down to search through the magazines on the bottom shelf.

Her position couldn't have been better for him. His eyes only had to move a slight flick to switch from Bern to her bosom, where gravity swelled her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the spilling point.

Then suddenly, the little girl was in the picture again, appearing squarely in the center of the aisle behind the woman, her moronic stare fixed on him once more, her head poking up just above the woman's hips, as if it were balanced on top of them.

t.i.ts, child, Bern. t.i.ts, child, Bern. The kid was irritating the s.h.i.+t out of him. The woman moved a few magazines, looking under them, her movements causing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to s.h.i.+ft and roll. The kid stared at him. Bern talked. With all the bending, the woman had to adjust herself, slipping a pretty hand inside- The kid's moronic eyes s.h.i.+fted slightly to a position over the man's right shoulder, her expression still as dumb as a rock.

The hand coming over his shoulder and covering his mouth hardly registered on him before the knife did its work on his throat. He knew he was dying. The woman straightened up and walked past him as if he weren't there. Then he felt himself being dragged backward.

The last thing his eyes registered was the mute, imbecilic stare of the little girl, who did not run or blink or react to what she was seeing. She seemed to think that watching a murder in the back aisle of a pharmacy was no extraordinary thing.

Chapter 46.

Bern gripped the phone and kept his head ducked next to the phone box as if listening intently. In fact, nothing was happening. Silence on both ends. What all of this was leading to was beyond him, beyond his imagining, almost beyond belief. But it kept going on and on.

Suddenly, Kevern was screaming, "Jack! Jack! Look out! Lookout! Lookout!" And then a woman screamed and there was a thunderous crash.

The old junker car slammed into them out of nowhere, flying at highway speed from a side street and ramming into the driver's side like a torpedo. The two cars, twisted together, left the main street in a cloud of burned rubber and sparks, then careened off of two other cars before coming to rest just a few yards outside the window of a restaurant on the cross street.

Jack Petersen was killed instantly. Lupe was in the backseat on the same side, dying, a piece of chrome the length of a yardstick driven through her rib cage, pinning her to the rear seat. Mattie was dying, too, a fist-size lump of something lodged in her left temple.

Kevern had all the luck in the world.

He was dazed, his collarbone broken, a cut on his forehead bleeding freely, but he was conscious and fighting his seat belt even before the noise stopped. He knew what had happened, and he knew what was going to happen next. His door had been ripped off, and while the car filled with thick acrid smoke, he got free of his seat belt and simply rolled to the side and fell out of the car, hitting the ground in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the twisted cars and the restaurant wall.

While the entire restaurant clientele stood back from the windows and watched the smoldering cars in stunned silence, Kevern crawled un.o.bserved against the building's wall, pulling himself along as fast as he could to the corner and then around to the other side. Just out of sight, he stopped to get his breath. He thought he was all right, but his guts felt as if they were swollen all out of proportion. His head was still throbbing from the impact, his hearing almost gone.

Within seconds, two helmeted motorcyclists roared up to the smoking cars. The driver of the junker, also helmeted, staggered out of his car on wobbly legs and crawled onto the back of one of the motorcycles, while the other cyclist goosed his machine right up to Kevern's smoke- engulfed car. Instantly, he opened fire with a stubby automatic weapon, sending the horrified diners onto the floor of the restaurant. He emptied a full magazine into the car, and then he reloaded and did it again.

Then the shooter reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a hand grenade and lobbed it into the backseat of the junker. Both cyclists roared away, and by the time the grenade exploded, setting off a second and third explosion as the gas tanks blew, the two cyclists had hit the on-ramp onto the circuito, circuito, and they were gone. and they were gone.

The whole incident lasted less than a minute.

"Judas." Sabella was back on the line. "Put down the phone and walk into the pharmacy. When you get inside, hurry straight to the back of the shop and go out the door into the courtyard."

"Wait-"

"Mondragon's man inside is gone."

"But I just heard-"

"Do it!"

Bern slammed the phone down in its cradle, pocketed the cell phone, and went through the pharmacy door, a few steps away. Inside, he quickly oriented himself, then headed around a corner into an aisle, suddenly confronting four people gathered around something on the floor.

They all looked up in puzzled disbelief as he approached. At a glance, Bern sized them up as the white-jacketed pharmacist, his wife perhaps, also wearing a white jacket, a child, and a woman who appeared to be her mother. He didn't stop to figure it out, just pushed through them, nearly slipping on the stuff that they were looking at.

By the time that he realized that he had walked through a pool of blood and then realized how it had gotten there, he was opening the door to the courtyard. A woman grabbed him.

"Andale!" she said, already turning to lead the way, her blue dress swirling around her legs as she took him around the courtyard, through a door on the far side and into another courtyard, and then immediately up a flight of stone stairs that led to the second floor. They turned into a corridor and came face-to-face with Mazen Sabella.

"I dragged the guy under a stairwell down there," he said to the woman. He looked at Bern, and there was an awkward moment in which Bern felt as if something was happening but he was missing it. He saw blood on Sabella's clothes. He was sweating and out of breath.

Sabella broke eye contact with him and looked at the woman.

"I'm going down to get the car ready. I'll be waiting for you across the street. You know where."

Suddenly, he was gone, and the woman pushed Bern through a doorway and out into an open-air patio. They crossed the patio and then burst into an apartment.

Baida turned to them. He was standing by a pair of open windows that overlooked the plaza. They were above the Farmacia Pedras. He had an automatic pistol in one hand and with his other hand he held a tiny headset to his ear.

"Your man's not coming," Baida said. "They're dead. All of them."

Bern gaped at him, stupefied.

Baida held up the headset and the automatic.

"Sabella got these from the guy downstairs in the pharmacy. I heard the report to Mondragon that it was done."

Bern knew it was true. There was no doubt at all.

"Mondragon's boys saw you go into the pharmacy," Baida said. "They tried to contact this guy, and when he didn't answer, they switched frequencies. It's no good now," he said, flinging the tiny headset across the room. "And down there," he added, jerking his head toward the plaza, "they've all disappeared."

Baida was talking fast, his celebrated composure showing signs of fraying.

"I've called my people," he said, lunging across the room to an armchair where a gray nylon bag lay open. He jammed the gun inside. "I have to go."

The woman, who still hadn't said a word, was pulling things out of an open drawer in a chest near the entrance to another room. She brought a packet of something wrapped in clear plastic-it looked like doc.u.ments-to Baida, who jammed it into the bag. He was sweating profusely.

"I'm going to give you a number," Baida said. "You won't remember it . . . with all this. . . . I'll show you where to hide it. Pull down your pants. Carleta, un boligrafo! Carleta, un boligrafo!"

The woman grabbed a ballpoint pen from the top of the chest and gave it to Bern, who unbuckled his pants.

"Write it high on the inside of your thigh. If they strip you, they won't see it there."

"Who-"

"Anybody! Hurry!"

Bern bent over and with a trembling hand wrote on the inside of his thigh the number Baida recited to him. Baida repeated it, and Bern nervously traced over the numbers. h.e.l.l, someone would figure it out later.

"When you get to our people, use the number," Baida said. "Time is running out."

Time was running out. Bern pulled up his pants and buckled his belt. In fact, he was d.a.m.ned convinced that it was gone entirely, and that the numbers he had just written on his skin were useless.

Baida started to zip the bag, then stopped suddenly. He looked up at Bern. Then he pulled the gun out of the bag and handed it to him.

"My advice," Baida said. "If you get a chance to kill Vicente, do it."

The pistol was lighter than Bern expected. He didn't even know the caliber. He found the safety above his thumb on the grip. He checked the magazine and was surprised to see that it was loaded. Jesus. He shoved it back into the grip.

Baida quickly zipped the bag, and all Bern could think about was Baida walking out of there with his terrible secret. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed Baida's s.h.i.+rt.

"Wait! Listen-"

In a move that Bern didn't even see, Baida ripped Bern's hand off his s.h.i.+rt and was holding another pistol to Bern's forehead before Bern could even recoil.

"Listen to me, my friend." Baida's voice was tight. The barrel of Baida's automatic was cutting Bern's forehead. His face was inches away from Bern's, and every pore was moist, every nerve taut.

"The deal for my cooperation was my guaranteed safety," Baida panted. "That isn't happening, is it? And it doesn't look like it's going to. In fact, it looks like Vicente is in the process of wiping out your whole operation. I think you need protection as much as I do." He was trembling. "But . . . if there is a miracle anytime soon, you know how to reach me-the numbers are warming your b.a.l.l.s."

In the silence of the moment, an incredible sound seeped into the room through the windows overlooking the plaza: the gentle, serene whisper of a slow rain. Bern concentrated on it. In fact, he clung to it as if that sound alone could redeem him to reality, to sanity, offer him deliverance from this nightmare.

Baida lowered his pistol.

"You'd better get the h.e.l.l out of here," he said.

Chapter 47.

Kevern lay in a hedge of some kind at the far side of the restaurant and watched pedestrians craning their heads toward the sound of the collision on the other side of the building. He heard the unmistakable rivet-driving sound of an Ingram MAC-10 machine pistol. He heard screams, saw the pedestrians retreating, heard the pause to reload. He heard the ripping of the second magazine. He saw people running away now, heard the screaming of the motorcycles as the riders full-throttled them onto the expressway. Then the grenade blast and the immediate explosion of the first gas tank, and then the second one.

People yelling. The pedestrian flow stopping now, reversing itself, and surging in the other direction as people headed toward the explosions and the billowing smoke.

That was the anatomy of a killing. People reacted the way people always did, terrified, then horrified, then, as the a.s.sa.s.sins fled, curious as h.e.l.l.

He had checked all of them as he was fighting his seat belt. He had seen a lot of people die. He had seen a lot of people dying. It was creepy how you knew instantly. You didn't have to check the vital signs; you just threw them a look, and you either saw death looking back at you or you saw death crawling onto them like a little monkey, impatient to get inside at the first chance. When you saw that, you didn't wait around.

He looked at the street again. He was on the back side of the restaurant, looking around the next corner, where sitios sitios sometimes waited for customers. There were a couple of them, the drivers out of their cars, craning their heads toward the direction of the disaster. sometimes waited for customers. There were a couple of them, the drivers out of their cars, craning their heads toward the direction of the disaster.

When a small group of people fled the restaurant and took the first sitio, sitio, Kevern knew he couldn't wait. Grimacing with pain, the pressure in his stomach intensifying, he crawled out of the hedge and staggered toward the second Kevern knew he couldn't wait. Grimacing with pain, the pressure in his stomach intensifying, he crawled out of the hedge and staggered toward the second sitio. sitio. The driver, seeing a second group of people fleeing the restaurant, was getting ready to take them, when Kevern ran up to him and showed his automatic. The deal was done. The driver, seeing a second group of people fleeing the restaurant, was getting ready to take them, when Kevern ran up to him and showed his automatic. The deal was done.

They got into the black Lincoln and drove away.

Mazen Sabella left through the courtyard of the building and made his way to the street. At every corner, he waited, scanning the cars parked along the street, scanning the windows in the buildings opposite, taking a moment longer to consider every darkened doorway.

In some ways, it was more difficult to escape surveillance in the rain. People running surveillance were taking cover from the rain, hiding from the weather as well as from their targets, and therefore doing a better job of concealing themselves. And for the target, the rain itself was a distraction from detecting surveillance.

But in other ways, the rain offered possible advantages. In hiding from the rain, the surveillers often sacrificed a wider field of vision to stay dry, sometimes opting to squint through a narrow s.p.a.ce or peer through a foggy window.

Either way, Sabella took it all into consideration without even thinking about it, these small adjustments having become second nature to him. Every compensation made to adjust to the environment was only a reflex now, embedded long ago into his unconscious.

The car was only a few doorways away, but it wasn't parked on the street. It was behind a closed garage door that opened right onto the street.

The rain had been coming in waves, a hard, driving downpour, followed by a momentary letup, and then another hard, driving deluge. Sabella waited in the corridor doorway for the downpour, waiting the way a dancer waits for his body to get into the stride of the music before he moves into the stream of dancers.