The Face of the Assassin Part 28

Around 9:40, Susana brought their attention to the nearly full moon rising above the hills across the lake. Using the remote he kept in his pocket, Bern turned off the lights in the studio, and they moved to the sofa to watch one of the lake's loveliest spectacles. After a little while, Bern noticed that Alice was nodding off in her corner of the sofa.

Susana got up and poured a Glenfiddich for herself and one for Bern, and then she wandered over to the gla.s.s wall, leaned on the window frame, and stared out at the palely luminous landscape. Bern lost track of time, but Charlie Haden's sax was only a few bars into "Pa.s.sion Flower" when he sensed the mood in the room change, and he looked at Susana, who had turned her head to look at him, the right side of her face illuminated by the moonlight.

Instantly, a warm flush of alarm washed over him.

"There's a boat in the cove," she said. There was almost a hint of the incredulous in her voice.

Alice, so sensitive to voice tone, stirred awake, and in the moon glow flooding the room, Bern could see her face as she looked at Susana.

"In the cove?" he asked. "Not on the point?" the cove?" he asked. "Not on the point?"

"In the cove," she answered, and the incredulity was gone and something harder had taken its place.

Alice, sensing their concern, sat up. Bern reached for the remote control and snapped off the music as he stood. Alice got up from the sofa, too.

"You don't see anybody?" he asked as Susana reflexively moved back along the wall.

"No, just the boat. A powerboat."

Bern and Alice joined her at the window, where the moonlight created the illusion that the boat was floating in the air about a foot above the water.

"You recognize it?" Susana asked.

"No."

"If ever there was a blue tree, I wouldn't know myself, either," Alice whispered, taking Susana's arm.

"What about the doors?" Susana asked.

But Bern was already heading toward the front. He heard a noise behind him: A drawer was opened and closed in the cabinet that stood a few feet from the studio door that led out to the terrace.

"We shouldn't . . . we shouldn't open our eyes for the singers to be scared," he heard Alice say in a dramatic stage whisper.

He had cleared the steps and was crossing to the front door that opened into the courtyard corridor at the same moment that Susana was approaching the door that led to the terrace. Just as Bern reached out to put his hand on the dead bolt, Susana hissed, "Paul-"

Suddenly, both doors flew open, knocking them back into the room. Bern staggered backward, falling on the steps and tumbling down to the floor in front of his drawing tables. Alice screamed as Susana was hurled into her, sending both women reeling, overturning chairs and a side table and smas.h.i.+ng a lamp.

A man yelled something in Spanish. Alice screamed back something unintelligible, which was followed by a second sharp bark of Spanish.

Silence.

Chapter 57.

Bern's head hit the concrete floor at the bottom of the steps, making him dizzy momentarily, but he was already recovering as someone roughly pulled him to his feet. By the time he was dragged across the room and shoved into one of the armchairs, Susana and Alice were already sitting on the sofa. In the pale light coming through the gla.s.s wall, he could see that Susana had been cut on the forehead. Alice was helping her stanch the bleeding with bunches of tissues from the box sitting on the coffee table.

"I'm okay," Susana said, her voice a little shaky. "The edge of the door-"

"Las luces!" someone commanded.

"They want the lights," Susana said.

"The remote's on my drawing table," Bern said.

"s.h.i.+t," another voice said. "Get it, then."

Suddenly, Bern was alert, his mind scrambling to place the familiar tone and inflection.

As Bern stood, a man came up to him and followed him around to the drawing table. Bern knew where he had left the cell phone, and as he pretended to feel around for the remote, he hoped he would be able to feel the right b.u.t.tons fast enough in the dark. Nine-one-one-send. Nine-one-one- But the instant he touched the keypad, it lighted up, and the guy beside him swung his arm down like a sledgehammer, smas.h.i.+ng the phone and sending shattered pieces pinging all over the dark room.

"That was brilliant, Judas," the familiar voice said from across the room. "Just turn on the d.a.m.n lights."

Bern felt the remote in his pocket and punched on the lights, pretending to leave the remote on the drawing table. As the lights came up, he was stunned to see two Mexicans with MAC-10s and . . . Mazen Sabella.

"Jesus," Bern said, glancing at Susana, who merely looked at Sabella in silence. Alice's eyes were huge, but she was controlled, helping Susana but throwing nervous glances at the two men with the MAC-10s.

Bern returned to his chair by the sofa, hiding the small remote in his hand as he walked past Sabella, who was wearing jeans, a pair of scruffy loafers, and a dress s.h.i.+rt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows as before. Bern noticed that the black military watch was still there, and that his s.h.i.+rt was just as wrinkled as the one he'd been wearing in Mexico City.

"This isn't going to take long," Sabella said to Bern, "but I just had to know if what Vicente had said to Ghazi was true."

He picked up the overturned end table, put it down near Bern's chair, and sat down on it. He studied Bern.

Bern didn't say anything. A two-day stubble covered Sabella's face, and he had begun growing a Vand.y.k.e, which looked to be a couple of weeks old.

Sabella leaned toward him. "Twins," he said, lowering his voice to hoa.r.s.e whisper, "he said you were Judas's identical twin."

Bern saw no reason to deny it now. "That's right," he said.

Sabella continued looking at him. Was he angry? What did that expression in his eyes reflect? And why in G.o.d's name would it matter at this point?

"This is very creative," Sabella said, nodding as his eyes made their way over Bern's features "even for the CIA. Sending twins through all of that training, waiting years for just the right time, just the right operation when they could use them somehow. h.e.l.l, I'm flattered."

Flattered?

Sabella looked around the studio. "So this is your cover, then? You're a artist, too? s.h.i.+t. A forensic artist? Amazing coincidence!"

The tone was insolent as he pretended to be gulled by the outrageous concoction of the twin scenario.

"It's not a cover," Bern said.

Sabella nodded, waiting for the explanation.

"I'm not CIA."

Bern could see that Sabella didn't believe him, but he thought he saw a flicker of doubt creep in at the edges of Sabella's eyes, even a slight change in his mouth.

Bern shook his head. "I'm a forensic artist." He gestured at the room. "This is my life. Mondragon came to me, said they needed me to stand in for Jude for a few days, that's all. He said I wouldn't have to do anything, just pretend to be Jude for a few days."

Sabella continued looking at him, skeptical, yet tempted perhaps. He knew better than Bern that the truth could be even more complex than this, so convoluted, in fact, that sometimes it could never be unraveled. Or it could be just as Bern said. As simple as that.

Sabella looked at Susana. "What about you, then? Just switched brothers? Just like that? Didn't matter to you which one you were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, huh?"

Bern felt the sudden heat in his face. What the h.e.l.l was Sabella doing? What did he hope to accomplish by humiliating her? Jesus Christ.

Susana still said nothing, looking at Sabella without emotion as she held the b.l.o.o.d.y tissue to her head.

Sabella turned his eyes on Alice.

"Who are you?"

Alice glowered at him. The drama of the last few minutes had clearly cast him as the villain in her mind.

"She's a friend's daughter," Bern explained. "How did you find out about this?" He wanted to get the attention off Alice as fast as he could. "You had the room bugged, didn't you, the room at the Jardin Morena?"

Sabella pulled his eyes away from Alice. "I listened to the whole d.a.m.n thing. Vicente bragging to Ghazi about how smart he had been, crowing and strutting around." He looked at Susana and then back to Bern. "But he didn't get to enjoy it very long, did he?" He pondered a moment. "How was that for you, anyway? You being just an artist, just an average guy, shooting a man like that. Point-blank. Murdering him."

He smirked. "Of course, you knew that he'd killed Kevern and the others. And he'd killed Ghazi. And he'd s.n.a.t.c.hed Susana because he had already planned to screw Kevern's operation even before Kevern had called him off. And, of course, he would have killed you, too, both of you, if time hadn't run out on him. Vicente was burning his bridges. He'd done it before."

Yes, Bern had indeed realized all of this, but it hadn't made it any easier to pull the trigger.

He glanced at Susana to see if she was following the drift of Sabella's performance. She met his look, and then she slowly looked down at her side, s.h.i.+fting her hip against the arm of the sofa. Jesus, he couldn't tell anything from that, except that she seemed to be uncomfortable.

Bern didn't want to talk about what he'd done to Mondragon. "How did you find me?"

"You find a loose thread, you pull it, things unravel," Sabella said. He shrugged, dismissed it, studied Bern a little bit longer, then glanced around.

"So they just came to you with this idea, then?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"And you just did it."

"After some persuasion."

Sabella nodded. "Vicente's persuasion."

"Yeah, I think he wanted Baida more than the Agency wanted him."

"That son of a b.i.t.c.h," Sabella said. "He and Ghazi went to school together. Pinche cabron! Pinche cabron! Ghazi looked out for him. When Ghazi got involved in the Middle East, in Lebanon, he stayed in touch with Vicente, and threw a lot of business to him. Vicente had his great intelligence connections through CISEN. s.h.i.+t, we practically had escorts through Mexico for our stuff. And we ran guns through Latin America, explosives, drugs. They did a lot together, running stuff through Cuba, Spain, Algeria. Ghazi looked out for him. When Ghazi got involved in the Middle East, in Lebanon, he stayed in touch with Vicente, and threw a lot of business to him. Vicente had his great intelligence connections through CISEN. s.h.i.+t, we practically had escorts through Mexico for our stuff. And we ran guns through Latin America, explosives, drugs. They did a lot together, running stuff through Cuba, Spain, Algeria.

"But the son of a b.i.t.c.h wasn't getting rich fast enough, so he stole four million dollars from us."

Alice had begun to squirm on the sofa. Bern had noticed that she had started to watch Sabella after a few minutes, her attention no longer focused on tending to Susana's bleeding forehead. Something about him was irritating her. Bern glanced at her. Jesus, this just wasn't a good time for any of her crazy stuff.

She caught him looking at her.

"He's not not doing the thing that is," she snapped, looking at Bern and shaking her head indignantly, her att.i.tude making it clear that Sabella wasn't fooling her. "He's not doing the real place, not in his mouth he isn't." doing the thing that is," she snapped, looking at Bern and shaking her head indignantly, her att.i.tude making it clear that Sabella wasn't fooling her. "He's not doing the real place, not in his mouth he isn't."

"It's okay," Bern said to her, already antic.i.p.ating Sabella's reaction to her nonsense. "It's okay."

"What the h.e.l.l's she saying?" Sabella was frowning, suspicious. "What's the matter?"

"It's . . . she has a disability," Bern said. "A brain dysfunction."

Sabella looked at her, and Alice glared back, her disapproval of him very clear to everyone.

"What's the matter?" Sabella asked again.

"Look," Bern said, "what do you want? I don't have anything to do with this anymore."

Sabella dragged his suspicious eyes away from Alice.

"Oh, you just want to be left alone, I guess," he said, giving it some thought.

Bern didn't like any of this. Sabella, of course, was lying about something and Alice was picking up on it. But Sabella's world wasn't a place that her subtle talents could comprehend. Lying wasn't an anomaly in his Wonderland, where every utterance was a chess move, never complete in itself, but always calculated against an antic.i.p.ated response that hadn't yet entered the other person's mind. Alice couldn't know that Sabella's lying was a given. For Bern and Sabella, it wasn't a deception, but an a.s.sumed behavior.

But something else about her reaction bothered him. Sabella hadn't really said anything that Bern didn't already know to be generally true. He hadn't really lied about anything. What was she picking up on, then? His sarcasm? His hateful words to Susana? Maybe, but she had never reacted like this to anything but lying. But then, he had never seen her afraid before, either. Who knew how that would affect her.

"I can't help you," Bern said, wanting it to be over. But he knew d.a.m.n well that Sabella hadn't come just to satisfy his curiosity.

Chapter 58.

"Your brother," Sabella said to Bern, leveling his eyes at him, "was good, but he wasn't as good as Ghazi Baida. And he never would be. When they met in Ciudad del Este, it was a contest of masters from the start. Judas was trying to lure Ghazi into Mexico, and he had decided to play a very risky game to achieve that, a game of . . . insouciance. Do you know that word . . . Paul?"

"Yes, I know the word." But Bern had taken note of the way Sabella had hesitated before saying his first name. And he also noticed something that he hadn't seen in the previous few minutes. As he had done that night in the Hotel Palomari, Sabella seemed to be covering up the fact that he was under a lot of pressure. Perspiration was beginning to glisten on his temples, and an underlying note of tension had begun to show through his relaxed manner.

"Unworried," Sabella said. "Unconcerned. Take it or leave it. That was Judas. When that game is played well, and Judas played it very well indeed, it can be most enticing. If the target-in this case, Ghazi-senses that this insouciance is an act-then it's all over. But Judas was a master of the f.u.c.k-off att.i.tude. He offers you a deal, but it is slightly in his favor. He pretends not to notice this, but he knows that you do. And then he tells you to take it or leave it. He bets the whole table on his att.i.tude, and on this moment when his target might say, Okay then, I'll leave it. If he says that, it's over. Taking that kind of risk, all or nothing, that takes very big b.a.l.l.s."

Sabella looked a the two women, then back to Bern.

"But you know what?" he went on. "Insouciance, genuine insouciance, can be seductive. Why? For the same reason that gold is seductive, or certain kinds of pearls, or love. Because it is rare."

Sabella leaned a little more toward Bern, his body language suggesting he was about to share a secret.

"Ghazi Baida saw himself in Judas," Sabella said softly. "He saw the same kind of man that he was looking back at him from Judas's eyes. And he accepted Judas's challenge. Why? Because it was the ultimate challenge, to bet your life-everything-against a man who is exactly like yourself. Ghazi accepted Judas's challenge, and he came to Mexico City, stepping willingly into Judas's advantage."

Sabella paused and smiled, despite his barely subdued agitation.