David Morrell - Assumed Identity

The interrogator tapped his fingers on the battered table.

“I swear to you. I didn’t kill anybody,” Buchanan said.

The door swung slowly open. The interrogator shielded the camera bag with his massive body, shut the bag, and with a remarkably fluid motion for so huge a man, he set the bag out of sight behind the desk as he scrunched his wide hips into his creaking chair.

Woodfield entered.

“To pursue this matter any further would be a mockery of justice,” the interrogator said. “Senor Grant, your passport and belongings will be returned. You are free.”

“You look like you need a doctor,” Woodfield said.

They walked from the jail, across a dusty street, and toward a black sedan parked beneath a palm tree.

“I know an excellent physician in Merida,” Woodfield said. “I’ll drive you there as quickly as possible.”

“No,” Buchanan said.

“But. .”

“No,” Buchanan repeated. He waited for a fenderless pickup truck to go by, then continued toward the car. After having been in the jail for so long, his eyes hurt from the glare of the sun, adding to his headache. “What I want is to get out of Mexico.”

“The longer you wait to see a doctor. .”

Buchanan reached the car and pivoted toward Woodfield. He didn’t know how much the diplomat had been told. Probably nothing. One of Buchanan’s rules was never to volunteer information. Another rule was don’t break character. “I’ll see a doctor when I feel safe. I still can’t believe I’m out of jail. I won’t believe it until I’m on a plane to Miami. That jerk might change his mind and rearrest me.”

Woodfield put Buchanan’s suitcase into the back of the car. “I doubt there’s any danger of that.”

“No danger to you, ” Buchanan said. “The best thing you can do is drive me to the airport, get me on a plane, then phone Charles Maxwell. Tell him I asked him to arrange for someone to meet me and to take me to a hospital.”

“You’re certain you’ll be all right until then?”

“I’ll have to be,” Buchanan said. He was worried that the police in Cancun would still be investigating his previous identity. Eventually, they’d find Ed Potter’s office and apartment. They’d find people who’d seen Ed Potter and who’d agree that the police sketch looked like Ed Potter. A policeman might decide to corroborate Big Bob Bailey’s story by having those people take a look at Victor Grant.

He had to get out of Mexico.

“I’ll telephone the airport and see if I can get you a seat on the next flight,” Woodfield said.

“Good.” Buchanan automatically scanned the street, the pedestrians, the noisy traffic. He tensed, noticing a woman in the background, among the crowd on the sidewalk beyond Woodfield. She was American. Late twenties. A redhead. Attractive. Tall. Nice figure. She wore beige slacks and a yellow blouse. But Buchanan didn’t notice her because of her nationality or her hair color or her features. Indeed he couldn’t get a look at her face. Because she had a camera raised to it. She stood at the curb, motionless among the passing Mexicans, taking photographs of him.

“Just a minute,” Buchanan told Woodfield. He started toward her, but the moment she saw him approaching, she lowered the camera, turned, and walked away, disappearing around a corner. The oppressive sun intensified his headache. Festering pressure in his wound made him weaker. Dizziness halted him.

“What’s the matter?” Woodfield asked.

Buchanan didn’t answer.

“You looked as if you were about to go somewhere,” Woodfield said.

Buchanan frowned toward the corner, then turned toward the car. “Yeah, with you.” He opened the passenger door. “Hurry. Find a phone. Get me on a flight to Miami.”

All the way to the airport, Buchanan brooded about the red-haired woman. Why had she been taking photographs of him? Was she just a tourist and he merely happened to be in the foreground of a shot of a scenic building? Maybe. But if so, why had she walked away when he started toward her? Coincidence? Buchanan couldn’t afford to accept that explanation. Too much had gone wrong. And nothing was ever simple. There was always a deeper level. Then if she wasn’t just a tourist, what was she? Again he asked himself, Why was she taking pictures of me? The lack of an answer disturbed him as much as the threatening implications. He had only one consolation. At least, when she’d lowered the camera, turning to walk away, he’d gotten a good look at her face.

And he would remember it.

ACAPULCO, MEXICO

Among the many yachts in the resort’s famous bay, one in particular attracted Esteban Delgado’s attention. It was brilliant white against the gleaming green-blue of the Pacific. It was approximately two hundred feet long, he judged, comparing its length to familiar landmarks. It had three decks and a helicopter secured to the top. It was sculpted so that the decks curved like a hunting knife down to the point of the bow. Behind the decks, at the stern, a large sunning area-designed to allow voyeurs to peer down unobserved from the upper windows of the looming decks-was terribly familiar. If Delgado hadn’t known for certain, if his assistant hadn’t given him verified information less than an hour ago, Delgado would have sworn that the distinctive yacht didn’t just resemble the source of his sleepless nights and his ulcerated stomach but was in fact the very yacht, owned by his enemy, that figured so prominently in his nightmares. It didn’t matter that this yacht was called Full House, whereas the yacht he dreaded was called Poseidon, for Delgado felt sufficiently persecuted to have reached the stage of paranoia where he suspected that the yacht’s name had been altered in order to surprise him. But Delgado’s assistant had been emphatic in his assurance that as of noon today, the Poseidon, with Delgado’s enemy aboard, had been en route from the Virgin Islands to Miami.

Nonetheless, Delgado kept staring from the floor-to-ceiling window of his mansion. He ignored the music, laughter, and motion of the party around the pool on the terrace below him. He ignored the women, so many beautiful women. He ignored the flowering shrubs and trees that flanked the expensive pink vacation homes similar to his, carved into the slope below him. Instead, he focused his gaze beyond the Costera Miguel Aleman boulevard that rimmed the bay, past the deluxe hotels and the spectacular beach. The yacht alone occupied him. The yacht and the yacht it resembled and the secret that Delgado’s enemy used to control him.

Abruptly something distracted him. It wasn’t unexpected, although it was certainly long anticipated, a dark limousine reflecting sunlight, coming into view on the slope’s curving road, veering through the gates, past the guards. He brooded, squinting, hot despite the room’s powerful air conditioning. His surname had always been coincidentally appropriate for him, inasmuch as Delgado meant “thin,” and even as a boy he’d been tall and slender, but lately he had heard whispered, concerned remarks about his appearance, about how much weight he had recently lost and how his carefully tailored suits now looked loose on him. His associates suspected that his weight loss was due to disease (AIDS, it was rumored), but they were wrong.

It was due to torment.

A knock at the door interrupted his distraction and jerked him back to full awareness. “What is it?” he asked, betraying no hint of tension in his voice.

A bodyguard replied huskily beyond the door, “Your guest has arrived, Senor Delgado.”

Wiping his clammy hands on a towel at the bar, assuming the confident demeanor of the second most powerful man in Mexico’s government, he announced, “Show him in.”