David Morrell - Assumed Identity

Problems? Buchanan thought. The kind of problems I’ve got, you can’t solve.

Here’s the postcard I never thought I’d send.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Buchanan asked as they drove along the Little River Turnpike from Fairfax back to Alexandria. The day was gray, a late-October drizzle speckling the windshield.

The man who called himself Alan glanced at him, then peered forward again, concentrating on traffic. He turned on the windshield wipers. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Why have I been exposed?”

As the drizzle changed to rain, the man turned on the windshield defroster. “Exposed? What makes you think. .?”

Buchanan stared at him.

The man turned on the headlights.

“There’s not much left,” Buchanan said, “for you to toy with and avoid the question. What are you going to do next? Turn on the radio and keep switching stations, or pull over and start changing the oil?”

“What are you talking about, Buchanan?”

“That. My name. For the first time in eight years, people are using it openly. I’m deliberately being compromised. Why?”

“I told you last night. It’s time for a rest.”

“That doesn’t justify violating basic rules.”

“Hey, the doctor has a security clearance.”

“It was a needless violation,” Buchanan said. “He certainly didn’t need to know who I was in order to assess a CAT scan. And he mentioned the wound in my shoulder, but he didn’t get a look at that shoulder, and I didn’t tell him about it. What else has he been told that he didn’t need to know? How I got the wound?”

“Of course not.”

“Sure. I bet. This isn’t just a rest. I’m not just in limbo. I’m being eased out. Am I right?”

The man steered into the passing lane.

“I asked you a question. Am I being eased out?”

“Nothing lasts forever, Buchanan.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“What should I call you? Who the hell do you think you are?”

Buchanan’s skull throbbed. He didn’t have an answer.

“An operative with your talent and experience could do a lot of good as a trainer,” Alan said.

Buchanan didn’t respond.

“Did you expect to work under cover all your life?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Come on,” the man said. “I fail to believe that.”

“I meant what I said. I literally never thought about it. I never thought beyond who I was during any given assignment. If you start planning your retirement while you’re working under cover, you start making mistakes. You forget who you’re supposed to be. You fall out of character. That’s a great way to ensure you don’t live long enough for the retirement you’re not supposed to be planning.”

“Well, you’d better think about it now.”

Buchanan’s skull ached more fiercely. “Why is this being done to me? I didn’t screw up. Nothing that happened was my fault. I compensated perfectly. The operation wasn’t damaged.”

“Ah, but it could have been.”

“That still would not have been my fault,” Buchanan said.

“We’re not discussing fault. We’re discussing what did and didn’t happen and what almost happened. Maybe you’ve become unlucky. The bottom line is you’re thirty-two. In this game, that makes you a senior citizen. Eight years? Christ, it’s amazing you’re still alive. It’s time to walk away.”

“The fact that I’m still alive proves how good I am. I don’t deserve. .”

The rain increased, drumming on the car’s roof. The windshield wipers flapped harder.

“Did you ever see your file?”

Despite his pain, Buchanan shook his head.

“Would you like to?”

“No.”

“The psychological profile is very revealing.”

“I’m not interested.”

“You’ve got what’s called a ‘dissociative personality.’”

“I told you, I’m not interested.”

The man changed lanes again, maintaining speed despite the rain. “I’m not a psychologist, but the file made sense to me. You don’t like yourself. You do everything you can to keep from looking inward. You split away. You identify with people and objects around you. You objectify. You. . dissociate.”

Buchanan frowned ahead at the traffic obscured by the rain.

“In average society, that condition would be a liability,” the man continued. “But your trainers realized what a prize they had when their computer responded to a survey by choosing your profile. In high school, you’d already demonstrated a talent-perhaps a better term is compulsion- for acting. At Benning and Bragg, your Special Ops commanders gave you glowing reports for your combat skills. Considering the unique slant of your personality, all that remained to qualify you was even more specialized training at the Farm.”

“I don’t want to hear any more,” Buchanan said.

“You’re an ideal undercover operative. It’s no wonder you were able to assume multiple identities for eight years, and that your commanders thought you were capable of doing so without breaking down. Hell, yes. You’d already broken down. Working under cover was the way you healed. You hated yourself so much that you’d do anything, you’d suffer anything for the chance not to be yourself.”

Buchanan calmly reached out and grasped the man’s right elbow.

“Hey,” the man said.

Buchanan’s middle finger found the nerve he wanted.

“ Hey, ” the man repeated.

Buchanan squeezed.

The man screamed. Jerking from pain, he caused the car to swerve, its rear tires fishtailing on the wet, slick pavement. Behind and in the passing lane, other drivers swerved in startled response and blared their horns.

“Now the way this is going to work,” Buchanan said, “is either you’ll shut up or else you’ll feel what it’s like to lose control of a car doing fifty-five miles an hour.”

The man’s face was the color of concrete. His mouth hung open in agony. Sweat beaded his brow as he struggled to keep control of the car.

He nodded.

“Good,” Buchanan said. “I knew we could reach an understanding.” Releasing his grip, he sat rigidly straight and looked forward.

The man mumbled something.

“What?” Buchanan asked.

“Nothing,” the man answered.

“That’s what I thought.”

But Buchanan knew what the man had said.

Because of your brother.

“What’s he doing now?” the man who called himself Alan asked as he entered the apartment directly above Buchanan’s.

“Nothing,” the muscular man, Major Putnam, said. He sipped from a Styrofoam cup of coffee and watched the television monitors. Again he wore civilian clothes.

“Well, he must be doing something .” Alan glanced around the apartment. The colonel and Captain Weller weren’t around.

“Nope,” Major Putnam said. “Nothing. When he came in, I figured he’d pour himself a drink, go to the bathroom, read a magazine, watch television, do exercises, whatever. But all he did was go over to the sofa. There he is. That’s what he’s been doing since you left him. Nothing.”

Alan approached the row of television monitors. Massaging his right elbow where the nerve that Buchanan had pinched still troubled him, he frowned at a black-and-white image of Buchanan sitting on the sofa. “Jesus.”

Buchanan sat bolt straight, motionless, his expression rigid, his intense gaze focused on a chair across from him.

“Jesus,” Alan repeated. “He’s catatonic. Does the colonel know about this?”

“I phoned him.”

“And?”