David Morrell - Assumed Identity

He tensed.

“Buchanan?” The voice was familiar. It belonged to the portly man who called himself Alan. But the voice sounded wary, troubled. “Buchanan?”

Uneasy, Buchanan didn’t want to respond to that name. Nonetheless, he showed himself, careful to keep partially in the shadows of the bedroom.

Alan turned, his expression a mixture of concern and surprise.

“Don’t you believe in knocking?” Buchanan asked.

“Well. .” Alan rubbed his right hand against his brown-checkered sport coat, awkward. “I thought you might be sleeping and. .”

“So you decided to make yourself at home until I woke up?”

“No,” Alan said. “Uh, not exactly.”

“Then what exactly?” The man was normally confident to the point of being brusque, but now he was behaving out of character.

What was going on?

“I just thought I’d check on you to make sure you were all right.”

“Well, why wouldn’t I be?”

“You, uh, you were upset in the car and. .”

“Yes? And what?”

“Nothing. I just. . I guess I made a mistake.”

Buchanan stepped completely from the darkness of the bedroom. Approaching, he noticed Alan direct his gaze furtively, nervously, toward a section of the ceiling in the far-right corner.

Ah, Buchanan thought. So the place is wired-and not just with microphones.

With hidden cameras. Needle-nosed.

Yesterday when Buchanan had arrived, he’d felt relieved to have reached a haven. There’d been no reason for him to suspect the intentions of his controllers and hence no reason for him to check the apartment to see if it was bugged. Later, after last night’s conversation with Alan, Buchanan had felt disturbed, preoccupied by the postcard, by the unexpected echo of one of his lives six years ago. It hadn’t occurred to him to check the apartment. What would have been the point? Aside from the man who called himself Alan, there was no one to talk to and thus nothing for hidden microphones to overhear.

But video surveillance was a different matter. And far more serious, Buchanan thought. Something about me spooks them enough that they want to keep extremely close tabs on me.

But what? What would spook them?

For starters, being catatonic all afternoon and half the evening. I must have scared the hell out of whoever’s watching me. They sent Alan down to see if I’d cracked up. The way Alan keeps pawing at his sport coat. After I bruised his arm this morning, he’s probably deciding whether I’m disturbed enough that he’ll have to draw his handgun.

Meanwhile, the cameras are transmitting every move I make.

But Alan doesn’t want me to know that.

Buchanan felt liberated. The sense of being on stage gave him the motivation he needed to act the part of himself.

“I knocked,” Alan said. “I guess you didn’t hear me. Since you’re not supposed to leave the apartment, I wondered if something had happened to you.” Alan seemed less nervous now that he’d come up with a believable cover story. He gestured with growing confidence. “That injury to your head. Maybe you’d hurt it again. Maybe you’d slipped in the shower or something. So I decided to let myself in and check. I debrief operatives here a lot, so I always have a key.”

“I guess I ought to be flattered that you care.”

“Hey, you’re not the easiest guy to get along with.” Alan rubbed his right elbow. “But I do my job and look after the people assigned to me.”

“Listen,” Buchanan said. “About what happened in the car this morning. . I’m sorry.”

Alan shrugged.

“A lot’s been happening. I guess I’m having trouble getting used to not being under pressure.”

Again Alan shrugged. “Understandable. Sometimes an operative still feels the pressure even when it’s gone.”

“Speaking of which. .”

“What?”

“Pressure.”

Buchanan felt it in his abdomen. He pointed toward the bathroom, went in, shut the door, and emptied his bladder.

He assumed that the bathroom, like the other rooms in the apartment, would have a needle-nosed camera concealed in a wall. But whether he was being observed while he urinated made no difference to him. Even if he had felt self-conscious, he would never have permitted himself to show it.

And even if his bladder hadn’t insisted, he would still have gone into the bathroom

As a diversion.

Because he needed time to be away from Alan. He needed time to think.

Here’s the postcard I never thought I’d send. I hope you meant your promise. The last time and place. Counting on you. PLEASE.

Buchanan stepped from the bathroom, its toilet flushing. “Last night, you mentioned something about R and R.”

Alan squinted, suspicious. “That’s right.”

“Well, you call this being on R and R? Being caged in here?”

“I told you, Don Colton’s supposed to be invisible. If you start wandering in and out, the neighbors will think you’re him, and when the next Don Colton shows up, they’ll get suspicious.”

“But what if I’m out of here? Me. Buchanan. A furlough. I haven’t had one in eight years. Who’d notice? Who’d care?”

“Furlough?”

“Under my own name. Might do me some good to be myself for a change.”

Alan cocked his head, squinting, nonetheless betraying his interest.

“Next week, I’m supposed to go back to that doctor,” Buchanan said. “By then, maybe your people and the colonel will have decided what to do with me.”

“I don’t have the authority to make that decision alone.”

“Talk with the colonel,” Buchanan said.

Alan continued to look interested. “Where would you go? Since you don’t have a passport, it can’t be out of the country.”

“I wouldn’t want to leave the country, anyhow. Not that far. South. New Orleans. Two days from now is Halloween. A person can have a damned good time in New Orleans on Halloween.”

“I heard that,” Alan said. “In fact, I heard that a person can have a damned good time in New Orleans any time.”

Buchanan nodded. His request would be granted.

But he wouldn’t be going as himself.

No way, he thought.

He’d be stepping back six years.

He’d be reinventing himself to be the person he was then. A hundred lifetimes ago.

A once-happy man who liked jazz, mint juleps, and red beans with rice.

A charter pilot named Peter Lang who’d had the tragic love affair of his life.

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

Pilots-especially when being a pilot is not their true occupation and they need to establish an assumed identity-ought to fly. Instead, Buchanan-Lang took the train to New Orleans.

That method of travel had several advantages. One was that he found it relaxing. Another was that it was private, inasmuch as he’d been able to get a sleeper compartment. Still another was that it took a while, filling the time. After all, he didn’t have anything to do until Halloween the next evening. Certainly he could have spent the day sight-seeing in New Orleans. But the fact was, he was quite familiar with New Orleans, its docks, the French Quarter, the Garden District, Lake Pontchartrain, Antoine’s restaurant, Preservation Hall, and most of all, the exotic cemeteries. Peter Lang had a fascination with exotic cemeteries. He visited them whenever he could. Buchanan didn’t allow himself to analyze the implications.

However, the major reason for taking the train instead of flying was that there wasn’t any metal-detector and X-ray security at train stations. Thus he could bring the 9-mm Beretta pistol that Jack Doyle had given him in Fort Lauderdale. It was wedged between two shirts and two changes of underwear, along with Victor Grant’s passport, next to the toilet kit in the small canvas travel bag that Buchanan had been carrying with him since Florida. As his confusion about his employers and about himself continued to aggravate him, he was grateful that he’d lied about the passport and that he hadn’t told anyone about the handgun. The passport and the gun gave him options. They allowed him potential freedom. That he’d never before lied to a debriefer should perhaps have troubled him. It should perhaps have warned him that he was more disturbed than he realized, that the blow to his head had been more serious than he knew. But as he sat next to the window of his locked compartment, listening to the clack-clack-clack of the wheels on the rails, watching the brilliant autumn colors of the Virginia countryside, he persistently rubbed his aching head and was grateful that he hadn’t tried to conceal the handgun somewhere in Don Colton’s apartment. If he had, the cameras would have exposed him. As it was, his story had evidently been convincing. Otherwise, his controllers wouldn’t have given him money as well as ID in his real name and then have allowed him to take this brief trip.