David Morrell - Assumed Identity

He glanced both ways along the street, out of habit watching the shadows for any sign that the house was under surveillance. If Juana was in trouble, as the postcard and her failure to meet him suggested, if she was on the run-which would explain why she hadn’t shown up at Cafe du Monde-there was a possibility that her enemies would watch her parents in case she contacted them in person or telephoned and inadvertently revealed where she was. The Juana who’d been in the military would never have let anyone know the name and location of her parents. But a great deal could have happened in the intervening six years. She might have foolishly trusted someone enough to give that person information that was now being used against her, although being foolish had never been one of Juana’s characteristics.

Except maybe for falling in love with Peter Lang.

The street suggested no threat. There weren’t any vehicles parked on this block. No one was loitering at a corner, pretending to wait for a bus. Lights in the other houses revealed what appeared to be normal family activity. Someone might have been hiding in bushes, of course, although in this neighborhood where everybody seemed to take pride, a prowler on long-term surveillance wouldn’t be able to hide easily, especially from the German shepherd that a man was walking on a leash along the opposite sidewalk. Still, that was assuming the man with the dog was not himself on surveillance.

Buchanan took just a few seconds to register all this. From someone else’s point of view, he would have seemed merely a visitor who’d paused to comb his hair before walking up to the house. The night was mild, with the fallen-leaf fragrance of autumn. As he stopped on the brick porch and pushed a button, he heard not only the doorbell but the muted sound of a laugh track on a television sitcom. Then he heard footsteps on a hardwood floor, and a shadow appeared at the window of the front door.

A light came on above him. He saw an Hispanic woman-in her late fifties, with shoulder-length black hair and an appealing oval face-peer out at him. Her intense dark eyes suggested intelligence and perception. They reminded him of Juana, although he didn’t know for sure that this woman was Juana’s mother. He had never met her parents. There was no name on the mailbox or beneath the doorbell. Juana’s parents might have moved during the past six years. They might even have died. When he arrived in San Antonio, Buchanan had been tempted to check a phone book to see whether they still lived at this address, but by then he was so anxious to reach the house that he hadn’t wanted to waste even a minute. He would know soon enough, he’d told himself.

An amateur might have phoned from New Orleans, and if he managed to contact Juana’s parents, that amateur might have tried to elicit information from them about whether Juana was in trouble. If so, he would have failed, or the information he received would have been suspect. Most people were gullible, but even a fool tended to hold back when confronted by personal questions from a stranger using a telephone, no matter how good that stranger’s cover story was. A telephone was a lazy operative’s way of doing research. Whenever possible, face-to-face contact was the best method of obtaining information, and when the military had transferred Buchanan for training at the CIA’s Farm in Virginia, Buchanan had quickly acquired a reputation as being skilled at what was called in the trade elicitation. His instructor’s favorite assignment had been to send his students into various local bars during happy hour. The students were to strike up conversations with strangers, and in the course of an hour, they had to gain the trust of those strangers to such a degree that each stranger would reveal the day, month, and year of his birth, as well as his Social Security number. Experience had proved to the instructor that such personal information was almost impossible to learn in a first-time encounter. How could you invent a casual question that would prompt someone you’d never met to blurt out his Social Security number? More than likely, your question would result in suspicion rather than information. All of the students in the class had failed-except for Buchanan.

The Hispanic woman unlocked the door and opened it, although she didn’t release the security chain. Speaking through the five-inch gap in the door, she looked puzzled. “Yes?”

“Senora Mendez?”

“ Si. ”

“ Perdone. I know it’s late. My name’s Jeff Walker, and I’m a friend of your daughter.” Buchanan used the Spanish he’d learned at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, when he’d been preparing for his mission into Mexico. “I haven’t seen her in several years, and I don’t know where she lives, I’m visiting town for a couple of days, and. . Well, I hoped that she was around. Can you tell me where to find her?”

Juana’s mother studied him with suspicion. However, her suspicion seemed tempered by an appreciation that he was using Spanish. Juana had told him that while her parents were bilingual, they much preferred speaking Spanish and they felt slighted when whites whom they knew spoke Spanish forced them to speak English.

“ Conoce a mi hija? ”

“ Si, ” Buchanan continued in Spanish. “I know your Juana. We were in the military together. I knew her when she was stationed here at Fort Sam Houston.” That had been one of Juana’s cover assignments. Although she had worked with Army Intelligence and was affiliated with Special Forces at Fort Bragg, her ostensible assignment had been with the Fifth Army headquarters here in San Antonio. “We got along real well. Several times, we went out together. I guess you could say. . Well, we were close. I wish I’d kept in touch with her. But I was overseas for a while and. . I’d sure like the chance to say hello.”

Juana’s mother continued to study him with suspicion. Buchanan was certain that if he hadn’t been speaking Spanish and if he hadn’t mentioned Fort Sam Houston, she wouldn’t have listened to him this long. He needed something else to establish his credibility. “Do you still have that dog? The golden retriever? What was his name? Pepe. Yeah. Juana sure loved that dog. When she wasn’t talking about baseball, she was talking about him. Said she liked to take Pepe out for a run along the river when she wasn’t on duty.”

The mother’s suspicion began to dissolve. “No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The dog. Pepe. He died last year.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that, Senora Mendez. Losing a pet can be like. . Juana must have taken it hard.”

“You say your name is Jeff Walker?”

“That’s right.” Buchanan made sure to stand straight, as if his character retained habits of bearing from when he’d been in the military.

“I don’t remember her mentioning you.”

“Well, six years is a while ago. Juana certainly told me a lot about you. The way I hear it, you make the best chicken fajitas in town.”

The mother smiled slightly. “Those were always Juana’s favorite.” The smile became a frown. “I would remember you if I’d met you before. Why didn’t Juana ever bring you to the house?”

I’ve got another “why,” Buchanan thought with growing concern. Why so many questions? What the hell’s going on?

Two blocks along the street, a small gray van was parked in front of a house with a FOR SALE sign on the lawn. The van had been parked there for several days, but the neighbors had not been troubled by its presence. On the contrary, they felt reassured because the van’s driver, a private detective, had paid a visit to everyone who lived on that block and had explained that recent vandalism in the neighborhood had prompted a security firm with clients in the area to dispatch a guard to keep a watch on several homes in the district, particularly the vacant house, which seemed a natural target for vandals. If the neighbors had telephoned the number on the business card that they were given, a professional-sounding secretary would have told them that what the private detective had said was correct. The man did work for the firm. What the secretary would not have said, of course, was that she was speaking from an almost-empty one-room downtown office, and that the security firm had not existed two weeks ago.