Robert Bidinotto - Hunter

“I bet he was floored.”

“He’s pretty reserved about showing his feelings. But let’s say that it was not at all what he had planned to be doing with his life. Over the next hour, I explained-as honestly and graphically as I could-the sort of contributions he might make. And the personal costs. He listened without saying a word, looking straight into my eyes the whole time. When I finished, I told him to sleep on it, and I called the waitress over for the bill.

“I’ll never forget the expression that came over his face. It had been tight, completely intense. All of a sudden, it relaxed. He looked slowly around the room, at things on the walls, at his fellow students. Then he picked up his mug of beer, drained it, and set it back down on the table, very deliberately. He held my eyes, stuck out his hand, and said: ‘I don’t have to sleep on it, Don. I’m in.’”

She glanced again at the photo, now lying on the coffee table. “As you say, an extraordinary young man. And now-he’s gone?”

“But not forgotten. His subsequent career in the Agency-if we could tell it-would be the stuff of legends.”

It baffled her. “How does a man like that go rogue and become an assassin?”

“That brings us back to motive,” Garrett answered, sitting down again. “Matt Malone had every reason in the world to hate and want to kill James Muller. You see, Malone was one of the officers that Muller betrayed to Moscow.”

“Oh!”

“So that’s motive. He also had opportunity-because he knew about the safe house. In fact, he’d been there himself once, to conduct an interrogation.”

Kessler said, “And also believe us when we say: He had the means. Many times, he had proven in the field just how lethal he could be.”

She paused, turning it over in her mind. “Okay. I believe you. Still, I’m having trouble getting my head around this. His motivation, mainly. Sure, Muller blew his cover, and he was pissed off. But assassination? That seems a bit over the top.”

The two men exchanged glances.

“It’s more than just being blown,” Garrett said. “After Muller tipped off the Russians, they tried to assassinate Malone. That was almost three years ago, March. He was in Afghanistan as an interrogator attached to a black ops team. The Russkies lured him into an ambush. They had a bomb waiting. Malone barely survived it. His face in particular was a mess. We flew him back to Walter Reed. He underwent extensive reconstructive plastic surgery.” He looked at her, said quietly: “Your late friend, Dr. Copeland, did the surgery himself.”

“Arthur?” she said. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He was the best.”

“Imagine what that must have been like, Annie,” Kessler said. “Sure, we all take risks in this business. It’s part of the game. But you don’t expect to be betrayed by one of your own. You don’t expect to have your career, let alone your appearance, annihilated by a traitor.”

She stared at the face in the photo, hating the memory of James Muller even more. “So you’re sure he did it.”

“Malone is a stellar marksman. It all fits. No other explanation does.”

“We had it all wrong, then,” she said, sighing. She turned the photo around to face them. “You say he had plastic surgery, but this is an old shot. What does he look like now?”

Garrett shrugged. “I’d like to show you something more recent, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“There isn’t one.”

“But don’t we-”

“Not for him.” He leaned back and propped a foot against the edge of the coffee table. “There’s no file, either. We have nothing on him. Not even fingerprints. I’ll explain in a moment. In fact, it’s sheer dumb luck we have this single photo. It shouldn’t exist. It was taken surreptitiously by a Special Ops Group team member in Afghanistan. To impress his girlfriend, he admitted later. We canned the idiot for that; but he should consider himself lucky, because if Malone had known, he would’ve probably killed him. Anyway, it wound up at the bottom of the SOG guy’s file, and it turned up only after we began searching for anything that could help us find Malone.”

“Find him?”

Garrett said, “Two months after his admission to Walter Reed, he vanished from his hospital bed. That was the night before Dr. Copeland was going to remove the bandages from his final round of plastic surgery.”

Allegheny National Forest Tionesta, Pennsylvania

Thirty-one Months Earlier-May 15, 3:45 p.m.

“Who are you?”

The lips on the stranger’s face in the bathroom mirror moved, perfectly in synch with his own.

He stood frozen in place, unable to make sense of what he was seeing.

For weeks, he thought he’d accepted what had happened to him. With his usual cockiness, he figured he was prepared. In fact, he’d been eager for this moment.

But that was before he stared into this mirror-into the haunted eyes of a pale, swollen, bruised, unshaven face that he no longer recognized.

He exhaled loudly, suddenly aware that he’d been holding his breath. He shook his head-but stopped when the stranger shook his, too.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, louder.

The stranger’s lips had moved again. And this time the voice registered. Deeper than his own. Not quite raspy, but huskier. The same trauma that had done this to his face had done something funny to his vocal cords, too.

He stopped.

His face? His voice?

His heart was pounding and his head began to spin. He had to look away. He lurched to the bathroom doorway and leaned against the frame, stomach churning, fighting down the bitter taste rising in his throat.

The rustic living room swam before him dimly, gloomy from the towering oaks and pines that cloaked the cabin in perpetual shadow.

He noticed his duffle bag on the bare planks of the floor, where he’d dropped it a few minutes ago. Nearby, his worn leather jacket, draped over the back of an old wooden chair.

His eyes drifted to the double-barreled Mossberg he’d propped near the screen door that led onto the front porch.

Outside, the wind hissed through the leaves of the forest. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed.

A faint medicinal smell reminded him that he still gripped the remnants of the bandages he’d just cut from his face. He lifted the white tangle and noticed brown streaks of dried blood on it. Instinctively, he opened his hand to drop it, but the surgical tape stuck to his fingers. He waved his hand, but it still clung tightly. He shook his hand wildly, two, three times, grunting like an animal. The stained white wad finally spun off into the middle of the room, landing beneath the knotty-pine coffee table.

He was sweating now, and shivering. His tongue felt like a thick rag. He knew he was losing it. As he’d been trained, he closed his eyes, imagined himself on a puffy cloud, counted slowly as he struggled to control his breathing.

He wanted to step into the living room. But he couldn’t move. He knew he had to look again. Had to force himself to come to terms with what he had become.

He turned slowly. At first, he didn’t dare look into the mirror. He bent over the sink, propping himself on shaky arms. He remained that way for a moment, eyes down, staring at the rough floorboards beneath his boots. Until the knots and swirls in the wood grain arranged themselves into an Edvard Munch image of a distorted, howling face.

He clenched his teeth. Raised his gaze to the mirror.

The haunted stranger with the bruised jaw and swollen cheeks still stared back at him.

“Who am I?” the stranger whispered at him.

*

For several days after he arrived, he could barely muster the will to unpack necessities, which he left scattered around the cabin. He didn’t eat much or go out. Didn’t read or listen to the radio. Didn’t bother to clean up or shave, either. He didn’t want to look again into the bathroom mirror.