David Lindsey - The Face of the Assassin

He stood up from the desk and went down the hall to get a bucket of ice. From the minibar, he took a miniature bottle of gin and some tonic and made a drink. No lime. He really wished he had a lime. He stared out the windows again. The freeway was packed now as the rush-hour traffic began to build up.

Picking up the telephone, he called home and listened to his voice mail. Several messages, though none from Becca Haber. But there was a curious one. A man’s voice. He said only, “Important that you call me,” then gave a number. No name. Houston area code.

Bern was beginning to lose patience with apparent coincidences. He took another drink of gin, picked up the telephone again, and dialed the number.

“Hello.”

“Who is this?” Bern asked.

There was a momentary pause and then the man said, “Hello, Paul. How odd that you are in Houston.”

“Who is this?” Bern repeated.

“Vicente Mondragon,” the man said. “I knew your brother.”

It was a strange moment. Though Bern had convinced himself that the skull that he had reconstructed in Austin was indeed that of his brother, to hear this idea-never before even imagined by him-confirmed so casually by a stranger was disorienting.

“I’m sorry,” Mondragon said. “I know you must be horribly confused by what is happening to you. I would like to explain some of it to you, if I may. Can you meet with me this evening?”

Bern felt a flurry of emotions, some of which he couldn’t explain. On the one hand, he was eager to talk to this man, but on the other, he was furious at being jerked around like this, and, rightly or wrongly, he immediately blamed this Mondragon for it. Also he was, irrationally, angry at the sound of Mondragon’s voice, which was mellow and sophisticated. But there was also something else about it, too, a hint of a speech impediment. That, and an air of the imperious.

“Where? When?”

“I’ll have someone pick you up at eight-thirty.”

“Just give me an address. I’ll be there.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to insist,” Mondragon said.

Washington, D.C.

It was already dark as Gordon pulled into the parking lot of a low-dollar motel on Jefferson Davis Highway near Reagan International. He locked his car and went inside, where he found Kevern in the stale gloom of the cocktail lounge. He had commandeered a relatively quiet corner, despite the creepy piped-in music. Gordon quickly ordered a scotch and soda and Kevern tapped the tabletop for another one of whatever he was having. Gordon just wanted to get it over with.

“When’s your flight?” he asked.

Kevern looked at his thick wrist.

“Coupla hours.” He was wearing a white guayabera, and his hairy, muscular forearms rested on the table.

“Okay,” Gordon said. “You’ve got your clearance for your jump start. The Bern deal’s a go. But I’m telling you, they broke into a collective sweat before they checked off on it. Lots of discussion, some of it heated. Lots of agonizing.”

Kevern nodded.

Gordon stared at him in the silly, moony light of the lounge. Expressway atmo. Jesus.

Kevern asked, “So… how’d you handle Mondragon’s Tepito thing?”

Gordon didn’t flinch. “I didn’t.”

Kevern was a sphinx, but Gordon knew that he understood the implications of two of Gordon’s decisions. One, he’d given Kevern the break he wanted. The drug hit in Tepito was the official story and would remain the official story. If the Heavy Rain group had learned the truth, they would have pulled the plug on the operation. Two, the only way Gordon was able to push through the Bern operation was by not telling the group that Kevern had already initiated it six weeks earlier.

Gordon had covered for Kevern twice and had lied to the group twice by omission. Kevern owed him. But there was a flip side.

“Now, give me the downside,” Kevern said.

Gordon didn’t even offer a preface.

“If either the Tepito slaughter or your six-week jump on the Bern operation ever come to light,” Gordon said, “I’ll deny I knew anything about it. I’ll swear to that in court. I’ll swear to that before a special intelligence panel. I’ll sign documents to that effect. You stepped out into the void all alone on this one, Lex, and whatever happens to you as a result, you’ll have to deal with all by yourself.”

Kevern’s expression was a mixture of sobriety and sour amusement.

“Well, I appreciate it, Gordy,” Kevern said. The irony of his remark wasn’t lost on Gordon. “That’s one of the benefits of being up here in Washington, isn’t it?”

Gordon waited for the explanation that he knew Kevern wanted to lay out for him.

“I mean,” Kevern said, “you think this little scheme just might work after all, don’t you? Fuckin’ twisty, you think. Twisty and, by God, maybe a real possibility. And if it does work, well, then all the talk up here is, ‘Goddamn, old Gordy, he’s an ace. You want a clandestine op to go sweet, get Gordy. Hell, let’s promote him.’

“On the other hand, if this thing goes south, well, nobody can blame you. Your man got killed, for Christ’s sake. And then you had the nuts to get innovative to try to save the thing. Hell, heroic effort. Slap on the back.”

Kevern wasn’t smiling. Gordon wasn’t going to respond. He’d learned a long time ago about the interpretive possibilities of silence. He took a drink of the scotch.

Kevern, still not smiling, took a drink of whatever he was having.

Gordon could taste the lingering essence of scotch at the back of his sinuses.

“I’ve got to tell you, though,” Gordon said. “You have to rein in Mondragon. The group’s more indulgent these days about the contractors we deal with, but I’d say that Mondragon pushes the limit of their indulgence.”

Kevern strung out a long grunt under his breath, as if he were straining at something.

“And I’m really going to worry about the limit of their indulgence,” he said.

“Listen to me.” Gordon lowered his voice and leaned forward. “These people sit on the NSC, for Christ’s sake. You do something stupid, you bring them blowback, and they’ll hang you out to dry so fast, your nuts will shrivel up like they were freeze-dried.”

Kevern’s thick neck seemed to swell even thicker when he was holding in his temper.

“Cobalt-sixty,” he grunted slowly. “Cesium-one-thirty-seven. Plutonium. And that’s just the little stuff. But I doubt if Baida’s even bothering to put anything together at that level. We’ve been through this… shit”-he shook his head-“how many times? Intel points to something bigger. We think he’s been at it-what, nearly two years? That points to a significant scheme, something complex. Complex means big.

“I’d piss off a whole army of NSCs to get Paul Bern next to Ghazi Baida, because the alternative is just too fucking freaky. And if Mondragon can help me do that, I don’t much care who he shits on in the process, and I care even less about some Washington fatties’ limits of indulgence.”

This was precisely the kind of situation that drove Gordon mad. The intelligence about Ghazi Baida was grim and scary, like the rumors of a beast lumbering through the night in your direction. If you don’t act on the rumor and it turns out to be a reality, then you’re screwed and people will die in numbers so large that it will change the way historians will write about the century.

But if you do act, you do so with the full knowledge that the only way to stop the beast coming after you is to send your own beast out into the night to meet him. And your beast has to be fed and nurtured and indulged and treated in the same way you’d treat a friend or someone you respected. You have to collude with him, and abet. You have to get close enough to him to feel his warmth and smell his breath. And you have to do all of that knowing full well that he isn’t any different from or any better than the beast you are sending him out to meet. Except that your beast doesn’t want to eat you, and the other one does.