David Lindsey - The Face of the Assassin

“I know a guy in the Houston Police Department’s Intelligence Division,” Bern heard himself say. “If he told me I was in good company, I’d believe him.”

“What is his name?” Mondragon asked.

“Mitchell Cooper.”

Mondragon nodded. “I’m going to leave you for a little while and make a phone call. When I return, we can continue to talk.”

He rose to his feet and walked away into the shadows, and almost immediately the young woman appeared again. This time, she actually seemed to see Bern and smiled.

“I understand you may want something to drink,” she said.

She was right about that. “Tanqueray and tonic,” he said. “And a good slice of lime, if you have it.”

She nodded and left. Bern took a deep breath. This thing did not reach a point of correction. It just kept going and going further out into the unknown, breaking all bonds of gravity as it went. What was going to bring him back?

The woman returned with his drink, and he sat alone, waiting, drinking. The gin was welcome. Several times, he turned and looked back toward the floating faces. Jesus. He stared at the city glittering in the darkness behind the chair where Mondragon had been sitting. This was an evening he wasn’t likely to forget very soon.

He had almost finished his drink when the woman reappeared and approached him, handing him a cell phone.

“Mr. Cooper,” she said.

Bern took the phone, clearing his throat. “Mitchell?”

“Yeah, Paul. You okay?”

“I’m fine, sure. I appreciate the call.”

“Well, look, I, uh, I guess you know what this is all about. I just got a call from a friend of mine, who’s going to have to remain nameless. He, uh, he’s CIA, Paul. Maybe you actually know more here than I do.”

He paused, inviting a response, but Bern didn’t seize the opportunity. Cooper went on.

“Anyway, I guess the point is that I’ve known this man a lot of years, in intelligence work, and he’s… reliable. I trust him. I understand you need to know that. I’d trust him with whatever I had to. He told me that you’re talking to a guy-wouldn’t give me his name-and my man says he’s to be trusted, too. You can believe him, okay?”

“Yeah, okay, then.”

“Now listen,” Cooper added. “That being said, I don’t know what’s going on there, but… well, those people, these are curious times. Lots of hocus-pocus going on in the intelligence world right now. Just be careful. Whatever. Anyway, I want you to know that all I’m vouching for is that I trust this guy who called me. I, personally, am not vouching for whoever you’re talking to. I mean, I can’t do that, obviously.” He hesitated. “You get what I’m saying here?”

“I do. Sure. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah. Okay. I guess that’s it, then… You sure you’re okay? You sound kind of funny.”

“No, I’m fine, Mitchell. I appreciate the help. Sorry that we had to bother you.”

“Well, okay. No problem from this end. I hope it’s what you wanted to hear.”

That was it. Bern handed the cell phone back to the woman, who had been waiting, and she went away.

Mondragon appeared immediately after the woman’s departure and returned to his dark leather chair, resuming his position in the partial shadows. An inch or so of the white cuffs of his shirtsleeves glowed in the low light as they rested on the arms of the chair. Bern could just make out the whites of Mondragon’s lidless eyeballs through the slanting shadow.

“That was impressive,” Bern admitted.

“Do you feel better now?”

“I feel better. I can’t say I feel comfortable.”

This elicited no response from Mondragon. They sat in silence a moment, and then Mondragon said, “You will find this interesting, Mr. Bern. Your brother was also an artist. It was his profession as well as his cover. He had what I think you would call classical training. He studied in London. I don’t remember where exactly. He was a very good draughtsman. His nudes were elegant, more than mere academic exercises. They were… human. But he excelled at portraiture. His portraits were exceptionally fine, I think. He got behind the eyes of his subjects, into their minds. I think it was his ability to see.. . underneath a face that enabled him to excel as an intelligence officer.”

An unfamiliar feeling surged through Bern, sending a pungent taste into his mouth. Jesus. Strangers in everything but the moment of birth, he and Jude had gravitated to an artistic medium that focused on the face, a human attribute that was famous for its infinite variety, except in rare cases such as his own.

“You are, you know, remarkably like him,” Mondragon went on. “Aside from the obvious, there are things about you that are eerily evocative of your brother. Sometimes it’s… just a gesture, the way you turn your head, or…”

Mondragon’s voice trailed off, and Bern was surprised to feel a sudden deep sorrow. It was a baffling but undeniable moment of yearning for something that could never be. If only he could have talked with Jude. The questions he would have asked flooded his thoughts, swelling and multiplying into an explosion of curiosity. And regret, regret that this extraordinary experience of having had a brother, of having been a twin, was completely beyond his reach by the time that he realized that it had even been a part of his life in the first place.

Bern had always had the reputation of being something of a loner, and now this vague sense of isolation that he had lived with, and which he had simply accepted as being his own peculiar kind of individuality, was cast in an entirely different light. There was no way that he could have known that somehow, in some tragic and inexplicable way, he had been robbed, almost from the beginning, of his second self.

“Mr. Bern.” Mondragon’s voice had a sterner tone now, which caught Bern’s attention. “Paul,” he said then, seeking to redefine their relationship. Then he paused to spritz his face and eyes. When the sparkling mist settled out of the slanting light, Bern felt a change in the tension in the room.

“As you must surely see by now,” Mondragon continued, “you are in a unique position. All the more so when you consider your situation from the point of view of your brother and his role in the unfolding events in Mexico. And more to the point, what was left undone when he was killed.”

Mondragon paused and slowly, calmly clasped his hands together in his lap. It seemed a gesture at once careful and preparatory.

“Whether he was present or not, we don’t know,” Mondragon said, “but we are sure that Ghazi Baida was responsible for Jude’s death.”

He raised a hand; the mist flew through the light.

“I will tell you something, Paul, a critical truth about hunting men. War has a thousand faces. Behind the public face of war, behind the florid rhetoric of politicians who whip up the public will to move armies and navies in pursuit of other men, the truth is that a man like Ghazi Baida is eventually brought to ground because another man possesses a relentless desire to see him brought to ground. It has always come down to the fearful, sweaty efforts of one man against another man. It has always been, and always will be, personal.”

He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice carried forcefully from the shadow and the faceless head, driven by more than breath and discipline.

“Surely you see where this is going,” he said. “We need your help, the kind of help that only you can give us. We want to use your face to find Ghazi Baida. All you have to do is cooperate with our people, who will guide you. You will not be asked to be a soldier or an assassin. You will not be asked to perform heroic and fearsome feats. Just lend us Jude’s face and body. Help us finish what he began.”