David Lindsey - The Face of the Assassin

He wasn’t sure he should tell her. He seemed to have been dropped into a world where the shapes of your friends and enemies could change even as you looked at them, where one could easily become the other, depending upon a criteria that was completely outside his understanding.

But he found himself in desperate need of a friend right now, and the tone of her voice alone seemed genuine and inviting, and he wanted to believe, as she had said he should, that he could trust her.

He closed the laptop to get the cold glare out of his face, and the shadows closed around them. He could just make out her figure on the edge of the bed, her back straight, her hands in her lap, unthreatening, almost absent of bravery.

He told her about the conversations with Mondragon and then with Mitchell Cooper. He told her of Mondragon’s proposal, of his refusal to be any part of it, and then of Mondragon’s extortion. He went on and told her of Alice and her family, of Tess’s death and Alice’s disability, and of their close relationship. He told her that he would do just about anything not to destroy his connection with that family.

When he was through, she said nothing. He waited for her to speak, to ask another question, to commiserate in some way, however perfunctorily, but she said not a word. He felt the air move through the window and pass over him.

“Tomorrow, you need to start wearing Jude’s clothes,” she said.

Jesus. He hadn’t fully appreciated how strange this was going to be. He imagined it would be like looking at himself in a mirror with his reflection out of focus, two overlapping selves.

She was studying him. “You sit the same way he did,” she said. “Exactly. It’s very strange. You cross your legs the way he did. Your hands look like his, too, and you use them the way he did.” She was speaking softly, almost meditatively. “And the way you use your voice. And show impatience.”

He could see her on the bed, her figure a little lighter than darkness.

“The way you look at me,” she went on, “my face first, absorbing it completely. You tend to look at my mouth more than my eyes when I talk. He did that.”

She suddenly stopped, as if catching herself.

“Sleep here,” she said. “I don’t want to wake up and not know where you are.”

She was quiet a moment, and he felt that he should say something, but nothing seemed quite right to him. And then the moment passed, and she stood. He could only barely see her, and at moments he wasn’t sure he could see her at all. He heard her turn back the covers, and then the barely audible rustle of her gown coming off slipped through the darkness to him like a fugitive memory. The sounds of her body moving between the covers made him ache with memories of Tess.

He opened the laptop again and made himself concentrate on the screen. It wasn’t hard, because he began with Jude’s biography file. The information was riveting, and he read until his eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sandpaper. Susana was breathing the heavy sleep of exhaustion as he returned the CD to its hiding place and plugged in the laptop to recharge.

He went back to the windows and looked down into the black trees of the park. He recalled the nude drawings that Jude had made of her. He hadn’t slept next to a woman since Tess’s death, and even though Tess had been dead for almost a year now, he couldn’t shake the odd feeling of guilt simply at the thought of crawling into bed with Susana. But it was going to be good just having her there beside him, sharing the silence and the darkness… the way it used to be.

He lost track of time by the windows. He heard sounds in the park across the narrow street. Once, he thought he heard footsteps on the sidewalk underneath the trees over there. Hours passed, it seemed-he deliberately didn’t look at his watch-before he was too tired to stand there any longer. He went around to the other side of the bed, pulled off his clothes, laid them over a chair, and carefully crawled under the covers.

His hand was on the cell phone after the second ring, but he was still asleep when he picked it up.

“Yeah.”

“Judas,” the voice said. “It’s Mingo.”

But before Bern could respond, someone grabbed the cell phone. Foggy-headed, he struggled to open his eyes. The room was highlighted in a blue dusk. Confused, he couldn’t move.

“ Si, ” he heard a woman say.

She was on one elbow, leaning against him. “?Quien es este? ” Pause as she listened. “ No, se enfermo. ” Pause. “?Quien es este? ” Pause as she listened. “ Dos o tres dias. ” Pause to listen. “ Si. Si. Bueno. ”

She stayed on her elbow and punched off the phone. He could see her profile against the light from the window.

“Did he say anything to you?” she asked.

Bern was awake now. The guy had said something…

“It’s… I think he said, ‘It’s Mingo.’”

“Mingo?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he… that was it.”

“Mingo,” she said.

“Yeah.”

She was quiet, looking at him, though her face was in shadow, the light coming in from behind her.

“Don’t answer the phone,” she whispered hoarsely.

She kept the phone and put it on the table on her side of the bed. She lay down again.

He turned on his side to look at her. She was lying on her back, the sheet folded down to her rib cage, the surface of her bare breasts dusted in a pale powder blue light. She was staring into the darkness above her, and he could see a glint in the moisture that glazed her eyes.

They lay that way for a long time, and her eyes were still open when he lost consciousness.

The twin towers known as Residencial del Bosque faced Avenida Ruben Dario and the sixteen-hundred-acre Bosque de Chapultepec (the Woods of Chapultepec), a sprawling park in the heart of Mexico City. Once the site of the palace of the Aztec poet-king Nezahualcoyotl, Chapultepec was now the home of Los Pinos, the palatial residence of the Mexican president.

Designed by the U.S. architectural firm of Cesar Pelli amp; Associates, the postmodern towers were the most expensive residential structures in the city. Constructed of alternating bands of dark glass and terracotta tile and brick, they were home to some of Latin America’s richest men, and it was rumored that many of them had acquired their fortunes by dubious means and maintained them by the same.

The walled compound had the requisite gated security service, but the real protection was in the hands of the men in dark suits and sunglasses who lingered in the shade of the trees along the boulevard and the surrounding wooded streets. With their automatic weapons casually slung underneath the open lapels of their shiny suits, they smoked with passive faces. Like blind serpents at the mouth of a den, they sensed danger without having to see it.

Even at night, Vicente Mondragon could see the lights of the presidential palace from his twenty-ninth-floor suite near the top of the second tower. He always felt different in Mexico, even after being there for only a few hours. In Mexico he was more alert, more aware of the depths of the water he swam in.

He had arrived in the late afternoon, before Paul Bern had even left Austin. Like the president, he had choppered to the helipad at the Residencial del Bosque from his private airstrip on the southwestern edge of Santa Fe. Now he was standing at the display case of one of his plastinized faces, which were exhibited in the same manner as those in Houston, floating in pools of soft light, scattered across the breadth of the shadowy room.

Lex Kevern, looking uncomfortable but stubborn, sat in the typical gloomy twilight of the Mondragon residence, his thick body filling one of Mondragon’s lush leather armchairs.