David Lindsey - The Face of the Assassin

“Right now,” Kevern said, “getting our hands on Ghazi Baida is what we’re focused on. The thing with Susana is tied in with it somehow, and it’ll resolve itself. We’ve got to play this out, and that’s the hard truth of it.”

Kevern upended the soda and drained it in three or four big gulps, then tossed the can into a paper sack on the floor near the window. He looked at his watch.

“We’ve got fifteen minutes till we can call the hospital on the schedule Sabella gave you. Any questions?”

“What if they tell me to go somewhere right now?” Bern asked.

“Do it. We’re going to put a tag on you, and you’re going to tell him about it. If this defection thing is for real, he’s not going to be bothered by that. He’ll know it’s necessary, and he’ll know why.”

“Okay, tech’s up and running,” Lupe said, coming over to them and handing her phone to Bern. “Mattie’s ready anytime.”

Kevern checked his watch.

“We’ve got a few minutes,” he said, examining Bern for signs of stress. He didn’t see them, but he knew they were there. Operational butterflies were a hell of a thing. It was tough. But again, he admired the way Bern was dealing with it.

The room fell silent. Everybody had stopped. The guy they had been trying to kill for the past year was about to get on a cell phone with a dead man, and he was about to do something that would’ve seemed outrageous if anybody- anybody -had ever mentioned it as a possibility.

This was the goose that Lexington Kevern lived for. This was it. In this business, it always came out of nowhere, came suddenly, came with head-spinning, disorienting surprise. And it was the sweetest feeling in the world, better than any number of things that got you high, that got you limp with bliss. Having an operation turn sweet on you was like no other accomplishment in the fucking world, and Kevern was going to relish this one more than any other sweet deal that he had ever experienced. Because the stake here was… everything.

Without getting the nod, Bern started dialing. It caught Kevern by surprise, but it didn’t matter. He was in the slipstream of an operation turned sweet.

When the phone was answered, he asked for the pharmacy. When the pharmacy answered, he asked for Flor. Silence. Prolonged silence. He looked at Kevern, who was listening on another phone, as was Mattie on yet a third phone. Kevern showed nothing, just sat there as if he were waiting for the information operator.

“Flor,” she said in English.

“This is Luis,” Bern said, expecting the woman to draw a blank and ask, “Luis who?”

Pause. “Oh, yes. Momentito, por favor. ” Her voice was flat.

Silence. Then suddenly she was reciting a telephone number. Slowly. Deliberately. At the end, she paused, then repeated it in the same disinterested tone of voice.

“You have that?” she asked.

“Yes, I have it.”

“Tomorrow morning, go to Colonia Santa Luisa,” she said, again speaking very deliberately. “Go to Jardin Morena. It is a small park, and it is market day there tomorrow. There is a man there who sells old issues of comic books on the sidewalk on the north side of the park, in front of Farmacia Pedras. There is a telephone on the sidewalk by the pharmacy door. There will be a red dot by the number six on the keypad. At precisely ten o’clock, use that telephone to call the number I just gave you.”

Bern was watching Mattie, who stood behind Kevern, writing furiously. She looked at Bern and nodded.

“Repeat that to me, please,” Flor said.

Bern did.

“Do you want me to repeat anything?” Flor asked.

“No,” Bern said. “I have it.”

The line went dead.

Bern lay on one of the cots in a third room in Kevern’s safe house on Plaza Rio de Janeiro. The lights were out, but as always in this city, the ambient illumination came in through the windows like an eerie twilight. He could see a couple of overnight bags on the floor, some clothes hanging here and there. He could smell perfume on the bedcovers beneath him. And looking toward the windows, he could see and hear the rising and falling language of the rain.

Sleep was out of the question, but he hoped he would slip in and out of consciousness. The others were still working in the adjacent rooms. He didn’t know how they kept it up. He was exhausted, and scared. And he couldn’t get Susana off his mind. He wanted to believe that Kevern was being honest with him, and he wanted to believe what he read in Kevern’s body language-that it wasn’t time to be alarmed yet. These things had a degree of predictability, a range of expectations. And these people were not totally without an understanding of what was happening to them.

He thought of Susana. He just wanted her to be safe, and to be with her again in a place as far away from this insanity as they could get.

He closed his eyes and listened to the rain.

When Bern finally roused himself the next morning, he felt stiff and hungover from a dearth of sleep. He looked at the window and saw that the morning was still overcast and rainy. He found everyone already back at their posts, getting ready for Bern’s meeting with Baida. He poured a cup of coffee for himself from the pot on a hot plate in the corner of the room where they were working, then walked down the hall to the bathroom, where he washed his face, scrubbed his teeth with his index finger, and washed out his mouth. He did the best he could with his hair. He looked like hell.

When he got back to the offices, Kevern motioned him over to where he was sitting on the edge of one of the folding tables, which were laden with computers, radio receivers, and other kinds of electronics whose usefulness was lost on Bern.

“Give me your belt,” he said.

Bern handed it over and Kevern gave it to Lupe, who began gluing a tracer bug on the underside.

“It ain’t sophisticated,” Kevern said, “but it’ll get the job done. Now listen. Sabella and Baida have set up this meeting the way they want it to go, to give themselves maximum protection. I’m guessing Sabella’s going to jump with him.”

Kevern sipped his coffee. His eyes were pinched from only a couple of hours’ sleep, but Bern noticed that he was closely shaven. Military discipline. He was running on caffeine.

“The thing is,” Kevern said, groaning softly as he paused, “as soon as these two guys jump ship, their lives won’t be worth a nun’s fart. They’ll instantly become traitors, and their own men will kill them in a heartbeat. So you can bet they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to isolate this meeting from their guys. It’s just Baida and Sabella. Which means they aren’t going to have their usual protection. But they’ll have something going, and they’ll be as touchy as hell. They could call it off in an instant. If that happens, don’t sweat it. They’ll reconnect.”

Lupe Nervo came over to him, pushing buttons on a cell phone.

“They might take this away from you immediately,” she said, handing the phone to him, “but until they do, you can connect to Lex instantly by punching four, seven, star. Just slide your finger down the last three buttons on the left side. Don’t even have to look at it.”

After a few more words of caution and instruction, Kevern stopped and studied Bern carefully.

“Now listen,” he said, speaking more slowly and in a less operational tone, “when defectors decide to come over, they always have aces in their pockets, something juicy to sweeten their arrival. Sometimes these guys have time- critical information, some imminent action that they can tell us about that’ll make them heroes.

“I’m guessing Baida’s in this category. When Sabella came to you at the Palomari Hotel, he mentioned that he could spare us ten thousand lives. He was getting at something. And all that talk about the American heartland…” He nodded at Bern. “Okay? See where I’m going here?”