David Lindsey - The Face of the Assassin

Kevern shifted his weight on the edge of the table, causing it to creak.

“As soon as you can,” he went on, “you get to that. You ask him if he’s bringing us time-critical information.”

Bern walked out of the building on the corner of Plaza Rio de Janeiro. The rain had stopped, leaving wet sidewalks and fresh air, the usual smoggy shroud having been washed away by the night rains.

Bern half-believed that none of this was going to work. But he didn’t say so. He just went along with everything as if he bought into it, just as if he believed. An atheist among the faithful, keeping his doubts to himself.

He walked up Calle Orizaba, and at Avenida Alvaro Obregon, he picked up the first taxi he saw and directed the driver to head south on Insurgentes. Colonia Santa Luisa was just off of Insurgentes, nearly to the artsy colonia of San Angel.

Insurgentes itself was a busy thoroughfare. Though not a wide street, it was densely packed with buildings and pedestrians and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Progress was slow and halting, but Bern was oblivious. Block after block, he watched the traffic and the teeming sidewalks without seeing them, his mind’s eye obliterating his physical vision.

He didn’t give a damn what Kevern said; Susana was in a hell of a spot. Kevern’s reassurances meant nothing to him. In fact, he was furious that Kevern had even tried to downplay the serious risk in Susana’s situation.

At the major intersections, newspaper vendors threaded their way through the lanes of stalled vehicles to sell the latest edition of Reforma or El Universal or the left-leaning La Jornada. Lottery vendors did the same, as did an occasional seller of bright plastic toys that dangled from sticks and fluttered in the wind.

Suddenly, a little boy was at Bern’s window, holding up a newspaper with screaming headlines, his urgent pleas growing faster as the traffic in front of them began to move. The boy rested the newspaper on the window frame so that the paper filled the whole space, and he moved with the taxi as it started up.

The driver yelled at him to get away, and then suddenly something shot out from the newspaper, hit Bern in the side, and fell into the seat beside him. And then the boy disappeared as the taxi sped up with the traffic.

In the next few seconds, Bern’s mind worked in jerky still frames: It was small and black. It was a bomb. Some kind of bomb. He was practically sitting on it. In his mind, the explosion lifted the taxi off the street in a ball of fire. He was grabbing at it. Throw it out.

And then it began to ring, and he slapped at it, and it rang again. He looked down at a cell phone. His heart stopped. Started. Stopped. Started. The cell phone ringing. Ringing. Stunned, he picked it up. He looked at it in his hand as it rang a fourth time. He opened it, lifted it to his ear, and said hello.

“Paul…” It was Susana. “Paul, listen, I’m okay. I’ll be-”

Her voice broke off. He couldn’t believe it… What had happened? Silence, and then: “This is Vicente Mondragon. We are four cars behind you. Tell me what is happening.”

Susana was with Mondragon?

“What the hell’s going on?” Bern asked. “Those were your people who took Susana?”

“Yes. Tell me quickly what is happening,” Mondragon insisted.

Bern’s thoughts swarmed. Kevern said that there would be demands. Whoever kidnapped Susana would contact them and tell them what they wanted in return for her safety.

“For Christ’s sake,” Bern said, “what are you doing? What’s this all about?”

“I want to know where Ghazi Baida is. That’s what we’ve all been doing for over a year.”

“You’re still trying to find Baida?” Bern asked.

“Of course.”

“I was with Kevern when he called you, told you to hold off. I heard him tell you to wait until he got in touch with you again. What’re you doing?”

“Oh, yes, he did tell me that,” Mondragon said, sounding amused that Bern knew this. “And just why did he do that, Paul?”

Bern was tired, confused. He didn’t trust anyone anymore except Susana, and he really believed that there was a good chance that this freak he was talking to was going to kill her.

“What I want to know,” Bern said, growing heated, pissed at Mondragon, pissed at Kevern, pissed at all of it, “is what in the hell is going on here with Susana? What are you up to?”

“It’s not important,” Mondragon said. “It’s a little matter of insurance.”

“Insurance? Insurance against what?”

“I need to be sure you will cooperate with me in whatever way I need,” Mondragon said.

“Well, what do you need?”

“Right now, Paul,” Mondragon said slowly, trying to get past Bern’s confusion and panic, “I need to know what is happening. I need to know where you are going and why. Do you understand that I need to know that? Susana’s life depends on it.”

There was a pause while Bern locked onto this last remark and processed it. For all the gravity of his mission regarding Ghazi Baida’s defection, the foremost concern in his mind was getting Susana away from Mondragon. It happened in an instant.

“Baida wants to defect,” Bern said.

This time, the hesitation came from Mondragon’s end of the line.

“To defect?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“He doesn’t suspect that you are not Jude?”

“No, he doesn’t suspect anything,” Bern said.

“How do you know he doesn’t suspect you?”

“Goddamn it! He doesn’t. I’d sense it. I’d know. He doesn’t!”

“Where are you going now?”

“Colonia Santa Luisa. There’s a little park there, Jardin Morena. I make a phone call from there.”

“And then what?”

“Somebody tells me what to do.”

“To make the arrangements for his defection?”

“That’s my guess. Just make the call, he said, so that’s where I’m going, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Will he be at Jardin Morena?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is he doing it like this?” Mondragon asked, talking to himself as much as to Bern. He sounded suspicious, either of Bern or of Baida. Then he said, “Listen to me carefully, Paul. I will say this only once. I know you must have a way of communicating with Kevern. Do not tell him that we have spoken. Do not tell him that I am still looking for Ghazi. Now that I have found you, I will not let you out of my sight. I have people in front of you, and now I’m going to send others to Jardin Morena. They will be everywhere around you now, all the time.

“Three things you have to remember to stay alive: Do not tell Kevern what I am doing. Do not even mention my name to Ghazi Baida.”

He stopped, waiting for Bern to ask the question.

Bern obliged. “And the third thing?”

“If you are lying to me,” Mondragon said, his voice reflecting a chilling lack of passion, “Susana is fucked.”

When they heard the phone ring, the three of them exchanged puzzled glances. They were gathered around a receiver and a digital recorder, watching the lime green display numbers flying by as if they were comprehensible words.

“Cabbie’s phone,” Mattie conjectured.

“No, he’s not answering it,” Lupe said.

“Well, it’s not Bern’s cell,” Mattie countered.

She and Kevern were sipping soft drinks. Lupe was still nursing a cup of coffee. All three of them were sitting on chairs, leaning over notepads on the table in front of them. Lupe was doodling, drawing caracoles, three elaborately spiraled snails.

The phone stopped ringing.

“Nobody’s talking,” Kevern said. They could hear traffic in the background.

“He’s listening,” Lupe said. “Bern is.”