David Lindsey - The Face of the Assassin

“Unworried,” Sabella said. “Unconcerned. Take it or leave it. That was Judas. When that game is played well, and Judas played it very well indeed, it can be most enticing. If the target-in this case, Ghazi-senses that this insouciance is an act-then it’s all over. But Judas was a master of the fuck-off attitude. He offers you a deal, but it is slightly in his favor. He pretends not to notice this, but he knows that you do. And then he tells you to take it or leave it. He bets the whole table on his attitude, and on this moment when his target might say, Okay then, I’ll leave it. If he says that, it’s over. Taking that kind of risk, all or nothing, that takes very big balls.”

Sabella looked a the two women, then back to Bern.

“But you know what?” he went on. “Insouciance, genuine insouciance, can be seductive. Why? For the same reason that gold is seductive, or certain kinds of pearls, or love. Because it is rare.”

Sabella leaned a little more toward Bern, his body language suggesting he was about to share a secret.

“Ghazi Baida saw himself in Judas,” Sabella said softly. “He saw the same kind of man that he was looking back at him from Judas’s eyes. And he accepted Judas’s challenge. Why? Because it was the ultimate challenge, to bet your life-everything-against a man who is exactly like yourself. Ghazi accepted Judas’s challenge, and he came to Mexico City, stepping willingly into Judas’s advantage.”

Sabella paused and smiled, despite his barely subdued agitation.

“And he won,” Sabella said.

Suddenly, Alice burst into a tantrum.

“No! No! Nononono! He’s the who man! Just really… really the shitty no man,” she blurted at Bern, flinging a look at Sabella, her Asian features hardened into an indictment. “ He’s the who of the whole thing about him.”

Sabella flinched and locked his eyes on Alice, anger, alarm, and suspicion mingled in his expression.

Before Bern could speak, Susana intervened.

“Alice, Alice, listen to me… listen… the lights… the lights… don’t worry about it… anytime. Just the lights. It’s okay. Understand? Understand?”

Bern was caught off guard, and it seemed for a moment that Alice was, too. She looked at Susana, her eyebrows raised in puzzled fascination, and then she began to rock her head from side to side.

“You need to listen to me, Alice,” Susana went on. “The lights.. . okay. Now! The lights now!”

“Okay,” Sabella snapped. “That’s enough of this shit. You think you can do this? You think I’m an idiot, Judas? You don’t have any idea what’s happened to you.”

Bern was dumbfounded. Sabella really thought he was Jude!

“Wait a second,” Bern said, his head growing lighter, his disbelief at what was happening almost scrambling his thinking. “This is… insane. Look, I’m not Jude. I can prove it.”

“No!” Sabella said, stretching out an arm as one of his guards handed him a small tape recorder. “Let me prove something to you. ”

He clicked a button the recorder, and they listened to Mondragon’s final moments in Carleta de Leon’s apartment overlooking the plaza Jardin Morena.

There was a loud smashing noise as Quito and Susana burst into the room, sending Mondragon and Quito crashing into the dining room table and chairs.

“Guns on the table!” Bern yelled.

“Don’t do it!” Susana screamed as she swung her gun around to Quito, who was scrambling to his feet. “No! No!” But Quito brought up his gun anyway.

They heard the punt and smack of her silenced bullet blowing out the back of Quito’s head. There was the sound of Bern rushing to Baida’s side as he tried to stanch the hem-orrhaging wound in his neck.

Silence. Then: “Jude,” Susana snapped, “has he talked?”

“No!”

“Nothing? You don’t know anything?”

“No!”

Another prolonged silence while Bern continued to stanch the bleeding in Baida’s neck, and Susana had her gun on Mondragon.

“Oh! God. Shit! Good, good!” Bern said, momentarily deluded into thinking that Baida’s bleeding was stopping. In fact, he was dying.

Silence.

“Jude,” Susana said again, trying to get his attention.

Sabella punched off the recorder.

Shocked, Bern and Susana looked at each other, realizing what her slip of the tongue had done to them.

Silence.

Alice, picking up on the building tension in the room, was growing increasingly flustered. Then suddenly her arm flew up and she pointed a finger at Sabella and began yelling.

“ He’s the who man!… The who man!… The who man!…” she chanted, her eyes flashing at Sabella. “ He’s the who man!… The who-”

Sabella’s two bodyguards threw nervous glances at everyone, shifting their weight from foot to foot as if to be ready for anything, as if Alice’s wailing could unleash some hidden threat.

“The lights!” Susana yelled at Alice. “Goddamn it, the lights!”

The last word hit Bern with a flash of understanding, and his thumb hit the bottom button on the remote.

Instant darkness.

Alice screamed, a prolonged high-pitched shriek.

Everything was crowded into the short burst of the next few seconds.

Sabella yelled, “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

But the bodyguards’ hesitation was fatal.

From Susana’s corner of the sofa, one, two, three shots blasted through the darkness, and one of the guards flew backward as the other guard lunged away, ripping off a wild burst from his weapon an instant before Susana’s fourth and fifth shots blew into him, driv-ing him into a worktable and knocking over glass jars of Bern’s old paintbrushes, everything crashing into the darkness.

“He’s Ghazi!” Susana screamed. “He’s Ghazi!”

Unconsciously, a stunned Bern was keeping track of the sounds of the choreography: one down, two down, the third man bolting across the paths of the other two.

Bern threw himself at Baida just as the Lebanese reached the glass wall, their momentum and combined weight exploding the glass and hurling them through the railing on the deck and over the side.

The two men embraced.

The fall lasted for days.

Bern’s face was buried in Baida’s sweaty shirt, and he could smell the other man’s fear and his violence, and he could feel his taut muscles and energy and even the painfully slow boom… boom… boom of his heartbeat as it demanded life, even in the airy fall through the moonlight above the lake.

She lived in Tarrytown, one of the older genteel parts of Austin, its quiet streets canopied by trees as old as the neighborhood itself. Her yard and two-story brick home were shaded by an almost unbroken shelter of oaks. The only sunny spots were at either end of the half-circle drive, where two pair of magenta crepe myrtles formed brilliant arches to arrive and leave by.

Susana parked Bern’s old black Triumph in front of the house, and together they walked slowly along the short sidewalk. Bern was still stiff and wanting to favor every wound, though he was determined to hide it for the next hour or so. Luckily, the scores of stitches scattered all over his upper body, except the dozen crossing the bridge of his nose and sliding under his left eye, were all hidden by his long-sleeved shirt.

They went up a few steps to the front porch as blue jays and mockingbirds punctuated the rhythmic background sound of an old sprinkler in one corner of the yard. Bern had hardly made it up the last step when the front door opened and a woman who appeared to be in her late sixties came out to meet them. Her dark hair, generously streaked with silver, was pulled back in a proper chignon. Without hesitating, she approached Bern, smiling.

“Paul,” she said gently, and embraced him. It didn’t hurt; he didn’t let it hurt. She held him close, her arms wrapped tightly around him, and he could feel her breathing, feel her wanting to absorb him, feel her reluctance to release him. But then she did, looking at him closely for just a moment. She noted the stitches, but her eyes were seeing something else. Then she turned to Susana.