Assumed Identity

by David Morrell

  14

  The rule was, if a contact didn't show up at an agreed place on schedule and if no arrangements had been made for an alternate time and place for a meeting, you returned to the rendezvous site twenty-four hours later. With luck, whatever had prevented the contact from coming to the meeting would no longer be an obstacle. But if the contact didn't show up the second time.

  Buchanan didn't want to think about it. He made his way through the French Quarter. Crowded, narrow streets. Dixieland. The blues. Dancing on the sidewalk. Commotion. But no costumes. This time, with no masks to hide people's faces, Buchanan would have a much better chance to learn if he was being followed. Last time, he'd been conspicuous because he hadn't been wearing a costume. Now, just one of many people in street clothes, he would have a much better chance of blending with a crowd, slipping down an alley, and evading anyone who did try to follow.

  With a sense of d‚ja vu that made him wince from the memory of when the knife had entered his side, he passed the shadows of Jackson Square, studied Decatur Street, and once more crossed toward Cafe du Monde. Again, the restaurant was busy, although not as much as on Halloween. To make sure that the crowd didn't prevent him from entering, he'd taken care to arrive early, at ten-fifteen rather than the scheduled time of eleven when he had last been here with Juana six years ago.

  He festered with impatience. Never showing it, he waited his turn and was escorted by a waiter past pillars through the noise of the crowd to a seat at a small, circular, white-topped table surrounded by similar, busy tables at the back in a corner. By chance, the table was in exactly the spot he would have chosen to give him an effective view of the entrance.

  But he wasn't satisfied. He needed something more, another way to be sure, a further guarantee, and when he saw his chance, he stood to claim a suddenly empty table near the center of the restaurant. It was here, he remembered, that he and Juana had sat six years earlier. Not this same table. He could never be positive of that. But the position was close enough, and when Juana came in, she would have no trouble finding him. Her gaze would scan the congested room, settle on the area that she associated with him, and there he would be, rising, smiling, walking toward her, eager to hold her.

  He glanced at his watch. Ten-forty. Soon, he thought. Soon.

  His headache made him sick again. When the waiter came to take his order, he asked for the specialty: caf‚ au lait and beignets. He also asked for water. That was what he really wanted. Water. The coffee and the beignets were just so he'd be allowed to sit here. The water was so he could swallow more Tylenol.

  Soon.

  Juana.

  'I love you, he had told her. 'I want you to know that you'll always be special to me. I want you to know that I'll always feel close to you. I swear to you. If you ever need help, if you're ever in trouble, all you have to do is ask, and no matter how long it's been, no matter how far away I am, I'll-'

  Buchanan blinked, realizing that the waiter was setting down the water, the coffee, and the beignets. After he swallowed the Tylenol, he was startled when he glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed like fifteen seconds. It was almost eleven o'clock.

  He kept staring toward the entrance.

  Here's the postcard I never thought I'd send. I hope you meant your promise. The last time and place. Counting on you. PLEASE.

  'Is something wrong, sir?'

  'Excuse me?'

  'You've been sitting here for half an hour and you haven't touched your coffee or the beignets.'

  'Half an hour?'

  'Other people would like a chance to sit down.'

  'I'm waiting for someone.'

  'Even so, other people would like-'

  'Bring me another round. Here's ten dollars for your trouble.'

  'Thank you, sir.'

  Buchanan stared at the entrance.

  Midnight.

  One o'clock. People frowned toward him, whispering.

  By two o'clock, he knew that she wouldn't be coming.

  What in God's name had happened to her? She needed his help. Why hadn't she let him prove he loved her?

  15

  He packed his bag and dropped a signed check-out form on the bed. At three a.m., no one saw him leave the hotel through a service exit. Stepping out of shadows onto Lafayette Street, he hailed a taxi.

  'Where to, suh?' The driver looked wary, as if a man carrying a suitcase at three a.m. might be a threat.

  'An all-night car-rental agency.'

  The driver debated briefly. 'Hop in. It's kinda late to be takin' a trip.'

  'Isn't it, though.'

  He slumped in the back seat, thinking. It would have been easier to fly to where he needed to go. But he didn't want to wait until morning and catch the first plane to his destination. For one thing, the major, the captain, and Alan might arrive earlier than they'd said they would and intercept him. For another, because he didn't have enough cash to buy an airplane ticket, he'd need to use a credit card. But the only credit card he had was in Brendan Buchanan's name. That would leave a paper trail for the major, the captain, and Alan to follow.

  This way, while he'd still have to use a credit card to rent a car, there'd be no record of where he was planning to drive. The paper trail would end right here in New Orleans. And with luck, the major, the captain, and Alan would accept that he'd decided to do what he'd told them and disappear. In a perfect world, they would consider this a reassuring gesture and not a threat. To direct their thinking, he'd written a note about his determination to disappear, had sealed the note in an envelope addressed to Alan, and had left it on the bed in the hotel room beside the signed check-out form.

  'Here we are, suh.'

  'What?' He roused himself and looked out the taxi's side window, seeing a brightly lit car-rental office next to a gas station.

  'If I was you, suh, I'd take it easy drivin'. You look beat.'

  'Thanks. I'll be fine.'

  But I'd better look more alert when I rent the car, he thought.

  He paid the driver and didn't show the effort needed to carry his bag into the office, where the bright lights hurt his eyes.

  A weary-looking, spectacled man shoved a rental agreement across the counter. 'I'll need to see your credit card and your driver's license. Initial about the insurance. Sign at the bottom.'

  He had to look at the credit card he'd set on the counter to see which name he was using. 'Buchanan. Brendan Buchanan.'

  If only this headache would ease off.

  Juana.

  He had to find Juana.

  And there was only one place he could think to start.

  16

  'It's been taken care of,' Raymond said. Seated at the rear of the passenger compartment of his private jet, Alistair Drummond peered up from a report he was reading. The fuselage vibrated softly as the jet streaked through the sky. 'Specifics,' he said.

  'According to a radio message I just received,' Raymond said, 'last night, the director of Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History was killed in a car accident near the National Palace in Mexico City.'

  'Tragic,' Drummond said. Despite his age, he didn't show the strain of having flown to a business meeting in Moscow, then to another in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia before his present trans-Atlantic flight back to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, all within forty-eight hours. 'Do we have evidence that Delgado was responsible?'

  'The man Delgado ordered to do it is on our payroll. He'll implicate Delgado if we ask him, provided we guarantee he won't be punished.'

  'We?' Drummond asked.

  'I meant "you".'

  'Your confusion of pronouns troubles me, Raymond. I'd hate to think that you consider me an equal.'

  'No, sir, I don't. I won't make the mistake again.'

  'Has his successor been chosen?'

  Raymond nodded.

  'An executive favorable to our cause?'

  Raymond nodded again. 'And money will make him more so.'

  'Good,' Drummond said
, his voice brittle, one of the few signs of his age. 'We no longer need the woman, even if we find her. The leverage she provided against Delgado isn't necessary any longer now that we have another way to put pressure on him. In all probability, Delgado will be Mexico's next president, but not if we reveal his crimes. Let him know we have proof that he ordered the death of the Institute's director, that his political future continues to depend on me.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Then, when he becomes president, I'll have even more influence.'

  'All the influence you need.'

  'Never,' Drummond corrected him.

  'Perhaps then you do need the woman.'

  The old man scowled, his wrinkles deepening so much that his true age began to show. 'I almost lost everything because of her. When your operatives find her.'

  'Yes, sir?'

  'Make certain they kill her on sight.'

  NINE

  1

  San Antonio, Texas.

  Buchanan arrived by nightfall. He'd driven west on Route 10 from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, past numerous small towns into Texas, toward Beaumont and Houston and finally.

  His headache, combined with the pain in his side, had forced him to rest several times along the way. At Beaumont, he'd rented a hotel room in mid-morning so that he could shave and shower and sleep for a couple of hours. The hotel clerk had looked puzzled when he checked out at noon. That was no good, attracting attention like that. It wasn't any good, either, that his scarcity of cash forced him to use his credit card to rent the room. Now there was a further paper trail, although by the time Alan, the major, and the captain traced him to the hotel, he'd be long gone, and they still wouldn't know his destination. Sure, if they checked the records of his past assignments, they might guess it, but he'd had a great many assignments in the six years since he'd known Juana, and it would take them quite a while to make the connection between her, New Orleans, and San Antonio. By then, he'd be somewhere else.

  He ate take-out food while he drove, hamburgers, french fries, po'boys, tacos, anything to give him fuel, washing it down with plenty of Coca Cola, relying on the soft drink's calories and caffeine to maintain his energy. Three times, he pulled off the busy highway and napped at a rest stop. He parked the rented Taurus near the toilet facilities so that the noisy coming and going of vehicles and travelers would prevent him from sleeping too deeply, for he knew that if he did truly sleep, he wouldn't waken until the next day.

  He had to keep moving. He had to get to San Antonio and begin the urgent process of finding out what had happened to Juana. Why had she failed to meet him? What trouble had caught up to her? Despite his pain and confusion, he had sufficient presence of mind to ask himself if he were overreacting. A promise made six years ago to a woman whom he hadn't seen since then. A plea for help in the form of a cryptic postcard.

  Maybe the postcard didn't mean what he thought. Did it make sense for Juana to contact him after so long a time? And why him? Wasn't there anyone else whom she could ask for help?

  What made him the logical choice?

  He didn't have answers. But this much he knew for certain. Something had happened to him.

  Something terrifying.

  He tried to establish when it had begun. Perhaps when he'd been shot in Cancun, or when he'd injured his head while he made his escape, swimming across the channel. Perhaps when he'd been tortured in Merida and had struck his head on the concrete floor. Or possibly later when he'd been stabbed and had again struck his head.

  The more he considered those possibilities, the less he thought that they were the source of his fear, however. No doubt they were contributing factors. But as he analyzed the past weeks, as he replayed his various traumas, one incident disturbed him more than any.

  The trauma had not been physical. It had been mental.

  It threatened his sense of identity.

  Or rather multiple identities. During the past eight years, he had been more than two hundred people. On some days, he had impersonated as many as six different people while attempting to recruit a series of contacts. During the past two weeks, he'd been confused with Jim Crawford and had identified with Peter Lang while he'd impersonated Ed Potter and Victor Grant and Don Colton and.

  Brendan Buchanan.

  That was the trouble. After disposing of Victor Grant, he'd expected to be given yet another identity. But at the Alexandria apartment, Alan had told him that there wouldn't be a new identity, that he was being transferred from field operations, that he would have to be.

  Himself.

  But who the hell was that? He hadn't been Brendan Buchanan for so long that he didn't know who on earth Brendan Buchanan was. On a superficial level, he didn't know such basics as how he liked to dress or what he liked to eat. On the deepest level, he was totally out of touch with himself. He was an actor who'd so immersed himself in his roles that when his roles were taken away from him he became a vacuum.

  His profession wasn't only what he did. It defined what he was. He was nothing without a role to play, and he realized now how brutally the realization had struck him that he couldn't be Brendan Buchanan for the rest of his life. Thus, to escape being Brendan Buchanan, he would become Peter Lang. He would hunt for the most important person in Peter Lang's world. And possibly in his own world, for the more he thought about it, the more he wondered how positively his life would have changed if he had stayed with Juana.

  I liked Peter Lang, he thought.

  And Peter Lang had been in love with Juana.

  2

  Past Houston, he used a pay phone outside a truck stop. It fascinated and disturbed him that the only person he cared about from Brendan Buchanan's world was Holly McCoy. He'd known her only a few days. She was a threat to him. And yet he had an irresistible urge to protect her, to insure that she escaped the danger she had created for herself because she'd investigated him. He thought he had convinced the major, the captain, and Alan of her intention not to pursue the story. There was a strong chance they would leave her alone. But what about the colonel? Would the colonel agree with their recommend-ation?

  Buchanan hadn't been lying when he'd told them that Holly had flown back to Washington, and he hadn't been lying when he'd said that he'd made Holly frightened enough not to pursue the story. Still he had to reinforce her resolve. Assuming that her phones would be tapped, he'd told her that he would use the name Mike Hamilton if he needed to leave a message on her answering machine or with someone at The Washington Post. As it happened, she was at the newspaper when he called there.

  'How are you?'

  'Wondering if I made a mistake,' Holly answered.

  'It wasn't a mistake, believe me.'

  'What about your negotiations? Did they work?'

  'I don't know yet'

  'Oh.'

  'Yes. Oh. Did you send them what you promised?'

  '. Not yet.'

  'Do it.'

  'It's just that. It's such good material. I hate to.'

  'Do it,' Buchanan repeated. 'Don't make them angry.'

  'But giving up the story makes me feel like a coward.'

  'There were plenty of times when I did things rather than think of myself as a coward. Now those things don't seem worth it. I have to keep on the move. The best advice I can give you is.' He wanted to say something reassuring but couldn't think of anything. 'Stop worrying about bravery and cowardice. Follow your common sense.'

  He hung up, left the pay phone, got quickly into the rented Taurus, and returned to the busy highway, squinting from the painful sunlight that now was low in the west ahead of him. Even the Ray-Bans he'd bought at noon in Beaumont didn't keep the sun's glare from feeling as if a red-hot spike had been driven through each eye and into his skull.

  Follow your common sense?

  You're good at giving advice. You don't seem to want to take it, though.

  3

  Shortly after nine p.m., he drove from the low, grassy, often wooded, rolling plains of eastern Texas and
entered the lights of San Antonio. Six years ago, when he'd been researching the character of Peter Lang, he'd spent several weeks here so he wouldn't be ignorant about his fictional character's home town. He'd done the usual touristy things like visiting the Alamo (its name was a Spanish word, he learned, which meant 'cottonwood tree') as well as the restored Spanish Governor's Palace, the San Jose Mission, and La Villita or The Little Village, a reconstructed section of the original, eighteenth-century Spanish settlement. He spent a lot of time at Riverwalk, the Spanish-motif shopping area along the landscaped banks of the San Antonio River.