Assumed Identity

by David R. Morrell

  “Replacing supplies isn’t the answer!” Drummond snapped. “Find whoever’s causing the damage. What about those supervisors who were in here complaining? Could it be someone who wants to shut down work so he can spend a weekend getting drunk in Mérida?”

  “We thought of that,” McIntyre said. “No. The men are tired and grumpy, but they’re also eager to finish the job ahead of schedule so they can get their bonus. None of them would do anything to force them to spend more time here.”

  “Then who?”

  “Natives,” Jenna said. “Maya.”

  Drummond looked astonished. “You’re telling me a handful of ignorant Indians are capable of outthinking you and paralyzing the project?”

  “There might be more of them than you think. And as for being ignorant, this is their backyard, not ours. They know this territory a lot better than we do.”

  “Excuses.”

  “I’m sure they’re watching our every move from the jungle,” Jenna said, “and I strongly suspect that this site has religious importance to them, that they’re furious about what we’re doing here.”

  “Superstition and nonsense. I’m amazed that you’ve let it interfere with the project.” Drummond scowled. “But you’ve given me an idea. You’re right. This is their backyard.” He turned to the fair-haired, pleasant-faced, well-dressed man who leaned against the closed door. “Raymond, how would you like to go hunting?”

  “I’d like that very much, Mr. Drummond.”

  “The captain of the guards will see that you’re outfitted properly.” Drummond turned to Jenna. “Where do these natives live? Have you got their village marked on the map you’re preparing?”

  “Village?” Jenna said. “I’ve had problems enough mapping the site. We’re surrounded by rain forest. There aren’t any trails. You don’t just go wandering around out there. You’ll get lost or worse. Village? We haven’t seen even one native, let alone a village.”

  “And yet you’re certain they’re responsible?” Drummond turned to his assistant. “Raymond, find them. Stop them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Raymond opened the door.

  “But Raymond . . .”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Since this is their backyard, since they know it thoroughly, I want one native able to talk. Bring him to camp for questioning. Maybe he’ll know where to find what we’re looking for.”

  As Raymond left the building, a man in a blue pilot’s uniform appeared. He had a red logo—DRUMMOND INDUSTRIES—on his jacket pocket.

  “Sir, there’s a call for you on the helicopter radio.” He was slightly out of breath.

  “Have it transferred to here. McIntyre, what frequency have you been using?”

  McIntyre told the pilot, who hurried away.

  Drummond gestured toward the map that Jenna had braced beneath her left arm. “Let me see what you’ve accomplished.”

  Jenna spread the map across a table.

  “No, no, no,” Drummond said.

  “What’s wrong? I was thorough. I double-checked every—”

  “That’s exactly the problem. You were thorough. I told you specifically. I wanted a map that would look convincing to the Mexican authorities.” Drummond led her out the door, gesturing toward the commotion of the site, workers clearing trees and stacking equipment.

  Assaulted by harsh sunlight after the shadows of the room, Jenna shielded her eyes and directed her attention toward where Drummond pointed. As more and more trees were cut down and dragged away to be burned, as more bushes were plowed free, as what seemed to be hills became ever more distinctly pyramids, temples, and palaces, the legacy of the once-great Mayan empire, her heart pounded.

  “Too much depends on this,” Drummond said. “Your map can’t—”

  He was suddenly interrupted by a crackly, static-ridden voice on the radio.

  “That’s your call coming through,” McIntyre said.

  “Is the scrambler functioning?”

  McIntyre nodded. “Just flick the switch.”

  “Stay here. I won’t be long.”

  After Drummond entered the building and shut the door, leaving Jenna and McIntyre outside, Jenna shook her head, frustrated, puzzled, angry. “That son of a bitch.”

  “Keep your voice down,” McIntyre said. “He might hear you.”

  McIntyre was right, Jenna realized. Even with the noise from the vehicles and the workers, she was close enough to the door that her voice might carry.

  But by that same logic . . .

  The door fit the crude frame loosely. It had inched open after Drummond closed it. Jenna heard occasional raspy outbursts.

  “. . . Find the woman. If Delgado learns she isn’t cooperating . . . ruined. Everything. Find her. Use every pressure. I don’t care what you have to . . . Kill him if . . .”

  Then Jenna couldn’t hear Drummond anymore, and at once she stepped farther from the door, joining McIntyre, feeling sick but trying to seem as if she was a good employee waiting patiently.

  Drummond jerked the door open and stalked outside. A black pall appeared to surround him despite the sunlight that gleamed off his thick white hair and his glasses. He was about to continue verbally assaulting Jenna when he noticed something to the left and looked briefly heartened.

  Following his gaze, Jenna saw Raymond wearing outdoor clothes, carrying a rifle, entering the jungle. Even at a distance, his excitement was evident.

  Then Drummond’s brittle, forceful voice jerked her attention back to him.

  “All of this,” he demanded, gesturing. “You’ve been far too faithful on your map, far too diligent. The Mexican authorities can’t be allowed to realize how massive and important a find this is. Your map has to make it seem minor, an insignificant site that doesn’t merit undue attention, something that won’t he an irreplaceable loss.” Drummond pointed toward the majestic temples, the hieroglyph-engraved palaces, and the great terraced pyramid where gigantic snake heads guarded the bottom of the wide, high stairs that went up each side. “Because ten days from now, I expect all of that to be leveled. Do you hear me, McIntyre?” He glared at the foreman. “You knew the orders. You understood the schedule. Use bulldozers. Use sledgehammers. Use dynamite. If you have to, use your fingernails. Ten days from now, I expect my equipment to be set up and all of this to be gone. Level it. Scatter the rubble. Truck it out. Dump it in sinkholes. Have the helicopters lift it out. I don’t care how you do it. I want it gone!”

  SIX

  1

  ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

  The safe site was on the third floor, yet another apartment in yet another sprawling complex into which Buchanan could easily blend. After he’d arrived in Washington from Florida, he’d used a pay phone to report to his controller, just as he’d reported at various stops along the Amtrak route. A man’s voice told him to be waiting, seated, on the steps outside the Library of Congress at 3:00 P.M. Precisely at that time, a middle-aged man wearing a blue blazer and gray slacks stopped beside him and bent down to tie his right shoe. When the man departed, Buchanan concealed the small envelope that the man had slid toward him. After waiting five minutes longer, Buchanan then went into the Library of Congress, entered a men’s room, and locked himself in a stall, where he opened the envelope, took out a key, and read a slip of paper that provided him with a name, some biographical information, an Alexandria address, and an apartment number. The paper and the envelope were far from ordinary. He dropped them into the water in the toilet and watched them dissolve. In the library’s reference section, he used an area directory to tell him which major streets were near the Alexandria apartment, and shortly before six that evening, he got out of a taxi a few blocks from his destination, walking the rest of the way, out of habit using evasion procedures in case he was being followed.

  His name was now Don Colton, he’d been informed. He was supposed to be a writer for a travel magazine that he assumed was affiliated with his controllers. Posing as a travel writer was an excellent cover, Bucha
nan thought, inasmuch as a travel writer by definition was on the move a great deal and hence the neighbors wouldn’t consider it unusual that they never saw him. However, because Buchanan’s controllers would not have had sufficient time to tailor the cover specifically to him, he automatically assumed that this identity would be temporary, an all-purpose, one-size-fits-all persona that his controllers maintained for emergencies. As Don Colton, Buchanan was in a holding pattern and would soon be sent to God-knew-where as God-knew-who.

  Avoiding the elevator, he used fire stairs to get to the third floor. After all, because most people preferred elevators, there was less chance of encountering anybody on the stairs. He reached a concrete corridor with fluorescent lights along the ceiling. As he had hoped, no one was in view, the tenants having already arrived home from work. Doors to apartments flanked each side. As he walked along green heavy-duty carpeting, he heard music behind one door, voices behind another. Then he came to 327, used the key he’d been given, and entered the apartment.

  He turned on the lights, scanned the combination living room–kitchen, locked the door, checked the closets, the bathroom, and the bedroom, all the while avoiding the windows, then turned off the lights, closed the draperies, and finally turned the lights back on, only then slumping on the sofa. He was safe. For now.

  2

  The apartment had a hotel-room feel to it, everything clean but utilitarian and impersonal. A corner of the living room had been converted into a minioffice with a desk, a word processor, a printer, and a modem. Several copies of the magazine he was supposed to work for were stacked on the coffee table, and when Buchanan examined their contents, he found articles under his pseudonym, another indication that Don Colton was an all-purpose identity. Obviously, the magazines had been prepared well in advance, not just for him but for any operative who happened to need this type of cover. Don Colton—at least this Don Colton—wouldn’t be in the neighborhood very long.

  Nonetheless, Buchanan still had to make his portrayal of Colton believable, and the first step was to familiarize himself with the articles he was supposed to have written. But halfway through the second essay—about Tahiti—he suddenly discovered that two hours had passed. He frowned. It shouldn’t have taken him that long to read just a few pages. Had he fallen asleep? His headache—which had never gone away since he’d banged his skull in Cancún—worsened, and he surprised himself by no longer caring about his persona as a travel writer. Weary, he stood, went into the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by only a counter, and poured himself a drink from a bottle of bourbon that was next to the refrigerator along with bottles of gin and rum. After adding ice and water, he debated which to do first—to shower or to open one of the cans of chili he found in a cupboard. Tomorrow, he’d have to decide what to do about clean clothes. The ones he’d found in the bedroom closet were too small for him. But he couldn’t leave the apartment without establishing a procedure with his employers so they’d know how to get in touch with him, and that was when the phone rang.

  It startled him.

  He pivoted toward the living room, staring toward the phone on a table next to the sofa. The phone rang a second time. He sipped from his bourbon, letting his nerves calm. The phone rang a third time. He hated phones. Squinting, he entered the living room and picked up the phone before it could ring a fourth time.

  “Hello.” He tried to make his voice sound neutral.

  “Don!” an exuberant male voice exclaimed. “It’s Alan! I wasn’t sure you’d be back yet! How the hell are you?”

  “Good,” Buchanan said. “Fine.”

  “The trip went okay?”

  “The last part of it.”

  “Yeah, your postcards mentioned you had a few problems at some earlier stops. Nothing you couldn’t handle, though, right?”

  “Right,” Buchanan echoed.

  “That’s really swell. Listen, buddy, I know it’s getting late, but I haven’t seen you in I can’t remember when. What do you say? Have you eaten yet? Do you feel like getting together?”

  “No,” Buchanan said, “I haven’t eaten yet.”

  “Well, why don’t I come over?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “Great, Don. Can’t wait to see you. I’ll be over in fifteen minutes. Think about where you want to eat.”

  “Someplace that’s dark and not too crowded. Maybe with a piano player.”

  “You’re reading my mind, Don, reading my mind.”

  “Be seeing you.” Buchanan set down the phone and massaged his aching temples. The man’s reference to postcards and his own reference to a piano player had been the recognition sign and countersign that the note he’d destroyed at the Library of Congress had told him to use if he was contacted. His debriefing would soon begin.

  Yet another.

  His temples continued to ache. He thought about washing his face but first drank his glass of bourbon.

  3

  Fifteen minutes later, precisely on schedule, the doorbell rang. Buchanan peered through the door’s security eye and saw a fortyish, short-haired, portly man in a brown-checkered sport coat. The voice on the phone had not been familiar, so Buchanan wasn’t surprised that he’d never seen this man before, assuming that the voice on the phone belonged to this man. All the same, Buchanan had hoped that one of the controllers he’d dealt with previously would show up. He’d been through too many changes.

  He opened the door warily. After all, he couldn’t take for granted that the man was his contact. But the man immediately allayed his suspicions by using the same cheery tone that Buchanan had heard earlier. “Don, you look fabulous. In your postcards, you didn’t say you’d lost weight.”

  “My diet didn’t agree with me. Come on in, Alan. I’ve been thinking, maybe we shouldn’t go out to eat. I’m not in the mood for a piano player.”

  “Whatever.” The man who’d earlier identified himself as Alan, undoubtedly a pseudonym, carried a metal briefcase into the apartment and waited while Buchanan locked the door. Then the man’s demeanor changed, as if he was an actor who’d stepped out of character when he walked off a stage. His manner became businesslike. “The apartment was swept this afternoon. There aren’t any bugs. How are you feeling?”

  Buchanan shrugged. The truth was, he felt exhausted, but he’d been trained not to indicate weakness.

  “Is your wound healing properly?” the man asked.

  “The infection’s gone.”

  “Good,” the man said flatly. “What about your skull? I’m told you hit it on a—”

  “Stupid accident,” Buchanan said.

  “The report I received mentioned a concussion.”

  Buchanan nodded.

  “And a skull fracture,” the man said.

  Buchanan nodded again, the movement intensifying his headache. “A depressed skull fracture. A small section of bone on the inside was pushed against the brain. That’s what caused the concussion. It’s not like I’ve got a crack in the bone. It’s not that serious. In Fort Lauderdale, I was kept in the hospital overnight for observation. Then the doctor let me go. He wouldn’t have let me go if—”

  The portly man who called himself Alan sat on the sofa but never took his gaze from Buchanan. “That’s what the report says. The report also says you’ll need another checkup, another CAT scan, to find out if the bruise on your brain has shrunk.”

  “Would I be walking around if my brain was still swollen?”

  “I don’t know.” The man continued to assess Buchanan. “Would you? Agents from Special Operations have a can-do attitude. Problems that would slow someone else down don’t seem to bother you.”

  “No. The mission comes first. If I think an injury impairs my ability to perform the mission, I say so.”

  “Commendable. And if you thought you needed some time off, you’d say that, too?”

  “Of course. Nobody turns down R and R.”

  The man didn’t say anything, just studied him.

  To chang
e the subject as much as to relieve his curiosity, Buchanan asked, “What happened in Fort Lauderdale after I left? Was the situation dealt with to everyone’s satisfaction? Were the photographs—?”

  The man lowered his gaze, worked the combination locks on his briefcase, and opened it. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” The man pulled out a folder. “We have some paperwork to take care of.”

  Uneasy, Buchanan sat across from him. His instincts troubled him. It might have been the consequence of fatigue, or perhaps it was due to the aftermath of stress. For whatever reason, there was something about the man’s attitude that made Buchanan uncomfortable.

  And it wasn’t just that the man was brusque. In his eight years of working deep cover, Buchanan had dealt with controllers of various types, some of whom had a manner that would disqualify them from a popularity contest. But being personable wasn’t a requirement for the job. Being thorough was, and sometimes there wasn’t time to say things politely, and it wasn’t smart to establish a relationship with someone whom the odds were you would never see again.

  Buchanan had learned that the hard way over the years. In his numerous assumed identities, he’d occasionally found that he felt close to someone, to Jack and Cindy Doyle, for example. As much as he guarded against that happening, nonetheless it sometimes did, and it made Buchanan feel hollow after he moved on. Thus he could readily understand if this controller didn’t want to conduct the debriefing on anything but an objective, unemotional basis.

  That wasn’t it, though. That wasn’t what made Buchanan feel uncomfortable. It was something else, and the best he could do was attribute it to his experience with Bailey, to an instinct that warned him to be extra cautious.

  “Here’s my signed receipt,” the portly man who called himself Alan said. “Now you can give me Victor Grant’s ID.”

  Buchanan made a snap decision then. He didn’t trust this man. “I don’t have it.”

  “What?” The man looked up from the receipt.