Assumed Identity

by David R. Morrell

  Yes, Pedro thought. Why?

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Pedro, go get your matches.”

  Pedro’s angry resolve surprised him. He turned toward the house.

  “Wait,” the man blurted. “I don’t know. That’s the truth. I really don’t. We were told to watch for her, to learn where she was.”

  “And if you saw her? If you found out where she was?” Jeff Walker demanded.

  Pedro listened intensely.

  The man gave no response.

  “You’re disappointing me,” Jeff Walker said. “You need a reminder.” He leaned toward the first man and used the pliers to yank out more pubic hair.

  Pedro suddenly began to appreciate Jeff Walker’s tactic, realizing that the pain Jeff Walker inflicted on these men wasn’t physical but psychological.

  The first man thrashed, his tear-streaked face contorted by another silent scream. Since the two men were lashed together, every time the first man jerked, the second man was jolted.

  “Care to try again?” Jeff Walker asked the second man, whose eyes bulged with fear. “What were you supposed to do if you saw Juana or found out where she was?”

  “Phone the people who hired us.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know why they want her. You don’t know who they are. It seems to me there’s an awful lot you don’t know. And it’s making me angry.” Jeff Walker pinched his pliers into the skin of the second man’s groin.

  “No,” the second man pleaded.

  “Who hired you?”

  “They used an intermediary. I never had a name.”

  “But you know how to get in touch with them.”

  “On the phone.”

  “What’s the number?”

  “It’s programmed into . . .” The second man pointed his chin toward a cellular telephone on the floor of the van. “All I had to do was press the recall button, number eight, and send.”

  “Do they know I came to the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your check-in code.”

  “Yellow Rose.”

  Jeff Walker picked up the phone. “I hope for your sake that you’re telling the truth.” He pressed the three buttons as instructed, placed the phone against his ear, and waited for someone to answer.

  It took less than half a ring. Pedro was close enough to the phone to hear a seductive male voice say, “Brotherly Love Escort Service.”

  What Pedro heard next astonished him. Jeff Walker mimicked the second man’s voice.

  12

  “This is Yellow Rose,” Buchanan said into the phone. “That guy who came to the Mendez house tonight still worries me. Have you got anything more on him?”

  The male voice lost its smoothness. “Just what I told you. His name isn’t Jeff Walker. It’s Brendan Buchanan. He rented the Taurus in New Orleans, and . . . Wait a minute. Something’s coming in on another line.” The connection was interrupted.

  Buchanan waited, disturbed that these people had been able to learn his real name so fast.

  The connection abruptly resumed, the voice strained. “It’s a good thing you called. Be careful. Our computer man found out that Brendan Buchanan is a captain in Army Special Forces, an instructor at Fort Bragg.”

  Damn it, Buchanan thought.

  “So I was right to be worried,” Buchanan said. “Thanks for the warning. We’ll be careful.”

  Troubled, Buchanan pressed the END button. Throughout the call, the number he’d contacted had been shown on a display at the top of the phone. Now he took a pad and pencil from the floor of the van, printed the number, tore off the sheet of paper, and put it in a shirt pocket.

  He studied the second man, deciding what further questions to ask, when suddenly he heard approaching footsteps. Whirling, he saw Anita Mendez crossing the lawn toward the van. She wore a housecoat. Her face was contorted with worry, puzzlement, and fear.

  “Anita,” Pedro said, “go back in the house.”

  “I will not. This is about Juana. I’m sure of it. I want to know what it is.”

  As she rounded the back of the van, she stopped abruptly, startled to see the naked, bound men. “Madre de Dios.”

  “These men can help us find Juana,” Pedro said. “This is necessary. Go back to the house.”

  Anita glared. “I’m staying.”

  Fatigue made Buchanan’s headache worsen. “Does Juana have an office here in town?”

  The interruption made Anita and Pedro look at him.

  “Yes,” Anita said. “At her home. Although she is seldom there.”

  “I don’t have time to wait until morning,” Buchanan said. “Can you take me there now?”

  Pedro frowned. “You think she is at her home? You think she is hurt and . . .”

  “No,” Buchanan said. “But maybe her office records can tell me why someone in Philadelphia wants to find her.”

  Anita started toward the house. “I’ll get dressed and take you.”

  “We both will,” Pedro said, hurrying after her.

  At once Buchanan turned to the second man where he lay bound on the floor of the van. “If Juana’s home is in town, you must have other sentries watching the place.”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “The easy way or the hard way.” Buchanan showed him the pliers.

  “Yes, another team,” the man said.

  “How many men?”

  “Two. The same as here.”

  “They alternate shifts?”

  “Yes.”

  The tactic was flawed, Buchanan knew. Thorough surveillance wasn’t possible if only one man at a time watched a target site. Suppose Juana showed up. The spotter would phone for help. But how could the spotter be sure that a team would arrive in time to trap her?

  As Buchanan brooded, the shadow of a long object secured horizontally to the van’s left wall attracted his attention. He shifted the flashlight’s beam to see what it was.

  His stomach felt cold. Seeing the object made him realize that the surveillance tactic did make sense—in an efficient, deadly way.

  The object on the wall was a sniper’s rifle equipped with a state-of-the-art night-vision telescopic sight. The intent of the surveillance wasn’t to capture Juana. It was to kill her the minute she was spotted.

  13

  Juana’s home was in the hills south of the city, along the western bank of the San Antonio River. They took forty-five minutes to get there, Pedro driving the van while Buchanan sat in back and guarded the captives, Anita following in the Jeep Cherokee. En route, Buchanan used the pliers again, forcing the first man to give him the telephone number that would put him in touch with the sniper who watched Juana’s home.

  The telephone barely made a noise before a man’s gravelly voice answered, “Yellow Rose Two.”

  “It’s Frank,” Buchanan said. Trained to mimic voices, he made himself sound like the first man. “Anything doing?”

  “Quiet as hell. No sign of movement here for the past two weeks. I think we’re wasting our time.”

  “But at least we’re being paid to waste it,” Buchanan said. “I’m going to stay with Duncan and watch the Mendez place. Meantime, I thought I’d better tell you I’m sending a guy out there in my Jeep. That’s how you’ll know he belongs. He’s going to pick the front lock and go in to check a few things we’re beginning to think we missed, especially some stuff in her files.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. If she’s watching the house, debating whether to go in, she’ll get spooked if she sees anybody.”

  “I agree. The thing is, it’s not like I have a choice. This wasn’t my idea. These are orders.”

  “Fucking typical,” the sniper said. “They pay us to do a job, but they won’t let us do it properly.”

  “Just let the guy I’m sending do his job when he shows up,” Buchanan said.

  “No sweat. Be seeing you.”

  Soo
ner than you expect, Buchanan thought as he broke the connection.

  14

  A little after one in the morning, Pedro warned Buchanan that they were about a mile from Juana’s home.

  “Close enough. Stop right here,” Buchanan said.

  After Anita pulled up behind them, he got out of the van, told Anita to wait with Pedro, and drove Tucker’s Jeep Cherokee over a murky rise, proceeding the rest of the way along a winding, partially wooded road. His headlights revealed mist drifting in from the river. They also showed new streets and the start of construction on houses for a new subdivision.

  Juana won’t like that.

  What you mean is, you pray to God that she’s still alive so she’ll be able not to like it.

  Pedro and Anita had described the house, which for the present was one of a very few along this section of the river, so Buchanan had no trouble finding it. Wooden and single-story, on stilts in case of flooding, it reminded him more of a cabin than a house as he passed a cottonwood tree and stopped in the gravel driveway. Quaint, rustic. If Juana’s dog had still been alive, Buchanan imagined how much Juana would have enjoyed running with it along the river.

  . . . had still been alive.

  Man, you sure are thinking about death a lot.

  You bet, with a sniper watching me from God-knows-where.

  Buchanan’s back felt tense as he opened the screened porch and approached the main door. With the mist coming in from the river, the sniper might not have been able to recognize the car whose headlights had veered toward the house. What if he came down to investigate?

  Play the scenario you described to him, Buchanan thought.

  He picked the two dead-bolt locks and entered, smelling the must of a building that had not been occupied for quite a while. Feeling vulnerable even in the darkness, he shut the door, locked it, felt along the wall, and found a light switch. A lamp came on, revealing a living room that had a bookshelf, a television, a VCR, and stereo equipment but very little furniture, just a leather sofa, a coffee table, and a rocking chair. Obviously Juana hadn’t spent much time here. Otherwise, she would have paid more attention to its furnishings. Also, few furnishings suggested that she seldom had company.

  Buchanan proceeded across the room, noting the dust on the sofa and the coffee table, further evidence that Juana hadn’t been here in some time. He glanced into the kitchen, turned on its light, and assessed its neat appearance, its minimum of appliances. Remote, austere, the place gave Buchanan a sense of loneliness. It made him feel sorry for her.

  Down a hallway, the first door he came to—on the left, facing the river—was an office. When Buchanan turned on the overhead light, he saw that here, too, everything was kept to a minimum: a metal filing cabinet, a swivel chair, a wooden table upon which sat a computer, a laser printer, a modem, a telephone, a gooseneck lamp, a yellow notepad, and a jar filled with pencils and pens. Otherwise, the room was bare. No rug. No pictures. Impersonal.

  He wondered what the sniper would be thinking in the misty darkness outside. How would the man react as he watched various lights come on in the house? Despite the instructions that the man had been given, would he come down to investigate?

  Buchanan opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet, and immediately two things became important to him. The first was that each file had a stiff folder with hooks on each side that suspended the file rigidly on metal tracks along each side at the top of the drawer. The second was that the files were arranged alphabetically but that the files in A to the middle of D were bunched together, separated by a slight gap from the rest of the files that continued D through to L. The rigid hooks on each side of the neighboring files prevented them from expanding to fill the gap. Obviously, one of the D files had been removed. Possibly Juana had done it. Possibly an intruder who’d been searching as Buchanan was. No way to tell.

  Buchanan opened the second drawer, found the files marked M through Z, and noticed a slight gap where a T file appeared to have been removed. D and T. Those were the only two apparent omissions. Buchanan thought about it as he opened the bottom drawer and discovered a Browning 9-mm semiautomatic pistol. The basic necessities, he thought.

  What did Juana do for a living? Her parents had said that she was involved in private security. That kind of work would be a logical progression from what Juana had done in military intelligence. But private security could mean anything from doing risk assessments, to installing intrusion detectors, to providing physical protection. She might be a free-lance or work for a major corporation.

  He shut the bottom drawer, reopened the top one, and began to read some of the files. A pattern became obvious. Juana’s principal activity had been to act as a protective escort for businesswomen, female politicians and entertainers, or the wives of their male equivalents, primarily when they traveled to Spanish-speaking countries or to cities in America that had a sizable Hispanic population. The logic was clear. A protector had to blend with the local population. Because Juana was Hispanic, she would lose considerable effectiveness in an environment in which her Latin facial characteristics and skin color attracted attention. There wasn’t any point in her working in Africa, the Orient, the Mideast, or northern Europe, for example. For that matter, even some of the northern United States. But Spain and Latin America were ideal for her. With that kind of travel, it wasn’t any wonder that she stayed away from home for months at a time. Possibly her absence could be easily explained. Possibly she was merely on an assignment.

  Then why the postcard? Why did she need my help?

  Something to do with a job she was on? She might have wanted to hire me.

  The notion that her interest in him would have been professional and not personal made Buchanan feel hollow—but only for a moment. He quickly reminded himself that a request for professional help would not have required so unusual and secretive a means of contacting him.

  And snipers wouldn’t be lying in wait to kill her.

  No. Juana was in trouble, and even if she’d been away on a lengthy assignment, she wouldn’t have neglected to phone her parents, certainly not for nine months in a row. Not willingly.

  Something was stopping her. Either she wasn’t physically capable of doing it or else she didn’t want to risk involving her parents in what had happened to her.

  At the back of each file, Buchanan found itemized statements, copies of bills submitted and checks received. He learned that Juana’s business had been quite successful. She’d been earning fees that ranged from $5,000 for consultations, to $10,000 for two-week escort jobs, to $100,000 for a two-month protective assignment in Argentina. A note in the file indicated that there had evidently been some shooting in the latter case. Protection was a demanding, sophisticated occupation for those who knew what it truly entailed. The best operatives were paid accordingly. Even so, Juana had been unusually successful. Buchanan made a rough estimate that she’d been earning close to half a million dollars a year.

  And living this simply, paradoxically without security devices? What had she been doing with the money? Had she been saving it, investing it, planning to retire in her mid-thirties? Again, Buchanan had no way to tell. He searched the office but didn’t find a bankbook, a statement from a brokerage firm, or any other sign of where she might have placed her money. Now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been any mail outside or on the coffee table. Juana must have told the post office to hold it for her. Or else her parents had been picking it up. Before they’d come out here tonight, Anita had mentioned that she and Pedro sometimes drove out to inspect the place. Buchanan made a mental note to ask them about her mail, about whether she ever received statements from financial institutions.

  At once the room appeared to sway, although actually it was his legs that caused the effect. They were wobbly. Exhausted, he sat in the tilt-back chair and rubbed his throbbing temples. The last time he’d slept through the night had been forty-eight hours ago, but that had been in the hospital, and even then his sleep had not
been continuous, the nurses waking him intermittently to check his vital signs. Since then, he’d slept for a few hours at the motel in Beaumont, Texas, and had a few naps at freeway rest stops en route to San Antonio. The knife wound in his side ached, its stitches making him itchy. The almost-healed bullet wound in his shoulder ached as well. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep.

  The files, he thought. Whoever was concerned enough to want to find Juana and kill her would have searched her home in hopes of discovering a clue about where she was hiding. If they wanted to kill her because she knew too much about them, they would have searched for and removed any evidence that linked her with them.

  A name that begins with D. Another that begins with T. Those had been the two files that were obviously missing. Of course, the files might not be missing at all. Juana might have caused the gap in the sequence of the files when she replaced two files, scrunching a group of other files together in order to make room, leaving a space where her fingers had been.

  But I’ve got to start somewhere, Buchanan thought. I have to assume that two files are missing and that they’re important. He leaned back in the chair, hearing it creak, thinking that the pages in the files looked like computer printouts, wondering if the files might be in the computer.

  And realized that the creak he had heard had not been from the chair but from the hallway.

  15

  Slowly, Buchanan turned his head.

  A man stood in the doorway: mid-thirties, five foot ten, 150 pounds. His hair was sandy and extremely short. His face, like his build, was thin, but not unhealthily so; something about him suggested he was a jogger. He wore cowboy boots, jeans, a saddle-shaped belt buckle, a faded denim shirt, and a jeans jacket. The latter was slightly too large for him and emphasized his thinness.

  “Find what you’re looking for?” The man’s flat mid-Atlantic accent contrasted with his cowboy clothes.

  “Not yet.” Buchanan lowered his hands from where he’d been massaging his temples. “I’ve still got a few places to check.”