He’d never been confident with disguises. On occasion, he would grow a mustache or a beard, or else he would put on well-made facsimiles. A few times, he had used noncorrective contact lenses that changed the color of his eyes. A few other times, he had altered the length, style, and color of his hair. As well, he always tried to make each of his identities dress differently from the others, preferring particular watches, belts, shoes, shirts, sunglasses, even ballpoint pens, anything to make each character distinctive, just as each character had a favorite food, favorite music, favorite writer, favorite . . .
But Juana had become the ultimate impersonator. If Buchanan’s suspicion was correct, she hadn’t only been altering her personality with each job—she had been totally altering her physical appearance, not just her clothes but her facial characteristics, her weight, her height. Buchanan found padding that would have increased Juana’s bust size. He found other padding that would have made her look pregnant. He found cleverly designed sneakers that had lifts that would have made her seem taller. He found makeup cream that would even have lightened the color of her skin.
A part of him was filled with professional amazement. But another part was horrified, realizing that at Café du Monde in New Orleans, she could have been sitting right next to him while he waited for her to enter the restaurant and he would never have known how close she was. During his quest, he might have bumped into her or even spoken to her and never have been aware.
What had happened to her in the past six years? Where had she learned this stuff? For whom was he looking? She could be anybody. She could look like anybody. He remembered the last conversation they’d had. “You don’t know me,” he’d said to justify his inability to commit to her. “You only know who I pretend to be.”
Well, she had outdone him, becoming the ultimate pretender. As he’d gone through the house, he’d thought it frustrating and strange that he’d found no photographs of her. He’d wanted so much to be reminded of her brown eyes, her shiny black hair, her hauntingly lovely face. Then he’d suspected that her hunters had taken the photographs so they’d be better able to memorize what she looked like. But if so, he now understood, the photographs wouldn’t do them any good because there wasn’t any definitive image of her. It may have been that Juana herself had removed the photographs because she no longer identified with any individual version of her appearance. Buchanan suddenly had the terrible sense that the woman he (or Peter Lang or whoever the hell he was) had fallen in love with was as insubstantial as a ghost. As himself. He felt sick. But he still had to find her.
18
He closed the window in the computer room, then used a handkerchief to wipe his fingerprints off everything he had touched. He shut off lights as he left each room, reconfirmed that he had done everything he had to, and finally shut the front door behind him, using his picks to relock the two dead-bolts. When the killer’s partner arrived to begin his shift, the partner would take a while to figure out what had happened. The two area rugs that had been moved (and one of which was missing), the bullet hole in the hallway ceiling, the blood beneath the area rug that Buchanan had put in the computer room—each individually would not be obvious, but together they would eventually tell the story. The killer’s partner would then waste time looking for the body. His report to his bosses would be confused, adding to the further confusion that the two snipers watching the Mendez house couldn’t be found, either. The only certainty was that the people who were hunting Juana knew that a man named Brendan Buchanan had visited Juana’s parents, and that made it equally certain that they would associate Brendan Buchanan with everything that had happened tonight. By morning, they’ll be hunting me, he thought. No. They’ll be hunting Brendan Buchanan. With luck, it’ll take them a while to realize that tonight I became Charles Duffy.
Patting the wallet that he’d taken from the dead man and put in his jacket, Buchanan got into the Jeep Cherokee and backed from the driveway. His hands shook. His wounds hurt. His head throbbed. He’d come to the limit of his endurance. But he had to keep going.
A mile down the murky road, at the bottom of a misty hollow, he came to the van. Getting out of the Jeep, he kept his right hand behind his back so that he could quickly draw his weapon if there had been trouble while he was away. He saw movement in the mist, tensed, then relaxed somewhat as Anita came toward him, telling him in Spanish that Pedro was in back with the bound-and-gagged sentries.
“The phone kept ringing.”
“I know,” Buchanan said.
“We thought it might be you, but it didn’t ring twice, stop, and then ring again as you said it would if it was you. We didn’t answer.”
“You did the right thing.”
Buchanan studied her. She seemed nervous, yes, but not in a way that suggested she knew that someone was hiding and aiming a weapon at her. Nonetheless, he didn’t fully relax until he made sure that the prisoners were as they had been and that nothing had happened to Pedro.
“Did you find Juana?” Pedro asked.
“No.”
“Did you find any sign of her?”
“No,” Buchanan lied.
“Then this was pointless. What are we going to do?”
“Leave me alone with these men for a minute. Sit with your wife in the Jeep,” Buchanan said.
“Why?” Pedro looked suspicious. “If you’re going to question them about Juana, I want to hear.”
“No.”
“What do you mean? I told you if this is about my daughter, I want to hear.”
“Sometimes it’s better to be ignorant.”
“I don’t understand,” Pedro said.
“You will. Just leave me alone with these men.”
Pedro hesitated, then somberly got out of the van.
Buchanan watched to make sure that Pedro got into the Jeep with Anita. Only then did he close the van’s rear doors. The back of the van smelled from when Buchanan had allowed each man to use the Porta Potti before he drove to Juana’s house. They were still naked and looked chilled.
He aimed a flashlight at one man and then the other. “You should have told me the sentry was in the house.”
Terror made their eyes wide, their faces gaunt.
“Now he’s dead,” Buchanan said.
Their fearful expressions intensified.
“That puts the two of you in an awkward position,” Buchanan said. He took out his gun and used his other hand to ungag the first man.
“I figured,” the man said. “That’s why you sent the man and woman away. You didn’t want them to see you kill us.”
Buchanan picked up a blanket from a corner of the van.
“Sure,” the man said in despair. “A blanket can make a not-bad silencer.”
Buchanan pulled the blanket over the man and his partner. “I wouldn’t want you to get pneumonia.”
“What?” The man looked surprised.
“If our positions were reversed,” Buchanan said, “what would you do to me?”
The man didn’t answer.
“We’re alike, yet we’re not,” Buchanan said. “Both of us have killed. The difference is, I’m not a killer.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Is the distinction too subtle for you to grasp? I’ll make it plain. I’m not going to kill you.”
The man looked simultaneously troubled and bewildered, as if mercy was not a familiar concept.
“Provided you follow the ground rules,” Buchanan said.
“What kind of . . .?”
“First of all, you’re going to stay tied up until sunset,” Buchanan said. “You’ll be fed, given water, and allowed to use the toilet. But you’ll remain in the van. Is that clear?”
The man frowned and nodded.
“Second, when you’re released, you will not harm Pedro and Anita Mendez. They know nothing about me. They know nothing about their daughter. They’re totally ignorant about any of this. If you torture them or use any other means t
o interrogate them, I’ll get angry. You do not want me to be angry. If anything happens to them, I’ll make your worst fears seem an understatement. You can hide. You can switch identities. It won’t do you any good. I make a specialty of finding people. For the rest of your life, you’ll keep looking behind you. Clear?”
The man swallowed. “Yes.”
Buchanan got out of the van, left the doors open, and gestured for Pedro and Anita to come over.
Pedro started to say something in Spanish.
Buchanan stopped him. “No. We have to speak English. I want to make sure that these men understand every word.”
Pedro looked confused.
“You’re going to have a busy day watching them,” Buchanan said. “I want you to find a place where this van won’t be conspicuous. Maybe in back of one of your garages.” He explained his conversation with the prisoners. “Let them go at sunset.”
“But . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Buchanan said. “They won’t bother you. In fact, they’ll be leaving town. Won’t you?” he asked the first man.
The first man swallowed again and nodded.
“Exactly. Now all I need is for you to tell me if you have a check-in schedule,” Buchanan said. “Is there anybody you have to phone at a specific time to let your employer know there hasn’t been trouble?”
“No,” the man said.
“You’re sure? You’re negotiating for your life. Be very careful.”
“We’re supposed to phone only if we have a question or something to report,” the man said.
“Then let’s wrap this up.” Buchanan’s legs were rubbery from pain and fatigue. He turned to Pedro and Anita. “I need something to eat. I need a place to sleep.”
“We’d be honored to have you as a guest,” Anita said.
“Thanks, but I’d prefer that you don’t have any idea where I am.”
“We’d never tell.”
“Of course not,” Buchanan said, not bothering to correct her, knowing that Pedro and his wife didn’t have the faintest idea of how vulnerable they would be to torture. “The less you know about any of this, the better, though. As long as these men realize you can’t tell them anything, you’re safe. Just keep the bargain I made. Release them at sunset. Meanwhile, on our way into town, I need to pick up my car. My bag’s in the trunk.”
“What happens later? After you rest?” Pedro asked.
“I’m leaving San Antonio.”
“To where?”
Buchanan didn’t answer.
“Are you going to Philadelphia? To find the people who hired these men? The people you spoke to on the phone?”
Buchanan still didn’t answer.
“What happened at Juana’s house?”
“Nothing,” Buchanan said. “Pedro, drive the van while I stay in back and watch these men. Anita, follow in the Jeep.”
“But what about Juana?”
“You have my word. I’ll never give up.”
19
THE YUCATÁN PENINSULA
McIntyre, the sunburned, leathery foreman of the demolition crew, lay feverish and helpless on a cot in the log building that his men had constructed when they’d first arrived at the site. Dense trees and shrubs had still covered the ruins back then. The ruins themselves had still been here. Sanity had still prevailed.
Now, as it took all of McIntyre’s strength for him to use his good arm to wipe sweat from his brow, he wished from the depths of his soul that he had never agreed to his damnable contract with Alistair Drummond. The considerable fee—a greater sum than he’d ever received for any assignment—had been irresistible, as had the equally considerable bonus that Alistair Drummond had promised if the project was successfully completed. McIntyre had worked all over the world. In the course of his career, his nomadic existence had resulted in two divorces, in his being alienated from two women he loved and two sets of children he adored. All because of McIntyre’s urge to conquer the wilderness, to put order where there was chaos. But this assignment had required him to destroy order and create chaos, and now he was being punished.
The earth itself seemed infuriated by the obscenity that McIntyre and his crew had caused to happen here. Or maybe it was the gods in whose honor the ruins had been constructed. An odd thought for him, McIntyre realized. After all, he had never been religious. Nonetheless, as his death approached, he found that he was increasingly thinking about ultimates. What he would once have called superstition now seemed to make perfect sense. The gods were angry because their temples and shrines had been desecrated.
Destroy the ruins, Drummond had commanded. Scatter them. His word be done. And with each dynamite blast, with each crunch of a bulldozer, with each hieroglyph-covered block of stone dumped into a sinkhole, the earth and the gods beneath had protested. Periodic tremors had shaken the camp. Their duration had lengthened. And with the increased tremors had come a further horror, myriad snakes escaping from holes and fissures in the ground, a pestilence of them, only to be controlled by spraying kerosene and scorching the earth, further despoiling it. A pall of smoke hung over the devastated ruins.
For a time, the snakes had seemed everywhere, but as the tremors had stopped, the snakes had simultaneously vanished. No longer disturbed, they’d returned to their underground nests.
Not in time, however. At least for McIntyre. The previous day, just before sunset, he had reached into a toolbox to get a wrench and felt a sharp, burning pain just above his right wrist. Compelled by fear, rushing toward the medical tent, he barely had a glimpse of the tiny snake that slithered from the toolbox and into a hole. The camp physician, an unshaven man who always seemed to have a cigarette in his mouth and whiskey on his breath, had injected McIntyre with antivenom and disinfected the puncture wounds, all the while assuring McIntyre that he’d been very lucky inasmuch as the fangs had missed the major blood vessels in his arm.
But as McIntyre had shivered from fear and shock, he hadn’t felt lucky at all. For one thing, different snake toxins required different types of antivenom, but McIntyre hadn’t been able to get a good enough look at the snake that had bitten him in order to identify it. For another, even if he had been given the correct antivenom, he still desperately needed emergency care in a hospital. But the nearest major hospital was in Campeche, 150 miles away. A road had not yet been built through the jungle to allow a vehicle to leave the ruins. The only way McIntyre could be taken to Campeche in time for the medical treatment he urgently needed was by helicopter. But two of the camp’s helicopters were much farther away, in Vera Cruz, getting supplies, and weren’t expected back for twelve hours. The third helicopter was in camp but disabled. That was why McIntyre had been reaching into the toolbox when the snake hidden there bit him—he’d been helping a mechanic to fix the chopper’s hydraulic system.
As he lay on a bunk in a corner of the camp’s office, his mind seemed to float while death spread slowly through his body. Death felt suffocatingly hot, squeezing moisture from his body, soaking his clothes. At the same time, death felt unbearably cold, racking him with chills, making him wish fervently for more blankets.
McIntyre’s vision clouded. Sounds were muffled. The roar of bulldozers, the blast of explosions, the din of jackhammers seemed to come from far away instead of from the remnants of the ruins outside his office. But the one thing he listened for, the one sound he knew he couldn’t fail to hear no matter how far away, was the rapid whump-whump-whump of a helicopter, and to his despair, he still had not detected it. If the chopper in camp wasn’t fixed soon, if the other choppers didn’t return soon, he would die, and it occurred to him, making him furious despite how weak he was, that adequate medical care in camp was one of the conditions that Alistair Drummond had guaranteed. Since Drummond had failed to make good on that promise, perhaps none of the other promises would have been fulfilled, either. The bonus, for example. Or the fee for the job. Maybe Drummond would have all kinds of reasons for not being able to complete the terms of the contract.
This suspicion had obviously not occurred to any of the surviving workers. They were so eager to get out of here that they attacked the job with relentless fury. Their impatience filled them with greater anticipation of the reward they’d been guaranteed. Nothing discouraged their greed, not the tremors, not the snakes, certainly not McIntyre’s impending death. They had persisted despite efforts by Indians in the area to scare them away. Those natives, descendents of the original Maya who had built these monuments, had been so outraged by the obliteration of the ruins that they had sabotaged equipment, poisoned the camp’s water, set booby traps, attacked sentries, and in effect waged war. Responding, calling it self-defense, the workers had hunted and killed any native they found, dumping the corpses into wells in unconscious imitation of the human sacrifice once practiced by the Maya. In this region untouched by civilization, the struggle had reminded McIntyre of what had happened four hundred years earlier when the Spaniards had invaded the region. The area was sealed. No outsider would ever know what had happened here. Certainly no outsider would be able to prove it. When the job was finished, all that would matter would be the results.
Delirious, McIntyre heard the office door open. From outside, bulldozers crunched past. Then the door was closed, and footsteps crossed the earthen floor toward this area of the office.
A gentle hand touched his brow. “You’re still feverish.” A woman’s voice. Jenna’s. “Do you feel any better?”
“No.” McIntyre shivered as more sweat oozed from his body.
“Drink this water.”
“Can’t.” He struggled to breathe. “I’ll throw it up.”
“Just hang on. The mechanics are working as fast as they can to fix the chopper.”
“Not fast enough.”
Jenna knelt beside his cot and held his left hand. McIntyre remembered how surprised he had been to learn that the camp’s surveyor/cartographer was female. He’d insisted that this was no place for a woman, but she’d soon overcome his chauvinistic attitudes, proving that she could adapt to the jungle as well as any man. She was in her forties, the same as McIntyre. She had honey-colored hair, firm-looking breasts, an appealing smile, and in the three months they’d been working together, McIntyre had fallen in love with her. He had never told her. He’d been too afraid of being rejected. If she did reject him, their working relationship would have been intolerable. But as soon as the job was completed, he had intended to . . .
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