Angel Face

by Suzanne Forster

  “I don’t know why you’re looking for this Angela Lowe,” Mitch was saying, “but I’d be careful, if I were you. Nothing about this smells good to me, Doc. Nothing.”

  GOLDEN dust poured through the windows of the ramshackle bus as it shambled to a halt, springs creaking and groaning. They’d just come down a dirt hill so steep that Angela had grabbed a rusty guardrail to keep from falling out of her seat. She’d punctured her thumb and would probably need a tetanus shot, but that would have to wait until she found what she was looking for.

  “¡Darse prisa!” the bus driver shouted at the passengers, urging them to hurry and disembark. “San Luis de la Paz. ¡Prisa! ¡Prisa!”

  Was that the right village? There’d been so many towns and villages they were all beginning to sound the same to Angela. The autobus had just trundled through mile after mile of the lower Bajio, Mexico’s heartland, and the lush, fertile valley she remembered from her one other trip here had turned into a chain of valleys, one indistinguishable from the next. If she were wrong, she would be caught in this wild web of nature forever.

  All she knew was that San Luis, or a village like it, was a strong link to her unrecoverable past, and much about that time was as thick and gauzy as the dust cloud rising around the bus. She didn’t know what had forced her to take refuge in such a primitive place. Those details were lost now, along with the year of her life that she’d erased. She hadn’t been able to point and click with the specificity of a mouse, and she’d lost good data as well as bad. But this was where she’d fled to, and it was where she hoped to disappear again—if she could find the right house, the right person. Silver, that was the name that had come back to her. Just Silver.

  “¡Darse prisa!”

  Angela pressed a tissue to her thumb and let the other passengers go first, although no one seemed in any particular hurry, despite the driver’s shouting. They were mostly farm workers of Indian descent on their way to the valley’s fields and orchards, and Angela found their stoicism admirable. Nothing flustered them, including a trip down the face of a cliff. According to the shy young woman who shared Angela’s seat, the planting season was over, and harvest hadn’t begun, but the crops needed to be watered and maintained.

  Angela wanted to know more about the young woman’s life and whether there was any joy to be eked out of such obvious hardship, but her Spanish had given out. It surprised her that she knew any, but if she’d ever spoken it well, she’d erased that, too.

  As the dust settled outside, she saw an ornate hillside village that she vaguely remembered from her other time here. Its stucco and adobe dwellings were perched along twisting cobblestone streets, all of which ran uphill at a precipitous rake. San Luis de la Paz seemed to hover on the banks of an emerald river that overflowed the valley floor, where acres of avocado trees gave way to lavender amaranth bushes and cantaloupe vines looped like fleur-de-lis. She took it all in with a sense of gratefulness and numb relief.

  This was the place. Thank God she was here at last.

  Now she could get off the bus.

  She’d taken the Million Air flight to Mexico City, where she’d caught the express train, El Constitucionalista, and taken it to its very last stop. From there she’d boarded this bus and severed her last tie to civilization as she knew it. She’d only been here once, and she couldn’t have said for how long, but it had felt as if she’d escaped the insanity that chased her. Here she could drink in the sparkling clear air and be cleansed of all sins, no matter how unforgivable. Of the little she remembered about this place, what lingered over everything else was a sense of refuge and rebirth. Thank God that hadn’t changed.

  PETER Brandt found his partner in the M-1.5 clean room, suited up in shock-white coveralls and a hood. Since Peter was responding to Ron Laird’s urgent summons, he hadn’t bothered with the full regalia, despite the company’s stringent requirements. He’d slipped on a disposable frock and was still pulling on his bouffant hair cover as he hurried out of the air shower into the rigidly controlled environment.

  Ron had left a message on Peter’s voice mail, telling him they had to talk as soon as possible—and any summons to a clean room invariably meant problems with some aspect of their work at SmartTech. Ron’s latest passion was robotics that used components so tiny they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, but Peter had the feeling that company business wasn’t going to be today’s topic of discussion.

  Ron was hunched over a microscope and adjusting the magnification when Peter tapped him on the shoulder.

  “What’s up?” Peter asked, speaking over the constant whir of overhead ventilation.

  Ron peered at him through the hood’s window. “Where is she?” was his muffled question.

  There was only one “she” in this company. Peter felt as if the air were being squeezed out of his lungs. He wished he’d worn a hood to conceal the dread that must have left him pale. “Is that what you called me in here about?”

  “Where the hell is she, Peter?”

  “She’s been out in the field the last couple of days. I left her a voice mail, and she hasn’t answered it yet, but she will. What’s the big deal?”

  “The CIA’s looking for her. That’s the big deal.”

  “Jesus, why? Do they know something?”

  “They didn’t share that information with me, I’m afraid. But if they do, and if they get to her before we do, it’s all over, Peter. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Only too well,” Peter said bitterly. He didn’t appreciate his partner’s sardonic tone, especially since Ron bore his fair share of the responsibility for the first fuck-up with Angela.

  “What if she’s gone into hiding again?” his partner asked.

  “If she’s gone into hiding, she’ll come back for me. She did before.”

  “And if she’s reverting?”

  “She’s not reverting.”

  But Peter wasn’t at all sure of that, and if his partner knew how close he’d come to accurately predicting Angela’s state of mind, he would have a team of detectives out looking for her. Peter had kept Dr. Mona Fremont’s ongoing assessments of Angela to himself. He had never mentioned Angela’s paranoia, her violent fantasies, or any of the other indicators that something was going wrong.

  In fact, Peter was scared shitless that Angela had had another psychotic episode, and if that were the case, he would have to tell Ron at some point, because he didn’t know how to save her this time.

  “I’ll take care of everything,” Peter said.

  “Just take care of this, will you? This one thing?”

  The two men exchanged glances, and Peter saw something in his partner’s eyes that he hadn’t expected. It looked like fear, and just seeing the two tiny white glints had more impact on Peter than anything Ron could have said. His partner was not a man who frightened easily.

  “SILVER? Do you know anyone here in San Luis by that name?”

  The grizzled old woman shook her head, refusing to answer Angela’s question or even to look at her. She hurried on her way, stumbling as she struggled to balance a heavy basket of fresh-picked pineapple on her shoulder.

  Angela held back an offer of help, knowing it wasn’t wanted. The woman seemed frightened of her, and that came as a surprise. More and more sensory memories were triggered as Angela explored the village, but the strongest was her memory of the villagers as being quite friendly. Nevertheless, this one seemed determined to escape her. She huffed and puffed up the steep cobblestone street, balancing her heavy load.

  Angela was wondering what to do when the woman paused to catch her breath and stabbed a finger toward a black road winding through the green valley. It cut through a grove of avocado trees and disappeared.

  “El Rancho Alvarado,” she called back to Angela, then continued on her way. “Plata.”

  Angela didn’t know whether she meant that Silver lived on a ranch or that there was some kind of silver ranch in the valley. Angela dimly recalled an adobe hut in the vi
llage with a dirty straw floor and no electricity or running water. She and another young woman had bartered themselves—hard labor for food. Could that have been Silver?

  They’d toiled in the fields alongside the seasoned workers, and they’d subsisted on the fruits and vegetables that were picked there, like the basketful the woman carried. Angela had been pushed to her limits, but she’d also been purged of all concerns except survival.

  Now she was just glad she’d packed light and worn her roomy khakis and sneakers. If there was a ranch house in the valley, it couldn’t be seen through the trees, which made her think it was going to be a long walk. She threw her backpack over her shoulder and began to pick her way down the same cobblestone street the old woman was climbing up. It led to the dirt road the bus had come in on, and beyond that, lower in the valley, was a man driving a donkey cart along a wandering, intersecting path that seemed to come from nowhere and go nowhere.

  Angela watched him turn onto the silver road the old woman had pointed to, and she took off at a run.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE cart jerked to a halt, raising the same clouds of golden dust that had enveloped the autobús. Angela slid off the back end and thanked the driver, a man whose cork black eyes brought to mind the mustachioed Emiliano Zapata, leader of the Mexican revolution. She had a handful of new pesos left over from the train, but he seemed faintly offended when she offered them. She let it go, gracefully, she hoped. She had some things to learn about the local mores.

  She’d been wedged into a cart loaded with farming tools and equipment, including primitive wooden clubs and gleaming machetes, and she could remember using both. On the drive up, she’d had a flashback of a machete whistling through a forest of dead corn stalks, and the woman wielding it was brown from the sun and physically fit from her labors. The long hair, shimmering beneath a faded red bandanna, and the shy, dark eyes made her look like one of the natives. No one would have recognized her as Angela Lowe.

  It was coming back, Angela realized with a sense of dread. Whether she wanted it to or not, it was.

  She’d been sitting with her back to the ranch as they approached, and the image in her head was of a rambling old adobe hacienda, still proud, but beaten down by weather and time. Perhaps she’d worked at a place like that. What she could see from the back of the cart was fields rolling away from her in every direction, green with new growth. But the crop wasn’t corn or wheat. It looked more like coffee. Small trees produced pods that looked like elongated oranges, with tinges of red and green on the skin. Surprisingly, the fruit looked close to ripe and ready to harvest.

  But now that the cart had stopped and she’d slipped off, she realized that this could not be the same place. The adobe hacienda was actually quite a grand plantation house with a red clay tile roof, graceful white colonnades, and manicured hedges. The oak double doors could have been taken from an early mission, and the house and surrounding gardens were gated off by the verdigris pillars of a wrought-iron fence. On one side, a terraced pathway led around to the back, and on the other was a lawn of cut grass with a net that looked like a badminton court.

  If Silver really was the friend who had worked in the fields beside Angela, it was hard to imagine her living in a place like this, unless she was on the household staff. Angela still didn’t have a clear picture of the woman in her mind, although she could hear a voice, and it sounded like the one that had been coming to her in moments of stress or fear. It could have been her own voice—that inner guiding force that everyone has—but for some reason, she kept thinking it was Silver’s, and that Silver was the one who had brought her down here the other time she’d had to disappear.

  “Are there servants’ quarters around the back?” Angela asked as she hauled her duffel from the cart. “Apartmento con cocina?”

  The driver opened the gate for her and waved her through, but he didn’t seem to know what she was talking about, even when she asked specifically for Silver. Moments later, she watched him head off in his cart, lurching down a pitted road that led to several large tin buildings dotting the hillside. Warehouses or processing plants, Angela imagined.

  Now it was just her and the formidable house. There didn’t appear to be anyone else around, and the place was so still, she wondered if it was occupied. She would have preferred to wait outside for a bit and get her bearings, but the cut on her thumb was throbbing and needed attention.

  A stone path led her through a lush hanging garden alongside the house and into a back courtyard, where lacy ferns drooped over gurgling fountains and boughs of blue wisteria swayed in the breezes. The arched doors hung open enough for Angela to see a small anteroom and another tiled archway. She gave the lion’s head knocker a rap.

  “Entrar,” someone called out. The voice sounded near, yet muffled, as if it were coming from a tunnel.

  Angela had just been invited to come in, and she did so, but cautiously. Beyond the archway was a darkened room lit with floor lanterns that threw billowing shadows. What stopped her were the grotesque masks and grinning life-size skeletons, some of them dressed up in fancy clothing and hats, even carrying purses in their bony fingers. She didn’t know whether to be frightened or not. There was a long table heaped with offerings of flowers, liquor, and food.

  It was draped like a shrine, and Angela had the sudden realization that she was in some kind of burial chamber. That did frighten her. She stepped back and saw that there was a skeleton right next to her. Its leering smile and empty eye sockets made her drag in a breath.

  She wanted out of there. But when she turned to leave, a ghoulish figure appeared in the doorway. Angela reared back and hit the skeleton, sending it crashing to the floor. Terror fired her muscles. But the impulse that shot through her was to attack. Not to run. To fight.

  She coiled, preparing, but with no conscious knowledge of what she was doing. It was all instinct. Gut instinct. A pure right-brained, limbic-driven response. It didn’t surprise her that she knew how to defend herself or that it came automatically. As an informant she’d been an important commodity to SmartTech, and they’d provided her with basic training. But she knew how to counterattack, too. One perfectly placed kick could snap the neck and paralyze an opponent. She knew that. It was wired into her nervous system. This was more than a gut reaction.

  She knew how to kill. She had killed people.

  The impulse was instantly gone, but Angela could hardly breathe from the shock. She would have been an easy target at that moment. But her opponent was already ripping off the mask and trying to apologize.

  “Angela?” The statuesque woman shook out her wispy blond hair, feathering it with her fingers. “What are you doing here in Mexico? I thought it was Pedro, my super-intendente. Forgive me for scaring you!”

  Angela gaped at the alarmingly lovely face, the breathless concern.

  “Silver?” Her racing heart wouldn’t let her do more than whisper. She’d expected to remember everything the moment she saw her friend face-to-face, but Angela didn’t know this woman. Only the confident demeanor was familiar. And the voice.

  “You don’t remember me, do you? Oh, dear . . .” Silver searched Angela’s features regretfully, as if admitting that she held some personal responsibility for this dilemma. “There’s a reason for that, and I’ll explain later. First, let’s get you a drink to calm your nerves.”

  But Angela wasn’t quite ready to be calm. She didn’t know who she was dealing with. “Your eyes?” She struggled to get it right. “Were they ever another color? Silver blue?”

  “Oh, yes, of course! These are those disposable contacts. They’re brown today, right?” Silver laughed out loud.

  “You can get contacts in San Luis?”

  “No, north of the border.” Silver pulled off the black crepe paper cape she was wearing, revealing trim white shorts and a striped halter top.

  “I’m in the States at least once a month on business,” she explained. “My hair’s different, too. It was dishwater before
, as long as yours. Do you remember? I change it about as often as my contacts.”

  Angela was starting to remember. Many things, including the realization that she had first met Silver briefly when they were both teenagers. Silver had been in trouble, and Angela had seen it coming. She’d warned her and probably saved her life. But that young girl had looked very different from this woman, or even the woman Angela had turned to when she needed help.

  Silver had always had the lean grace of an athlete, and that hadn’t changed. She was bright and quick-witted. She radiated intelligence and compassion. Still, she’d changed dramatically in the last two years.

  Angela stared at her friend now, shaking her head, and both women said at once, “What are you doing here?”

  Silver popped up first. “Can you believe it? I’m a plantation owner.” She threw out a hand, inviting Angela to check the place out.

  “This is yours? You own it?”

  “Yes, all mine. Well, I’ve got a silent partner, but I run things, and business is good. We grow addictive substances here: chocolate! Technically, the crop is cocoa beans, but . . .” She shrugged. “Same thing. And that’s enough about me.” She peered at Angela searchingly.

  A ragged sigh escaped. “I’m in trouble, Silver. Again.”

  The last time Angela had come to San Luis, she’d been running from shadows, a part of her past so terrible she couldn’t bear to remember it. But there was also information, explosive information that could destabilize the government, maybe several governments, and make the country vulnerable to attack. That was the reason they’d watched her and monitored everything she did.

  When she’d returned to the States, Peter Brandt himself had told her she would be “on probation.” It was a condition of her amnesty, but she’d never known who was watching her or what she’d been running from. Now it was different. There were flesh-and-blood men trying to silence her, and obviously they would stop at nothing, including luring her with her own weaknesses, with him. She wondered how they got him to cooperate. Sammy had always said the genius experiment was badly designed and pointless, and now Angela had begun to question its purpose herself, and especially Peter’s involvement. Maybe it was all a means to an end and never a legitimate study.