Assumed Identity (1993) (66 page)

'I did it for us.'

'Oh?'

'I was trying to get us out of at least part of the mess we're in,' Holly said.

'What part is that? Right now, it seems we've got plenty of mess to go around.'

Holly bit her lip. 'Shouldn't we talk about this when we're back in our room?'

'And give you time to think up believable answers? No, I think we ought to keep talking.' Buchanan grasped her arm. 'Exactly what part of the mess were you trying to get us out of?'

He guided her along the lane. The sky was less gray. The breeze was stronger. Birds scattered into the sky.

'All right, I've been wanting to tell you since we were in New York,' Holly said. 'God, I'm so relieved to. At the start, the reason I knew you were in Cancun, the reason I was able to get to Club Internacional ahead of time and watch you talk to those two.' She almost said'drug distributors,' then looked around the shadowy lane and chose other language, wary of being too specific before she reached their room. '. businessmen. The reason I.'

'Someone in my unit set me up.' Buchanan opened the squeaky door to their room.

Holly spun in surprise. 'You knew that?'

'It was the only explanation that made sense. Someone on the inside. No one else could have known where I'd be. The same person who told you about Yellow Fruit, Seaspray, the Intelligence Support Activity, and Scotch and Soda. That information could have come only from one of my superiors.'

Still grasping Holly's arm, Buchanan led her into the room, turned on the light, closed the door, locked it, and guided her to the bed. He set her down firmly. 'Who?' he asked.

Holly fidgeted.

'Who?'

'What will you do? Beat it out of me?'

'No.' Buchanan studied her. 'Cut my losses.' He put his toilet kit into his travel bag, glanced around the room to make sure that he hadn't forgotten anything, and walked toward the door. 'There are buses that'll take you back to Miami.'

'Wait.'

Buchanan kept walking.

'Wait. I don't know his real name. I only know him as Alan.'

Buchanan paused. 'Medium height. Chubby face. Short, brown hair. Early forties.'

'Yes. That's him.'

'I know him. He was my controller a while ago. He's with the.'

The hesitation seemed to be a test for Holly. She decided to fill in the gap. 'The Agency.'

Buchanan seemed reassured by her candor. He walked toward the bed. 'Keep talking.'

'He was very straightforward about what he wanted. He doesn't approve of the military's involvement in civilian intelligence operations. American servicemen, armed, in civilian clothes, using false ID, conducting Agency operations in foreign countries. It's bad enough to have a civilian caught as a spy. But a member of Army Special Forces? On active duty? Pretending to be a civilian? On a strike team intended to topple unfriendly foreign governments or engage in an unsanctioned private war against major drug dealers? If the public realized how out of control the relationship between the CIA and the military had become, Congress would be forced into a major investigation of American intelligence tactics. The Agency is under enough pressure, as it is. One more controversy, and it might be replaced by an intelligence bureau with stricter limits. That's what Alan's afraid of. So he came to me and gave me certain information, insisting that he never be named, that he be cited only as a reliable government source. To make my story look less like a setup, he didn't tell me everything. He gave me just enough hints that my work in checking them out and linking them would provide me with evidence to maintain the fiction that I'd come up with the story on my own. Why are you looking at me like that?'

'It doesn't make sense. If Alan was afraid that exposing the Agency's use of unauthorized military action would threaten the Agency, why the hell would he give you the story? It's exactly what he doesn't want.'

'No.' Holly shook her head. 'He was very specific about that, and I agreed. You and only you were to be the object lesson.'

'Oh, Christ,' Buchanan said.

'The idea was that I'd expose you as a single example of the dangerous use of the military in civilian intelligence operations. The government wouldn't have any more information than what was in my story. I'd testify that I didn't know anything further. The congressional investigation would eventually end. But the message would be clear. If the CIA was using military strike teams, it had better stop, or else the Agency and certain Special Operations units would be severely limited, if not disbanded. Careers would be destroyed.'

'Sure.' Buchanan's voice was strained. 'And in the meantime, you'd be a journalist celebrity. And Alan would have the shop back in his control.'

'That was the idea,' Holly said.

'Politics.' Buchanan made the word sound like a curse.

'But it's not the idea any longer.'

'What are you talking about?'

'That's why I phoned Alan,' Holly said. 'To cancel my agreement with him. I told him I wanted out. I told him I wanted to talk to your superiors, to assure them that what we're doing isn't related to them, that you aren't a risk to them and neither am I.'

'You honestly expected he'd go along? No hard feelings? Nice try? We can't win 'em all? That sort of thing? Jesus.'

'Alan told me he was sorry things got out of hand.'

'I bet.'

'We're still being hunted. He suggested I distance myself from you while he figures out a way to bring me in.'

'Damned good advice.' Buchanan squinted. 'Distance yourself.'

'No,' Holly said. 'I won't let you go.'

'Just how the hell do you think you're going to stop me?'

'Follow.'

'Lots of luck. What is it with you? You still think I'm a front-page story?'

No answer.

'Then maybe you figure it's safer to stay with me and run from them than to try to do it by yourself.'

Still no answer.

'Look, I don't have time to guess what you're thinking. I've got to get out of Key West before your phone call brings a hit team down here.'

'You.'

'What?' Buchanan frowned.

'You,' Holly said. 'That's why I want to go with you.'

'Make sense.'

'I can't make it any plainer. I want to be with you. It's not just because I feel safe with you, although I do. It's. I didn't expect you to be what you are. I didn't expect to feel attracted to you. I didn't expect that I'd get so used to being with you that my stomach cramps at the thought of your going away.'

'Now who's playing a role?'

'I'm telling the truth! I got used to you. And as long as we're spreading blame around, don't forget you're the one who came to me the second time. I wouldn't be in danger if you hadn't decided to use me. Hell, in Washington I saved your life. That ought to prove something.'

'Yeah, and I'm so wonderful that you fell in love with me.'

She started to say something.

'Save your energy,' Buchanan said. 'You're going to get your wish.'

Holly's eyes widened in surprise.

'I can't leave you behind,' Buchanan said. 'I just realized I made a mistake. I told you where I was going.'

'Yes. Mexico City,' Holly said.

'Because of Juana, I can't change my plans. I swore I'd help her if she ever needed me, and I intend to keep that promise. Which means I can't let you wander around until you're caught and you tell them where I've gone and what I'm doing. Pack. I want to get off this island before they get here.'

Holly breathed out. 'Thanks.'

'Don't thank me. This isn't a favor. As soon as I think you're no longer a risk to me, I'm cutting you loose. But in the meantime, Holly, pay attention. Take this advice. Do not force me to treat you as an enemy.'

Chapter 15.

The Yucatan peninsula.

A pall of smoke clung to the massive clearing. As construction proceeded, the crackle of gunshots punctuated the roar of bulldozers, cranes, and other heavy machinery. So did the crackle of flames, the source of the smoke that filled the area. Trees were being burned back, the clearing widened, anything to reduce the cover from which natives - descendants of the original Maya - persisted in their attacks on the construction crew and the equipment. The scattered stones of the leveled ruins of once-magnificent, towering pyramids and temples still lay among the towers that had replaced them, these made of steel. Occasionally the earth tremored, but the workers and guards no longer paid attention. As with the snakes, the smoke, and the gunshots, those who labored here had become used to anything. The job mattered. Completing it. Being paid. Escaping.

Alistair Drummond did that to a person, Jenna thought as she obeyed his orders, completing the archaeological survey map that would show that the ruins were not as impressive as photographs from space had led scholars to expect. A few minor structures. Numerous scattered stones, the result of earthquakes. Pathetic remnants of a formerly great culture. With one exception. The Mayan ball court. For reasons unexplained - perhaps because one intact structure might lend credence to his story - Drummond had insisted that the ball court, a distance from the area of demolition and construction, be spared. There, on its grassy, rectangular surface flanked by stone terraces upon which royal spectators had nodded approval, teams of men wearing leather armor had played a game in which they attempted to throw a punishing globe the size and weight of a medicine ball through a vertical hoop on either side of the court. The stakes of the game had been ultimate. Life or death. Perhaps that was why Drummond had spared it - because the ball court represented his cruelty, his pursuit of a goal at any cost.

He and Raymond had arrived yesterday afternoon, brazenly, in Drummond Enterprises' large, blue helicopter, as if he had nothing to hide as he took charge of the final stages of the operation. 'You've done well,' he'd told Jenna. 'You'll get an extra bonus.'

Jenna had muttered acquiescence, mentally screaming, All I want is to get out of here with my sanity. Her co-worker, her friend, her potential lover, the project's foreman, McIntyre, had died yesterday, from snakebite, a half hour before Drummond's helicopter had arrived. Jenna had prayed for the helicopter to arrive sooner so that Mac could be flown to a hospital, but the moment she had seen Drummond's determined, wizened face as the old man strode toward her through the smoke, she had realized that Drummond would never have agreed to waste the resources of the helicopter to take a dying man from the camp. 'He'll be dead before he gets to the hospital. We don't have time. Make him as comfortable as possible,' Drummond would have said. As it was, what he did say was, 'Bury him where the natives can't get to him. No, I've changed my mind. Burn him. Burn them all.'

'All' were the natives who'd been exterminated in their attempts to stop the desecration of their sacred land. Jenna had been certain she was going insane when she realized that a massacre had taken place. She'd known of tribes that were exterminated in South America, in the depths of the Amazon rain forest. But it had never occurred to her that portions of Mexico were equally remote and that communication with the outside could be so minimal that no one 'in the world' would have any idea of what was happening here. By the time word leaked out, there'd be no evidence of the atrocity. And who was going to talk? The workers? By acquiescing to the slaughter, by accepting obscenely huge bonuses, they were implicated. Only a fool would break the silence.

Now, standing in the camp's log-walled office, remembering how Mac had writhed feverishly on a cot in the corner not twenty-four hours ago, she listened numbly to final commands from Drummond about the charts she had prepared.

'Above all' - Drummond's aged voice was filled with phlegm -'the extent of the true discovery must be made to dwarf the archaeological ones. There'll be photographs, of course. But your charts will be given primary attention.'

At that moment, the door opened, and Raymond came in, wearing jungle clothing, holding a rifle, his face sooted from smoke, his shirt crimson with blood. 'If there are more, I can't find them.'

'But a different kind of enemy might be coming here. I think he's hunting us,' Drummond said, dismissing Jenna, who left the hut.

Raymond straightened, challenged. 'Who?'

'A dead man.'

Raymond furrowed his brow.

'Charles Duffy,' Drummond said. 'Do you recognize the-?'

'Yes, he was hired to watch the target's home in San Antonio. To deal with her if she arrived. He disappeared from the house three nights ago.'

'He's no longer missing,' Drummond said. 'His body washed up on a bank of the San Antonio River. He'd been shot. The authorities say he had no identification. One of the men you hired was able to get a look at the body in the morgue, however, and has no doubt that it's Duffy. But Mr Duffy is remarkable,' Drummond continued. 'While dead, he used his credit card to fly from San Antonio to Washington, D.C. He stayed at the Ritz-Carlton. For a portion of the next day, he stayed at the Dorset Hotel in Manhattan. After that, he and a companion flew to Miami where they rented a car.'

Raymond brooded. 'I don't understand the Washington connection, but the Dorset isn't far from the target's apartment in Manhattan.'

'And from the ex-husband. He was paid a visit by a man and a woman the day before yesterday. They interrupted the agreed-upon payment to him.'