Masquerade

OUTSTANDING PRAISE FOR

MASQUERADE

“A disturbing link to recent headlines.”

—The New York Times

“Watch out, Robert Ludlum! A bravura performance by Lynds, whose maiden race in the international thriller sweepstakes should make ‘the boys' turn around.”

—Sue Grafton

“Page-turning suspense . . . An edge-of-the-seat spy novel.”

—Faye Kellerman

“A master of intrigue and adventure. Her rush-to-the-next-page excitement never stops.”

—Clive Cussler

“Move over, Ian Fleming . . . an engrossing story of international intrigue with (at last) a female heroine who can hold her own.”

—New Woman

“Teeth-grinding suspense.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Masquerade
is a ball.”

—Santa Barbara News Press

“Rivals those of established masters.”

—Chattanooga Free Press

“Elaborate charade . . . nonstop pace.”

—Library Journal

“A female author blasts into the old boys' club of the international thriller.”

—San Diego Union-Tribune

“An impressive debut.”

—Winston-Salem Journal

“Hard to put down . . . a surprising conclusion.”

—The Omaha World Herald

ALSO BY GAYLE LYNDS

Mosaic

Mesmerized

The Coil

Gayle Lynds

 

 

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

MASQUERADE

Copyright © 1996 by Gayle Hallenbeck Lynds.

Excerpt from
The Coil
copyright © 2004 by Gayle Hallenbeck Lynds.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN: 0-312-98603-3

Printed in the United States of America

Doubleday edition / February 1996
Berkley edition / October 1997
St. Martin's Paperbacks edition / February 2004

St. Martin's Paperbacks are published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For Dennis,
with love

 

 

 

 

For advice and assistance, I am especially grateful to former intelligence agent Philip Shelton; speech and language pathologist Karyn Lewis Searcy, M.A. C.C.C.; espionage specialist and author Michael Kurland; editor Fred Klein; and Linda Tesar, Ph.D., Department of Economics, University of California at Santa Barbara.

For all their generous analysis and help, I am indebted to Julia Cunningham, Nancy Fisher, Bina Garfield, Brian Garfield, Gary Gulbransen, Susan Miles Gulbransen, Sheila Johnson, Ken Kuhlken, Dennis Lynds, Christine McNaught, and Katy Peake.

In the often perilous journey to publication, I deeply appreciate the high professional standards and many courtesies of Arlene Friedman, Ellen Archer, Russell Gordon, Tammy Blake, Peter Block-Garcia, Brandon Saltz, and Gabrielle Brooks.

Finally, a heartfelt thank you to Danny Baror for believing so early, to Judy Kern for her unerring editorial eye, and to the extraordinary Henry Morrison for his insight and ideas, his patience and kindness.

Certainty is based on flimsier evidence than most of us realize.

—E
LLEN
J. L
ANGER
, P
H
.D.,

Harvard psychologist,
author of
Mindfulness

PART I

Liz Sansborough

Chapter 1

Her past was slipping away. One morning she awoke to find strange furniture in her room. The man told her, “It's all yours. Don't you remember?” She didn't remember, but it was too much effort to say so. She was exhausted and hurt and confused. Her head felt as if it would explode. After a while she no longer knew where she was. Then she no longer knew her name.

“You don't know your name?” he said.

“No.” Pain pounded relentlessly behind her eyes.

“You will,” he said. “Soon, I promise. Just rest, my beautiful darling.”

As her suffering ebbed away, so did her strength. Her hands shook. Her lips trembled. She never answered the door or the telephone. She never sat beside the window or behind the desk. She'd come to distrust the world. Except for the man's voice, she lived in silence. Tried to hear in it who she was.

The man gave her medicine. He fed her like a baby. He undressed and showered her. She was helpless. All she had was the man, and a sense of loss so deep it shook her soul.

Sleep was her salvation. She stayed in bed. Time stopped.

The man gave her different pills.

She felt better. Stronger.

He told her his name was Gordon. “Don't you remember me yet, Liz, darling?”

“I wish—” She paused, the words lost, the idea forgotten.

Sunlight streamed through the windows. A fresh salt breeze fluttered her nightgown. She held onto furniture and pulled herself around the living room.

“You're Gordon?”

“Yes, darling.”

“You said my name was Liz.”

“Liz Sansborough.” He grinned, pleased. “You'll be back to your old self soon now.”

Liz Sansborough. The name repeated itself in her mind. She seemed to hear it at all hours, throbbing like a heartbeat.

The day she dressed herself, she asked, “Gordon, what's happened to me?”

“It was eight, nine weeks ago,” he told her. “You slipped and fell down a cliff. You landed on the rocks just above the surf. It was terrible, darling. You didn't break anything, but you hit your head.”

She grimaced.

“It gave you a concussion, and then sort of a brain fever. The doctor says that can happen. Inflamed brain tissue after a head injury, I mean. The inflammation caused your amnesia.”

“I have amnesia,” she said numbly. “Of course. Amnesia.”

A stranger was in her room. She awoke sweating, panicked.

“Do you remember me, Liz?” He approached through the morning shadows, carrying what looked like a small suitcase.

“I . . . think so. Who—?”

“I'm your doctor. My name is Allan Levine.” He was tall and cadaverous, but his voice was friendly. He set down his bag and smiled. “I haven't been here for a few days.” He took her blood pressure and her pulse. “All your signs are normal
again. The fact that you awoke while I was here shows how much more alert you are.” He listened to her heart. He smiled but worked with the focus of a microscope. She wasn't sure she liked that.

“When will I be able to remember my life?”

“I don't know. Try not to worry about it.” He took off his stethoscope. “I have some news you're going to like. First, you're so much better that I'll come only once a week from now on. And second, I'm reducing your medication to a pill a day.”

“Which pill?” She hated taking so many of them.

“Your antidepressant. It'll help keep you on track.”

“But I don't feel depressed.”

“Of course you don't. But if you quit it, your brain chemicals will go out of control—wild—like before. You'll risk a relapse, and I can't guarantee you'll come out of it next time. Stop the antidepressants if you like, but I don't advise it.”

The memory of the relentless pain in her mind, the horrifying chaos returned. “I never want to feel that again.”

She and Gordon took walks. She grew stronger.

She dreamed and awoke with visions of other lives, other people, never herself. She looked around the dark bedroom. A room she had no memory of.

She arose and went to the living room. “Where are we?”

Gordon sat up on the sofa in the morning gloom, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Liz? Is something wrong?” He turned on the lamp and looked at his watch. “It's only five o'clock!”

“Where are we?” she demanded again.

He studied her. “Santa Barbara. That's in California.”

She turned, surveying the Danish-modern furniture, the stacks of books, the Venetian blinds closed against the dawn. This was the living room. There were three more rooms—kitchen, bathroom, and the bedroom, where she slept. Gordon slept on the sofa out here in the living room.

She swung her arms, gestured at it all. “I know, you told me that. But what's this place?”

“Your condo. We've been living here a couple of years. You and I.” He paused, asked softly, “Do you remember, darling?”

She sat heavily in the rocking chair. “We were lovers?”

He smiled. “Do you mind?”

Her gaze swept his long frame, rumpled from sleep, and came to rest on his beaming face. He was muscular, tall, with wavy brown hair and a square jaw. Handsome and solid, like the cowboys she watched in old TV Westerns. All that was good, but far more appealing was his constancy. She hungered for that. She had no past, and he was her lifeline to an unremembered, unknown world.

“Of course I don't mind.” She smiled back. Suddenly she felt better. “But everything's so new. You. Me. This condo. Everything. What woke me was I realized something funny about my memory. I can't remember where I've been living, but I can remember how to tie my shoes and cook and even how to program the VCR. How can I know all that but nothing about my life?”

“Good question. Come on, let's have one of our walks.”

“At this hour?”

“I'll explain it to you.”

The summer air was fragrant and quiet. Santa Barbara's early morning streets were shadowy. Palm trees stood tall and black against the pastel sky. Gordon and Liz took a winding path through Alice Keck Park.

“So?” she prompted.

“Ah, I see you haven't forgotten.”

“Not likely. Not if it has to do with what's wrong with me.”

“Of course. But all I know is what Dr. Levine told me.”

“And that is . . .?”

“There are two kinds of memory—task memory and fact memory. Task memory is just what it says: Tasks. Doing things. What you can do. Like cooking, or driving a car, or tying your shoes, or programming the VCR. Fact memory is the details
around it—who, what, where, when, and why. Your identity. What's happened to you is typical of amnesiacs. You've lost all your fact memory and maybe some of your task memory. We may not know exactly what for a while.”

“So that's why I know how to read, but I can't remember any of the books I read before. Or why I wanted to. Or my accident.”

She lifted her face into the sea wind and increased her speed. She felt driven by some mysterious force deep within, a strange force that compelled her to race ahead as if by physical insistence alone she could heal her mind and recapture her soul.

Gordon kept pace. A fresh wind blew north across Santa Barbara's red-tiled roofs, rustling hibiscus and palms. The air tasted of salt and summer. Gordon told her the month was July.

The next afternoon her questions coalesced.

Who was she really? Not just a name, an identity. Where did she come from? How long had she lived in Santa Barbara? Was she married? Did she have children? Who were her parents? What kind of work did she do?

Who? Where?

What
kind
of person was she?

She asked Gordon, and he brought out a faded photo album. They sat together at the dining-room table. She smiled eagerly, nervously, as he told her, “Your name, as you know, is Elizabeth Sansborough. ‘Liz,' right? You were born in London and grew up on Shawfield Street in Chelsea. Does that sound familiar?”