Masquerade (21 page)

Yes, he told himself, she must be vital to the Carnivore operation, “blue-code, need-to-know.” But if the Carnivore
already wanted to come in, why all this extra fuss? He lay there a few minutes, trying to hear her breathe. Then he fell asleep, one hand on the small grip of his big .45.

Friday

She dreamed of unknown countries and harsh landscapes. Sometimes desert, sometimes ice and snow. In her dreams she was two Liz Sansboroughs—one married to the Carnivore, the other to Gordon. Helpless, and as evil as they. She wanted to die.

She awoke in a cold sweat, terror racing through her veins.

Christ! Who was she?
What
was she?

The red-and-yellow neon motel sign blared in through the grimy windowpanes. It colored the room a dull, hazy rouge. Through the only window, still open, came the roar of the nearby interstate and the hot odors of manure and stockyard slaughter.

She breathed deeply, accepting her fear. Sleepiness washed over her. Her eyelids drooped. It must be near dawn.

She closed her eyes. Then she remembered the open window.

Had she seen movement around it?

Her eyes snapped open. Without turning her head, she used her peripheral vision to survey the room. At last she saw it. An aberration in the shadows near the dresser in the corner. It looked like a hand with a pistol and a long sound suppressor extending out into the still room.

Fear froze her. Then she remembered what to do.

What she'd been trained to do.

As if still dreaming, she sighed and moaned softly. She rolled onto her side. She moved her hand up under her pillow and gripped her Beretta. She slid it out.

Chapter 23

Liz fired the Beretta as she rolled off the bed. The room shook with the explosion. Instantly a shot from the intruder followed. Her mattress erupted. Tattered cloth and ticking sprayed the air, and another shot rang out.

Flores's bed exploded.

“Flores!”

She watched the darkness. A shot whined past, honing in on her voice. Wood splinters showered down. She dropped under the bed and slid across the cracked linoleum. It cut her thighs.

She raised herself just above the other side of the bed.

Two more shots exploded in the little motel room.

Flores was alive! One shot must be his, but which one? One had come from her left, the other from her right. The thick red darkness made it impossible to see.

She slid under Flores's bed. She heard sounds of movement, someone trying to be silent. Two more shots shattered the quiet. The men had relocated. Then she saw shadowy shoes near the door. It couldn't be Flores. He'd be barefoot. The intruder must be crouching, legs and torso lost in the shadow from a table. She aimed where she thought the legs would be. She wanted the guy alive. She wanted to ask questions.

She squeezed the Beretta's trigger. The jolt traveled up her arm and into her teeth. She heard a grunt and thud.

“Flores! Where are you?”

“I'm okay.”

She heard him scrambling toward the lump by the door. She got up on her haunches, waiting. Soon the police would come. Even in this rotten section of town, where life was worth no more than a drink or a needle, someone eventually would call the cops. The habits of civilization die hard.

She rested the Beretta on her bare arm. Why was there no sound from the downed man? Not a groan or a curse. If he were alive, he'd make a sound.

“Sansborough, the window!”

She whirled in time to see a face and a gun in the harsh red glare of the motel sign. She shot instantly. It was as if she were back at the firing range, but instead of hitting the target, she hit the man's forehead. He was a blond young man with a muscular jawline and astonishment in his eyes.

Her bullet blasted through his forehead and took the top of his head off. Blood, tissue, and bone showered the carnival-colored air. There could be no doubt this time: She'd killed someone. Vomit surged up into her throat.

His gun went off spontaneously. Its bullet went wild.

“Check the window!” Flores was in trouble. His voice was strained. There were thuds.

The first intruder had been playing possum, and Flores was worried there were more.

Feeling ill, drenched in sudden sweat, she scrambled to the window. She heard another shot behind her. She whirled.

“It's okay.” Flores's voice was gruff. “He was more alive than I thought, dammit.”

“You killed him?”

“Had to.” His voice was somber. Now he'd go through the corpse's pockets, try to find something that would tell them who he was and what he'd been after.

She raised her eyes over the windowsill. The window faced a weed-choked, trash-infested empty lot. She saw no signs of movement. She looked down and recognized the gun in the hand of the dead man. It was an Ingram M-11 machine pistol. Only ten inches long and under four pounds, it was lightweight and concealable, an automatic that could fire 850 rounds of .38 ammo a minute. A lot of power. This was no casual weapon.

The guy had been a pro. Without turning from her sentry post, she told Flores about the Ingram.

“Other than his gun, all this one's got is his cigarettes.” He dragged the intruder by the heels toward the light of the window. “Nothing else in his pockets. Not even money. But I know him. His name's Matt Lister.”

“I know him, too!”

She studied the dead face in the flashing red glare. It was the man she'd been told she'd killed in her Santa Barbara condo: The same bland features, the same slicked-back brown hair. She told Flores about the attack. “Gordon gave me a gun, and this guy came at me around the sofa and pointed his gun at me. I fired. It all happened so fast, and I was in a daze. Shocked, really. The next thing I knew, he flew back with blood—what I thought was blood—across his chest and coming out of his mouth!”

“Blanks and fake blood. Good staging of an old trick.”

“And it worked, dammit! After that I believed everything they told me!”

“Of course you did. They're damn good, and at that point even I'd be inclined to believe them. The important thing is you didn't let it convince you permanently.” He leaned out the window and stared down at the blond youth. “I don't recognize him, do you?”

She shook her head, and he crouched beside her. He wore only his Jockey shorts, a slash of white in the ruby gloom. He had a good body, wiry, with long muscles. The legs had the long sexy lines of a runner. The shoulders were straight and wide, the kind a woman liked to run her hands across.

“Are there any more out there?” he asked.

“Not that I can see.” She could smell him, sweat and intensity.

“Dress and pack. We've got to get out of here.”

“No kidding.”

He smiled briefly. She shimmied into her jeans. He dressed and threw things into his gym bag. Oddly, she no longer felt sick and shaky. She was damn angry.

She finished first. “Gordon sent them?”

“He wouldn't have the clout to order an assassination. They
had to come from Bremner himself.” Flores was grim. “My mentor. Your mentor. Not just Gordon Taite, it's Hughes Bremner, too.”

“How can you be sure?”

“No time for explanations. Come on.” He opened the door. They surveyed the night. There was no traffic. Parked across the street was a Honda Accord, clean and new among the battered, rusty heaps that littered the street.

“They must've come in that,” she said.

They jumped into their pickup. Flores started the engine.

Liz looked ahead at the silent Honda. “It's a rental car.” On the back left bumper was a Gold Star Rent-a-Car sticker. Gold Star was the new number-one car-rental agency in the United States. No clue there.

In the distance, a siren wailed.

Flores spun the pickup out onto the street. “Too bad we don't have time to search their car. The way it looks to me, Matt Lister was going to kill me and grab you. He was right beside my bed, trying to decide which of us he had. If he'd wanted to kill us both, he would've shot from the window before we had a chance to wake up and fight back.”

“How do you know Bremner's part of it?” She'd had high hopes the CIA division chief would help them. Gordon was out of the question, but Bremner, the head of Mustang, she'd hoped—

In the distance, the sirens stopped. The police had arrived at the motel. To the east, dawn was breaking over Denver's mile-high serrated skyline. In her mind she saw the blond youth's astonished face when her bullet had burst his skull.

She'd killed him. A human being.

She said quietly, “Tell me about Bremner.”

His jaw flexed with fury and betrayal. “I called him last night when I went for the food. I'd tried to reach him from the Ranch, but he was in Paris, ‘unavailable.' He got back last night.”

“That's not so bad. You wanted him to help us.”

“I wanted information.” He was silent, guilty.

Then she understood: Flores had made a mistake; he hated
to make mistakes. “Bremner traced your call. Then he sent his people out to look for us. There aren't that many motels around here. Your phone call brought the killers to us.”

Flores's jaw was hard. “That's the way I figure it.”

Hughes Bremner stepped into the hall of his wife's Virginia mansion and found her, Bunny Hartford Bremner, the former belle of Fifth Avenue, pounding toward him. It was early morning, and he could smell the clean countryside calling to him. Instead he had to deal with a broken-down drunk, old-looking beyond her sixty-one years. She was angry because she had to appear for jury duty at 9:00
A.M.
Civic obligations called to one and all, even to Bunny Bremner.

She started appropriately enough: “Hughes, really. Must you look like a thundercloud all the time?”

“That's a cliché, my dear.”

“And you're a pompous jackass.”

She presented her back to him. Beneath her too-youthful red dress, she wore a red bra. The back and one shoulder strap were twisted. She couldn't even dress correctly.

“Zip me,” she demanded.

He zipped. He liked the viciousness of the sound. With satisfaction he noted the twisted bra made a bulge beneath her dress. Her ineptitude grew more public each day.

“You used to like to dress me, Hughes,” she continued. “And undress me. Back in the Dark Ages when you were poor and I was a love-sick fool.”

“Aren't you going to remind me again your sweet papa was right? That I was a nobody going nowhere with nothing in his head or his pockets? My God, Bunny. You're losing it. The first sign of a Scotch-boiled brain.”

She returned to her bedroom and was back before he'd reached the top of the stairs. She had on her hat and pumps now, and a prim little purse in her hand. “At least you had an acceptable pedigree.” She went down the stairs first.

Even though he hadn't seen it, he knew she'd had her first drink of the day. Her pores oozed alcohol. The odor followed
her like a hungry cat. He had a sudden urge to push her. It wouldn't take much to topple her down the stairs. She was a fat old woman on tall, teetering heels. She'd go ass over teakettle and break her pleated neck. Her money would end up in a trust fund he couldn't touch, but he no longer needed her money.

Alas, she had no knowledge of that.

“How about giving me a little shove, Hughes?” she sniped up over her shoulder as she descended. “You'd like to. We both know you would.”

That's when he laughed. It was a huge, guttural laugh that shook him dangerously and made her stop and turn around. He wiped his eyes and grabbed the handrail while she watched in stony silence.

At last he was able to speak. “No, my dear. Killing you is the last thing I'd want. And it's not your money. No, dear Bunny. Without you, what in hell would I do for amusement?”

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. Was she being ridiculed? She couldn't seem to make up her mind. Finally she tossed her head to indicate the unimportance of it all, and her little hat slipped precariously to the side. She didn't notice.

They continued down the stately staircase, two Eastern Seaboard blue bloods, each aware of a desperate bond to the other.

Bunny said, “Do be on time for dinner tonight, Hughes. The Coxes and Cabots will be here.”

“I'll be late. As usual. Maybe I won't even come.”

“Hughes!”

At last he'd worn her down to a one-word reply. Her inarticulateness was his victory.

At the front door, their cars were waiting at the top of the long, circular drive. Beyond, the lush countryside spread vivid and green in the morning light. Once he'd wanted to have this land developed. A shopping center, gas stations, and satellite stores. Around these would have spread a sea of tract houses, dotted with parks where the wild Virginia forests would be tamed and manicured. This land was too good to waste, and civilization should leave its imprint, control Mother Earth, and make her pay her way, just as he'd had to pay his.

“Good-bye, Bunny, dear,” he said with mock affection. “Hope you have an awful day.”

Tommy opened the driver's door to her fire-red Mercedes 450SL sports car, a classic she refused to give up. She scowled at Bremner, smiled at Tommy, and climbed in with a flash of flabby thigh. Bremner stared at the flaccid flesh, burned the image into his brain. If love and hate were two sides of the same coin, he must love Bunny very, very much. And she him.

At last Tommy opened the back door to the long, black, government limousine. Bremner stepped inside and sank into the familiar seat. He glanced out ahead, through the window. As Bunny burst off into the morning in her extravagant Mercedes, the limousine door closed softly next to Bremner, encasing him in the sound-proofed chrysalis of the back seat. The telephone rang. He picked it up, invigorated for the day. It was Sid Williams.

“Matt and Beno are dead, sir.” Sid's voice was stone.