Masquerade (26 page)

“Yeah,” she said dryly. “Mom's a terrific person, and I got the feeling she still loved him. But she made it clear to Michael and me he wasn't the kind of adult to emulate. Maybe that's why she didn't keep up with her brother. Maybe Hal Sansborough turned out to be like his father.”

“Could be. What happened to your Sansborough grandparents?”

“They died in a yachting accident. Their will left nothing to Uncle Hal or Mom. It all went to the University of Southern California. There's a chair at the USC law school in my grandfather's name.”

“You're right. He did have dough.”

“And no friends. He'd screwed them all. But his partners in the law firm ‘loved' his clients and their whopping fees. I overheard Mom tell a neighbor the will made clear Grandfather was getting even with her for marrying beneath the family.”

“Your father?”

“Mom got something better than money when she married him.” She grinned. “Now it makes sense why I thought of ‘Hamilton' when I had to come up with a word for cipher class, and why I felt so happy afterward. What a great guy. But Mom and Dad have moved to Arizona. That was about the same time my brother left for his big dig in the Himalayas. He won't be back for months.”

Flores said, “Could've been Bremner.”

“What?”

“Removing your support system. Isolating you. Making you vulnerable to needing a new friend, like Gordon.”

She grimaced. “Well, at least one good thing came out of this—Mom and Dad are happy in their new place. It must be great to be in love. I don't know how they do it after so many years.”

“You consider love the better choice? Over money?”

“Don't you?” A wave of unexpected loneliness swept over her.

Flores said mildly, “Romantics don't live long in our business.”

“Your business is
not
my business. Get that straight. I'm no spy. I'm here only because I've been used.”

“Yup. But you'd better start thinking of yourself as a tough, well-trained spy, if you want to get out of this mess.”

She pursed her lips, flooded with fury. She wanted to grab the wheel from Flores and ram the car into the nearest building. She wanted to smash her fist through the dashboard and rip out the engine. She wanted to put a bullet through Gordon's head and Bremner's heart. She wanted—

She stopped, shocked at the rage that boiled just beneath her modulated voice and quietly folded hands.

Damn Hughes Bremner and his black heart for what he'd done.

She inhaled sharply. “Cynics lead lonely lives, Flores. I'd like to be happy someday.” She stared ahead, willing the fury
to subside. “Anyway, that's what I remember about my family, the clean and the dirty linen. Let's try looking at it from the other end again. What does Hughes Bremner gain by having me look like the Carnivore's girl friend?”

“Maybe Liz Sansborough's shaky or wants to quit being his intermediary. Maybe she's sick and can't hold on.”

“Maybe Bremner—or Langley—doesn't trust her.”

“Whatever it is, the stakes have to be sky high for Bremner to try to murder us, and to use Langley resources to do it.”

She paused. “We know Gordon's in on it. And Bremner, and the two we killed. Is all of Langley after us?”

“Looks like it,” he said somberly. They drove past western restaurants and tall office buildings. “So, Sansborough—”

He stopped, glanced at her.

“That's okay, Flores. It's going to be tough for a while, but you've got to start calling me by my real name.”

Sarah Walker
. She played with it in her mind. With sudden clarity she remembered writing it on school papers. Schools, yes! Monte Vista Elementary, La Colina Junior High, Santa Barbara High, UCSB. She could name most of her teachers and old friends. Thiel Rivers! What had happened to her best friend, Thiel? There was something she should remember about Thiel. . . . Something recent—

“Okay,” Flores said. “Walker, we've got trouble. Bremner's thorough. He'll alert every agency from the FBI on down.”

“We have to move fast.”

“We will.” He handed her $5,000 in cash.

“Hey! Did you rob a bank?”

“You could say that.” He described his work with the bank computer.

“That's why you needed Gordon's code.”

“Couldn't use my own.” He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. It was a look both shy and sly. “A few months ago I requisitioned a lot of dough to cover an operation I'd set up in Monte Carlo. The dough was casino bait for two Korean entrepreneurs who'd stolen specs to one of our breakthroughs—an antenna so small it's the size of a grain of sand. Problem was, the Koreans won big at the tables. In fact, they won $4 million,
and all of it was Langley's. I collected enough evidence to send them to the slammer forever, but they skipped to Korea and took their goddamn winnings with them.”

She laughed. “So Bremner exiled you to the Ranch.”

“Yeah. And my code won't transfer funds anymore. I'm supposed to get his approval first.” He laughed, and the car filled with his exuberance. He'd outwitted Hughes Bremner.

She was amazed he could be so lighthearted with the police, FBI, and CIA all breathing down their necks. He was like one of those old outlaws of the Wild West. But then, that's what she was now, too, whether she liked it or not. An outlaw.

He drove around the artist's studio several times. At last they decided it was safe.

He went in and she slid behind the wheel, motor running, on guard, her senses sharply tuned as she watched pedestrians and vehicles. Why had Bremner given her Liz Sansborough's face? Why had he sent her to the Ranch to be trained? Was he really trying to capture the Carnivore, or was the Langley dossier correct when it said the assassin wanted to come in?

All roads in this entangled, violent mess seemed to lead back to Hughes Bremner. Whatever he planned, the stakes were so high he was willing to risk everything to make it work.

She stiffened behind the Toyota's wheel. Flores was right, to survive she'd have to integrate Liz Sansborough's training into Sarah Walker's personality. But she resisted. Keeping the two separate seemed somehow vital. She not only desperately wanted to resolve this mess, she wanted to return to her old life, pick up the pieces, and figure out what to do so she—Sarah Walker, not Liz Sansborough—could find some happiness.

At last Asher Flores reappeared on the steps of the artist's studio. He gazed around and sauntered across the street. He got into the passenger side of the front seat, and she drove away.

“She did a good job,” he told her. “This should see us through most anything.”

He showed her passports, driver's licenses, and VISA cards. The passports not only looked real, they were real. The artist had bought stolen ones and used her fine hand to make the necessary changes. Both the Colorado driver's licenses and the VISA cards
were fake. Although they looked perfect, the VISA cards would be unusable anywhere a clerk checked for charge approval. But they looked real and so confirmed the rest of the new identification. Flores was now Eric Hoffman, and Sarah was Julia Fasick.

As Flores directed, she turned the Toyota northeast toward. Denver International Airport. As they approached the mammoth airfield, one big jet after another roared in low for a landing.

“Airport security must know about us, Flores.” She glanced at him. “How in hell are we going to get past them?”

“We're covered.” With a flourish, he slapped an employee identification sticker onto the car's front window and directed her to pull into an employee lot.

She parked, and they got out. He opened the trunk and took out navy chino trousers, navy caps, and loose white shirts.

“Put 'em on,” he said. “And here's your employee I.D. badge. We'll leave our Stetsons here. If we wore 'em in Paris, we'd stick out like the dumb Yanks we are. But in jeans and shirts, we'll fit right in.”

“Uniforms? Where did you get these?”

“Made a little stop on the way to pick you up. The uniforms are real, and we're now employees on the books of International
A.M.
-
P.M.
Catering, Inc.”

As they quickly stepped into the big trousers, she asked, “How'd you ever manage that?”

“The pal I told you about is a V.P. in the head office. At Langley we teamed a lot, and I saved his ass once in Sofia. So I called him in New York, and he called the manager here, told him to do whatever I asked. CIA, national security.”

“Will your V.P. friend check with Langley?”

They pulled on the loose white shirts and snapped on their matching navy-blue caps and their badges.

“Not Abner. He's no fan of Langley, and he knows me.”

“We're not going through the terminal?” She took off her plastic earrings and tugged her short black hair out from under her cap until it straggled over her face and sunglasses.

“Nope. Don't have to.”

“The badges will get us past security on the field?”

“Like ghosts. The FAA treats employees different from
passengers. Employees don't have to be searched or pass through metal detectors. So only the ones who go through the terminals to get to the airfields have to be checked.”

“You're amazing, Flores.” She was impressed and relieved.

They surveyed the parking lot. He grabbed his gym bag, and she took her day pack. Her Beretta was heavy inside. He slid the thick folder into his gym bag and zipped it up.

“There's a nice maintenance field ahead,” she said. “Is that for us?”

“You bet. Our badges have magnetic strips that get us through the gate's mechanical scanner. The badges are our key to restricted areas. The airport department issues 'em. Come on.”

They walked briskly, and Sarah shook her head. “If I were a passenger, I'd be worried. How does the airport protect the public from crazy employees bringing in guns? Like us?”

“In the first place, lots of employees don't work for the airport authority. They're like my friend, employed by private contractors. They handle bags, clean planes, do all kinds of things. To require 'em all, especially the ones who have to run around a lot, to go through magnetometers or be searched every time they pass checkpoints would bring airport operations to a screeching halt. So to protect the public, the FAA conducts spot-checks. Likewise, security agents for the airport department patrol with portable computers that verify employees' badges. But since you and I are registered with International
A.M.
-
P.M.
, we'll pass all badge tests with flying colors.”

“You have an amazing amount of information floating around in that brain of yours.”

“Yeah. And I'm modest about it, too.”

She chuckled as they approached the unmanned gate built into the perimeter fencing. Then a car squealed to a stop behind them. She and Flores whirled. It was Gordon. Armed, and with three more agents.

“Let's go!” Flores snapped. Instantly they pivoted and raced toward the airport gate. Behind them they heard shouts and pounding feet.

Chapter 29

Asher Flores reached the gate first and squatted down with his gun drawn, covering Sarah as she pushed her badge through the scanner. Gordon, a woman, and two other men were closing in. Her heart pounded as she pulled out her Beretta. Then the gate clicked open, she jumped through, and Asher slid after her.

Gordon shouted, “Liz, wait!”

It was one of his typical self-assured commands.

She leveled her weapon through the steel-mesh fence. The late-afternoon sun shone down, hard and flinty. Gordon and his people froze, impressed by her Beretta and Flores's Gunsite Service Pistol. In the parking lot, some startled airport employees gathered, frowning, unsure.

Gordon stepped toward the gate, smiling. “Come back with me, Liz, and we'll forget all this crap. Both of you. We've all made mistakes, but we can straighten them out at the Ranch.”

He stopped when she cocked her Beretta. She liked the idea Gordon was afraid of her.

“You've got an important date with the Carnivore, Liz,” he continued, his voice serious. “We haven't finished getting you ready for it.”

Flores spoke low. “We've got to get out of here.”

“I know.”

Behind them were maintenance and storage buildings, and beyond those, big jets taxied in and out of the terminal. But
before they made a run for the one that would fly them to Paris, there was something she had to understand.

She made her voice small and needy. “I don't know what to do, Gordon.”

“Come back, Liz. Finish your training. Resume your career with the Agency.” He stood there like a sexy gun advertisement—long sturdy legs, muscular chest, wind-blown hair, face as honest as the Fourth of July, gun firm as he faced the enemy. Her.

She asked, “What about the Carnivore?”

“You'll be ready for him, Liz. I promise.”

“But Gordon, I'm not Liz Sansborough. She's in Paris. I'm Sarah Walker.” She waited for him to deny it, but he said nothing. The expression on his face remained unchanged, an impenetrable mask. She said, “Why would the Carnivore want me?”

“Because he thinks you saw him. I told you about that.”

“That was Liz Sansborough. Why would he want to kill
me
?”

“Jesus Christ, Liz! You've got it backward. You're remembering your
cover
story. That background about Walker was made up to protect you from the Carnivore, and you
memorized
it. You're Liz Sansborough! Come back to me, darling. Together, we'll get that assassin.” His voice softened. “Besides, I miss you.” No wonder he'd fooled her so long. He was damn good.

Flores moved closer to her. “I'm gonna be sick right here. I'm gonna puke on the tarmac, on you, and definitely on Gordon. Can't you hurry this up?”