Masquerade (41 page)

In his room, he picked up the phone. At 4:00
A.M.
in Paris, it would be 10:00
P.M.
in Washington, D.C., six hours earlier. He dialed Langley. If he gave his name, they'd patch him through instantly to Arlene Debo. He didn't want that. Instead he gave the operator an anonymous message. “Write it down exactly,” he warned sternly. “Don't miss a word: Hughes Bremner is
bringing in the Carnivore 8:00
P.M.
Sunday. Arlene, you'd better get your butt over here pronto if you want to stop it.”

Finally he gave the operator a top-priority code that guaranteed the message would go instantly to Debo at whatever Foggy Bottom party she was being bored by.

As he hung up, he grinned to himself, charming and conceited as ever. He was seventy-five years old, and he'd never felt healthier, smarter, or more in control. He dressed, packed up, and checked out.

Back in his shabby rented room on the opposite side of the city—temporary but necessary digs—there was a message on his answering machine from one of the people he'd assigned to watch the strange mansion on the rue Vivienne. The fire fighters and bomb squad had come and gone, and all was now quiet.

He went out once more to leave a message for Quill at their drop. Then he returned to his bed to rest. He'd need it. Tomorrow would be a big day. As always, he drifted off as soon as his head touched the pillow. He slept like a baby.

There was a single, muffled shot from Sarah and Asher's former room in the Hotel Aphrodite. Gordon Taite opened the door and returned to the corridor where four of his people waited. He carried a Beretta with a sound suppressor.

“Bill Howells just tried to kill me, poor bastard,” he told them. “Flores got to him.” He let the news sink in, hardening their resolve to be better than that. “Okay, let's search it.”

“What about Bill?” asked one of his people.

Gordon told them sadly. “Dead.” Flores had filled the poor jerk's head with information he shouldn't have had, so Gordon had been forced to kill him. His people wouldn't understand that, so he'd invented the attack.

They swore.

“Goddamn that fucking Sarah Walker and Asher Flores.”

When the night clerk had gone into the back office, Sarah and Asher knocked out the lobby backup man and left him in a
broom closet. They dodged through the hotel alley and stopped behind the cardboard shanty of some homeless person to strip, dress, and decide where to meet.

As dawn spread across the city, religious music and radio news began to float from Paris's open windows. Church bells chimed. Birds sang. The inviting aromas of espresso and fresh croissants drifted from cafés. The sun climbed into the pastel August sky, and the ancient city shrugged itself awake.

Within an hour, as Sarah and Asher had planned, they were breakfasting in a café far from the Hotel Aphrodite, sharing an
International Herald Tribune
, and smiling across the booth at one another. She was in her side locks, spectacles, plain black suit, and wide-brimmed Hasidic hat.

He was in gray summer trousers, Bally loafers with no socks, and a cream-white linen, open-necked shirt. The shirt was loose, blousy, so he could hide his Gunsite pistol in his armpit. With his dark good looks and thickening black beard, he cut a striking figure. The one interesting eccentricity was the black beret, which didn't belong, yet somehow did. A statement of individuality. Asher, Sarah decided, was gorgeous.

She said, “You did a pretty accurate job guessing my size for these clothes.”

“I'm good, even if I do say so myself.”

“Yeah,” she said dryly. “You memorize women's bodies real well.”

He laughed. “Only yours.”

The waitress gave the young Hasidic Jew a curious glance, then took their order.

Asher grumbled about the Dodgers. Apparently they had no games that day. Sarah scanned the front page and turned inside. A headline on page three caught her attention:

DON'T COME HOME, SARAH

Her chest contracted.

That headlined name, so bold and black,
Sarah
, held all the intimacy of her only “old” memories. Her mother calling her
to dinner. At bedtime her mother would brush her silky woman's lips against Sarah's cheek.

“I love you, Sarah.”

Her father, red faced and worried, shouting, “Sarah! Come down off that roof!”

She was sure the article was just a coincidence, but still she read on—

Chapter 46

DON'T COME HOME, SARAH

By MARILYN MICHAELS

Special to the Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Most of us live lives of routine and responsibility. Jobs, family, friends. Our very ordinariness is a comfort. From that solid foundation, we enjoy the triumphs and solve the problems of everyday life.

But what happens if we begin to doubt our sanity?

Meet Sarah, 32, intelligent, attractive, and ambitious. In six short days her world turned upside down.

What happened to her is a lesson in trust. If we can't trust our government, whom can we trust? And it's a lesson in the imagination. What most of us find unimaginable is the fuel that powers geniuses . . . and monsters.

I'm not allowed to use Sarah's last name or the real names of those who appear in this series, but be assured they all exist. I have the transcripts, notes, and paper trail to prove it.

Because I'm in danger, my byline is a pseudonym. Because you're in danger from the mentality that
allows self-interest to thrive among those in power, I write this series . . .

In the Paris café, Sarah Walker handed the newspaper across to Asher. “Take a look at this.”

Asher frowned when he saw the headline. He began to read.

She turned to gaze out the window at the pale blue sky, hazy with thin morning clouds. Her only movement was her eyelids. She blinked periodically.

The newspaper story had described her cosmetic surgery at the hands of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, now disappeared. Then it had recounted her meeting with a certain man who was obviously Gordon. Although the carefully detailed article promised the next installment tomorrow, her memory continued on its own. At first it came in pieces, and then in large, graphic scenes, until it all made sense.

Her mind focused on the new pair of Levi's she'd bought back then. At home in her Santa Barbara condo, she'd taken the jeans from the Nordstrom's bag and found them slashed to ribbons. She remembered being terrified. Who? . . . How? . . . Then she remembered . . . Thiel—her best friend—had come over to tell her something important—

“You first,” Thiel had commanded. “Men before careers for a change. Who's the new guy?”

Thiel had curly yellow hair, wide green eyes, and an abundance of energy. A reporter for the
Santa Barbara News-Press
, she was a Botticelli beauty traipsing with a tape recorder through politics, the ghetto, and Santa Barbara's grand University Club, where only a few years ago women, no matter their credentials, had to enter through the side door.

As they'd sat before her fireplace, Sarah had described her meeting with Gordon Taite.

“How sure are we about him?” Thiel's pale eyebrows raised in mock seriousness. “Can he put a safety pin inside where it
doesn't show? Is he sensitive, generous, nurturing? In other words, is he female?”

“Thiel!”

“I know how it is. I want to meet someone, too. Someone I can take for granted.”

Sarah laughed. “Why do we bother? They don't remember anniversaries or birthdays, but they know basketball scores from twenty years ago.”

“The one good thing about Monday Night Football is the knit pants. Mighty good booty!”

“Put two men, perfect strangers, in a room with a case of beer, two bags of potato chips, and ESPN, and they bond faster than Krazy Glue. Football season, and we never see them again!”

They slapped hands and laughed.

“Oh, lord. If only it weren't so true!” Thiel wiped tears from her eyes.

“Do you think we'll ever meet guys we can settle down with?”

Thiel was shocked. “You mean
marry
? Have you seen the divorce statistics lately?”

“I've seen them. But think of the gene pool. Don't you feel guilty not making a contribution?”

“Children? Sarah, wash your mouth!” Thiel ate a carrot.

Sarah ate a carrot. “Okay, so how about telling me why you called this meeting?”

Thiel was silent. Whatever it was, it was hard to say. “Well, see, I got the job at the
Chicago Tribune
.”

“Thiel! Congratulations!”

“But they need me now. And that means we're not going to have any good-bye lunches. I won't even get to meet this Gordon of yours until I come back for my furniture. I have to fly out tomorrow. I start the next day. Somebody died on them.”

It was Sarah's turn to be silent. “Have I got herpes, AIDS, the plague? Is it my new face? Why is everyone deserting me?”

Thiel hugged Sarah. “I'm sorry.”

“No, don't be. This is great for you.”

They smiled at each other. Sarah touched her friend's arm.
“It's okay, Thiel, really. But now I'd like you to come into my bedroom. I want to show you something.” They went in, and she pulled the Nordstrom's bag from under her bed. Inside were the slashed jeans. She handed the bag to Thiel.

“Tell me what you think.”

Thiel took them out. “Hey, these are great. Just my size—” She glanced up, stopped speaking, grabbed Sarah's arm. “Why are you looking like that? Sarah? Here, sit down. Are you sick? Sarah! What's wrong!”

The jeans were perfect.

Yes, Sarah remembered everything, from the slashed, then unslashed, jeans all the way to the horror of thinking she'd poisoned the puppy Gordon had given her. A devastating act of carelessness on her part. Except . . . she was sure now—Gordon had to have done it himself. He'd killed the dog he gave her just to undermine her belief in her own sanity.

All for Monday. They'd kill a dog, a friend, an assassin, or an innocent bystander for whatever Monday was bringing Bremner.

Meeting Gordon had been the beginning of her nightmare. She'd blown two easy magazine assignments. Been fired from her job at
Talk
. She'd supposedly had a one-night stand with a Las Vegas bellboy. She recalled heading upstairs in the hotel that night to transcribe a taped interview she'd just conducted. But during the interview she'd had a drink. It could've been drugged, which would explain why she knew nothing of the so-called night of lust . . . nor how she'd managed to break her little finger during it . . . nor how she'd managed to erase the entire interview from her recorder.

She shook her head. God, no wonder she'd thought she was losing her mind. No wonder she'd agreed to see Gordon's friend, the psychiatrist, Allan Levine. No wonder she'd been willing to take his medication.

Now she remembered something else. After she'd started the medication her furniture—her old, thrift-store furniture—had
disappeared. One of those first mornings she'd awakened to find Danish-modern furniture filling her condo.

But Gordon had said, “It's all yours. Don't you remember?”

She hadn't remembered, but it had been too much effort to say so. After a while, she'd been unsure where she was. Then she forgot her name.

“What's my name?” she'd asked.

“You don't know?”

“No.”

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

At the end she'd emerged Liz Sansborough. Liz Sansborough, whose Danish-modern furniture from her London flat had taken over Sarah Walker's Santa Barbara condo.

The writer of the article said there'd be five more parts to the series. She hinted that behind Sarah's transformation was an operation whose roots lay within the U.S. government. She named no agency, and she listed no one responsible. Those, she wrote, would be revealed in the last article in the series.

Sarah sat for some time, oblivious to the Parisians strolling down the sidewalk just beyond the café window. Her hot croissant grew cold. When Asher finished the story, she asked to see the list of Sterling-O'Keefe companies again.

She studied it, tapping her growing memory bank. “I got fired because a movie star I was supposed to interview tanked on me at the last minute. He was a spokesman for
Nonpareil International Insurance
. My parents' prize, the fabulous retirement home, was awarded by
OMNI-American Savings & Loan
. The
Presidents'Palace
in Vegas was where I went to do another interview, and the next morning the bellboy told me I'd seduced him and then broken my finger screwing around with him. The bastard.” She held up the crooked little finger. “It was all fabricated, except the broken finger. That's real, because Liz Sansborough has a broken finger. They had to break mine and give me a story I'd believe.”

He nodded. “Gold Star, Nonpareil International Insurance, OMNI-American Savings & Loan, and the Presidents' Palace are all part of Sterling-O'Keefe. Hard to believe that's
a coincidence.” There was fire behind Asher's coal-black eyes. “One way or another, I'll bet Sterling-O'Keefe's one of the keys to what's going on. I'd better see what I can find out about Jack O'Keefe.”

He dropped the newspaper, and it fell open to another page. They stared at each other, then down at their photos—mug shots, with a large headline warning that two killers were on the loose in Paris and extremely dangerous. They'd expected it, and yet it was still shocking. One more card from Hughes Bremner's deadly deck stacked against them.

Chapter 47

Inside a windowless, air-conditioned room in his safe house near Montmartre, Quill deciphered a warning he'd just picked up at a dead drop. He read the message twice, then sank back in his chair, his cosmetically adjusted face puzzled. The U.S. President had changed his mind and ordered Hughes Bremner to turn away the Carnivore, yet he had heard none of it, and apparently neither had Liz. Instead, Bremner's people had left confirmation at the agreed dead drop that the coming-in was set for 8:00
P.M.
Sunday, this very night.