From her place at the edge of the light, Susana called Kevern on her encrypted cell phone. Bern gathered from her side of the conversation that they were in a safe house, and that Kevern was as stunned as they were that Bern’s impersonation had actually worked. Susana also passed on the name of Estele de Leon Pheres, and then she explained the situation with Baida and said he was waiting for a response from Bern. There was some conversation about that, during which Susana said very little.
Bern watched her profile as she listened; she was shifting her weight, her movement nearly imperceptible at the edge of the shadow. He sensed that she was weighing her options. She must do that a thousand times a day, he thought, weighing the consequences of speaking or not speaking, of revealing or not revealing, of finessing a phrase this way or that. It was a life of calculation, of factoring in, of making choices.
It was, he guessed, a life of never really knowing if you had done the right thing or not, because the ramifications of having made a different choice were too complex to play out to a logical end. He wasn’t even sure there were any logical ends in the life she lived.
Finally, the conversation ended, and she snapped the phone closed.
“Okay,” she said, “Mondragon’s boys are at Mingo’s place now. Kevern’s going to pass on the information about Estele de Leon.
“In the meantime, we need to come up with a plan for you to meet with Baida again, something to drag this out a little. There’s a possibility that Quito’s people will come up with something useful from Mingo’s girls. Or if they find Estele de Leon in time, maybe she’ll come up with some information that will help us in arranging this next meeting. If they do, that could change things. But for right now, we have to play this as if those possibilities don’t exist. Kevern and his team are going to put their heads together, and then we’ll get back in touch and see what we’ve got.”
The rain continued off and on.
“Every hour, a quarter past the hour,” Susana said, confirming Baida’s instructions.
“Yeah,” Bern said. All he could think of was that this was impossible. How were the two of them going to contrive a convincing plan? And what in the hell was he going to do when the meeting actually took place? Like so much else about this madness, it seemed to be over-the-top. He couldn’t believe that people actually did these sorts of things, and that whether they lived or died depended upon success or failure in these endeavors.
The rainy night was breathless now, and the curtains hung as limp as old promises.
Bern turned on the bed and bent over and pulled off his shoes and socks. Then he shed his shirt, draping it over his suit coat on the chair.
Susana didn’t say anything. In the dusky light, he couldn’t see the finer points of her features-the little wrinkle between her eyebrows that showed she was worried or thoughtful, the pull at the corner of her mouth that foretold a change of mind. She was staring toward the window again.
With a sigh, she turned to the window, unbuttoned her dress all the way down to her stomach, and then fanned the sides for air. After a little while, she turned and came back to the bed and sat down, leaning against the headboard like Bern. She seemed oddly reluctant to begin the planning.
“What happened to Mondragon’s face?” Bern asked.
“Somebody took it off for him,” she said. “No one knows the real story. There are only outrageous rumors, everything from brujo curses to a sexual fantasy gone wrong. I don’t think anyone really knows. No one’s talking anyway.”
“When did it happen?”
“A couple of years ago. Maybe a little more.”
“Here in Mexico City?”
“Who knows.” Susana pulled her legs up, her feet flat on the bed, the skirt of her dress pooling into her lap. She rammed the fingers of both hands into the front of her thick hair and held them there as she leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees. She stared into the mirror on the armoire.
Bern couldn’t tell if she was staring at herself or at him, but in the blue haze he could see the white crotch of her panties between her raised thighs.
“It was Jude,” she said, “who was supposed to kill Ghazi Baida.”
There it was, baldly stated. What Bern had suspected all along, but had never been told, was now laid out in front of him like a corpse on a slab. No more euphemism of silence. No more implication. There it was, without apology.
For the past few days, Bern had been unable to escape the slightly out-of-focus feeling that he was constantly accompanied by a doppleganger. Jude was always there-in front of him, behind him, looking over his shoulder. Everyone he met spoke to him from within a context occupied by his double. Bern was constantly at a loss, struggling to read the hidden meanings, the implications, and the nuances in their remarks. But now, the doppleganger-his brother-acquired an altogether different dimension.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “Jude was… he-” He stopped himself. He wanted to get it straight. “He’d done this before?” he asked.
Now Bern was sure that she was looking at him in the gloomy reflection of the old speckled mirror, using it as an intermediary, as if it would make the truth less shocking, or maybe make it somehow more comprehensible.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“That was… that was what he did?”
“He had done it before,” she said; “that’s all I know.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
Bern was stunned, and he knew that she could sense that, even in the gloomy obscurity of the rainy light. He knew that she was well aware that suddenly he was nearly overcome with questions.
Still staring at him from between the wrists of her hands planted in her hair, she said, “Look, I know you’ve got to be… just… boiling over with questions, but we don’t have the time to do that right now.” She took her hands out of her hair and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I want you to understand the situation here, the situation Jude was in. It’ll help you understand what we’re up against. Just… just bear with me here. I promise you we’ll talk about it all you want later. I’ll tell you everything I know. But not now.”
Bern couldn’t bring himself to say a word. He nodded. It was all he could do.
“Okay,” she said.
He heard her take a little breath before going on.
“But this job, Baida, it couldn’t be, you know, a targeted killing,” she said. “No bomb, no booby trap, no missile from a chopper. It couldn’t be seen to be a political assassination. Remember the clandestine aspect to this. Jude had to make it look like a drug hit. Plant a false ID on him. Better yet, just make him disappear. Baida lived in secrecy; he would die in secrecy. As if it never happened. Jude knew it wasn’t going to be an easy thing to do.”
Bern tried to concentrate on the logistics of it. He tried to ignore what was really making him light-headed-the genetic factor: What were the implications here for him?
“He couldn’t do it down in Ciudad del Este,” she went on, still using the mirror as an intermediary. “It would’ve been suicidal. Baida was well protected down there. By this time we had pretty good intelligence that he was moving into Mexico, and we thought it would be easier to do here, where our resources were better.
“And then Jude was killed. The assassination was shifted to Mondragon, and you were recruited to set up Baida.”
She hesitated, then said, “Before we get on with this, I want you to know something else.” Hesitation again. “Your first meeting with Baida tonight-we didn’t know what he might’ve learned during that month or so after the killings in Tepito. There was no way we could know. Jude was our man inside. There was no other access. If Baida had
… somehow learned the truth, that Jude had in fact been killed in Tepito… they would’ve killed you tonight.”
She was as still as the curtains.
“That’s the part that Mondragon-that none of us told you. There was always that little bit of possibility-well, that’s not right, because we didn’t know, had no idea, what the degree of possibility was-that you wouldn’t make it back from your first meeting with Baida.”
Bern looked at her dark eyes in the mirror, and suddenly Susana was transformed into an absolute stranger. In an instant, her nearness to him on the bed was turned into a proximity filled with danger, as if he were lying next to a woman who had walked in off the street. Her manner, her glance, even her pauses and silences emanated a sense that, with her, anything could happen. The next moment with her could bring anything from the ordinary to the fantastic, and all were equally likely. She simply did not distinguish between these vastly different contexts. He had no idea who she was. He knew nothing about her, could not imagine what her life had been like a moment before she walked into the room.
“Remember,” she asked, “how upset I was about… finding out that Jude had been working with Mingo behind my back?” Her voice took on a reflective tone. “You could tell, I know, that that hurt me.”
She hesitated. When she went on, she spoke more slowly, and more softly, as if she was afraid to touch the subject.
“The thing about working with a single partner undercover… it’s more complex than you might imagine. It’s a cliche, I know, but we were close in a special way. No one can ever understand just how that is unless they experience it for themselves. And precious few people qualify for that.”
The sound of the rain lent a sense of consecration to the moment. She had lowered her head a little, her chin nearly resting on top of her knees. Her eyes glinted in the mirror, fixed on him from beneath her parted dark hair.
“What Jude and I needed from each other… and gave to each other during this last year, was as special in its own way as any personal sacrifice could ever be. We learned to turn loose of all the lifelines that people cling to, and we submitted to a kind of… free fall. Against all of our instincts, we… committed to the idea that the other person would always be waiting at the end of our fall. We were faithful unto death.”
She cleared her throat, still looking at Bern.
“But that kind of trust doesn’t come without a price. It changes you, a piece of you, forever.”
The rain came hard now, no breeze, just straight down, slapping the leaves of the laurel trees below the window, thundering in the street.
He heard her clear her throat again.
“I needed you to know this,” she said. “I told you that you could trust me, and then…”
Her voice trailed off. Uncharacteristically, she couldn’t bring herself to come right out and say it.
“I wouldn’t have done that to Jude,” she said. “Ever. I couldn’t have. And I shouldn’t have done it to you, either.”
She was very still, and Bern felt as if he were being lifted off the bed by the sound of the pounding rain.
“I’m… I’m telling you this,” she said, abandoning their reflections in the mirror and turning to look directly at him, “because… this is only going to get rougher. I want you to know. .. that I’ll give you the same kind of loyalty that I gave to Jude. I’m willing to go against my instincts… to be waiting at the end of the free fall.”
She was still looking at him, close enough for him to reach out and touch her face. He didn’t know what to say. She had just told him that she had been willing to risk letting him be killed to see if he could pass as Jude. And then almost within the same breath she had pledged a loyalty to him that superseded her loyalty to the ideas that had enabled her to betray him. The first revelation had been shocking; the second one seemed reckless in its promise.
As suddenly as it had begun, the downpour stopped. Silence. And then dripping, like far-off whispers, a world of whispers.
“What in God’s name do you expect me to say to something like that?” he asked. Oddly, he wasn’t furious; he was simply at a loss for framing a response. Despite himself, he believed her. He believed the betrayal, and he believed the pledge of loyalty. It was the staggering simultaneity of them that confused him, and made her seem wildly unstable.
She let go of her knees, leaned away from him, and got off the bed. She stood a moment with her back to him, and then she sat down in the chair near the nightstand, her legs apart, her hands sunk into the skirt gathered between her thighs, the front of her dress still unbuttoned. She was looking toward the window, her profile powder blue in the wet light.
The city had vanished, and the universe was nothing but a dripping darkness as far as the mind could imagine.