for Baida. Your brother was at the heart of an operation to locate him. His work placed him in enormously risky situations. Six weeks ago, he disappeared.”
“Six weeks? Only six weeks?”
“Yes. That surprises you?”
“A little. I was told-”
“By this woman who brought the skull?”
“Yes… that he’d disappeared four months ago.”
“No,” Mondragon said curtly. “It was only six weeks ago.”
All of this was coming fast. Bern’s curiosity was taking him further than he had imagined it would. Common sense should have kicked in long ago. It would have said: Go to your lawyer and tell him someone has brought you your twin brother’s skull in a box, a brother you never knew you had. Then ask him what in the hell you should do now.
Mondragon leaned forward slightly in his chair, nearly enough to expose his face. He seemed to want to speak carefully.
“Mr. Bern,” he said, “your brother was… important in his secret world. It is a small world, one in which decisions are made and things are done that have ramifications in times and places far removed from him. The people he worked for knew more about him than he knew about himself. That is not uncommon in his profession. That is the way his world handles its business. He knew that, and he accepted it.”
The implication was that Bern would be wise to do the same.
“Look,” Bern said. “All this is a good story, but I don’t know who in the hell you really are. I don’t know if you’re telling me the truth about… my brother, about his being an intelligence officer, about the CIA… about anything. I don’t even know if I should be sitting here talking to you. This doesn’t exactly feel right to me.”
“‘Feel right’?” Mondragon’s tone was laden with disdain. “I see. Well, Mr. Bern, tell me, what would you require to make you comfortable with talking to me and believing what I have to say?”
“What would I require?” That was a good question, and it was like calling a raise in a poker game. Did Bern even want to stay in? He guessed so. Instead of walking away from this, here he was talking to a man without a face and allowing himself to be drawn, almost moment by moment, deeper and deeper into what any fool could see was a dangerously murky business.
And yet, even as it was happening, he wondered if his willingness to continue with this had something to do with his newly discovered second self. Did the same elements in Jude’s DNA that had made him seek a life in this foggy world of espionage that Mondragon was describing now provide Bern the wherewithal to follow him… a little way, at least? It was a gravitational pull that was difficult to resist.
“I know a guy in the Houston Police Department’s Intelligence Division,” Bern heard himself say. “If he told me I was in good company, I’d believe him.”
“What is his name?” Mondragon asked.
“Mitchell Cooper.”
Mondragon nodded. “I’m going to leave you for a little while and make a phone call. When I return, we can continue to talk.”
He rose to his feet and walked away into the shadows, and almost immediately the young woman appeared again. This time, she actually seemed to see Bern and smiled.
“I understand you may want something to drink,” she said.
She was right about that. “Tanqueray and tonic,” he said. “And a good slice of lime, if you have it.”
She nodded and left. Bern took a deep breath. This thing did not reach a point of correction. It just kept going and going further out into the unknown, breaking all bonds of gravity as it went. What was going to bring him back?
The woman returned with his drink, and he sat alone, waiting, drinking. The gin was welcome. Several times, he turned and looked back toward the floating faces. Jesus. He stared at the city glittering in the darkness behind the chair where Mondragon had been sitting. This was an evening he wasn’t likely to forget very soon.
He had almost finished his drink when the woman reappeared and approached him, handing him a cell phone.
“Mr. Cooper,” she said.
Bern took the phone, clearing his throat. “Mitchell?”
“Yeah, Paul. You okay?”
“I’m fine, sure. I appreciate the call.”
“Well, look, I, uh, I guess you know what this is all about. I just got a call from a friend of mine, who’s going to have to remain nameless. He, uh, he’s CIA, Paul. Maybe you actually know more here than I do.”
He paused, inviting a response, but Bern didn’t seize the opportunity. Cooper went on.
“Anyway, I guess the point is that I’ve known this man a lot of years, in intelligence work, and he’s… reliable. I trust him. I understand you need to know that. I’d trust him with whatever I had to. He told me that you’re talking to a guy-wouldn’t give me his name-and my man says he’s to be trusted, too. You can believe him, okay?”
“Yeah, okay, then.”
“Now listen,” Cooper added. “That being said, I don’t know what’s going on there, but… well, those people, these are curious times. Lots of hocus-pocus going on in the intelligence world right now. Just be careful. Whatever. Anyway, I want you to know that all I’m vouching for is that I trust this guy who called me. I, personally, am not vouching for whoever you’re talking to. I mean, I can’t do that, obviously.” He hesitated. “You get what I’m saying here?”
“I do. Sure. I appreciate it.”
“Yeah. Okay. I guess that’s it, then… You sure you’re okay? You sound kind of funny.”
“No, I’m fine, Mitchell. I appreciate the help. Sorry that we had to bother you.”
“Well, okay. No problem from this end. I hope it’s what you wanted to hear.”
That was it. Bern handed the cell phone back to the woman, who had been waiting, and she went away.
Chapter 16
Mondragon appeared immediately after the woman’s departure and returned to his dark leather chair, resuming his position in the partial shadows. An inch or so of the white cuffs of his shirtsleeves glowed in the low light as they rested on the arms of the chair. Bern could just make out the whites of Mondragon’s lidless eyeballs through the slanting shadow.
“That was impressive,” Bern admitted.
“Do you feel better now?”
“I feel better. I can’t say I feel comfortable.”
This elicited no response from Mondragon. They sat in silence a moment, and then Mondragon said, “You will find this interesting, Mr. Bern. Your brother was also an artist. It was his profession as well as his cover. He had what I think you would call classical training. He studied in London. I don’t remember where exactly. He was a very good draughtsman. His nudes were elegant, more than mere academic exercises. They were… human. But he excelled at portraiture. His portraits were exceptionally fine, I think. He got behind the eyes of his subjects, into their minds. I think it was his ability to see.. . underneath a face that enabled him to excel as an intelligence officer.”
An unfamiliar feeling surged through Bern, sending a pungent taste into his mouth. Jesus. Strangers in everything but the moment of birth, he and Jude had gravitated to an artistic medium that focused on the face, a human attribute that was famous for its infinite variety, except in rare cases such as his own.
“You are, you know, remarkably like him,” Mondragon went on. “Aside from the obvious, there are things about you that are eerily evocative of your brother. Sometimes it’s… just a gesture, the way you turn your head, or…”
Mondragon’s voice trailed off, and Bern was surprised to feel a sudden deep sorrow. It was a baffling but undeniable moment of yearning for something that could never be. If only he could have talked with Jude. The
