But more than that, he didn’t want it to wear his by-the-numbers reconstruction when he knew that it should have his own face. And then an astounding thought hit him: If fate had been otherwise, if he had had the opportunity six weeks ago to reach out and touch this same human bone, he would have touched the living face of his identical twin.
It was approaching dusk by the time Bern finished thoroughly cleaning off the clay face and reattaching the jaw to the skull. Now he retrieved an old ebony box that he had bought in Paris when he was a student studying anatomy. The box smelled richly of oil paints and seemed an appropriate resting place for Jude’s skull.
He dragged some old green velvet scraps out of a storage cabinet and cut a piece to fit in the bottom of the box. Then he set the skull inside and loosely wadded more velvet around it for protection. He put the box on a bookshelf among his art books.
He deliberately had avoided drinking while he was doing all of this, because he was thinking about what he was going to do, and he wanted to be lucid. But now he poured a gin and tonic from the cabinet in the studio, tossed in some ice and a fat wedge of lime, and took his cell phone to the sofa. He turned out all the lights so he could watch the clean arrival of night and dialed the sterile number Vicente Mondragon had given him.
The phone rang several times, and Bern tried to imagine why it wasn’t answered right away. What did a man like Mondragon do at dusk, without a face?
“Hello, Paul,” Mondragon said.
“Okay,” Bern said, “I’ll do it.”
“Good,” Mondragon said quickly, although without seeming eager. “Then you can leave immediately?”
“No. I’ve got to make arrangements for someone to look after the house. Maybe by tomorrow afternoon. I’ll try to book a flight.”
“Not necessary. I’ll fly you down. It’s important that you arrive at Jude’s place at night. We don’t want anyone to see you for several days, until you’ve had some time to be briefed.”
“How does that happen?”
“We have someone who knew Jude very well. That person will have everything you will need to be briefed. Be ready by seven o’clock in the evening. Someone will pick you up and take you to a charter plane. It’s a two-hour flight. In Mexico City, someone will meet you and take you to Jude’s place in Condesa.”
“I hope to hell this is something I can handle.”
“We are well aware that you are not a professional, Paul. We’ll do everything we can to make this work for you. Everyone is working toward the same goal.”
“You want this guy to think Jude’s still alive,” Bern said. “You’ve got to know that this kind of thing can’t be taken too far.”
“Yes, we do know that. But we are going to take it as far as we can.”
And without another word, Mondragon ended the call.
Chapter 18
Mexico City
The Dessault Falcon settled down through the clouds and floated into the light field of Mexico City’s dusk. From this distance, the ancient city’s lights were a dull coppery glow, a hue that added to the mystery of the six- hundred-year-old metropolis.
Bern sat forward in the cabin, ignored by two men who had entered at the last moment, walked past him without acknowledging him, and sat together at the back of the small aircraft. As the Falcon banked and descended toward Toluca, forty-two miles west of Mexico City-private and charter jets were not allowed at Benito Juarez International-the grid of Mexico City’s avenues and boulevards emerged out of the light shimmer as the city became three-dimensional.
The Falcon whispered onto the tarmac at Toluca and came to rest at the dark end of a runway far from the terminals. Bern glanced back at the two men, who were now silent and staring straight at him without expression. He left the aircraft and descended the steps to a waiting Mercedes, where a door was being held open for him by a young Mexican man with a snappy suit and a ready smile.
“Mr. Bern?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Welcome to Mexico.”
The young man sat on the passenger side as the driver maneuvered into the traffic, heading to Mexico City. There was no conversation during the hour’s drive, but occasionally the young man spoke softly into a cell phone when it blinked at him, or when he placed a call by punching a single number.
Once they were in Mexico City, Bern gazed out his window at the famous city of contrasts. The summer- evening rains had left the streets washed and glistening, but the grime remained in the shadows, and this was a city of shadows. Beauty was a queen here, but a dying queen. This city of the twenty-first century owed much of its undeniable charm to the nearly seven hundred years of its past. The allurements and the enchantments remained, but they were dressed in melancholy.
Condesa was the gentrified neighborhood of Mexico’s elite when it flourished during the l920s and l930s. It was rich in fine examples of Art Deco architecture. During the latter half of the twentieth century, it had fallen on hard times, but it was now something of a cause celebre with young artists, writers, and foreigners who had moved into the area and had begun a serious movement to save the exquisite architecture. Now the neighborhood was booming with sidewalk cafes and hip new restaurants springing up everywhere.
The heart of Condesa was the lush and beautiful Parque Mexico, which had been built on the site of a nineteenth-century racetrack. The park was oval and was surrounded by two concentric oval avenues, the innermost of which was Avenida Mexico, into which the Mercedes now turned. The car cruised slowly under the jacarandas that were planted on the outermost ring of the park and formed a canopy over the encircling sidewalk and street.
After they had gone nearly half the distance of the park’s length, the driver pulled to the curb on the park side of the street. He cut the motor.
The young man who had held the door open for him now turned and put his arm on the back of his seat and looked over it at Bern.
“He lived right here”-he jerked his head toward the building across the narrow street-“the one with the leaded-glass doors.”
Bern looked out the car window at the building’s entryway, where a slightly amber light came through the frosted-glass panels, throwing the Deco design of the leading into clean relief. The building was narrow, three stories, its Deco facade different from its neighbors on either side.
“Second and third floors. There’s no one there now,” the young man said, speaking softly. He reached over the seat and handed Bern a ring with two keys on it. “Hang on to them. They are a special kind, and it’ll be hell to replace them if you lose them. The fat one is for the outside door. The other is for the front door of the apartment.”
“So I go in there. Then what?”
“Someone will contact you. Don’t answer the door. Not yet. People will see the lights and think that he’s returned.”
“They’ll wonder why I’m not answering.”
He shrugged. “Let them wonder.”
“That’s it?”
“This is all we’re supposed to do, bring you here, give you the key, tell you not to answer the door, tell you someone will contact you.”
Bern nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
He opened the back door of the car and got out. Avenida Mexico was little more than a narrow lane. He crossed it in a few steps, and when his feet hit the sidewalk on the other side, he heard the Mercedes start up. He didn’t look back as he heard it pull into the street and drive away.
An awning made of wrought iron and inset with square glass blocks hung over the front doors, the frames of
