Masquerade (24 page)

“When are you going to tell me what you did that got you sent to the Ranch?”

“It was no big deal.” He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes and returned to the subject at hand. “If you were in government, would you believe us?”

“We're hardly the most credible accusers.”

“Exactly.”

“I've got an idea, Flores. Let's go find the Carnivore and this extra ‘Liz Sansborough' ourselves. Then we'll know what's really going on. There's something wrong about all this. You say Bremner's in charge of bringing in the Carnivore and me, yet Gordon said Bremner was grooming me to help capture him.”

“True.”

“So here I am, in Colorado, but I'm
not
in Colorado. I'm in Paris, an intermediary. It makes no sense. We need to know what Bremner's doing so we can give solid evidence to the DCI. . . . Or to the President. What do you say to Paris?”

Asher liked the way she thought. “I know a great artist here in Denver. Among her many talents, she does passports, driver's licenses, that sort of useful thing.”

It would cost a fortune, $5,000 each, but the artist guaranteed secrecy and quality. She wanted the money up front, but Flores gave her what cash he had and told her she'd get the rest when they got the finished artwork. She snapped their photos and told them to come back at three o'clock.

Out in the pickup, Liz said, “From the look on your face, I assume you have a plan to finance this?”

“Absolutely. Let's switch places.”

She drove around the block while he went into a janitorial supply shop. He came out wearing drab-green coveralls over his regular clothes. He carried a clipboard stacked with official-looking forms, and climbed back behind the wheel of the pickup.

“D'you still remember Taite's access code?”

She gave it to him. “What are you going to do?”

“Tell you later.” He smiled mysteriously. “How about you?”

It was her turn to smile mysteriously. “Tell you later.”

He dropped her at the public library at Broadway and West Thirteenth Avenue. The library was in the Denver Civic Center, where three square blocks of lawns and gardens also housed the Denver Art Museum, the Greek Theater, and the Pioneer Monument. To Liz, the parklike grounds and neoclassical architecture were refreshing reminders of humanity's accomplishments, especially important after last night's motel of horrors.

Once inside the library, she went directly to periodicals. She got copies of
Talk
, the magazine she'd written for under her cover name, Sarah Walker. She paged through the previous eighteen months. Sarah Walker's byline last appeared two months ago. Before that she'd had many bylines. At last Liz came to what she'd hoped to find—a small, tasteful announcement of Sarah Walker's promotion to senior contributing editor a year ago.

Liz closed her eyes and looked again.

Yes, there was Sarah Walker's photo. Not hers. There was the small chin and the crooked nose. No beauty mark. She had not used Sarah Walker as a cover, because if she had,
her
photo would be there. Not Walker's.

With his computer-repair credentials and his official-looking green coveralls, Asher Flores glanced at his clipboard and announced to the sleek receptionist at the big branch bank on East Colfax he'd come to make sure the bank's networking handshakes were working properly. In a business where computers were constantly being tinkered with and upgraded, the request was reasonable. The receptionist gave him permission to sit at the desk he'd indicated he wanted—the one with not only a computer, but a check-writing machine.

While she took care of new customers, he used the computer to create a fictitious account at the bank. Then he used Gordon Taite's code to tap into the CIA slush fund Mustang maintained in Denver. Last he transferred $47,500 from the slush fund into the
fictitious account. Going to Europe was expensive these days, especially if you had to hide two sets of tracks.

He then ordered up five cashier's checks for $9,500 each from the account, which cleaned it out. He slipped blank checks into the machine on the desk, and it printed them out to the pseudonym on one set of fake I.D.s he'd carried from the Ranch. He slipped the checks beneath the forms on his clipboard, and he penciled some boxes and made some notations on the top two forms as if he'd accomplished something for the bank.

He reported to the helpful receptionist that all handshakes were now working properly, and he left. At the end of a deserted alley he stripped off his coveralls and buried them and the clipboard in a trash can. Once again in his boots, jeans, and Stetson, he was just a free-wheeling cowboy fresh off the range.

He went to five more banks, and at each he turned a cashier's check into $4,000 cash and the rest into traveler's checks, made out this time to the pseudonyms the artist was putting on his and Sansborough's passports and other I.D.s, in case Langley backtracked on the money withdrawals at the first bank. None of the banks challenged him; transactions under $10,000 didn't have to be reported to the federal government.

Next he visited a travel agency and bought two tickets, with seat assignments and boarding passes, for a flight that left early that evening for Paris. The tickets were also in the pseudonyms the artist was putting on his and Sansborough's passports and other I.D.s. He paid cash.

Then he repeated the entire transaction at a second travel agency for a flight to Copenhagen half an hour later.

He was feeling good. But then, anybody would feel mighty good with so much dough in his pocket. He shoved his thumbs down his waistband and whistled a little tune. Yup, a lot of dough and he was taking the most gorgeous female—emphasis on
female
—spy he'd ever met to Paris. He was feeling exceptionally good about that, too, until he walked past a newsstand.

There were huge three-column photos of him and Sansborough on the
Denver Tribune
's front page. In color. At least five inches high. The headline seemed almost as high:

POLICE HUNT 2 MURDER SUSPECTS

He swallowed and pulled his Stetson lower over his face until it touched his sunglasses. His beard was scruffy, and he hoped it changed him enough that no one would connect him to the criminal on the front page of Denver's only afternoon daily. Flores bought the
Tribune
and turned to saunter away.

“Hey, mister.”

His pulse pounding, Flores turned back. “Yeah?”

The old man at the cash register looked at the front page of the
Trib
, and then he looked at Flores. “Damned if you don't look like this guy. What is he—your brother?”

“What guy?” He played dumb, let the man explain about the slaying of two out-of-town businessmen at dawn in one of Denver's more notorious “hell-tels.” Other customers gathered around, discussed how much Flores resembled one of the murderers.

At last Flores glanced at his watch. “My wife! Now there's a real killer. I'll be dead in fifteen minutes if I don't get to where I'm supposed to meet her! Sorry, folks.”

As he headed away, they laughed behind him. This time he'd escaped, but Bremner had lost no time making sure the local authorities knew who the killers were. Now not only Bremner, but the police and the state patrol were looking for him and Liz.

It was time to ditch the pickup. And that meant he'd need one of his other identities.

Fortunately he had a New York driver's license and a Gold Star Rent-a-Car credit card both in the same fake name, both created by private artists, not Langley's. That would take care of his immediate problems. With luck, he'd need no other I.D. Flores drove to an office of the huge car-rental agency, thinking grimly the airport would have been alerted, too, which meant getting past security and onto a jet would be next to impossible.

The young, ambitious assistant manager of downtown Denver's Gold Star Rent-a-Car outlet recognized Asher Flores immediately, despite his Don Johnson beard and sunglasses. This was because she had a nearly photographic memory and because she was acutely aware of her responsibilities now that she was to be promoted to manager of Gold Star in Littleton, a prosperous Denver suburb.

Of course, she expected him to have a fake I.D., because the central office had alerted her he would, although the pseudonym he was using hadn't appeared on their list. She guessed they'd probably told every Gold Star Rent-a-Car employee in the United States about him, and maybe in Europe and the Orient, too. The company was thorough.

In fact, they'd included the guy's photo and a warning he was dangerous. And since he was thought to be in the area, this morning the FBI had delivered tracking devices to every Gold Star agency in metropolitan Denver, requesting it be placed under the bumper of any car rented to Flores.

So as Flores filled out the rental contract, the assistant manager excused herself, went into the back to see to his car, handed over the tracking device to the service manager with an explanation, and returned to the front desk.

Her excitement only added to her natural enthusiasm. As soon as Flores left, she called the 800 number the FBI agent had given her. Such cooperation between the government and a private company impressed her greatly. She was proud to know she'd made a contribution to her country today.

Flores used the phone booth at the rear of the dark cocktail lounge to call the corporate headquarters of International
A.M.
-
P.M.
Catering, Inc., in New York. He asked for Abner Belden.

“This is Belden.”

Asher said, “A lot bigger trucks in New York than in Sofia, aren't there, Pericles?”

“Asher? Jesus, where are you?”

“Denver, Abner. I need a favor.”

“You've got it.”

“This one you've got to trust me.”

There was a pause. “Improvising in the field again?”

“Langley hasn't changed. Tightassed as ever.”

Belden laughed softly. “Tell me what you want done.”

Asher told him.

In the Denver library, Liz waited until the restroom was empty. Then she stood at the mirror and tried to see through the thick makeup to the face beneath.

Who was she? Who was she
really
?

Why had the dossier said Sarah Walker was her cover?

Her stomach churning, she tipped her face back and forth. Flores had said there was a resemblance between her and Walker, similar bone structure, but she didn't see it. Then she spotted something that made her chest tighten.

There was a narrow scar only an inch long beneath her chin.

She tilted her head far back to get a good look at it in the mirror. It was pale purple. White would have indicated she'd had it a long time. Purple meant more recent.

She dropped her chin and stared at herself in the mirror. There was something she should remember—

She returned to periodicals and found the
Talk
magazine in which Sarah Walker's last article had appeared. She flipped through the pages. Had she seen it? Yes, a quarter-page advertisement for the magazine. It heralded:

COMING ATTRACTIONS!

Facing the Future:
To Cut or Not to Cut
?

Our senior contributing editor, Sarah Walker, acquires a brand-new face with the help of cutting-edge cosmetic surgery. . . .

A brand-new face! Had she missed that article? She searched the issues up to the current one. No. The article had
not been published, at least not in
Talk
. She turned to the front of the last magazine, found the telephone number, and memorized it.

She returned the magazines to the counter. Then she saw it: Her photo stared up from the front page of a newspaper. Fear turned her stomach upside down. She began to sweat. Next to her photo was one of Asher Flores. She glanced around. The periodicals librarian was on the telephone. One person stood at the desk, reading a magazine while waiting to ask a question.

She turned over the newspaper. Under it were two more papers, and each showed the same two mug shots. One reported:

Elizabeth Sansborough, 32, and Asher Flores, 29, both of California, are sought as prime suspects in the robbery and brutal slayings of two out-of-town businessmen before dawn this morning in downtown Denver.

Police say Sansborough and Flores are armed and dangerous. They report mounting a widespread effort to capture the two before more citizens are killed. . . .

Liz glanced at the librarian on the telephone and at the woman who was still reading her magazine. Liz picked up the newspapers and, as she strode out the door, she turned the photos inward, so her body hid them.

In the lobby she found a public telephone. She dialed
Talk
in Santa Barbara. The receptionist had a friendly voice. She transferred Liz to an editor.

Liz asked, “Can you tell me when Sarah Walker's article about her plastic surgery will appear?”

“Oh, that one. Sorry. It's been canceled.”