Silent Masquerade

He recovered quickly. “You thought I said `guess’? I said `yes.’”

She nodded, but there was a skeptical gleam in her eyes.

Bill mopped up the last of the yolk on his plate with a piece of biscuit and popped it in his mouth. A whole week of fast food had made him greedy for the taste of something real. It was almost worth the long, uncomfortable bus ride to have a chance to eat something a little closer to homemade at the various stops along the route.

Sated at last, he took a final swig of coffee and then concentrated on the girl, whose attention was now absorbed by her own meager breakfast.

Her hair was a blaze of colorful curls, and he remembered that when he awakened, his first sense had been that he smelled something wonderful. He realized now that it had been her hair. Every time she moved her head, the light, spicy scent wafted toward him. Her hair was her most arresting feature. Her eyes were brown, and she had a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks that precluded any chance of her ever being considered glamorous. But her smile revealed fine, even white teeth and a dimple in her right cheek. In a flash of insight, he realized that she was the kind of woman who would become really beautiful in the close-up lens of a camera, or in the eyes of someone who saw her day after day.

She ate slowly, breaking the toast in bite-size pieces with her fingers. He found himself mesmerized by the ritual. When she looked up and saw that he was watching her, a slight blush rose to her cheeks and her eyes lit with humor.

“Have I got butter on my chin?” she asked, smiling.

“I’ve never seen anyone eat toast like that,” he answered.

She laughed. “It lasts longer this way, and makes less of a mess.”

He wondered why she wanted to make it last, but didn’t ask.

When she looked at her check, he saw that she counted out the exact amount of her bill from a little change purse that she held close to her chest.

So, she had limited funds and she was on the run.

Ordinarily, he would have been intrigued by the mystery; it was, after all, his life’s work to solve the puzzles of human behavior. But he was through with all that now and didn’t dare risk any kind of involvement with strangers that might eventually lead his enemies to him.

No, not enemies. Enemy. Just one. One man in the whole world who had the power, even from behind the locked bars of a maximum-security prison, to snuff out his life. As long as Franco Alvaretti was alive, “Bill Hamlin” would be forced to live the half life of those who went underground.

It was war. And the whole world was mined with explosives. One wrong step, and it was all over.

Automatically he raised his hand to feel his beard, reassured when he felt its soft downiness. A couple more days and the beard would be as full and natural-looking as if he’d had one for years.

As they left the café to reboard the bus, Bill took sunglasses from his jacket pocket and put them on.

When he offered her the window seat, telling her he’d had enough of rolling scenery, Cara took the inside seat and thanked him.

Bill read for a while, forcing himself to concentrate on the pages of a book written by an agent he’d once worked with in the Middle East. The joke in the Service was that old agents didn’t die, they went to press. The book was good, unfolding an espionage tale that might well have been taken from the very records Bill himself had once helped compile.

He kept his place in the book with his finger and closed his eyes, his mind drifting back of its own accord.

“We need you back home, Spence. There’s an opening in Alvaretti’s organization, and if you move fast and with the right credentials, we can do what we’ve always wanted—get a man inside to overturn Alvaretti’s operation.”

He’d had the right credentials. Alvaretti had taken him on after only a couple of days of consideration, and he’d became privy to the legitimate books in Alvaretti’s accounting department—but not the books that the FBI, the CIA and the IRS were panting to uncover. That had taken time. He’d had to find a way to get into the man’s good graces before he was trusted with the other side of Alvaretti, Inc.

It had taken eighteen months. During that time he’d been tried by fire more than he cared to remember, once by being forced to stand by with his mouth shut while members of Alvaretti’s goon squad worked a man over until he was nearly dead.

When he was finally allowed into the inner sanctum of the organization’s workings, he’d thought it was merely a matter of photocopying the evidence and getting out. He had never anticipated the end result—that the agency would have to bury him, that from that moment on, Alvaretti wouldn’t rest until he got his revenge.

His superiors had talked about plastic surgery, a faked death, the Witness Protection Program. The WPP seemed the least drastic, in Spence’s mind, and he had determined then not to relinquish control of his life to anyone else. He knew now that the government had deliberately used him in its frenzy to get Alvaretti, and that once he’d done the job he was no longer of any use to them.

I should have realized up front that there was no other way out once I went in, he told himself for the umpteenth time. He ground his teeth and clenched his fists. The worst of it was that he really missed his job; it was work he’d known he wanted to do since he’d been a schoolboy. There was pain in recognizing how much he’d lost. He took a deep breath to push away the ache.

Cara felt movement beside her and drew her attention from the passing scenery to glance sideways at Bill. “Are you all right?” she whispered, seeing the devastation on his face, his rigid body language.

He blinked, forced himself to relax and nodded, a tiny line of sweat beading his forehead. “Yeah. Fine. Don’t worry.”

Cara wasn’t so sure. He looked sick, as if he were about to have a seizure or something, or as if he were experiencing incredible pain. “I’ve got some aspirin in my purse,” she said softly. “Would that help?”

He shook his head and then leaned back against the headrest. “No, thanks. I think I just need to sleep for a while.” He closed his eyes.

Cara turned back to the window but couldn’t get this last image of him out of her mind. It brought to mind news clips of the hostages just released from years of incarceration in the Middle East. But he was none of her business, after all. She’d offered her help, and she’d been refused. She had enough troubles of her own without adding his to her list.

Nevertheless, when they pulled into a bus station for their lunch stop, she suggested they eat their meal together.

He looked hesitant at first, but then shrugged, as if to say “What harm can it do?” For some reason, Cara found that gesture strangely disturbing. It made her feel insignificant; though they were only strangers passing a day and a night together by accident, she felt as if she would have liked to make a better impression on him.

Bill told himself that this interlude for the brief time they were travelers together couldn’t lead to anything dangerous. The girl was good company. She didn’t chatter away, as some travelers did, and yet she was friendly and open.

Well, not entirely open. There was that business about her name. And he’d noticed that whenever they came to a town, she put her hand up along the side of her face that was nearest the window, as if she were afraid someone in one of those towns would recognize her.

In the station coffee shop, Cara ordered a small dinner salad and iced tea, while Bill took the waitress’s recommendation of the blue plate special.

“How do you keep your figure, eating like that?” Bill asked, gesturing toward Cara’s tiny bowl of salad.

“This is how I keep my figure,” Cara said with a grin.

But when she ordered the same thing at the supper stop, Bill thought again that Cara must be short on funds and unable to afford a complete meal. It made him nervous to eat with her, and he couldn’t help but worry about her health. Wouldn’t she get sick if she didn’t get some real food into her?

He told himself that his only reason for being concerned about her was that her getting sick would draw attention to him, since they were seatmates and had taken all their meals together.

He ordered two roast beef sandwiches, an apple and a carton of milk to go. “I get hungry during the night, and we don’t stop again until morning,” he told Cara, who was looking askance at him, because he’d just stowed away a large steak, a double order of hash browns, salad and dessert.

An hour later, as darkness was beginning to creep across the highway, Bill nudged Cara. “I don’t feel so good. I think maybe it’s something I ate.”

“Probably all that fried food,” Cara said, nodding.

Bill reached down for the bag he’d placed at his feet. “Listen, I don’t think I’m going to be able to eat this, and I hate to see food go to waste. Do you think you could at least eat some of it?”

“You might feel better after a bit,” Cara said. She didn’t take the bag.

He pushed it into her lap. “Please. I have a real horror about waste. I’ve seen too many kids starving all over the world.”

Cara gave him a suspicious look, but then opened the bag and looked inside. “Well, all right, maybe I’ll eat part of a sandwich and drink the milk.”

She ate daintily, but he could see she was really hungry. When he saw how eagerly she drank the milk, he wished he’d bought two cartons.

“You’ve been all over the world?” Cara asked, as if his comment had just now registered with her.

“Yeah.” Bill shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This was exactly why it was so dangerous to get next to people—the unthinking way information just popped out of one’s mouth.