Masquerade (2 page)

“England?” She shook her head. “No, dammit.”

“Take it easy, darling.”

Something was wrong. “Why don't I have a British accent?”

“All I know is what you told me—that you imitated your father, and his accent was, as you'll see in a minute, American.”

He opened the album, pointed to a snapshot on the first page. In it picturesque row houses lined a narrow street. The
white houses rose three stories, with chimney pots on top and black wrought-iron fences in front. Standing before one of the houses was a little girl in patent-leather Mary Janes and a tailored wool coat. She held the hand of a smiling man in an overcoat.

“That's you and your father, Harold Sansborough,” Gordon said. “And that's the house where you grew up. Your father was an American salesman, but he moved to London after he married your mother. Her name was Melanie Childs, and she was English. He worked for U.S. companies there. See, that next picture's your mother. Quite a beauty.”

From a large portrait, Melanie Childs Sansborough, somewhere in her early twenties, stared off into the future. Liz looked nothing like her. Melanie had delicate features, a slender nose, and moist blue eyes that spoke of a protected upbringing. A pearl hung on a chain from her neck.

Liz smiled, relieved. She was looking at her parents. Real people, a real past, tangible and promising.

“What did my mother do?”

“She was just a housewife.” He turned more pages, pointed to snapshots of Liz as a child—riding a pony in Hyde Park, boating with her parents on the lake in Battersea Park, flying kites along the Embankment. Other photos showed family vacations in France and summer visits to New York, where her father had gone for annual sales meetings.

The last snapshot was of her, suddenly a young, leggy adult, standing between her proud parents. She resembled her father.

She glanced up, breathed deeply.

Then she looked down again at herself, a teenager, in the old photo. It was she, all right, but it was also a person she didn't know.

She took the album to the bedroom and stared into the mirror, then she studied the young woman on the album page. Tall and lanky. A high forehead, flared nose, and wide mouth. Distinct cheekbones. She looked closely at the photo: Yes, there it was. The little finger on her left hand was crooked.

She held up her left hand and looked at the finger. It was crooked in the same way.

“You broke it when you were a child,” Gordon told her from the doorway. “A skating accident. It never mended right.”

“Yes. It still aches sometimes.”

In the photo she noted the young woman's thick auburn hair and the black mole just above the right corner of her mouth. She looked into the mirror and touched the striking mole on her face.

She and the young woman were the same.

One person. Her.

Dramatic, not delicate. With an odd sense of distance, she realized she was beautiful, and that for some reason being beautiful was important.

He told her, “You were eighteen then and headed for Cambridge.”

“The university? Was I a student?”

“That's enough for now.”

“But I need to know—”

“You'll know everything soon. Very soon.”

It wasn't good enough. “But what kind of person am I?
Who
am I? Do I teach school, rob banks, what have I become?”

He shook his head. “We're going to do this right, darling. The doctor warned me. I'm supposed to wait until you ask for information and then feed it to you slowly so you don't get overwhelmed. Remember, you almost died from the brain fever. Your mind's healing, but we can't rush it. Your past has to evolve. With time everything's going to come back to you.” He gave her a confident thumbs-up and headed to the kitchen.

She turned pages, studied the pictures. And suddenly another question struck her. If Gordon was supposed to wait until she wanted information, why had he just refused to tell her any more when she'd asked? Why was he afraid she'd be “overwhelmed” . . . unless there was something he was worried about, something she should worry about?

“Liz! What are you doing?” He strode across the cluttered living room to the desk where she sat.
Her
desk, or so he'd led her to believe.

“Who's Sarah Walker?” She waved a sheaf of correspondence at him.

Fury fought with worry on his square face. “The doctor said—”

“I don't give a damn what the doctor said! This is my life. I've got a right to know who—and what—I am!”

He leaned across the desk, his jaw jutting. “Dammit, Liz! It's too soon!”

“For what, Gordon? For what?”

He leaned forward another inch. His square face was red. His brown eyes snapped. She'd never seen him angry. His furious worry softened something hard and lonely inside her. But she had to
know
. She slammed the correspondence down onto the desk.

“I'm sorry I've upset you, Gordon, but Sarah Walker . . . I've got to know. Who is she? See, I found these magazine articles in the drawer.” She dumped them onto the desk, too. “ ‘Tear sheets,' I think they're called. Articles published in some magazine called
Talk
, and they have Sarah Walker's byline on them. It seems to me, from looking through the files on the computer, that both the computer and desk must be hers. There's nothing in the drawers or files with my name. Nothing!”

Gordon inhaled, calming himself. He stood back. “I was warned this wouldn't be easy. But dammit, couldn't you have waited a while?”

“No. One way or another, I'm going to find out.”

“I've got to call Dr. Levine first. Once he approves, I'm off the hook. Be fair, Liz. He saved your life. He cares about you.”

“Even if he says no, I won't stop. I can't. I need to fill this empty hole that used to be my life. What will I find next you won't explain? Letters, more photos, mementos—”

Before she could finish, he was at the telephone, dialing. She stood beside him as he talked to the doctor. At last he nodded and hung up. “He says if you're so determined, you can probably handle it.”

“Of course I can.” She followed him to the hall closet, relieved to no longer be angry with him. As far as she was concerned, he, more than the doctor, had saved her life.

“Yes, but he still wants me to lead you through it.” From the closet's top shelf Gordon slid a stack of thick file folders, another photo album, and two video cassettes.

“Thanks.” Trembling, she took the materials and headed for the sofa. He sat beside her, and she opened the new album to the first page. A photo showed her and her parents standing before a majestic ancient church with buttresses and spires.

“Recognize it?” he asked. “That's King's College Chapel in Cambridge.”

But before she could answer, a deafening burst of sharp, erratic explosions filled the room. At the same instant, a window shattered inward. The table next to her exploded. A lamp cartwheeled and crashed. She recognized the sounds in some deep recess of her mind. Gunshots!

“Liz! Down!”

She dove to the carpet and crawled behind the sofa. A second fusillade ripped through the condo, smashing wood, glass, plaster. Then Gordon was beside her. He pulled a pistol from inside his shirt and another from beneath the sofa. He shoved one into her hand. It was huge. An automatic, she thought.

How did she know it was an automatic
?

“Take it!” he ordered.

She stared. “I don't know how to—”

“Yes, you do. Take it!”

She grabbed the gun. It felt . . . familiar.

Who was she
?

Chapter 2

Suddenly there was silence. Plaster dust rained down from the ceiling. A shard of window glass shattered to the floor. Tension was electric.

Then another fusillade blasted through the broken windows.

Gordon's voice was tight. “They're shooting from across the street, keeping us down. They—”

“Why, Gordon? Who are they? Who are we? Who—”

An explosion rocked the condominium.

“Liz! Watch—”

The front door blew across the room, splintering chairs and a table. Three men burst through the gaping door frame. Gordon rose to a crouch, firing. One man fell back through the doorway. The two others dove right and left into the room, returned fire with a burst of bullets that ripped the couch.

“Liz!”

She held the big automatic, watched as the man on the right crawled rapidly out of view. He was on his elbows, a stubby black weapon with a short barrel and a hand-hold sticking out its side cradled in the crook of his arm. She turned as he came around the couch. He looked straight into her eyes. His face was bland, expressionless, topped by slicked-back brown hair.

He raised to his knees, the black weapon aimed directly at her heart. In seconds she'd be dead—

She pulled her trigger.

The gun bucked in her hands and she felt pain inside her. She was dead . . . she was . . . staring at the man on his knees as his chest turned red and his mouth poured red and he was thrown backward like a rag doll into the wall and—

Other men swarmed into the room and knocked over the third gunman.

“Look after Gordon!” someone shouted.

Liz turned again. Gordon lay collapsed on the floor behind her. Blood covered him. Hands lifted her up, pulled her toward the doorway.

“Gordon!”

“We'll take care of him. Come on. Quick! Now!”

She was in the hall and being half-pulled, half-carried to the service stairs at the rear. She resisted, fought.

“Christ, we're friends, Sansborough!”

“No time to explain it. Just bring her!”

Three of them wrestled her down the stairs and out to a waiting car. They shoved her in. Two new men pinned her there. The door closed, and the car screeched off in a stink of burning rubber. It turned up Micheltorena Street.

Another car was slewed across the street as they passed. Bullet holes riddled it.

Men ran to a third car as sirens blared. Police cars raced up Garden Street, heading toward her condo.

The car in which she was a passenger dove into the maze of small streets on the Riviera, climbed steep hills, and plunged across a long ridge and then down into a valley. She had no idea where she was. She and Gordon had never come this way.

Finally they stopped at a house hidden up a deserted canyon. The men hustled her inside to a room with a bed and desk. The door closed, and she heard it lock. There were bars on the windows.

Shadows spread long and inky across the small room. She had been sitting there for what seemed hours, her stomach roiling. How badly was Gordon hurt?

What about the bland-faced man with the slicked-back brown
hair and the bloodied chest and mouth? Had she killed him?

And who were they, these men who said they were friends?

Did “friends” lock you in a room alone?

They had saved her from the attackers in the condo, and they knew Gordon. Or at least his name. But—

She heard the door being unlocked and a man came in. He was older, thin, with graying hair and a kindly face. He carried a tray of sandwiches and milk.

“Why am I locked in?”

“We're sorry, but there just hasn't been time to explain everything, Liz. You wouldn't understand yet. We were afraid you'd try to run away. But you're safe here, you need to eat, and we've sent for—”

“Where's Gordon? Is he hurt badly?”

“He's in the hospital. I don't know how serious it is, but I'll find out as soon as I can.”

“What about the man I shot?”

“Dead. A clean kill.”

She closed her eyes, nauseated.

“You had to shoot him, Liz. He would've killed you.”

She steadied her stomach, forced her eyes open. “Are you the police?”

“In a way. We've sent for your doctor. He'll be here soon. Now eat, okay?”

She didn't want to. She thought of Gordon and of the dead man. She bit into the first sandwich.

“Liz, are you all right?” Dr. Levine hurried in, his long, gaunt face clouded. He turned on the overhead light, took a stethoscope from his bag, and checked her. “They tell me it was a close call.”

“Who were those men? Why did they want to kill us?”

“Not Gordon. You, I'm afraid. And yes, you're certainly entitled to know why. But I warn you, finding out about your whole life in what amounts to a relative instant can be a shock, traumatic. If you begin to feel overwhelmed, stop. Finish tomorrow.”

He left and returned with the photo album, the file folders, and the two video cassettes she'd begun to examine at the condo. She took them gratefully, and the thin man with graying hair rolled in a television set and VCR.

“Is there any word about Gordon?”

“Sorry, Liz.” The doctor paused in the doorway. “I've given your medication to your security detail. They'll get you some clothes, fix you up. You can trust them. Do they have to lock you in anymore?”

She looked at the album, the cassettes, and the dossiers on her lap and shook her head. The doctor left. There was no sound of the door locking after him.

Outside her window, stars sparkled across the black sky. She went to the desk and turned on the lamp. She opened the first file folder and began reading about her life.

She'd studied international relations at Cambridge and moved in with a lover. The album contained dozens of photos, with typed lines of description, showing her with a dark-complected young man—in a tea shop, standing before the red-brick library, hiking along hedgerows, watching punters on the Cam. He had a serious face, smooth-cheeked, with coal-black eyes and hair. In almost every snapshot the hair tumbled over his forehead as if no force could control it or him. A dossier said his name was Huseyn Shaheed Noon, and he was a member of a prominent Pakistani family. He had returned home to tell his family about her, and while he was there he'd taken up his little plane for a recreational flight. The engine failed. He crashed and died.