Assumed Identity

7

The telephone rang at eight in the evening. Precisely on time. Good. Buchanan sat up in bed and reached for the phone, answering with a neutral voice. “Hello.”

“Mike?” The deep, sensuous female voice was unmistakably Holly’s.

“Yes. Where are you?”

“I’m using a house phone in the lobby. Do you want me to come up? What’s your room number?”

“At the moment, it’s three twenty-two. But I want you to go to five twelve. And Holly, you have to do it in a certain way. Take the elevator to the third floor. Then use the stairs to go up to the fifth. Anybody watching the numbers above the elevator in the lobby will assume that you didn’t go any farther than the third floor.”

“On my way.” Tension strained her voice.

Buchanan broke the connection and pressed the button for the hotel operator, telling her, “Please, don’t put through any phone calls until eight tomorrow morning.”

He left the light on, picked up his travel bag, walked out of the room, put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, made sure that the door was locked behind him, and headed toward the fire stairs. As he started toward the fifth floor, he heard the elevator stop behind him on the third.

Holly arrived at room 512 a minute after he did. The room was registered to Charles Duffy. It and Mike Hamilton’s room had been rented using Charles Duffy’s credit card. Buchanan had told the check-in clerk that Mike Hamilton would be arriving soon. After showering and changing, he’d gone back down to the lobby, waited until the clerk who’d checked him in was off on an errand, and then had checked in again with a different clerk, this time as Mike Hamilton.

When Buchanan turned from letting Holly in and relocking the door, she surprised him, dropping her camera bag and a briefcase onto a chair, putting her arms around him, holding him tightly.

She was trembling.

Buchanan wondered if she was putting on an act, trying to seem more distraught than she actually was.

“How do you stand living this way?” She spoke against his shoulder.

“What way? This is normal.” He responded to her embrace.

“Normal.” Her voice dropped.

“It’s just stage fright.” He smelled her perfume.

She stepped away, looking depressed. “Sure.” As rain pelted against the window behind the closed draperies, she took off her wet London Fog hat and overcoat, then listlessly shook her hair free.

Buchanan had forgotten how red her hair was, how green her eyes.

She wore a sand-colored pantsuit, a scooped white T-shirt, and a brown belt. The outfit complemented her height and figure, the flow of her hips and breasts.

He felt attracted to her, remembered how her breasts had felt against him, and forced himself to concentrate on business.

“I wanted a room where we wouldn’t be disturbed if the men following you decided to barge in,” he explained. “This way, if they talk to the desk clerk, they’ll think they know where you are and who you’re seeing.”

“That part I understand.” Holly slumped on the Victorian sofa. “But what I don’t understand is why you told me to pretend to make a call from a pay phone at the National Portrait Gallery. Who was I supposed to be talking to?”

“Mike Hamilton.”

Holly ran her fingers through her hair and didn’t seem to follow his logic.

“Otherwise, how were you supposed to know Mike Hamilton wanted to meet you here?”

“But. .” She frowned. “But you’d already told me as I came out of the Metro station.”

“The people following you didn’t know that. Holly, you have to remember: In this business, everything’s an act. You want your audience to know only what’s necessary for you to maintain an illusion. Suppose I’d just let you go back to work and then had phoned you and told you to meet me here. Your phones are tapped. This hotel would have been staked out fifteen minutes after I completed the call. They’d have found out who Mike Hamilton was. Regardless of the switch in the rooms, you and I would be under interrogation right now.”

“Nothing you do is uncalculated.”

“That’s how I stay alive.”

“Then how do I know I’m really being followed? How do I know that this business in the park and at the Metro station isn’t just a charade to frighten me into cooperating with you and staying away from the story?”

“You don’t. And I can’t prove it to you. Correction. That’s wrong. I can prove it to you. But the proof might get you killed.”

“There. You’re doing it again,” Holly said. “Trying to frighten me.” She crossed her arms and rubbed them as if she was cold.

“Have you eaten?” Buchanan asked.

“No.”

“I’ll order you something from room service.”

“I don’t have any appetite.”

“You’ve got to eat something.”

“Hey, fear’s good for losing weight.”

“How about some coffee? Or tea?”

“How about telling me what the names you gave me have to do with my story?”

“They don’t,” Buchanan said.

“What? Then why did you get in touch with me? Why did you put me through all this, being followed and passing secret messages and-?”

“Because I didn’t have any choice. I need your help.”

Holly jerked her head up. “You need my help? What could possibly-?”

“Drummond and Tomez. People important enough to need protection. What did you find out about them?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“It’s better if you don’t know anything about-”

“Bullshit,” Holly said. “Since I met you on the train to New Orleans, you’ve been playing games with my mind. Everything has to be your way, and you’re damned good at manipulating people into doing it. Well, this is one time that isn’t going to happen. If you need my help, there has to be something in it for me. If it isn’t about the story I was working on, what is it about? Maybe I can use that as a story. Quid pro quo, buddy. If I have to give up something, I want to get something in return.”

Buchanan studied her, then feigned reluctance. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Jesus, you are really something. You never stop acting. I get the impression you meant to tell me all along, but this way it looks like you’re doing me a favor instead of the other way around.”

Buchanan slowly grinned. “I guess you’re too smart for me. How about that coffee?”

“Tea. And if you’re going to tell me a story, I think I feel my appetite coming back.”