The Color of Night

CHAPTER 55

It took Mara nearly three hours to make Strand into someone else. Monitoring the process in a hand mirror, he watched as his features disappeared one by one until, slowly, a stranger’s face emerged and he no longer recognized himself. It was oddly like being invisible. He watched the man in the mirror as though he were seeing him on a small movie screen. The sensations he felt in his own body did not belong to the man he saw. His thoughts did not belong to the man he saw. There was nothing in that man’s eyes that Strand recognized, and there was nothing in that man’s eyes that he could read.

Mara had had the unfailing good sense to make Strand’s new self unremarkable; he was neither handsome nor striking in any sense. He had no identifying mole or coloring or manner of grooming. He was not interesting to look at, and it was highly unlikely that anyone would remember him or be able to describe him after having shared an elevator with him. He had become every man and no man. Harry Strand had disappeared.

“Okay,” she said, sitting back, looking at him as though he were a drawing she had just finished. She smiled softly, leaned toward him, and whispered, “I liked the other guy a lot better, mister. A hell of a lot better.” She kissed him lightly on the lips. “No offense.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” Strand said. He looked at his watch: it was nearly four-thirty. “I’m going to forget the padding. I don’t want to fool with it, don’t want to have to worry about it.”

He checked the mirror one more time. She had done a remarkable job. Not too much latex. It wasn’t like a mask, but his nose was broader, brow heavier, jaws rounder, neck thicker. The stuff was sticking to him like a second skin. He did not have to be apprehensive about it coming off accidentally. In fact, he was just a little concerned that it might not come off at all.

“How does it feel? Any problems?”

“No, not at all,” he said. “It’s good. It looks great.” He stood and removed the paper from around his collar.

Mara didn’t say anything. She busied herself with cleaning up and putting away the cosmetics and little bottles and tubes and aerosol cans that were scattered out on the scaffolding table.

Strand walked over to the windows and looked out. A misty fog had rolled in, and the evening was growing dim and gloomy. He stretched his neck, twisted his head. Again he took a deep breath, couldn’t seem to get enough air in his lungs. Turning, he looked at Mara. She had stopped what she was doing and was sitting there, a tube of something in her hands, watching him. The expression on her face told him volumes about the complex of emotions that churned within her.

Strand came over to her, and she put down the tube of makeup and stood. He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them. He kissed her palms and folded her fingers and kissed them. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, brimming with tears.

“I love you,” he said. “Thank you for everything. For everything from the first moment.”

He kissed her eyes softly, first one, then the other. He felt the moist salt of her fear and affection against his lips, tasted it on his tongue. This one tender moment was all he would allow. It was all he dared allow.

Turning away from her, he went to the closet and put on his coat. He took out his raincoat and pulled it on, too, and then reached in and got his umbrella and closed the door. When he turned to look at her she had wiped her eyes and was standing with her arms crossed, one hip cocked. She managed a smile.

“Take care of yourself, Harry,” she said.

He nodded at her and walked out the room.

At the front door he stepped outside and paused to put up the umbrella. Then he pulled the door closed behind him. It was quiet outside except for the light rain. He went down the steps, through the wrought-iron grille, and across the street. At the corner of Charles Street he turned and looked back. She had turned out the lights. He knew she was standing at the window in the darkness, watching him. He turned again and started down the street toward Berkeley Square.

The light rain had slackened to a mizzle by the time Strand got to Berkeley Square, where he had intended to hail a cab. Now he changed his mind. The weather was not so bad that he couldn’t walk, and the walking helped him think. The street lamps came on as he turned north on the west side of the square. The plane trees in the park sagged under the moisture of the last several days, and the pathways that traversed the lawn were empty and dreary. The wet summer evening had settled over the city like a soughing breath that was at one moment too warm and then almost chill.

He tried to stop thinking about Mara. He knew his lack of concentration was dangerous, but he could hardly get the image of the darkened windows of their rooms out of his mind. Gradually over the last month, everything he was and did had become wrapped up in that woman. She had become his rationale for everything. When he planned and when he dreamed, he had their future in mind. He did not think of himself; he thought of them.

He peered ahead, through the mist, up the hill toward Davies Street. He listened to his footsteps on the wet cement and to the footsteps of the people he passed: the long strides and plodding steps of men; the quick, rapid-fire steps of young women in smart clothes hurrying to their futures. All of them, shrouded beneath their umbrellas, moved along in the late day gloaming, microcosms of human hopes and disappointments.

Never, throughout the years of this deception, had it seemed more like an outrageous adventure than it did now. What had changed? Quite a lot, actually, not the least of which was the objective. Up until the last few days he’d had nothing more in mind than stealing stolen money, taking something that didn’t belong to the person who had it and returning it, not to those from whom it had been taken originally-which would be an impossibility, like trying to return a cup of water dipped out of the sea to the exact same place from which it was taken-but to others in need, to the kind of people from whom it had been stolen in the first place. The method had been complex, the scheme convoluted, the technology sophisticated, but at bottom he was only running away with a gangster’s ill-gotten profits. Stealing stolen money.

Now he was only hours away from killing a man. Did he really believe that Schrade would kill Mara-and himself-if he didn’t kill Schrade first? Yes… he knew Schrade would do that. Did he call it self-defense? Yes. Had he argued it ad nauseam in his own mind? Yes. Then why did he still agonize over it?

He didn’t know. But he did know that if he didn’t gain control of his thoughts right now, he might as well turn around this very moment, go back and get Mara… and start running.

He had stopped at the upper end of Berkeley Square. There was a spattering of cars careening off Mount Street and tilting into the turn that would take them down on the other side of the park, while traffic from behind him came up the near side of the square and headed into Davies Street. When the light changed he followed the dribbling traffic upward in the direction of Grosvenor.

In another ten minutes he was passing the lighted windows of Claridge’s dining room, which looked out onto Davies Street toward the Italian embassy. A few more steps and he turned into Brook Street and walked under the inviting awning of Claridge’s.

Accepting the doorman’s assistance, he folded his umbrella and entered the vestibule, removed his raincoat, and proceeded to the front hall, where he approached the reception desk.

“Good evening.” The reception clerk was quick and smiling.

“Good evening,” Strand said. “I just came in from Paris early this morning for a business meeting, thinking I would be returning to Paris this evening. Unfortunately my business is carrying over to tomorrow. Might you possibly have something available for me on such short notice?”

“Let me see, sir.” The clerk tipped his head and immediately consulted his computer, typing quietly in quick bursts, studying the screen. While he waited Strand allowed his eyes to follow the extension of the front hall toward three tall arches through which one passed to the more formal foyer famous for Claridge’s afternoon teas. A good number of people still lingered around the small tables, chatting quietly, the epitome of decorum in the most decorous of places.

“Nothing available, sir,” the clerk said, and Strand turned around.

“Not anything?”

“No singles or doubles, sir. We have only suites.”

“One of those will be fine.”

The clerk accepted this quiet extravagance with smooth alacrity.

Strand quickly produced one of his forged passports and credit cards, and the clerk got busy putting together the necessary paperwork for the accommodation.