“That will cost you extra,” she said, giggling. Reaching up, she put her hands on each side of his head as if she were about to kiss him. He did the same, conscious that he could break her skinny neck with one violent twist. There would be a muffled snap, her eyes would roll back into her head and her body would go limp. Instead, ignoring the craving to kill, he let his fingers run through her long, dark hair as he stared at the beautiful face before him.
Tucking a wad of bills into her bosom, he gave her a light slap on the backside, and said, “Get your butt out of here, darlin.”
“You got my number?”
“Oh yeah, babe. I got your number.”
He proceeded to push her out of the room. Maybe it had been a mistake not killing her. The young woman had opened a small door to his secrets and, thus, should not be allowed to live. But Isabel was the only one he’d ever met who hadn’t been turned off by his disfigurement. Besides, he wanted to enjoy her services again. He’d have to be careful, though. The last thing he wanted was for her to make him feel human again. That would be bad for business.
He picked up the leather case and carried it to the bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror, he removed the wig and peeled off the olive skin. His face was a featureless mass of white scar tissue that looked as if it had melted and re-frozen in place. There were only nostrils where his nose should be. His ears were mere stubs. His lips non-existent. When he saw photos of his old self, it was like looking at a stranger. The hot-shot surfer dude, and later, the warrior in the Special Ops uniform, had been movie star handsome.
He had been an exceptional soldier, excelling at languages, marksmanship and martial arts. At that time, classes at the UCLA acting school and marriage to his honey-blonde girlfriend were still in his future. So was an improvised explosive device in Iraq. The IED that exploded under his Humvee had killed everyone else in his squad. Goggles had saved his sight, but the blast of flames had completely eradicated his facial features.
Later, while recuperating in a room at Walter Reed Hospital, he learned that the Hummer was one of the models that came with insufficient armor, one of many that had been thrown into the battle in the early days of the war. When his fiancée then came to visit him, he learned as well, after seeing the horrified expression on her face, that there were limits to love.
The Army discharged him with his face swathed in bandages, like the Invisible Man in the H.G. Wells story. His face was a patchwork surgery job that used skin from his body as an attempt to fill in the holes. With nothing else available to him, he went back to what the Army had trained him to do. Kill people.
He returned to Iraq as a mercenary. He only lasted a few months before being fired for drug abuse. Returning home, he was drawn to his old surfing beach. From a distance he watched the young surfers skimming the waves like sea gods. He projected himself into their handsome bodies and the germ of an idea began to form.
Returning to acting school, concentrating on the field of make-up and disguise, he’d learned the craft of fashioning facial features out of artificial skin. During his studies he came across the phrase, Man of a Thousand Faces, used to describe the film actor Lon Chaney, known as a master of make-up. He even adopted the actor’s real name, Leonidas Frank.
He circulated his resume, stressing his chameleon-like ability to get close to a target. A client hired him for an assassination. The target was a heavily-guarded competitor of Auroch. Easily disguising himself as a bodyguard, he’d carried out the assignment with ridiculous ease. After the kill, Salazar had met with him personally and Leonidas accepted a job as a security consultant for special assignments.
Leaving the memories behind, Leonidas snapped back to reality. It was time to get moving on the new job. A cold shower cleared away some of fog in his mind. Then he applied a fleshy fake nose and a weathered olive skin to his ruined face. He replaced the wig with one that had streaks of gray and gained years of wisdom in only a few seconds. He was employed again, thanks to Hawkins. Too bad he wouldn’t have the chance to thank the guy before he killed him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Thanks to Abby’s machine-like efficiency, the move from Woods Hole to Cadiz had gone off without a hitch. Before he left town Hawkins had dropped Quisset off at Howard Snow’s house, given her a pat on the head and told her to have fun with Uncle Snowy. He hitched a ride on the truck transporting Falstaff from Woods Hole to JFK airport where the submersible was loaded onto a 747 cargo plane. He climbed aboard the plane for the flight from New York to Frankfurt, then on to Cadiz.
He slept for most of the Atlantic crossing and felt refreshed when the plane arrived in Spain. Abby had thought of everything. A crane truck was waiting at the airport to move Falstaff to the harbor. The submersible was lifted from the truck onto the deck of the Sancho Panza, the forty-eight-foot salvage boat Kalliste had hired for the survey. Hawkins had asked Kalliste to line up a boat that was large and sturdy enough to accommodate Falstaff’s weight. She greeted Hawkins on board with a hug. She said the boat was the best she could find on a limited budget, and the captain had a sterling reputation around the port.
Hawkins grew up on the Maine coast, son of a lobster fisherman. He had explored his father’s boat from the time he could crawl. He knew that a ship-shape vessel was the secret to a long life at sea. The Sancho Panza’s hull had welds and patches, but it was freshly painted. The winches that powered the arm-like cranes on both sides of the deck were free of rust. Every cable or coil of line looked brand new. When the captain introduced himself, Hawkins complimented him on the condition of the boat. The captain beamed at the praise and said he’d been strict with maintenance because the boat had been built in the 1960s. Together, they supervised the job of moving Falstaff onto the stern deck.
Hawkins soon learned why the boat had been named for the sidekick of Don Quixote. The skipper, Captain Alejandro Santiago, was a fanatic admirer of Cervantes, even naming his son Miguel after the famous Spanish author. Over a hearty dinner cooked by Miguel, the captain regaled them with stories of Don Quixote’s creator. He would have gone on all night, but Hawkins politely suggested that they turn in early. The next morning, the Sancho Panza eased from its slip in the gray light of dawn and chugged through the steamy mists rising from the Bay of Cadiz, trailing a creamy wake in the mirror-flat waters. As the boat cleared the harbor Captain Santiago goosed the throttle, ramped up the speed to a steady twenty knots and pointed the bow southwesterly into the Atlantic.
The soft pinkish-gold light from the rising sun fell on the flags fluttering from the mast. Topmost was the horizontally-striped red and orange banner of Spain. Hanging below the Spanish pennant was the blue and white flag of Greece, dominated by its white cross. On the bottom was the familiar Stars and Stripes.
Hawkins wore a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution T-shirt emblazoned with the picture of a sailing ship, a WHOI baseball cap, tan cargo shorts and high-topped work boots. Hawkins called the look, “Woods Hole chic,” because it was the standard uniform around the world-famous ocean studies center. Kalliste had on white shorts and a sky-blue T-shirt that had a drawing on the front of an ancient square-rigged ship and the word, AEGEO, the name of a Greek research vessel she had worked on.
Nearing the destination, it was easy to spot the buoy that the Spanish coast guard had used to mark the wreck. The captain used the GPS to hone in on the orange foam sphere bobbing in the waves. Cutting power, the boat plowed to a halt and the anchor splashed into the dark green water with a rattle of chain.