City of Spies

by Nina Berry

  A hand slipped into hers, and snaked her sideways, like the opening steps of a tango. She knew his touch, and followed without hesitation into a tiny alcove, spinning so that her back was to the towering wall of wooden barrels, facing Devin, her fingers still tangled with his.

  “How’d it go?” he said, voice low.

  His scent enveloped her: clean cotton and leather. She looked up into those restless blue eyes, now only two feet away, and had to lean against the casks behind her to stay steady.

  “Victory,” she whispered, so that he leaned in closer. “Six o’clock tomorrow night at the Von Albrecht house.”

  His gaze lowered to her lips as she spoke, then traveled down her neck. She rested her free hand on his chest for a bare second before lifting it to adjust his collar. Her fingertips brushed his collarbone.

  The collar wasn’t crooked. But he didn’t know that.

  “Well done.” He pulled his stare back up to her face, one corner of his mouth turning down. She lifted her right hand up and slid her free hand smoothly onto his shoulder. The warmth of his body was tantalizingly close. The violins were reaching a furious crescendo outside.

  “Do Scots tango?” she asked.

  “Tangle?” he said back.

  She gasped as he twisted his torso slightly and thrust his knee behind her, brushing his leg against the backs of her thighs. He lifted her off the floor for a heady second, seated on top of his thigh.

  He set her down lightly and withdrew to a self-contained space three feet away.

  “Sentada,” she said breathlessly. That was the name of the tango lift. “And soltada.” That was the break away. She wished he’d take her in that closed embrace again, but the violins and concertinas outside had come to the end of the song. “Maybe I don’t dislike the tango as much as I thought.”

  “A good leader follows his partner,” he said. “The great paradox of the tango. I’m sorry about Dieter harassing Mercedes. He’s quite the scaffbag.”

  She smiled. “I do love the Scottish sweet talk. Fortunately, Mercedes can handle herself, and, lucky us, Emma’s got a crush on me instead.”

  “Someone was bound to fall for you.” He said it casually, but then his eyes stopped, as if snared, on her lips. A small, knowing smile played around his mouth.

  She slung him a look from under her eyelids. “Someone?”

  The affection in his expression froze, replaced with a more distant, professional smile. “That’s why we recruited a movie star.”

  Stung, she glared at him. “What’s Scottish for jackass?”

  He squinted with amusement, which only irritated her more. “We’ve so many words for that, mo gràdh, it could take all night to name them. So we’d best be getting you home instead.”

  She frowned. “Mo gràdh?” She couldn’t quite pronounce it with the same lilt.

  “It doesn’t mean jackass,” he said, and swept his hand toward the swinging door back out to the café.

  She passed him, but stopped with one hand on the door. “Mercedes didn’t see anyone following us here,” she said. “But we can’t be sure. We’re going to walk over a block and catch a cab, which should give us a chance to find out.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’m dealing with it. Go home and get a good night’s sleep.”

  Which sounded suspiciously like, Don’t you worry your pretty head about it, to Pagan. “It’s me they’re following, not you.”

  He held up a hand, as if to acknowledge the truth of her statement. “It’s that you’re still jet-lagged and you’ve a big scene to shoot in the morning,” he said. “If we ask too much of you your cover could be blown.”

  Which was a little less patronizing but didn’t assuage her. No point in discussing it with him further, apparently. She’d have to take things into her own hands, as usual. “How do I reach you after I visit Von Albrecht’s house tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, and smiled.

  “Can’t wait.” She stalked out.

  A sighing violin scraped out a screech, and the music died. Over a general hubbub, the loudest voices were shouting at the far end of the bar. No one was dancing anymore. Pagan craned her neck, burrowing through the jostling press of bodies, to finally see Dieter Von Albrecht, his gang backing him up like a phalanx of troops, shouting right into the face of a young man holding a bandoneón. Behind him, a different group of young men was gathering. They tended to have darker skin and hair in a variety of tones.

  All around Pagan, the throng was dividing up into those who looked more like Dieter and those who more closely resembled the members of the orquestra tipica.

  “Apologize!” Dieter shouted in Spanish, thrusting an empty glass into the musician’s face. The front of Dieter’s striped shirt was damp, and the other man’s concertina was dripping. Pagan could smell the spilled beer from twenty feet away.

  “You bumped into me—it’s your own fault,” the musician said, thrusting a finger into Dieter’s chest. “You looking to start something?”

  Dieter threw the empty tumbler to the floor. It shattered, littering the floor with glass. “What if I am?”

  Dieter’s gang surged forward a few inches, like a school of angry fish. They outnumbered the group behind the musician at more than two to one.

  “Hey, now!” the bartender said from behind the bar. “Everyone remain calm.”

  “This is our place,” Dieter was saying to the musician. “Take your degenerate trash somewhere else.”

  “You don’t own this café!” the concertina player shouted at him. The crowd behind him muttered approval as the crowd behind Dieter roared in protest.

  Mercedes had been right about Dieter being dangerous. His encounter with her had left him full of anger. He was a time bomb. They should have left when M said so.

  Pagan headed for their table. Best to get the hell out of here now. Where had Emma gone? Pagan saw no sign of Dieter’s sister, but Mercedes was ready with Pagan’s coat and purse.

  Pagan grabbed them, throwing the coat over her shimmering dress. “Let’s get out of here!” More than a few people were already exiting, fast. By the bar, most of the crowd had gathered around Dieter, while a small but determined group around the musicians faced them down.

  The bartender had the phone receiver to his ear, probably calling the cops. Any second now someone would punch someone else and the whole place would erupt. Pagan headed for the door, but Mercedes didn’t. She was staring as the groups jostled and shoved at each other.

  “What?” Pagan halted in her tracks.

  “Someone’s got to stop him,” she said. “A lot of people could get hurt.”

  Pagan looked at Dieter, jabbing his meaty index finger into the bandoneón player’s chest. Spit flecked from his mouth as he shouted. He really wanted a fight, and so did his gang.

  And Mercedes—Pagan had never seen her look so torn.

  “I’ll help,” Pagan said. “If I can.”

  The anger in Mercedes’s face eased. She shot Pagan a look and they were united. Pagan put her purse down.

  “After I distract Dieter,” Mercedes said. “You get the other guys out of here.”

  Pagan had no idea how she was going to do that, but she nodded. “Be careful.”

  Mercedes strode right toward Dieter and the concertina player, inserting herself between them in one fluid move.

  Pagan took two steps forward and made herself stop, hand to her throat. From farther down the bar, Devin was watching. She caught his worried gaze, and he tilted his head toward the kitchen door. It was only a few feet behind the bandoneón player and his crew. A possible route out.

  Dieter was blinking down at Mercedes as she stood not two feet from him, her arms crossed. As Dieter hesitated, the press of people behind him suspended their forward p
ush. Behind Mercedes, the band players were exchanging puzzled glances. The momentum of their anger was being diverted.

  “Get out of the way,” Dieter said. His tone was dismissive, but confused.

  Mercedes said nothing, only lifted both her eyebrows deliberately and tilted her head. The whole effect was one of mild amusement and adamantine resolve. In the jostling, testosterone-fueled crowd, she was a short, still point, the center around which they all revolved.

  “What...?” the bandoneón player behind Mercedes started to say.

  “What do you want?” Dieter asked Mercedes, at the same time and in the same vein.

  Good. Mercedes had both sides off balance.

  There were only eight band members, pressed in on all sides except the very back by Dieter’s larger crowd. Pagan edged up to the man nearest the back, an older man with a bristling mustache holding his double bass beside him like a dance partner, and took his other hand.

  He whipped his hand away and turned, surprised and defensive. She gave him a flirtatious smile and said in Spanish, “My friend over there thinks you should go with him.”

  Mustache Man frowned at her, following her subtle point to the kitchen door. Devin stood there, holding it slightly open, and gave him a half bow.

  The frown deepened. “I can’t leave my...”

  “Your friends will follow,” Pagan said, keeping her voice low, and nodded toward the man beside him, who had his viola in his arms like a baby. “Take him now. I’ll get the rest. Save your instruments.”

  The bass player nudged the viola player and showed him the kitchen door. The viola player gave him an “are you crazy?” look.

  Meanwhile, Mercedes had the full attention of Dieter and his crowd. As Pagan watched, the German gang members pressing on either side of the musicians pulled back to get a better look at their leader angrily questioning this strangely confident young woman.

  As the press of angry men around them withdrew, the musicians glanced around, reassessing. Pagan tugged on the piano player’s arm and flashed him a conspiratorial grin. “The kitchen is open.”

  The piano player gave several of his fellow band members a questioning look, and in reply the bass player lifted his instrument off the ground and quietly backed up toward the kitchen door. The viola player followed suit as the piano man tapped one of the other men on the shoulder.

  Up at the center of things, Mercedes had taken two steps to her right, pulling the attention of Dieter and his boys that way. Dieter was leaning down, right in her face, his eyes devouring her smooth neck, her bare arms, as he spoke. “Your kind always sticks together. You don’t know these men, but here you are, risking your life for them?”

  Mercedes’s lips twitched in amusement. She still hadn’t spoken. “Are you laughing at me?” Dieter roared.

  In reply, Mercedes turned her shoulder to Dieter and took two more steps away from him and to the right, leading him away from the musicians, who, one by one, were vanishing into the kitchen. She walked casually but solidly, as if the mass of dumbfounded young men was bound to give way before her.

  And they did.

  Dieter didn’t know what to do with her. “Say something!”

  Mercedes paused, and, taking her time, gave him the once-over, her eyes cold, clinical. “This grows dull,” she said in English. “I’ve got bigger cats to chase.”

  She slipped between two of Dieter’s guys, and was swallowed in the crowd.

  “Come on!” Devin said to Pagan. The last of the musicians had vanished into the kitchen. “She’ll be fine.”

  As Dieter craned his neck and tried to follow Mercedes, Pagan darted through the door and into the kitchen once more. Devin had her by the elbow, and they hustled past several men in aprons, who gave them a nod, and out a narrow door to an alley and the cool evening air.

  The musicians went one way, merging into the dark, and Devin steered Pagan the other way, back toward the front of the café.

  Mercedes was waiting for them in a dark niche. Just around the corner, by the front door, Dieter was yelling at his friends. Something about indios and invasion and revenge.

  Pagan went right to Mercedes’s side. “You were amazing.”

  Mercedes shrank into her. She was trembling. “Get me out of here,” she said. “Before I kill him.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  San Telmo, La Boca and Recoleta, Buenos Aires,

  January 10, 1962

  PLANEO

  Pivot, glide. May occur when the man stops the woman in midstride.

  Men and women tangoed in tight circles through the golden squares of light shining through the windows of the Plaza Dorrego Café, while others leaned forward over tiny tables, holding hands. Trails of cigarette smoke wafted up through the lamplight to evanesce in the faint glow of the waxing crescent moon.

  Pagan hustled Mercedes quickly over the red-brown bricks of the wide-open plaza toward the taxis waiting on the other side. The brisk block-long walk had begun to alleviate Mercedes’s shivering rage.

  “How did you know what to do?” Pagan asked Mercedes. “Somehow you did exactly the right thing.”

  “It’s like a dance, fighting,” Mercedes said. “You have to get to know your partner. I knew him the moment I saw him, but he had no idea what to make of me.”

  “Those musicians would’ve gotten a bad beating if you hadn’t stepped in,” Pagan said. “That was kind of heroic.”

  Mercedes looked over at the dancing couples moving sinuously to the music, at the men and women laughing together over drinks. “No, it was necessary,” she said.

  Pagan knew exactly what she meant.

  She glanced over her shoulder. A number of people were leaving the café at the same time, and the plaza itself had more than one café open into the wee hours. But she saw no one in particular tailing them. Devin had followed them out of the café for half a block before he cast them one last glance and got into a black car with a rounded white top.

  But that didn’t mean the man in gray wasn’t following her tonight.

  Mercedes let herself into the backseat of a cab and said, “Alvear Palace Hotel,” as Pagan got in and slammed the door.

  “Can we go south a few blocks first, though?” Pagan asked. Off Mercedes’s weary look, she added in a low voice, “I want to see if anyone’s following me. It won’t take long.”

  Mercedes took a deep breath. “Okay.” She leaned forward and said in Spanish, “A brief tour of La Boca, please. Perhaps some of the most colorful buildings?”

  The driver, a lanky older man with a floppy mustache and a drowsy air, cast a puzzled glance at her via the rearview mirror. “At night?”

  Pagan threw some pesos onto the seat next to him. “Yes, please. And I might ask you to suddenly speed up, or turn, or stop. Is that all right?”

  The man’s drooping eyelids flew open at the money. He scooped up the pesos with one hand and stuffed them in his pockets. “Of course, señoritas. Whatever you want.” He turned left, then right down a narrow street, and they rattled down tiny streets between darkened houses for a few blocks. Pagan kept glancing behind them.

  A pair of headlights appeared, thirty yards back. They passed a park on their right. Their own headlights splashed up against the buildings, revealing bright walls of banana yellow, leafy green, royal purple.

  “Turn left when you can, please,” Pagan said.

  The driver shrugged. “Sí, senorita.” He turned left down a narrower street.

  “You’re squeezing too hard,” Mercedes said in a low tone.

  Pagan realized she’d grabbed her friend by the arm in a death grip. “Sorry,” she said, letting go.

  The headlights behind them reappeared.

  Pagan squinted. “Is that car black with a white roof?”

  Mercedes swive
led around to look. “No. It’s blue.”

  Pagan shot her a look. “It’s not Devin, then.” To the driver: “Turn left again. Let’s go back north.”

  “Sure,” he said, glancing nervously in his rearview mirror, and slowed down to turn left into a street that was little more than an alley.

  By the time they’d traveled two blocks, the same headlights were behind them again. For Pagan that confirmed it—they were still being followed.

  She rested her chin on the back of the seat, staring out the back window, studying the car. “Who is it? And why?”

  “Do you think it’s the man in gray?” asked Mercedes.

  Pagan shrugged. “And if so, who is he? I need to see his face, so I’ll recognize him again if you’re not around.” She turned to the driver. “Speed up a bit—let’s get closer to the hotel first.”

  “How are you going to see his face?” Mercedes asked as the cab picked up speed. “With the car headlights shining in our eyes, he’s nothing but a silhouette.”

  “I’ll have to get another angle on him.” Leaning over the front seat, Pagan said to the driver, “Let me know when we’re maybe seven or eight blocks from the hotel, please.”

  “You’re going to hop out once we’re close to the hotel?” Mercedes asked.

  Pagan grinned at her, skin prickling with excitement. “Exactly.”

  “You still might not get a good look at him.”

  “Or I might,” Pagan said.

  It was after midnight. The broader avenues were dotted with occasional taxis picking up late-night revelers, but the smaller streets were deserted. That made it easy to tell when their shadow caught up with them again, which he did within a few seconds.

  “We’re about eight blocks from the hotel now, señorita,” the cab driver said. “Maybe seven.”

  “Great. After I finish speaking, I want you to turn right and stop quickly after the turn. I’ll get out, and then you gun it and keep going, as if I’d never left the car. Take Mercedes to the hotel.” She turned to Mercedes. “I’ll meet you there.”