by Chris Pavone
This is a risky minute, perhaps the riskiest. He can hear sirens, a whole chorus of them, rushing somewhere. But he knows that it can’t be here that they’re coming, not yet.
Deep breath.
Remember the money. That’s what he’s been telling himself, over and over, ever since he signed on to this op. Except there was no signature, obviously. No contract. No record of any sort.
It’ll be just another few hours. Then he’ll be rich. Or at least no longer broke.
His phone beeps: the minute is up. He quickly types out the no-nonsense text—Departing Louvre—then shifts into gear. He restrains himself from peeling away from the curb in a scream of burning rubber, and focuses on adding gas incrementally, accelerating slowly, merging into traffic without swerving around too-slow cars, puny Peugeots and effete Fiats, wimpy little cars on their way to nowhere, driven by nobodies, in no rush.
He sure as hell is in a rush.
Remember the money, he tells himself. Remember why you need it.
* * *
Even after his discharge—four long years in Afghanistan and Iraq—he’d continued to spend much of his life abroad, three months here, six there, East Africa, Central Asia, places where his skill set was highly valued in the private-contractor environment. He was decently compensated, and for a long time he’d spent all his income freely. Wastefully. A tricked-out Hummer, which he almost never got to drive. Long weekends in Vegas, in Mauritius; full weeks in Jamaica or Bali. Any new weapons that caught his eye. Doing his part to maintain America’s 1:1 gun-to-person ratio.
He merges right, into the thick rush hour on the rue de Rivoli, then right again, then takes the first available turn.
Another turn, and another. He can recite this route from memory, starting at any point along the tight streets of the first arrondissement and into the second and then the ninth, putting distance between himself and the Arab’s drop-off point, away from the confluence of law enforcement and military, from cell-phone cameras and cable-news reporters, from all the potential problems back at the Louvre and the landmarks that surround it, venues where the police are stationed, the army also showing up, erecting roadblocks any minute now, checkpoints, lockdowns.
They’d plotted this out—they’d plotted everything out, beating it to death—but now that it’s upon him, the route feels improvised, slapdash. He sticks to the minor streets, the sorts that won’t be blockaded. In Paris, minor streets aren’t long-distance ones. So the straight line that he’s attempting to drive isn’t all that straight, the quick escape not terribly quick.
But straight isn’t the goal. Fast isn’t the goal. Undetected, that’s the goal. Unimpeded.
The eyeglasses are distracting him, encroaching on his vision from every direction. There’s no prescription to these lenses, yet it still feels like his vision is altered. To acclimate himself, he’d worn these frames a few times around the little apartment, and out in the street, even driving a stolen car along this very route, making all these same turns, at this exact time of day, headed to the same destination.
But practice is practice. Now, in the real moment, the glasses are bothering the shit out of him. Everything is bothering the shit out of him.
The eyeglasses weren’t the only thing that had been foisted upon him. He’d been painstakingly wardrobed, precisely haircut and groomed, all choices he would not have made himself.
Wyatt is aware of the figure he normally cuts, buff and bicep’d and heavily inked, jaw muscles twitching in stoic toughness, a lean mean fighting machine, a force to be reckoned with; he thinks of himself in these tough-guy tropes, always has. But this whole getup hides his assets, disguises his bearing, makes him look like any other French fag.
Which he supposes is the point.
He’s worried, irrationally, that he’s going to run into someone he knows, some hot chick who’ll give him a once-over and ask, “Dude, the fuck happened to you?”
Remember the money.
* * *
He did what he could do. He emptied his cash box. He liquidated this and that. When people are selling something to you, they talk about value retention and resale demand; when they’re buying back, though, it’s all depreciation, it’s excess inventory, it’s market downturns, global economic conditions. It’s fifty cents on the dollar. If you’re lucky.
On the other hand: the hospital costs, the specialists, the medications, none of that is discounted. There are no sales on life-saving surgeries.
One minute he was swimming in it—trucks and guns, gambling and liquor and coke and carefree casual sex—and the next, nothing.
Desperate times, they descended in an instant. So he started searching for drastic measures.
* * *
The job was in Paris. Big European cities were not the type of locale with which Wyatt had operational experience, but thanks to the grandparents who raised him, he did speak some French, which was one of the job requirements. And the payday was an awful lot of cake for a few weeks’ training and waiting, then one day of actual work.
Today. It would be a long and perilous day, no doubt. Already was, and it was barely nine in the morning. But he’d worked plenty of lengthy dangerous days in his life, and every single one of them had earned him a fuckload less money.
He’d already been paid the first installment. But that moment—seeing proof that fifty K had been transferred to his Cayman Islands account—turned out to be the saddest of his life. Because it was when he saw that balance that it hit him: the only way he was going to stop paying—ever—was if his little girl died.
And no, not if: when. When she died.
In that dark apartment in Paris, laptop in lap, he cried like a baby, tears splatting down onto the trackpad, wiping them away with the bottom of his T-shirt, until a window popped up on his screen, informing him that he was going to be logged out of his account due to inactivity.
“No,” he muttered. “I am definitely not fucking inactive.”
9
PARIS. 9:20 A.M.
Hunter sees another unmarked sedan pull to a stop, a blue light on its dashboard. Two uniformed patrolmen had emerged from the first car, and now a business-suited man climbs from the second, greets the cops. All three men swivel their heads around, scanning every direction, on alert, looking for something. What? Trouble.
They turn in unison and march to the building’s door, their heads still swiveling.
A window has popped up on Hunter’s phone: Unable to connect to server.
“Colette? I’m having a problem with my phone.”
She squints down, then consults her own device. “Moi aussi.” She shakes her head in disappointment; Colette takes things personally. “Both are not working. I will find out.”
“And the police seem to be coming inside.”
“Pardon? Coming inside where? Ici? Maintenant?”
Hunter nods. He worries that there’s a relationship between the two, the phone problem and the police arrival. He certainly hopes not. Any telecom issue that involves law enforcement is much more serious than rebooting the router. He doesn’t have time for serious French problems, telecom or otherwise.
His first phone appointment is in ten minutes. His plan is to take this morning easy, slowly, carefully. His jetlag is severe, his nerves are frayed, he’s exhausted. So he’s going to spend the whole morning here, making calls away from the office, giving himself the space to focus on the conversations, alerting VIPs to the news. Trying to stay calm.
Then he’ll have a light lunch and head to the office, where the press conference is scheduled for three P.M., thirty minutes before New York’s opening and while London is still trading and the rest of Europe still working, ensuring attention across all the financial institutions and media of the Western Hemisphere, and thus maximal trading volume.
And maximal profit. Today Hunter expects to increase
his net worth by hundreds of millions of dollars; today is the day when he finally becomes a billionaire. But it’s going to be a hard day; he’ll be earning every penny. In fact he has been earning the billions of pennies his whole life, but it’s only now that he’ll be able to collect them.
The sun never sets on Hunter’s empire, thousands of employees in a dozen countries, no time of any day when he does not have active business.
This is something that poor people—and most Democrats of any socioeconomic strata—don’t seem to understand about extremely successful businessmen like himself: being this wealthy doesn’t mean you can relax. The opposite.
“Monsieur? The television, now it also does not work.” Colette looks disgusted. “Everything is en panne. I am sorry, I—”
Ding.
* * *
What Hunter hopes is that the police are here because of some simple misunderstanding, something that Colette will take care of without even telling him about it. She’ll shake her head, not willing to waste even one second of his time explaining it. Hunter relishes the way she shields him; that’s part of the whole attraction.
He can hear the guard’s voice on the far side of the closed door. Hunter maintains a twenty-four-hour security detail everywhere, and here at the apartment that means a big stoic guy on a barstool in the hall. His global security chief hires local talent in every country, an interchangeable assortment of beefy men who all seem to wear close-cropped beards or goatees, and skulls that are some level of shaved, and automatic pistols strapped into shoulder holsters. It’s difficult to tell them apart, to keep track of their names.
At first, the minor comtesse who lives in the other penthouse was scandalized by these thugs who were so presumptively occupying their small shared hall. But Madame was also titillated. She still makes the occasional show of complaining, but probably because she thinks these protests will entitle her to some other concession, some favor, at some future point. She’s the type who has spent a lifetime trading in favors and obligations. Also the type who believes that surviving till old age entitles you to be a complete asshole whenever you want, a quality that Hunter recognizes from his own mother.
Now he hears heated words from the foyer, an unfamiliar man speaking firmly to Colette, her protests. Then Colette’s heels clacking on the wooden floors.
Six months ago, the downstairs neighbor complained about the noise, demanded that carpets be installed to muffle footsteps. But Hunter likes the look of the bare wood. Another problem solved by a timely transfer of a reasonable sum of money.
“Monsieur,” Colette says, approaching quickly. “These men, they are insistent. It is one member of the Parisian police, and one man from your embassy.”
“The US Embassy?”
In the foyer, the strangers are standing in uneasy poses around the security guard—Guillerme? Gustave?—who’s glancing from intruders to Hunter to Colette and back. Hunter’s guards have a specific protocol for what to do if the French police ever show up; that’s a foreseeable circumstance. But not in conjunction with an American official.
“Bonjour,” Hunter says, in French to be polite. Then “I’m Hunter Forsyth” in English, to clarify that this interaction will be on his terms. Everything is on Hunter’s terms; he makes that clear to everyone, all the time. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“Mr. Forsyth, I’m so sorry to bother you. My name’s Tom Simpson.” The guy reaches into his pocket, extracts something. “I’m with the Department of State.” He extends his hand, an identity card. Hunter looks from ID to person to ID again.
“I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Forsyth, that we have a, um, situation.” The guy is nervous. “Credible terrorist threats against heavily populated landmarks in central Paris.”
“You mean the train station?”
“Well, yes. But additional targets as well. The threats are immediate and active.”
Hunter instinctively glances toward the windows, the balcony…The sirens.
“The police informed us that your regular, um, security detail would be redirected to one of the target sites. The department has assigned two replacements—one has secured the lobby—to come here.” Simpson gestures at the Parisian uniform, still at the elevator. It’s a crowd of large men in a tight space. “We at the embassy thought it would be prudent to join. And perhaps to wait inside?”
“Inside my apartment? For what?”
“For the situation to be resolved.”
There’s something Hunter isn’t getting. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
The American looks uneasy. “Just a precaution.”
Bullshit, Hunter thinks. And speaking of bullshit: there’s no way this guy is really from State, is there? No. This must be a CIA officer who’s standing in Hunter’s foyer. Should that make him feel better? Worse? At this point, hard to tell.
“Okay, I guess. Come on in.” He glances at the phone glued to his palm. Still no signal. Still no wifi. “Colette?”
“Oui Monsieur. I will try again.”
10
PARIS. 9:22 A.M.
“Bonjour Madame.” It’s one of the morning waiters, in shirt and tie and tightly cinched apron.
“Bonjour Julien. Comment ça va?”
Julien shrugs; he’s a fatalist. “Café crème?” He asks every time, a standing invitation for Kate to change her mind, to order something else. But she never does.
Here on the boulevard St-Germain, waiting tables is not a holding pattern, a job for young people trying to do something else, or figuring out what to try, or for mothers who need to be home in the mornings, or for downsized people, for anyone hoping for something better. At this café, being a waiter is a career, a destination in and of itself.
“You get everything you need?” Dexter indicates the bulging cloth shopping bag, which when empty Kate carries folded into a little packet in the bottom of her handbag.
“Not quite. Could you pick up cocktail napkins?”
“Cocktail napkins?”
“You know. Little square things.”
“Where am I supposed to find those?”
“Probably at that place on the rue Jacob.”
“Which place?”
“The place with all the paper napkins in the window.”
Kate knows where to find things, how to do things, meet people, have a life. Here in Paris, she has made every attempt to fit in. Back in Luxembourg, one of the sources of her discontent was that she hadn’t. She’d held herself apart, and not just apart but above, superior to all those other homemakers, their aggressive parenting, fanatical nesting, competitive entertaining. She’d made no secret of her rejection of it all.
Not this time around. Hence the tennis league, the coffees at the café next to school, sitting around, accomplishing nothing more than going to a place for the sake of having a place to go. A concerted campaign to make friends, connections, resources. To be a full human being, complete with all the components of a full life.
She used to invite people out to breakfast—quick, inexpensive, conducive to her late-starting workday—until she realized that breakfast is not a social occasion in Paris; the only defensible breakfast invitation is actually one to have sex the night before. So she stopped doing that.
But despite her best efforts, Kate eventually had to acknowledge that she didn’t want to be a stay-at-home parent. It was driving her nuts.
Maybe two years hadn’t been sufficient to make the momentous adjustments, the wholesale redefinitions. Maybe in those two years she hadn’t been patient enough, dedicated enough, flexible enough. Maybe if she would’ve stuck it out—another year? two?—she could’ve found more fulfillment, more joy, less frustration, less resentment. Maybe she could’ve been happy as a full-time mom, if only she’d tried harder, longer.
She didn’t. Instead she found part-time work,
like many women in her situation, graphic designers, social-media consultants, the types of positions that accommodate unexpected visits to the pediatrician, and standard workdays that must routinely end in mid-afternoon, and the expanded holiday breaks that correspond with school schedules and amply compensated husbands.
Kate’s, though, is different. When she’s working, it’s sometimes out of town, it’s twenty-four hours per day, and occasionally people try to kill her. And it has been going downhill ever since her boss went on a mission to America and disappeared. Presumed, by many, to be dead.
But not by Kate.
* * *
When she returned to the working world, Kate no longer had the luxury of frittering away days with three-hour lunches and recreational-retail expeditions to the grands magasins. She had become a rarity in her milieu: a working mother, with a working husband. A two-career household.
But she didn’t want to withdraw entirely. She’d taken satisfaction in this community, a normal person who drops her kids at school, hosts dinners, meets her husband at the café, everything she’s doing today, this regular life, the life she wants, everyone does.
Kate’s phone dings: a text-message group chat, a shuffling of responsibilities for a school event next week. Organized, as ever, by Hashtag Mom. Kate can’t help but wonder if—hope that—the woman’s popularity is illusory, nothing more than a projection of her social ambition, her self-aggrandizing missives punctuated with a barrage of three or four and sometimes as many as ten references, as if the woman dropped a hand grenade into a barrel of hashtags and they came exploding out hither-thither, #Paris #autumn #Saturdays #BlessedLeftBankLiving #matin #fashion, all concluded—always—with #ExpatMom.
Kate occasionally has to remind herself that Hashtag Mom is not the woman’s actual name.