The Paris Diversion

by Chris Pavone

  Kate had never before been a regular subway rider, it wasn’t convenient to her home in DC—saved neither time nor money—and it didn’t exist back in Connecticut. But she adores the Paris Métro, the Art Nouveau entryways, the different styles of benches, the manually operated doors. And the subway facilitates extremely effective countersurveillance.

  Sometimes she rides her bicycle to work, and very rarely her Vespa, which she keeps parked on the private street in front of her office. She doesn’t want the moped to be easily identifiable as hers. When the time comes when she needs it, she wants the scooter to be clean, unidentified, unmonitored.

  Kate never takes the family car to work. Their apartment building doesn’t have parking in the courtyard, which is instead dominated by a garden—flowers, foliage, a few tomatoes in August, thyme and rosemary for anyone who wants it, limitless mint. When they were looking for a place to live, they didn’t realize that courtyard parking was an option. They’d probably do it differently now. They’d probably live in a different neighborhood too, a more livable one, with fewer tourists and students and art galleries. St-Germain is a formal, buttoned-up quarter of ancienne nobility who aren’t much interested in arriviste expats.

  There are many things she’d do differently.

  When it’s raining, Kate tends to walk. Especially when it’s raining hard, because almost no one else does.

  The European weather used to get her down, the long months of everyday grayness, it seemed like the sun never shone from September till April, day after day of cloud cover, spitting rain, bone-chilling frost. But Kate got used to it, as you get used to anything. Bad weather couldn’t be avoided, it wasn’t viable to stay indoors whenever it rained; for half the year you’d never leave home. So she acquired the proper gear, one item at a time—rubberized hat, slicker, comfortable boots—to manage the wetness. Like any other rational adult solution to any other problem. Not ignored, not dodged. Managed.

  What drives her crazy about Dexter is that he tries to avoid the unavoidable, ignore the unignorable. It makes her wish she were the kind of wife who could stand in the kitchen and scream at her husband, spewing profanity at high volume, accompanied by projectiles—teacups, produce, hardcover novels. But she isn’t.

  Another of Kate’s rules is that she keeps a log of her routes, to ensure that she doesn’t unintentionally fall into a pattern, a predictable sequence. The log is coded—it looks like a list of household reminders, scrawled in a handmade notebook she picked up in Venice—even though there’s no danger if this information falls into other hands. It’s a record of the past, not a plan for the future. It’s nothing.

  But using codes is another of Kate’s rules, and she adheres to it even when the codes are 99.9 percent superfluous. It’s a discipline, she tells herself. It’s not the details that matter. What matters is the general state of mind, a state of being: careful. Always.

  This is how she was trained, how she has lived. This is her identity, this careful person who maintains coded records of her surveillance-detection routes and countermeasures, of dead-drops and blind passes. This is what Kate knows how to do. This is all.

  What could she possibly do next?

  * * *

  During their long year living in Luxembourg, Kate tried having no job; for their first year in Paris too. Then when she finally rooted out the full extent of her husband’s duplicities, Kate realized that she had leverage. Leverage with Dexter, who’d nearly wrecked their lives with a combination of ambition, amorality, dishonesty, and gullibility; he owed Kate, they both knew it. She also had leverage with the CIA, courtesy of the huge sum of untraceable money that Dexter had stolen—dirty money, free money that could be used for anything—as well as the prospect of making the FBI look inept, corrupt. And leverage with herself, an argument that Kate could now advance to justify the increasingly uncomfortable feeling that had tainted her first couple of years as an expat: she was not cut out to be a full-time homemaker.

  What did Kate want in return for all this leverage? To be young again. But instead she asked for something that was actually possible.

  * * *

  Today she takes the pont des Arts, which affords her her favorite vantage in Paris—the pont Neuf bisected by the Île de la Cité, with the towers of Notre-Dame looming behind, and the grandeur of the Louvre, and the Musée d’Orsay and the Grand Palais, and the top of the Eiffel Tower. You can see it all from one spot, right here.

  This city is unrelentingly gorgeous, everywhere Kate turns, the broad boulevards and their neat apartment blocks, the grand hôtels particuliers and gothic churches and medieval houses, the wide green river traversed by all these splendid bridges, the quiet little places and leafy little parks, the Machine Age railroad terminals and Art Nouveau Métro stations, the incessant materialization of majesty around any corner, a constant barrage of world-famous landmarks. It seems unreasonable, an unfair distribution of assets.

  Kate feels the soft give of the wooden walkway beneath her feet, worn and uneven, mossy and damp, the sheen of wetness creating a mirror effect, reflecting the old lampposts and the clouds rushing by in the bright blue sky.

  The pont des Arts is a pedestrian bridge, and at this moment nearly all its pedestrians are coming toward Kate, away from the Louvre on the far side. Which is not the typical flow, not in the morning, with the museum just opening, the crowds converging.

  The last time Kate was in a museum was a year ago, what she hoped would be a manageable little visit with the kids to the Orsay, an hour tops. Take advantage of the culture; they might not live in Paris forever. She gathered her rosebuds from school, stopped at the bakery for le goûter: a pain au chocolat for Jake, a brioche au sucre for Ben, who asserts that chocolate croissants are too chocolaty. The same snack every afternoon, no dissatisfaction, no experimentation. Children are creatures of happy habit. Something needs to go awry to sway them to change.

  Kate was accustomed to the crowds in central Paris, but they were usually easy to circumnavigate. The multitudes at the Musée d’Orsay, though, were inescapable, unavoidable, holding up their phone cameras, their tablets, amassing in front of each painting to take a photo and then move on, an assembly line. Or—worse—blocking everyone’s view to stand directly in front of paintings, facing away, to take selfies with blockbuster backdrops.

  Teenage girls were the worst offenders. Posing was second nature for these kids, selfie smiles rehearsed in mirrors, poses perfected after thousands of variations in body angle and head tilt, hair fluff and lip purse and peace sign, a permanent regimen of fine-tuning, akin to practicing piano or laying down a sacrifice bunt, skills never attempted by these kids, who instead know how to do mainly this one thing: look like they’re having a great time in social-media photos, exposure and exclamation points compulsory, soliciting other exclamation points, an ouroboros of manufactured enthusiasm.

  Kate looks off to one side of the bridge, then the other. The houseboats are sitting there, as ever, but not the bateaux-mouches that should be plying the river, laden with tourists on this rarity of a perfect sunny day, thick throngs leaning over the gunwales.

  She herself had once been a teenage girl with a water-lily poster thumb-tacked above her dorm-room bed. She understood the attraction, wanting to possess the art. But not the impulse of adding yourself to it. Why? Proving you’d been there? Or something more insidious?

  Not only are there no sightseeing barges on the Seine, there are instead police boats.

  Kate’s little children were too short to see above the packs of auto-paparazzi in the Orsay. The only thing her boys could see were other people taking photos, of themselves. It was the opposite of appreciating art. It was unbearable.

  Now Kate also notices that there aren’t any cars on the far quay’s roadway. Traffic must be diverted.

  What the hell is happening?

  21

  PARIS. 9:53 A.M.
/>   “So Mr. Forsyth, I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  “Isn’t that always the case.”

  “The radio in my car is working, so I was able to get in touch with the embassy. Which is definitely on complete lockdown. No one in, no exceptions.”

  “I’m assuming that’s not the good news?”

  “There is a place we can go where the electricity appears to be functional.”

  “Okay. I guess that is good. What about a phone?”

  “It’s not plugged in, so I’m not sure if it’s working.”

  That doesn’t seem so bad. “Is that the bad news, Mr. Simpson?” Hunter knows that the guy’s name isn’t Tom Simpson, and he doesn’t work for State. But Hunter has decided to let it slide. Proving to everyone how smart you are can be counterproductive.

  “Er, no. There are a few bits of bad news. The first is that the cellular networks are all compromised, there’s no service anywhere in Paris right now. And it’s possible that there won’t be any wifi where we’re going. We’ll have to see once we’re there.”

  “Are there any other places I can go?”

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  “Well then that sounds perfect. Can we get going immediately?”

  “There’s one other thing, Mr. Forsyth: it’ll just be you. Your security can’t come with you. And your…” He cuts his eyes in the direction of Colette.

  “My assistant? She’s absolutely coming with me.”

  “C’est pas nécessaire,” Colette protests. But Hunter knows that she really does want to be rescued by him, plucked from her middle-class life as a professor’s wife, he’ll propose at Le Jules Verne, the ceremony will be on St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, the honeymoon will be a glamping safari in Kenya. He has planned it all.

  It took Hunter a good long while to come around to the idea of marriage, at which point he proposed to a girlfriend who wasn’t any more marriage-worthy than the preceding ones; she just happened to be the current one. Since his wedding, he has also become attached to the prospect of fatherhood, which is a much more compelling concept than being a husband. But he has also realized that it’s not Jen who he wants to be the mother of his children.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Forsyth. But Mademoiselle, um…”

  “Benoit. Madame Benoit.”

  “Excuse me, Madame Benoit is not an American citizen. We can’t—”

  “I’m not going anywhere without her.” Hunter is going to bluster his way through this, as he does everything. “Grab your things, Colette. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Tom Simpson from State has a quick conversation with the Parisian cops on the sidewalk. Hunter feels like he should hear whatever it is they’re discussing, but Simpson told him—ordered him—to wait in the lobby. Hunter understood that there was a dire warning in that instruction, a concern about being in plain sight on the sidewalk. Is it really possible that someone is going to take a shot at him?

  Simpson returns, looking serious. “Here’s how this is going to work. I’ll walk first. Mr. Forsyth, you’ll follow immediately behind me. And Mme. Benoit, you’ll walk directly behind Mr. Forsyth, flanked by these police officers, with the rear brought up by your security guard…?”

  It’s something with a G…Gérard?…Gérome?…

  “Didier,” Colette supplies.

  Didier?

  “Didier will return upstairs to keep your apartment secure. Comprenez-vous, Didier?”

  “Oui.”

  Didier. Hunter never bothered to learn the name of this security guard. Has he really become that asshole? It seems like just yesterday when he accepted the necessity of full-time security. An uncomfortable conversation, like estate planning, contemplating your demise, the different ways that it could—would—come about, and when, and how people would move on afterward.

  “Merci Didier,” Hunter says, but he’s not fooling anyone.

  “Please keep your heads down, and walk directly through the car’s rear door without slowing. Get yourselves onto the floor quickly. I’ll cover you with a tarp.”

  “A tarp? Is that really necessary?”

  “I certainly hope not. But I don’t want to discover the contrary due to a bullet in your head.”

  “Um…” Hunter looks over at the sedan. “You don’t have bulletproof glass?”

  “Or an RPG through the windshield.”

  How the hell does a role-playing game come through the windshield?

  “RPG?”

  “Rocket-propelled grenade. We don’t want you to get shot, we don’t want you to be seen, we don’t want anyone to be able to observe that there are any passengers. Just me. And no one knows me, I’m nobody. Okay, are we ready?” Nods all around. “Let’s do this.”

  He’s all business, this Simpson character, striding across the narrow sidewalk, just a few steps to the car, the guy’s head swiveling left and right, left and right, then he reaches to open the door, fingers on the handle, but something diverts his attention—

  He holds up his left hand. His right hand is in his jacket pocket.

  “What?” Hunter asks.

  Simpson gazes off to the right, the direction from which cars would come down this one-way street. Nothing is moving.

  “It’s okay. Get in.”

  Hunter bends into the backseat, scooches across the leather on his knees, and folds himself onto the floor. Colette joins him, limber, flexible. He can’t help but watch as her skirt is pushed up, up, high up her thigh…

  Oh my fucking God: her stockings are held up by garters.

  How did he not realize at their very first meeting that this was the sexiest woman in the world? Missing that has shattered his faith in his own powers of perception.

  Their faces are just inches apart, down here on the floor. It’s a new car, very clean carpets. It’s possible that there’s never been a backseat passenger.

  Hunter is plenty used to slipping in and out of car doors that are opened by other people, driven by other people, chauffeurs holding umbrellas, assistants carrying bags, doormen and porters and lawyers and publicists, leading him this way and that, intervening on his behalf. Hunter’s is a life set apart, buffered by bodyguards and hired cars, first-class cabins and private jets, three-star restaurants whose astronomical prices segregate the elite like him from the envious masses who want to be.

  But he’s never been hustled into a car like this. Except that one time in Kuala Lumpur, the political demonstration, who the hell knew what was going to happen, Southeast Asia.

  “This is something, isn’t it?”

  Colette smiles first with her eyes, then the smile migrates to her mouth, her whole face. It’s a beautiful smile. “An adventure, Monsieur. N’est-ce pas?”

  “Oui,” Hunter says, “an adventure.”

  In the end, KL turned out okay. This too will turn out okay.

  Hunter would definitely prefer if he had some way of confirming Simpson’s identity, his affiliation, their destination, anything. But he doesn’t. And he isn’t hampered by a dogmatic attachment to certainty. Hunter’s competitive advantage has never been fact-based. It’s his intuition, and his speed: Hunter acts quicker than everyone else, and has never been proven wrong, not on anything that matters. Except women. But those misjudgments have never really cost him much.

  “Maybe for today, Colette, you can stop calling me Monsieur? Hunter will be fine.”

  “Oui Monsieur,” she says. They both laugh, and that’s when Simpson drapes the tarp over the two of them, a fluttering descent of dark, and the last Hunter sees are Colette’s hazel eyes, replaced by the after-burned image of her garters, seared in his memory.

  The car pulls away, and his stomach immediately starts to roil. He’s going to have to concentrate on not getting sick here. Their romance definitely wouldn’t be hastened along by that humiliation.


  22

  PARIS. 9:55 A.M.

  First it was just a single sound of alarm, one woman who said something shrill to her companion, who responded in an urgent tone that was overheard by an adjoining family, and within seconds everyone in Mahmoud’s immediate proximity was fleeing in every direction, radiating waves of panic, people dragging each other by their hands, their wrists, falling and trampled and rising with ripped pants and bloody elbows, losing grips on phones and cameras and bottles of water, making a mad dash to nowhere, they had no destination in front, just trying to put distance behind, as much as possible, because no one knew why exactly they were running except those few who had the presence of mind and took the time to look back over their shoulders, to focus through the chaos on the expanding emptiness at the center, and these were the most terrified people of all, these were the ones who understood, who were calculating when exactly all that Semtex was going to be detonated, what magnitude of blast radius, and what in the name of God Almighty was with that briefcase?

  * * *

  “There will then be a long period of waiting,” the man had explained. “You will stand there, alone. For a few hours, or all day, into the night.”

  “Just waiting?”

  “We will make demands. There will be negotiations, back and forth. Our demands, theirs, concessions. Lines of communication will be established, credentials confirmed.”

  “Why will they not simply shoot me immediately?”

  “Good question. Two answers. One: it will be obvious from the design of the vest—with the phone—that the detonator is not controlled by you, so even if you are dead, the device can still be detonated. You are not in control; they have nothing to gain by shooting you, and possibly something to lose. Two: the briefcase. At the outset, they will not know exactly what the case is. Why would a man like you have such a thing?”