The Paris Diversion

by Chris Pavone

  Either way, it’s not something Kate can ignore, just a bystander, like that truck driver tried to pretend with the dog. He looked like a fool, and Kate would too. No: worse than a fool. She’d look like a neglectful, incompetent fraud. On the heels of her other recent failures, Kate would appear worthless.

  She turns her back on the bomber, scans the crowd, the police mobilizing, crowd-controlling, looking for other signs of trouble. This bomber can’t be a simple lone-wolf attack; that situation would be over already, the police would have shot him, or he would’ve blown himself up. There must be a bigger picture, and Kate needs to insert herself into it.

  If it turns out that this attack does have something to do with American interests—and at this point in geopolitical history, what doesn’t—and Kate has chosen to spend the day watching cable-news coverage? If something preventable is happening in Paris and she fails to prevent it? If there’s a plot to crack and she fails to crack it, if American lives are going to be lost and she fails to save them?

  Then today will be the last operational day of her career. It won’t happen a few weeks from now, with some marginally rude guy on a park bench. No, it’ll be immediate, persona non grata. Or worse.

  Kate reaches the far end of the place, and turns to take one last look at the man who’s standing there in the middle of the courtyard, strapped into oblivion.

  She knows that this has nothing to do with her. Except that everything in Paris has something to do with her.

  * * *

  Most of the post-Agency options for people like Kate are not available to the actual Kate. Private contracting work in conflict zones, or high-value security details, the types of jobs you can’t have if you’re a parent, if you need to come home alive every night. Management or consulting jobs in Langley, or in Washington, or on the rural campuses of paramilitary training camps in North Carolina, in Honduras, in Sudan, the types of jobs you can’t have if you’re married to Dexter Moore, and you’ve had their shared life experiences, their entanglements, and you live in France.

  She could do something completely unrelated, something entrepreneurial, maybe launch one of those businesses like Hashtag Mom, who supposedly designs necklaces, though mostly she seems to make so-called strategic expenditures—the studio in Montparnasse, the personal assistant who’s “so indispensable,” the research trips to India, to Thailand; they’re Eastern-inspired, Hashtag Mom’s necklaces. #Inspired.

  Or she could again try full-time householding, older and wiser, planning the vacations and inspecting the car, paying the bills and filing the taxes, cleaning and cooking and educating and shopping, plus all the personal maintenance, it’s like being a professional athlete, constantly training with one exercise obsession after another, plus the manicures, the teeth-whitenings, the haircuts and blowouts and colorings, the depilatorizations, and the fashion—the jeans, the boots, God all the shoes—amassing the requisite tribal insignia, the logos and patterns and patches and badges that sort you, that identify your clan.

  Could Kate do it? Could she compete for firmest ass and strongest triceps and widest gap between her thighs, for the latest this and chic-est that, the most original and attractive conversions of the money her husband earns into documentable manifestations of the good life, Instagrammable and Facebookable, eminently enviable, the best of everything, we all want the good life, don’t we, and look—I have it! I win.

  Could Kate win?

  * * *

  She unlocks a Vélib’ bike and pedals away on the rue de Rivoli, completely empty on this section alongside the Tuileries, with squad cars blocking the intersecting streets, traffic jams already formed, drivers standing beside the open doors of their fuel-efficient little citadines—Renaults, Citroëns—on the rue de Castiglione, the rue Cambon, smoking cigarettes, complaining into their mobiles. They don’t know what exactly the problem is. Rumors are flying.

  Kate passes the larger of the English-language bookstores, which reminds her of the other shop, closer to home, another resource developed, just in case.

  She glances over her shoulder. It’s impossible that any cars are following her, but there are also no mopeds, no motorcycles, no other bicycles. Just streams of pedestrians, some more frantic than others, but none paying any attention to her. No one is following Kate.

  She fights the urge to look up into the sky; you can’t see the satellites, not with the naked eye in daylight. But they’re there, watching. Drones too.

  At Concorde she cuts diagonally across the broad expanse of unoccupied lanes, a rare moment of calm in what’s usually a madhouse mega-roundabout. But now it’s just her bicycle headed in one direction, and a trio of cop cars zooming in the other.

  She barely glances at the US Embassy on her right; she’s not going there. Nor is she going home. Nor school. Nor the musty safehouse out behind Père Lachaise in the vingtième, a ground-floor unit with a private street-level entrance in an apartment building occupied mostly by North Africans.

  Kate continues onto the Champs-E´lysées. The grand boulevard is almost entirely empty, as if the bomb had already detonated.

  Suddenly she’s facing into a phalanx of police cars with their lights flashing, and behind the cops here comes the army, a few jeeps and a couple of armored personnel carriers and—yes—here they are, a half-dozen of them.

  That really didn’t take long, something she never thought she’d see in France.

  Tanks.

  Tanks are rolling down the Champs-E´lysées.

  28

  HONG KONG. 4:27 P.M.

  Shreve looks at his watch. Fuck.

  He rushes by that awesome sign—PLEASE DON’T WAIL AGAINST THE FLOW—while bounding down the Central–Mid-Levels escalator-walkway that transports pedestrians up and down the steep foothills of Hong Kong Island. Shreve loves that fucking sign—Wail Against the Flow! He wants that on a T-shirt. Or start a band, this could be the title for their debut.

  Though the thing is: however you interpret Wail Against the Flow, Shreve doesn’t do it. He’s more of a wail-with-the-flow guy. Maybe that’s why he finds the sign so appealing.

  Like, what was that band? Rage Against the Machine.

  He looks again at his Rolex. Fuck. He’s going to be so late.

  Okay, so, yes, things did get out of hand. It was just supposed to be a quick bite after the gym at that Italian in the Hollywood mall, Dougie and Frenac and the hot arbitrage chick Veronica, they’d already opened a Barolo before he arrived, then Dougie offered a bump, which turned into a few, and soon they were all shuttling back and forth to the unisex as if digging out the final stretch under the prison walls using soupspoons.

  So now, yes, he can’t deny it: he’s pretty fucking high.

  But these are clients; this is his job. Not just chiseling his commission off the intersection where someone else’s idea meets another someone’s investment, but recruiting and massaging and servicing these clients. They’d all agreed to meet again later, at Kau U Fong, Jell-O shots and beers down in the street, then the elevator up to Ping’s, where Dougie could re-up, everyone on sofas, the balcony for cigarettes, Veronica in that skintight skirt, what he’d really love to do is lean down to snort some blow off her back while fucking her from behind, bent over a leather sofa.

  Shreve has arrived at the end of the escalator-stairs, and now he’s running over a sky-bridge and through the shopping plaza, onto an elevated sidewalk, nothing is on ground level here, you’re constantly getting on and off escalators, elevators, even the sidewalks are in the sky, like the Jetsons, bars on the fifth floor, restaurants on the tenth, everything in vertical malls built into hillsides, you never know where you are in relation to street level, which isn’t even that clear of a concept. Car level.

  Even from up here on one-above-car level, Shreve still needs to dash up another escalator to the soaring glass-walled lobby with all the corporate signag
e, his own bank and a few others, plus media, and that American-based tech company that just expanded onto the fortieth and forty-first, they’re obviously growing, maybe he should get in on that, but right now he’s frantically searching for the ID card, not there, nor there, patting down his chest, swinging his gym bag off his shoulder, and fuck where’s my goddamned card?

  There. Whew. He looks at his watch again, fourteen minutes late and still in the lobby, Harrison is going to ream him.

  Shreve drops his corporate-logo’d little duffle—everybody at his gym uses these canvas bags, they’re like sports uniforms, they announce what team you play for, HSBC or UBS or BNP, the occasional Morgan or Citi dude—onto the conveyor through the X-ray, and he swipes his key card through the slot and strides into the turnstile, waits to collect his bag, which hasn’t come through the belt yet, and the security guards are staring at the monitor, then one of them yells at him—what did that dude say?—while the other jumps off his stool, and draws his gun, and that’s when all fucking hell breaks loose.

  29

  PARIS. 10:29 A.M.

  Hunter holds the newly powered-up phone to his ear, depresses the switch hook. Nothing, not even a hiss. Just silence.

  “There’s no dial tone,” he says. Depress and release, depress and release. “Nothing.”

  “No?” Simpson walks over. “I’m surprised.”

  Simpson reaches out his hand, and Hunter gives him the landline. Why? Does this CIA guy have a magic touch? Or is he just the kind of man who doesn’t trust anyone else to do anything right? Hunter is himself one of those men.

  “Huh,” Simpson says, depressing the plastic button himself, releasing, depressing. He examines his mobile too. “Nothing. You?”

  Hunter already checked. He shakes his head.

  “Sorry about that,” Simpson says. “I was told—Well, you know what I was told. I bet you don’t like hearing excuses. I’ll try rebooting.”

  It’s clear that Simpson knows this effort will be purely ceremonial.

  Hunter stifles the urge to explode at this guy, who obviously does not understand the magnitude of the shittiness that’s confronting Hunter.

  You work your whole life for something. You study. You cram. You pull the late nights and early flights, you beg and connive, you plot and scheme, you lie and cheat and maybe even steal, you do everything, all to create a specific opportunity at a particular time—your moment. Only to discover that all the things you could control aren’t nearly enough, too much is uncontrollable, beyond your influence. The world doesn’t give a fuck about your plans. About you.

  Okay, Hunter thinks, this is definitely bad on some level. But bad is a large, abstract thought. Let’s break it down into specific practical considerations.

  First, he doesn’t need to worry about San Jose, where everyone is still asleep. The people in California won’t be a concern for—Hunter checks his watch—another seven hours, maybe eight. And if this whole Paris situation isn’t resolved in eight hours? Then the high-level staff in San Jose will be the least of his problems.

  So what about Asia? It’s the middle of the afternoon in Mumbai, and the business day is almost over in Hong Kong. Both are problems. The people who were awaiting Hunter’s call are sitting at their desks, increasingly worried, maybe even panicked, they’re calling one another: “Have you heard from Forsyth?,” “No. You neither?,” “What do you think is going on?” They know that a big announcement is coming, they know Hunter is supposed to be calling, and then no one hears from him? No one knows where he even is?

  If it were just internal, that could be managed. His people aren’t going to go blabbing; no one in any of his offices would respond to any inquiry by saying, “Sorry, Mr. Forsyth seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. Good luck finding him! If I were you, I’d certainly sell any 4Syte stock you’re holding, asap.”

  But it’s not just internal. There are favors owed. A discrete call here and there, using a burner phone with an untraceable number from a country he’s never in his life visited, providing a quick update: the merger is on, no regulatory problems, banks committed, all clear. Guaranteed.

  An hour’s head start, or two. For some people, this will mean tens of millions in profit, even hundreds of millions. Not just by the early purchase of 4Syte’s and their acquisition’s stock, but also by shorting others, their competition’s, those companies’ suppliers. By making big complicated trades, taking heavy positions, accepting what looks like irresponsible risk in the hope of generating stupendous reward.

  These are not the types of investments that these people—that any sane, rational people—would make without assurances. Not just the untrustworthy scripted assurances of blustering from a CEO at a carefully orchestrated press conference. But iron-clad assurances, made by a longtime associate, in a private call.

  While speaking obliquely. Because, no, this is not, technically, legal.

  But if none of these people hear from Hunter—if this day continues to erode minute by minute, the hours mounting, while he continues to not place call after call—then sooner or later, someone somewhere is going to get worried, and change his mind.

  Maybe any minute now, some trader dude who was expecting the call after Hunter’s call that doesn’t arrive, this dude decides to sell instead of buy.

  Maybe this has already happened.

  Then someone further up the food chain notices. Does the same thing, in a bigger way.

  Then some nerd at a financial news service will catch wind, then mention it to someone else, then the share price will fall infinitesimally, then a cable-news producer will post the activity to the chyron.

  Then the share price will inch down further.

  Then everyone will notice.

  Then calls will be made, increasingly urgent and panicked.

  Then it will become clear that no one in the world has seen or heard from CEO Hunter Forsyth all day.

  Then the speculation will start, the rumors—drug overdose? kidnapped? hiding in the dark paralyzed with fear because his huge deal is falling apart?—will spread like wildfire.

  Then the stock price will fall off a cliff, it’ll turn into a fire sale, a bloodbath, and meanwhile Hunter won’t even know it, because he’ll be trapped here in this blackout.

  Then when “beleaguered 4Syte CEO Hunter Forsyth”—that’s what he’ll be called—eventually reemerges, blinking in the daylight, his personal net worth will have reduced by tens of millions, the company billions in valuation, plus he’ll have alienated some of the most powerful bankers in the world, he’ll have burned his network, ended his friendships.

  Then not only will he be broke, he’ll also be a pariah. An abject failure.

  Then he might as well be dead.

  So if some violent death—by assassination, or bombing, or who-the-hell-knows—is what’s waiting for him out there on the Paris streets, fuck it, at least he’ll die dramatically, while he’s still at the height of his success. He’ll die famous.

  He has worked himself up into a frenzy, sitting here on this musty sofa. He turns to Simpson, tries to wipe the panic from his face, but not the urgency. “Listen,” he says, “I have to get to my office. I really do.”

  Simpson nods. “I can understand why you’d feel that way, Mr. Forsyth, but it’s just not a good idea. I’m sure you recognize that.”

  “Well, good idea or bad”—Hunter stands—“that’s what I need to do.”

  Simpson sighs. This seems to be one of his main methods of communicating. Hunter is really beginning to hate this guy. “I’m sorry, but I have to insist. It’s too dangerous out there.”

  It takes a second for Hunter to understand what Simpson is saying. It’s so improbable. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Forsyth.” Another unapologetic apology. “I can’t let you leave.”

  “Can’t let me lea
ve? What exactly do you mean?”

  The guy doesn’t elaborate.

  “You’re going to forcibly detain me here, Simpson?”

  “You shouldn’t think of it that way.”

  “By whose authority? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in France. You don’t have any authority here.”

  Simpson nods, as if in agreement.

  “And what about Colette? She’s not even American. You, an American—what? What are we calling you? An American diplomat? Or should we dispense with that charade, and say CIA officer? An American spy is going to detain a French citizen, in France?”

  The guy doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t say anything at all.

  “Come on, Colette. We’re leaving.”

  Hunter walks past Simpson, brushing him on the shoulder, purposefully but lightly, like a teenage boy in a high-school hall, attempting to start a fight.

  He takes only a couple of firm strides before he remembers—

  Damn it: for one of the locks, Simpson used a key. From the inside.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Forsyth. It’s for your own safety.”

  Hunter turns around.

  “Your own good.”

  30

  PARIS. 10:49 A.M.

  Wyatt fumbles in his pocket, locates the Métro ticket, jams it into the turnstile, whisks through with a thump. He collects his validated ticket, pushes through the doors, tries to remember which train in which direction.

  He descends to the platform. Looks left, right. Walks to the map, confirms that he’s waiting for the correct train, headed in the correct direction, and the stop where he’ll get off.

  The train arrives in a warm whoosh, packed, newspapers and backpacks and people staring at their phones, earbuds, headphones, everyone in their own private worlds. He wedges himself uncomfortably, arm raised to hold a pole. At the next stop, many people exit, many more board, then the train sits for a long delay. He wouldn’t be surprised if the system gets shut down entirely. Wyatt has a contingency plan for that. For everything.