The Paris Diversion

by Chris Pavone

  And all the while, Dexter hung back, a dispirited spectator in the endeavor of keeping their child alive, like at a ballgame that wasn’t going his team’s way.

  “Why aren’t you doing any of this, Dexter?”

  He looked confused, as if he didn’t understand the point of the question, as if she’d asked, What shape is the earth? Everyone knows that, even the kids.

  “Why is it me who has to take care of all of this? How did that become the default?” This wasn’t about merely doctor’s visits.

  “Because you’re the one who’s best at this stuff,” he said, matter-of-factly, as if this were a matter of actual fact, two plus two equals four. “You’re in charge, Kate.” Plain as day. “You’ve always been in charge.”

  But I never asked for that, she thought; we never agreed to that. And it wasn’t even true! If Kate was in charge, why was it she who always did all the work? That’s not what it means to be in charge.

  Back when Kate didn’t have a paying job, it made sense for her to assume all the household responsibilities. And when she first rejoined the workplace it was piecemeal, half-time, so they never reassigned the chores. That was her fault as well as his, this imbalance.

  “You have to do more, Dexter. You have to care more.”

  “I care.”

  “Then you have to show it.”

  “I care plenty. That’s a terrible thing to say. A terrible thing to think.”

  “I can’t continue to do all this on my own. I can’t come home from work trips to find actual litter on our floor. I can’t collect every single prescription. I can’t be the only one who ever serves the children a vegetable or puts away laundry or buys toilet paper or—”

  “I buy—”

  Her glare cut him off. “I don’t know where the fuck you got the idea that this is how marriage works. But it’s not, Dexter. Not one to me.”

  Is this how a marriage ends? Maybe it doesn’t need to be a life-shattering betrayal, nothing explosive or dramatic, nothing cinematic, nothing filmable. Just an absence.

  And that was exactly when Peter reentered her life. When Kate allowed him—invited him—back in.

  That fault, that was hers, and hers alone.

  * * *

  The coveted box of Lego is right there in the vitrine. She could send a text to Dexter, letting him know it’s here, saving him the trouble of searching. Or she could ignore it, leave her husband to fend for himself, and possibly fail, and suffer the boy’s disappointment. Or she could walk into this store and buy it, solve her husband’s problem for him, as usual.

  It’s not even really a decision. Ben needs something good to happen to him, and here it is.

  “Tout va bien?” Inez asks.

  “Oui.” Kate is wedging the box into her bag.

  She composes a text to her husband. Pls make sure bathrooms and bedrooms tidy. She’s not going to let him off the hook.

  Then she turns to Inez. “On y va.”

  Kate walks a few steps farther up the street, putting distance between herself and Inez, creating the appearance that they’re not together. Just strangers who happen to be crossing the same street.

  There’s a gap in the traffic, a large truck that’s lagging far behind a speeding taxi. Both women cross the street at different paces, alighting at different points on the opposite shore, where Kate comes to an immediate stop and watches Inez continue up the street, then turn into the archway, pause, push a button on her watch, and sneeze.

  Kate starts a stopwatch on her phone.

  Inez begins digging through her bag. She removes a wallet, sunglasses, a coin pouch. Kate can see the woman mutter to herself, shake her head, let out a frustrated huff. She drops her glasses, picks them up. Walks to the security hut, taps on the window.

  Twenty seconds.

  The guard looks up. Inez’s mouth is moving, but Kate can’t hear what she’s saying.

  Thirty seconds.

  Inez makes a helpless gesture, palms up, please. The guard shakes his head, unmoved. Non.

  Thirty-five.

  Inez slips something out of her wallet, extends it toward the guard, who frowns, skeptical.

  Forty.

  Kate starts walking.

  Inez extends her hand, shoving this thing at him, some irrelevancy.

  Forty-five.

  Kate is now close enough to hear him say, “Désolé, Mademoiselle, mais c’est pas possible,” the unremitting chorus of nay-saying that you hear whenever you try to get anything done, from every single representative of l’administration, the vast network of bureaucracies that underpins French society. Sorry, but it’s not possible.

  Fifty.

  Inez beseeches, “S’il vous plaît, Monsieur. C’est très important.”

  Now Kate is just a few steps away, perhaps getting too close too fast—

  The guard relents, pushes open his glass door, and Inez steps toward him, and that’s when her bag slips from her shoulder, slides down the length of her arm, past her elbow, her wrist, crashing to the floor—

  “Putain!”

  —fifty-five seconds—

  —and as Inez kneels to collect her spilled belongings, her blouse billows, and the guard stares at the fabric’s gape while Kate turns into the arch, and he steps forward toward this woman in distress, this attractive mess, while Kate slides behind him—

  “Oh, merci bien Monsieur…”

  —and hops the turnstile in one fluid motion, and strides forward as if she has every right in the world—

  “Merci,” Inez repeats, gathering her things, tossing them back into the bag, then cutting her eyes up to the helpful man, giving him a small thankful smile.

  “De rien,” the guard says with his own smile.

  —and Kate disappears around the corner.

  * * *

  The elevator opens onto a smoothly impersonal waiting room, right-angled and hard-edged, glass and chrome and large expanses of cold dark stone.

  “Bonjour,” Kate says to the receptionist. “I’m here to see Schuyler Franks.”

  “Bonjour. Your name, please, Madame?”

  “Lindsay Davis.”

  “Un moment, Madame Davis.”

  The receptionist is wearing a headset, so Kate can’t hear a thing, but from the woman’s response it seems as if Schuyler is denying this appointment. It’s taking longer than a quick dismissive “I don’t have any appointment with any Lindsay Davis,” so maybe Schuyler is searching her calendar, looking for this name, double-checking that she hasn’t made some horrible mistake, because any mistake of any sort can be horrible when you work in PR, anyone you insult, any information you neglect to forward, any call you forget to return, any tiny thing can turn out to be a career-wrecking epic fail, this has been ingrained, the public-relations Hippocratic oath: first, do not offend.

  “Donc, what do you want me to do?” The receptionist whispers. Then she turns back to Kate. “S’il vous plaît, Madame Davis. Mademoiselle Franks will be one minute.”

  There’s already another woman waiting on a firm, uncomfortable-looking sofa, between end tables adorned with small stacks of magazines, tech and business, and a few of today’s international newspapers. A security camera is suspended in one corner; Kate noticed a seeing eye in the elevator, and a pair of them at the security gates in the breezeway. Her presence here is being amply documented, she registers that now. But it won’t be until later that she understands the magnitude of the threat this presents.

  Pls get 6 candles, she types. Plain white, no scent. If there’s one thing Kate hates, it’s scented candles at the dinner table.

  The other woman waiting is a middle-aged suit-wearing executive type, serious eyeglasses and sensible hair and a dour expression, constantly fidgeting with her collar, her neckline, as if worried that too much breast might be vis
ible. She has smile-lines and crow’s-feet and deep-set wrinkles across her forehead, the unmistakable look of someone who consumes a daily diet of recirculated office air and salad-bar lunches, too much work and too much stress, too little sleep and too little fun and far, far too little sex.

  For a couple of years back in DC, Kate worried that she was on a path to becoming one of these women, officious and humorless, no room to project anything except hyper-competent professionalism, as if any chink in that armor would be fatal, the gap that would allow sexism and ageism to sneak in, to infect her career, lay ruin to it. Nursing the bunions from high heels and the hangovers from office parties, harboring deep resentments that her work kept her away from her children, and her children away from her work, everything always tugging in the other direction.

  Her Washington office had even looked a bit like this one, the absence of personality its own kind of personality, institutional gray walls, loudly patterned wall-to-wall to hide soil and stains, chest-high cubicle dividers and glass-walled offices, women’s room down this hall and men’s down that one with the kitchen in between, decaf in the orange-handled pot and a plastic platter with leftover cake from a conference-room birthday celebration, the bulletin board with sign-up sheets for the potluck picnic and the softball squad, a list of the names and numbers of the fire-safety monitors, a long-ignored memo about recycling sent by an office manager who quit years ago.

  This caught Kate by surprise. It’s not what she’d imagined back when she’d first applied to the Agency, senior year of college, looking for a job that would take her far from her decaying hometown, far from the ghosts of her dead parents, from the mounting problems of her dysfunctional disaster of a sister. Far from a life she didn’t want.

  The CIA was Kate’s first escape, her first reinvention. It would not be her last.

  * * *

  “Madame Davis?” It’s Schuyler, twenty-five and slender, pencil-skirted and long-haired. Her cell phone is in her palm, facing up; this is a woman who never misses a call, an e-mail, a text-message, a tweet, the alerts flashing constantly, the light igniting every few seconds, and never, ever failing to catch her attention.

  “Bonjour.” Kate stands, extends her hand. Ready to head back to Schuyler’s office, or a conference room. Ready for their meeting.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I have any appointment now? Are you sure it’s me you’re here to see?”

  Kate does her best to look worried. “Oh crap, do I have the time wrong?”

  She takes out her phone, brings up her calendar, into which she has entered a meeting with this woman—her address, phone number, job title. Kate extends this screen in front of her, here, look, I’ll prove it to you, we have a meeting.

  Schuyler glances at Kate’s phone. Yes indeed, that’s her name, right there. “I’m sorry, I see you have a record of it, but I don’t? Maybe you can tell me what this is about?”

  Kate takes a deep breath, as if bringing herself under the barest tether of control.

  “Yes, of course.” She glances at the receptionist. “But not out here, okay?” Kate leans in. “It’s, um, sensitive,” she says in a near-whisper, and places her hand on Schuyler’s forearm. “Please?”

  36

  PARIS. 12:38 P.M.

  “We are getting a much more full picture of this man.” It is someone new speaking, a voice that Ibrahim does not recognize. “Mahmoud Khalid.”

  “Finally.”

  “Oh give me a fucking break, François. Using nothing more than the long-distance visual, this has been an extremely fast response. And it must be said—”

  “Do not—”

  “—that I have not seen an abundance of information being supplied by military—”

  “Oh go to hell.”

  “That suffices, you two.”

  “—intelligence.”

  “You are like children.”

  Ibrahim can imagine the bickering men behind him, glaring at each other, the third one standing there, shaking his head in disgust. The pissing contests are endless, it is just one after another, dicks hanging out all over the place.

  “Everything we have learned so far indicates that Mahmoud Khalid is a secular Egyptian. No ties to radical Islam. Not him, not his relatives. He migrated here immediately after the Arab Spring. Accompanied by his wife and children. They were two and three when they moved here.”

  “And the wife?”

  “Neela Khalid. A schoolteacher in Egypt, worked at a crèche here, not far from their home in the eighteenth. She appears to have died last year.Then a month ago, the children flew to Cairo, and it appears that they have not returned to Paris.”

  “The children traveled to Egypt by themselves?”

  “No. They were accompanied by what looks like the wife’s father.”

  “And what does Mahmoud Khalid do when not a suicide bomber?”

  “For the past two years, he has worked full-time in a quincaillerie.”

  Ibrahim almost drops his gun. He fights the urge to spin around, to see who offered this bit of information, to ask for details. Is it possible…?

  He needs to know.

  “Sir?” Ibrahim has not spoken in a while, his voice is croaky. He clears it. Then starts anew, “Sir, permission to ask a question?”

  This is a surprise to everyone. A long pause. “Yes, Officer Abid. Go ahead.”

  “Could I ask, where exactly is this shop?”

  “This is a strange question, Officer Abid.”

  “My parents, they are proprietors of a quincaillerie.”

  The hardware store is where Ibrahim worked his very first job, after school, stocking shelves, reorganizing the storeroom. Price-stickering was the first gun he ever used, back when guns were a completely different idea, when guns meant fun, games. You wore a smile on your face when you held a gun.

  His parents limited his working to just a few hours per week; token employment. They said he needed time to do his schoolwork. But school was easy, homework minimal, he had plenty of time. It was not until years later when he understood that they were trying to give him a normal schoolboy’s life—friends, football, girls. They did not want him stuck in a hardware-store basement. They were not immigrants, they did not want to live like immigrants, with the children working in the family shop.

  Ibrahim often wonders if his parents would make the same decisions today. And his great-grandparents, would they still leave Morocco for France? Would they still be as eager to raise their families here, to make their lives in a country that is increasingly hostile toward people like them, increasingly intolerant? Or maybe this tendency is merely how it looks to Ibrahim now, because when he was a child, things seemed to be headed in the other direction.

  He worries sometimes that he is living in a variation of Germany, 1932. That in five years, or ten, he will look back on this moment from a jail cell, or from an internment camp, or from some newly invented horror, and he will be furious at himself for his failure to anticipate what is so clearly the logical extension of everything that is coalescing around him now, and not just in France but in England too, in Russia, even in the United States, which is perhaps most terrifying of all. It is supposed to be the United States that prevents this from happening elsewhere. But then what do the Americans go and do?

  Is that what today is about? Is that why this man is standing here, clad in explosives? This Muslim man from North Africa, this family man who works in a quincaillerie, this man who could be Ibrahim himself.

  It is hard to understand what could bring a man to this. But Ibrahim is sure that it is not as simple as evil. Almost nothing is. Evil, in his experience, is a temporary subjective condition, not a permanent objective fact.

  “Where is your family’s shop, Officer Abid?”

  Ibrahim wonders why the man is responding this way, then he understands. “In the sixth, sir.
The rue du Cherche-Midi.”

  It is the man named François who answers: “It is not the same store.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Ibrahim returns his focus to the target, to the man who works in a hardware store that is not owned by Ibrahim’s parents. Mahmoud Khalil is not a man whom Ibrahim has met. If Ibrahim needs to kill Khalil, it will not mean anything personally to him.

  But if the opposite were true? What would François have said? He would, of course, have lied. Maybe he just did.

  “Oh, here is something interesting. A new-patient record for a Mahmoud Khalid was opened at the University Hospital eight months ago. One guess: which department?”

  * * *

  A whole crowd has gathered on the Richelieu Wing’s rooftop, men who had been arriving over the past couple of hours, one by one and some in twos. There is Ibrahim’s commanding officer, who runs the Louvre detail, and his commanding officer, plus a couple of other serious-looking men from the police department, management types. There is a deputy mayor. A pair of uniformed military men. A couple of guys in suits who must be from intelligence; Ibrahim did not catch their names, their affiliations, or maybe they did not say.

  Not one of these men has introduced himself to Ibrahim. The sniper is not here to give any input, discuss any options, make any decisions. He is here for one purpose.

  “What do we have to lose, Édouard?”

  “You mean if we take him right now?”

  He is here to pull the trigger.

  “That is a good question. Jean-Paul, what do you think?”

  “Well…” Jean-Paul either does not have an opinion or does not want to share it. Instead he makes a noise like a harrumph. It is when all the options are bad that true cowardice reveals itself. “There is no evidence that he has been radicalized.”