The Paris Diversion

by Chris Pavone

  She slows her pace. Is it? Yes, it’s silence that she hears. Golden silence, silken silence, the warm-bath embrace of silence, better than Champagne and caviar, better than the famous duck at La Tour d’Argent, better than the very best sex. Nothing compares to the onset of silence from a crying baby.

  Three years ago, if you’d have asked her what she’d be doing today, she’d never in her wildest dreams have predicted this. Married to that hopefully reformed cad, wandering the streets of Venice with their napping baby. The handgun in her pocket was the only predictable element.

  She stopped walking in the middle of a narrow lane, became one of those pedestrian obstructions that makes her want to throttle heedless tourists.

  With the baby asleep, and currently no crisis, she should eat, take care of her own physical needs while she has this chance. Another lesson from parenthood. There have been many teachable moments.

  “Ciao Susanna.”

  “Ciao Guido.”

  “Aperol spritz?”

  She would love to have her regular drink, sitting here in the Campo de la Pescaria, facing the Grand Canal, sun in her face, beautiful baby sleeping in her lap, net worth skyrocketing by the second.

  “No, grazie.” No alcohol today, not even a sip. There still might be plenty of action in front of her. She orders mineral water, seafood risotto.

  Her phone buzzes, an incoming text: All ok?

  Richie Fucking Benedetti. Who’d have thought he’d turn out to be a pussy?

  She’s had enough of him, and his ilk. She’s been interacting with scum for her whole life, she can feel the film of it coating her, she can’t wash it off, it has seeped into her bloodstream, infected her, she recognizes this, an awareness that has heightened since Matteo was born, after so much effort, so many tears.

  It’s amazing that there’s any path from being this innocent baby to becoming a Richie Benedetti. Or to becoming herself. She can’t let either happen. This has become her primary goal, the organizing principle of her life from now on.

  Starting tomorrow.

  Yes, she types her reply, all ok, and hopes it’s true.

  * * *

  When everything had been figured out, the final hurdle was securing the investment capital. If they landed just one big fish, others would fall into place, buoyed by someone else’s confidence. That was the way these things worked.

  This wasn’t an opportunity they could take wide. The opposite. There was a very finite population of individuals who’d be willing to participate in this endeavor, and an even smaller subset she’d be willing to trust with it.

  For better or worse, both her and her husband’s careers had afforded a broad acquaintance with exactly the sorts of people who’d be interested in this investment. But the first candidates had declined, and she was losing confidence.

  “Are you sure about this guy?” her husband asked, just steps from the hotel’s revolving door.

  They were running out of money, which is the same as running out of time, living on an ever thinner cushion of savings. Sicily had been an inexpensive place to live, and they’d been comfortable enough there, and for logistical reasons they’d wanted their kid to be born there. But they didn’t want to raise a child there; they didn’t want Sicily to be their permanent home.

  “Am I sure? No. Obviously.”

  “It’s not too late. We could…” He raised a hand to indicate the network of canals, boats, escape to other places, other possibilities. Her husband wore the cloak of a supremely confident man, a handsome man, a man who was good at everything; he had no doubts about his abilities to ski a steep bumpy slope, repair simple machinery, get a woman into bed. Trivial matters. It was the larger challenges that made him doubt himself.

  “This is going to work,” she reassured him. That was one of her roles in their relationship. Their partnership.

  That was all he needed. He nodded, turned to the revolving door, which a navy-suited man had already launched into motion. Guests here didn’t even need to push a door, the staff would do anything you wanted, fetch anything, arrange anything.

  Upstairs, Richie Benedetti sat in a wingback chair, facing the terrace over the Grand Canal. He’d draped himself in a big British newspaper, and crossed his legs the tough-guy way, displaying every contour of his ball sack in his tight custom-tailored suit pants, a long expanse of brightly patterned socks, suede loafers with a garish logo.

  Richie was small-time wiseguy from South Philly who’d turned into a halfway-connected mobster, then he stumbled first into a fortune and then into a quagmire and subsequently into the witness-protection program in North Carolina, from which he grew bored and skipped out to reunite himself with the money he’d squirreled away in a diverse portfolio of Italian real estate, Swiss numbered accounts, and Monacan safety deposit boxes. Richie wasn’t a devotee of traditional market-based securities. This was going to make the pitch both easier and harder. Because this opportunity was both a traditional security and the complete opposite.

  “Hi Richie,” she said. “Long time.”

  Richie looked her up and down, took in her distended belly, her new hair. “A pleasure. Who’s your friend?”

  “This friend is my husband Chris.”

  Richie didn’t stand to shake the new man’s hand. “That’s quite a beard you’re sporting. What are you, some kinda hipster?”

  “Something like that.”

  Richie turned back to her. “You won’t mind if I have Gianna check you both out, will you?”

  Susanna glanced at Gianna, bee-stung lips and jet-black hair and gravity-defying tits.

  “No problem,” Susanna said. “But we’re going to have to check you too.”

  “You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”

  “Nope.”

  Richie contemplated the situation, shrugged. He wasn’t wearing a wire, wasn’t carrying, there was nothing to find. He didn’t love the prospect of sacrificing his dignity by submitting to a pat-down, not at this stage in his life, but he understood the necessity. No one could trust anyone, not in his line of work. Not in anyone’s. And he’d long ago relinquished his dignity to this woman. He no longer gave much of a shit.

  “Phones?”

  Everyone handed their mobiles to the bodyguard, who left the room.

  “How’s life treating you, Richie?”

  Benedetti adjusted his heavy silk tie, one of those unmistakable patterns that certain men recognize, it’s like a secret handshake, hey, look, we’re both guys who spend a couple of hundred dollars on neckties.

  “Can’t complain.”

  He looked like part of the décor, decorated in that maximalist Italian fashion of velvet and silk, gold-leaf and marble.

  “You enjoying life on Lake Como?”

  Richie was a fourth-generation Italian-American whose ma cooked tuna casserole and meatloaf, not Sunday gravy. He learned everything he needed about being a guinea gangster from The Godfather and The Sopranos, and spent four decades fake-rhapsodizing about the old country that he’d always avoided visiting, too worried that reality would disappoint, that he’d be mocked for not speaking the language.

  When he needed to start a new life, he finally made good on his supposed fantasy. He bought a modest villa on the lake, probably thinking he’d be hanging out with George Clooney.

  “Sure, it’s a nice place. But what are we doin’ here?”

  “No pleasantries, Richie?”

  “You know I ain’t that pleasant a guy. And you were never that pleasant to me, were you? So.” He turned up one corner of his mouth, a sneering smile that’s laughing at you, not with you. She really despised assholes like Richie. But that’s how the world works, isn’t it? For anything involving big money, you have to deal with big-money assholes.

  “Okay, Richie.” She was about to launch into it, but just then the bodyguard reent
ered, delivering their espressi, swiping lemon peels across the rims of the glasses, one, two, three of them. Then the factotum retreated.

  “How much money do you have?”

  Richie sneered again. “You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”

  “I’m going to guess somewhere between twenty and thirty mil.” She used to have surreptitious access to Richie’s financial situation. Not recently. “Am I right?”

  He shrugged.

  “That’s certainly enough to live on for the rest of your life, I guess. As long as you don’t go doing anything stupid like buying jets.” She knew for a fact that he’d recently bought a jet. “But you’re continuing to hustle, aren’t you? Putting your neck out. Juggling this, juggling that, exposing yourself to people you don’t—”

  “We here to go over my whole, what, résumé? That’s not so interestin’ to me. I’m already familiar with the particulars. So why don’t you tell me the fuck you want?”

  She leaned forward. “How’d you like to double your money, Richie?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Sure, I’d like that very much.”

  “In a couple of months.”

  His eyebrows shot up.

  “Without hurting anyone. Or lifting a finger.”

  * * *

  Go through it chronologically, she reminded herself. Richie was a guy who needed a story to be linear. Visual too.

  “At eight in the morning, we call in a bomb threat to the police. A single device, deposited in a train station. The police radios will crackle with reassignments, calls to action. Units will rush to the scene, drawing forces from elsewhere. Trains will be canceled. Media will gather.”

  Richie could see this. He nodded.

  “This bomb will be a few sticks of TNT in a backpack, a detonator wired to a disposable mobile. But this bomb isn’t there to explode. It’s to draw the police. And to establish an aura of terror, first thing in the morning. During the next half-hour, while the police are swarming the train station, we plant a handful of other devices at high-visibility sites. To cap it all off, a man walks into the middle of the museum’s courtyard, wearing a suicide vest, which draws every last cop from their normal assignments.”

  “So, what? You robbin’ a bank?” Richie needs to prove how smart he is, which is actually not that smart. “This a heist?”

  “One of these normal assignments is to guard the home of an American CEO who spends time in Europe. This police escort is a privilege he pays for under the table.”

  This was something Richie could respect. He’d paid for more than his fair share of cops over the years. But sadly there was no buying off feds, at least not American ones. That’s what got him exiled.

  “The threats will be all over, alerts will be popping up on everyone’s phones, coverage will blanket the media, there will be video of this backpack sitting in the station, being approached by a bomb-dismantling robot. Sharing a split-screen with an aerial view of the museum, a suicide bomber standing in the center. Utter terror.”

  Richie was nodding again.

  “So the CEO understands it when his police escort abandons its post. Just minutes later, reinforcements arrive—policemen in one car, an American official in another, a middle-aged guy from the State Department, sent on a crucial mission to protect a prominent American citizen during a moment of extreme peril. Because not only is the city under attack, but a threat has been made against Americans. Specifically against prominent American businessmen. This is a man who always thinks of himself as the smartest guy in the room. So he’s proud of figuring out that a person like this bureaucrat, claiming to be from State and showing up in this situation, is lying. And because he’s so damn smart, he knows what the lie is.”

  Richie leaned back, trying himself to be that damn smart too. “CIA.”

  “Exactly. At the same time that the police escort is called away, the CEO’s cell service disappears. Because the trunk of the police car contains a powerful mobile device that jams any and all mobile-phone and data service.”

  “How do you get the squad car?”

  “We don’t. We’re using an unmarked car. If we need to explain this, it’s because all the cruisers have been deployed to the sites of the bombs. Extra personnel have been called in for the emergencies, more bodies than vehicles, et cetera. But we have the siren, a couple of other official-looking accessories.”

  “What about the CEO’s landline?”

  “One of the cops heads to the basement to cut the wires, taking out cable and Internet and landline telephone. This complete comms blackout, combined with the citywide attack, makes the CEO very anxious, impatient. Our State-slash-CIA official offers to try to fix the CEO’s cell phone, but fails. Sorry, he says, I couldn’t help.”

  “He doesn’t really try?”

  “He disables everything, including all geo-location services. So as the minutes tick by, the CEO grows increasingly frustrated. He demands a solution.”

  “The embassy?”

  “That’s his first request. Not possible, our guy says, embassy in total lockdown. So the CEO demands other options. Our guy hems and haws, doesn’t want to offer the thing that everyone knows he can offer. But eventually he relents, says he’ll look into finding a situation. After an understandable delay, he does find a secure location that has working telecom.”

  “A CIA safehouse.”

  “Exactly right, Richie. Though that’s not the phrase our guy uses, because a CIA officer wouldn’t. But this CEO, he’s a man of the world, he knows what’s what. This appeals to his sense of his own importance. Plus to everyone’s romance about the Agency. A CIA safehouse! He wants to see this.”

  “So you’re saying that the CEO demands his own kidnapping?” He was nodding appreciatively. “Jeez.”

  “And that, Richie, is how you kidnap a high-value, high-net-worth target who maintains twenty-four-hour, three-sixty-five armed guards, without hurting anyone.”

  * * *

  It was beginning to make sense to Richie, but he saw some holes, wanted to poke at them, see how big they’d grow.

  “This is a very complicated plan for a kidnapping. Why don’t you just kill the guard, snatch your hostage by force?”

  “That’s a good question, Richie. Why do you think?”

  The guy squinted again, mouth hanging open, like the illustrated-dictionary picture of a dunce trying hard to figure out something. “Afraid of drawing attention?”

  “Not especially. I think we could discretely effectuate a quiet abduction in a simpler fashion. We’d still have to draw away the police, but we could do that without a terrorist attack against an entire city.”

  She could see Richie thinking, his eyes darting around. Then they opened wide, and refocused on her. “You don’t want anyone to know that he’s been kidnapped.”

  She smiled. “Not even he will know he’s been kidnapped.”

  “Then why doesn’t he just walk out the door?”

  “Remember, this escape to a safehouse, that’s his own suggestion. The city is under attack! And he specifically has been targeted. The CIA has received direct orders—from the highest level—to keep this VIP off the streets, safe from abduction, from assassination, from all sorts of terrifying possibilities. Even if the CEO demands his freedom, our guy simply cannot let him go. For his own good.”

  “But what if he refuses to kidnap himself from the get-go? What if he doesn’t demand to be taken someplace else?”

  “Unlikely. He’ll be desperate to resume communications. To explain his disappearance. To be in touch. To run the empire that he believes only he can run.”

  “Sure. But.”

  “In that unlikely case, our man will claim to receive new info from the police radio. The situation out in the streets has deteriorated, there are now explicit orders from the DCI to remove the high-value target to a secure location.�
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  “DCI?”

  “Director of Central Intelligence.”

  “And if he still doesn’t agree to this?”

  “He’ll be forced to. For his own good.”

  “By just this one fake CIA guy?”

  “Also the pair of cops. In uniform. Armed.”

  “Why cops? Why not American army?”

  “The local-law look might come in handy if the team ends up interacting with citizens out in the streets. No one is going to challenge a local cop during a terror attack.”

  “What about the CEO’s security? Why doesn’t he bring along his muscle?”

  “That’s one of the benefits of making it the CEO’s idea to leave the apartment: his only option is to go to a safehouse, so it’s on the CIA’s terms. And his guard is local, not an American citizen, so he can’t be allowed into any secure Agency facility.”

  “Is that true?”

  “None of these people will know it isn’t.”

  “Once this guy is at this facility, what if he asks to leave?”

  “We tell him he can’t.”

  “If he disagrees?”

  “We have three armed men on-site. Our holding area—the safehouse—is an unoccupied building; condemned, scheduled for demolition.”

  “If he tries to escape?”

  “We’ll subdue him.”

  “If that fails?”

  “At the end of the day, Richie, I really don’t give a shit what happens to this guy.”

  “But you’re not going to kill him?”

  “Ideally, no.”

  Richie had been following along more or less successfully to this point, but now he became lost. “I don’t understand.”

  “What part?”

  Richie looked exasperated; his short fuse was burning quickly. “If you kill him, how the fuck are you gonna get a ransom?”

  She leaned back, let her hands rest on her protruding belly. She used to be annoyed by all those pregnant women who couldn’t stop cradling their bellies, something self-satisfied about it. Now look.