The Paris Diversion

by Chris Pavone

  That bastard.

  How is she going to keep him out of the grasp of French authorities? Should she try the US Embassy? Or go directly to the Paris Substation’s safehouse? Or would they be better off completely DIY? Kate could take him to that other location, much closer to home, with less of a connection to anyone else, completely unknown to anyone in any intelligence service.

  She doesn’t want to have to trust anyone. Because it’s definitely possible—it’s likely—that there’s hard evidence against Dexter, beyond the mere circumstantial. His phone records, browsing history, e-mails, who knows what. There could be plenty that makes him look guilty, creating ample incentive for people to turn him in.

  But could Dexter actually be guilty?

  It was much easier to be an intelligence operative when it wasn’t her husband in her crosshairs.

  * * *

  Back in Luxembourg, when Kate finally confronted Dexter with her suspicions, he explained the rationale for his conspiracy: he was a vigilante, not a mere thief; he was meting out justice on a global scale, taking a monster’s money and his life, making the world a better place; he was avenging the murder of his brother, who’d been an American peacekeeper in the Serbian civil war. The money was beside the point, mostly.

  His arguments were not without merit.

  Kate’s counterargument was simple, moral: even if it was true that the man Dexter robbed was a horrible person—an arms dealer, a murderer—and even if this man did deserve the harshest possible sentence, Dexter himself did not deserve to benefit from it. Certainly not with a stolen twenty-five million euros. That wasn’t justice, that was opportunism; it was illegal, and unethical. Dexter couldn’t keep this blood money, not if he wanted to keep his wife.

  He didn’t put up a fight.

  And, Kate added, one other thing: he had to give up his partner, the person who’d lured him into the whole plot, who’d used him, who’d ruthlessly put Dexter and Kate and their kids—their lives—at mortal risk.

  She realized that she was lashing out in anger, but she did it anyway. Kate was the one who made the immunity deal, who set up the CIA sting. Kate was the one who lured the woman called Julia MacLean to collect the account number for her share of the heist, with the Agency van waiting around the corner, ready to take her into custody. It was all set up.

  But at the last moment, in an unexpected burst of sympathy, Kate had a change of heart. She allowed Julia to go free, to escape the clutches of prosecution, to avoid the worst consequences of her crimes.

  Not, though, with her twenty-five million euros. Just with her husband and her freedom, or some semblance of it.

  * * *

  A framed map of Europe hangs in Kate’s office, and behind the map is a safe mounted in the wall. This is where Kate keeps a few thousand in cash—walking-around money for bribes, payouts, secret salaries. Also an expensive wristwatch that she ended up possessing after a series of boneheaded missteps on the part of an asset; Kate didn’t know what else to do with this tacky piece of jewelry.

  If anyone ever has the temerity to break into the office, to crack the safe, they will be excited—hey, look what we found, it’s the secret stash.

  It isn’t.

  In the kitchenette, the small microwave’s back panel can be removed in less than thirty seconds with a Phillips-head screwdriver. That’s where Kate stores another hundred thousand euros, plus a few passports with her picture but different names and nationalities. She also used to keep an untraceable SIG Sauer in there, but she brought it along for Peter, and hasn’t gotten around to replacing it. It’s been a few years since Kate has needed a gun.

  She keeps hoping that her days of shooting people are behind her. After Oaxaca, she’d told herself that it had been a fluke, an extraordinary confluence of circumstances, something she’d never need to repeat. But then she did, and not just once. Oaxaca was nearly two decades ago.

  She never imagined that she’d kill a person, that she’d be a cold-blooded killer—of course she wasn’t, that was so obvious, wasn’t it? Look at her, with her station wagon, her coq au vin, her little-kid birthday-party favors. This isn’t what cold-blooded killers look like.

  * * *

  Kate descends the stairs from the rue des Petits Champs, and walks through the passage out into the airy gardens of Palais-Royal, one of Kate’s favorite places in Paris, where the Moores attend a semi-regular weeknight picnic with other families, chilled rosé and good pâté, kids inventing games while adults play progressively more vigorous rounds of pétanque, surrounded by other people everywhere, packed into the cafés in the colonnades, reclined in the green metal chairs, strollers and loners and smitten lovers.

  Kate hopes she doesn’t have to leave Paris, now. Not like this.

  Inez arrives, kisses her on one cheek. “Ça va?” she asks, and kisses the other. Just like any other pair of friends.

  How’s it going? Terrible, that’s how. “Inez, I’m in a bad situation. Dangerous. I can’t get to my weapon, and I think I might need one.”

  Inez nods, understanding. She reaches her right hand inside her jacket while leaning forward, all the way into Kate, and brings her left hand up to Kate’s shoulder, around it, a close embrace. Inez gives a squeeze, as if in support—it’s so good to see you after so long, I’m so sorry about your mother, your job, your problems—then leans away. “Bonne chance,” she says.

  Somewhere in the middle of that, Kate felt the handgun fall into her pocket.

  * * *

  One ring.

  No answer.

  Two rings.

  Her unanswered call isn’t going straight to voice-mail, which means the device isn’t powered off, isn’t out of range. The phone is ringing. Just not being answered.

  Three.

  And then that’s it, voice-mail: Bonjour, it’s Dexter, please leave a message.

  “Hi,” she says, “it’s me.” As a rule Kate doesn’t leave messages, just ends the call; Dexter knows to ring back. That’s how life works now.

  She doesn’t want to say anything too specific. In fact she hasn’t wanted to make this call at all, she’s almost certain that his phone is compromised, not just the meta-data but probably the actual content of the communications too, the location, everything. But she needs him to get out of their apartment, and get rid of his phone.

  “Call as soon as you can, okay? It’s important.”

  Kate still remembers her parents’ first answering machine, a Sony the size of a dictionary, it sat on the kitchen counter next to the phone books, white pages stacked under the more frequently consulted yellows, life used to be easily divided, social contacts here and commercial there, dog-eared corners and circled numbers for mechanics and doctors, plumbers and pizza, take-out menus tucked inside, bills of service too, business cards. Phone books served as filing cabinets, booster seats, leaf presses, paperweights, weapons. She hasn’t seen a phone book in years.

  Why is he not calling her back? Dexter isn’t a husband who doesn’t answer, not one of those guys who’s always in meetings, on conference calls, at business lunches, you know how it is, crazy-busy, I can barely come up for air. Dexter is a reliably available person. Even in the midst of his big trades, he always has thirty seconds to talk to his wife.

  What Dexter is also—inconveniently, at this moment—is a guy who refuses to enable location services on his smartphone, a guy who’s a zealot for maintaining the most private settings on his device, who refuses to install apps that could track him, apps whose systems could be hacked. Dexter is ultra-paranoid about electronic intrusions, about hacks. Because Dexter is a hacker.

  There are plenty of good reasons why he wouldn’t answer his phone. He could be on the Métro, in one of the tunnels with no cellular service, on his way to buy Lego. He could be in the middle of a complex trade, can’t distract himself. He could be standing on the stree
t, talking to a neighbor, doesn’t want to be rude. He could be watching extremely compelling porn, concentrating hard.

  Maybe she’d believe any of those reasons, on any other day.

  * * *

  Her phone buzzes, another intercept of Schuyler’s line.

  “Hi, sorry to bother you so early? My name is Schuyler Franks, I’m calling from the Paris office?”

  “It’s…what time is…Jesus. Why are you calling me at home at five A.M.? Who are you?”

  “We have a, um, situation here? Can you gather the board of directors for a conference call as soon as possible?”

  * * *

  It was an immense favor that Kate did, allowing Julia and Bill to escape the clutches of the CIA, of arrest, humiliation, prosecution, prison. Julia deserved so much worse.

  That was one point of view.

  As that final encounter faded into the past, Kate began to accept that there was another possible point of view: that she’d deprived Julia of a fortune the woman had spent the entirety of her adult life pursuing, money stolen from a despicable criminal who didn’t in any way deserve it, money that was now sitting in a numbered account, unrecoverable, forever. Kate had sentenced someone who’d once been her closest friend to a life on the run, a life of aliases and temporary homes, of fleeting friendships using fictional identities. Half a life, at best.

  Perhaps Kate had been too punitive, like the Allied powers in the aftermath of World War I, engendering fascism from their own vindictiveness.

  From this point of view, Kate’s final encounter with Julia in that café may not turn out to be final. And gratitude was not what Kate should expect. Not at all.

  Revenge was. Another world war.

  54

  PARIS. 2:17 P.M.

  “Would you prefer English?”

  “Yes,” Dexter says, “thanks.”

  “You are a tourist, Monsieur?”

  “No, I live near here.”

  “Ah oui?” Eyebrows raised.

  One policeman is doing the talking, while the other lags behind, silent, waiting.

  “I see that you look into this parking. Could I ask, Monsieur, why?”

  “I keep a car there.”

  “Une voiture? Ici?” The cop purses his lips to expel a burst of air, a French gesture that can connote a wide breadth of emotions—exasperation, surprise, disappointment, frustration. Dexter understands what it means here, coming from this policeman: you must be plenty wealthy, Monsieur, to house a car here in the middle of St-Germain-des-Prés.

  “I was thinking of using the car. To run an errand.”

  “Errant?”

  Errand. How do you say this? “Je dois faire une course.”

  The cop looks confused. Dexter doesn’t know if he got the vocabulary wrong, or the grammar, or just the pronunciation. There are a lot of ways to be wrong.

  “But I decided against it.”

  “No? Why?”

  “With what’s going on at the gare, and the Louvre, I thought traffic would be bad. Streets closed. Bridges.”

  “You are correct, Monsieur. It is not a good day to drive a car in Paris. You keep the car here all the days?”

  “Yes.” Dexter glances at his watch. He really has to get moving. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “If you please, yes: could I ask you to admit us to le parking? There is no attendant. And no person answers the telephone.”

  Dexter doesn’t respond immediately; he doesn’t want to get involved in whatever this is.

  “Are you in a rush? I do not want to…er…detain? Is this the correct word?”

  “Yes,” Dexter says, but he isn’t so sure. Detain has a couple of different meanings, especially in the context of police.

  “Bon, merci, I do not want to detain you.”

  “I am, actually, in a hurry.”

  “Oh yes? Why?”

  “I have to buy a toy. A birthday present.”

  The cop smiles indulgently. Or maybe ironically. Toy shopping during a terrorist attack.

  “This will not take long, Monsieur. If you please.”

  “D’accord.” Dexter starts walking, it’s just a few steps back to the garage entrance, the ubiquitous keypad that confronts Parisians at every door, a code to punch, then the overhead light begins to flash red, the door starts to rise, slowly, loudly.

  “When you want to exit, press this button.” Dexter points to the big SORTIE, realizing too late that this is a completely unnecessary instruction. Insulting.

  “Oui. Could I ask, what car do you drive?”

  Why the hell is he asking? This cop is starting to make Dexter nervous.

  He feels his phone buzz a half-second before the ringing commences. He reaches into his pocket—

  It’s Kate again. He hits IGNORE.

  “Is it necessary for you to answer?”

  “No.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Yes, it’s fine.”

  “Thank you. Donc, your car?”

  “It is an old car, a break.” French for station wagon. “Good for the family.”

  “Family? You have children?”

  “Yes. Two boys.”

  “Ah, c’est bon. They are at school now?”

  “Yes.” Why the fuck is this cop asking him all these questions? “Officer, if you don’t mind, I really must…I have to…”

  “Yes, I understand, just one more moment.” The cop reaches into his pocket, takes out his notepad, continues to rummage around in there. “It is necessary…for our records, do you understand? Ah!” He has found what he was looking for, a pen. “Your name, if you please? And your address? Phone number?” He extends the pad, the pen too.

  Dexter doesn’t want to provide this information. But nor does he want to refuse, to get into an antagonistic relationship with this cop. He has that immigrant’s innate fear of law enforcement, you don’t know what they can do to you. Keep your head down, do what you’re told.

  He’s getting a queasy feeling about everything here. A fake name, fake address, fake phone number: these are what he’s going to give the cop.

  Dexter reaches for the pad, eager to get this over with, and his nerves about the cop, plus the general anxiety of today’s make-or-break trade, not to mention the terrorist siege of the city, all this is enough to make Dexter jittery enough to fumble the handoff, and he drops the pen to the pavement with a tinny little clatter, and stumbles slightly as he bends to collect it, and mutters an apology, and comes up flustered and a little lightheaded.

  The policeman stares at him.

  Dexter starts to write, and can’t help but notice that his hand is trembling.

  55

  PARIS. 2:18 P.M.

  Hunter’s vision is blurry, but nevertheless yes, he can tell that it’s the same place. He’s now sitting in a chair, and he can’t move his arms, nor his legs. He is tied up. And gagged.

  “Ah, you’re conscious.” Simpson is applying ice to his own skull. “Good.”

  Hunter can’t respond.

  “That wasn’t very smart of you, Mr. Forsyth. I’m disappointed and frankly surprised. I would’ve thought, a man like you, a business genius, a master of the universe. But don’t you remember how that ended?”

  Hunter furrows his brow.

  “Bonfire of the Vanities? Tom Wolfe? Never read it? But surely you saw the movie, Forsyth. No?”

  Colette is on the other side of the room, also tied up. By the ankles and wrists only, and she’s sitting on the couch. She’s not the one being punished.

  “If I were as stupid as you, Mr. Forsyth, I’d be punching you in the face right now, getting revenge, pow pow pow. But I’m not. Because I have foresight. Foresight!” The guy laughs. “Ironic, isn’t it? But I don’t want it to look like you were recreationally b
eaten. If you end up dead, that’s one thing. Honestly that’s an outcome I wouldn’t mind. But tortured? Very different implications.”

  Simpson looks over at Colette, then back at Hunter.

  “Speaking of: you probably need water. But listen, Forsyth: if you start making a racket, annoying me? I’m going to beat the living shit out of you, and—full disclosure—I’m going to enjoy it. It’s true that I’d rather it not look like you were tortured, but that’s just a slight preference, not a requirement. You understand me?”

  Hunter nods, and Simpson retrieves one of the water bottles that had been delivered earlier, along with ham sandwiches, back when hunger was relevant, when Hunter’s biggest problem was lack of a cell signal.

  The guy yanks out the gag. Tips water into Hunter’s mouth, waits for a swallow, tips again.

  “You all right?”

  “Yes,” Hunter says, a raspy sound. He coughs. “You’ve kidnapped me?”

  “Kidnapped? I don’t know about that. You came voluntarily, in fact it was your idea. And we’re not seeking ransom. So I think false imprisonment would be more accurate.”

  “No ransom? Then what the hell do you want?”

  “Merely the pleasure of your company, Mr. Forsyth.”

  “Oh come on.”

  “Believe it, don’t believe it, I don’t give a rat’s ass.” The guy shrugs. “Actually, to clarify: the pleasure part, that’s a lie. Your company is not enjoyable. You’re a prick. You know that, right? I can’t be the first person to have told you.”

  “How much?”

  Simpson raises his eyebrows, says nothing.

  “What would my freedom cost?”

  The guy still doesn’t respond. His face is hard to read, with the big beard and tinted glasses and wavy hair draped across his forehead. Which must be the purpose of the whole getup: disguise.