The Paris Diversion

by Chris Pavone

  “Merci,” he says with an indulgent smile, “mais non merci.”

  Dexter doesn’t expect Luc to accept. But it’s the invitation extended to the lonely person that’s the nice thing, not the occasion itself. Dexter doesn’t even want to go to his own dinner party, he doesn’t especially like those people from school. And certainly not tonight, with so much on the line today. He’ll be lucky to make it through the afternoon without throwing up.

  “You are ready for today, Dexter?”

  “Yes, I think so.” He looks up from his tennis bag, navy canvas, racquet handle sticking out. “I hope so. Thanks again for the tip.”

  The Frenchman laughs. “Do not thank me yet, mon frère. I promise nothing!” Luc too is a self-employed investor. They met online via a message board, then in person at a freelancers-in-finance meet-up where everyone was too young at a bar in Oberkampf, a whole neighborhood where everyone is too young. “Can I ask, what size position you have taken?”

  “Enough to be worth it.” Dexter smiles, a look that he hopes is lighthearted, untroubled. “Not enough to break me.”

  If only this were true.

  There are plenty of people in the world who spend most of their waking hours—maybe their sleeping ones too—thinking about money, about margins, about currencies and credit and equity and debt, market share and cost ratios, different ways of considering relative valuation. Dexter never imagined he’d become one of them.

  His path hasn’t been straightforward. There was the ultimately disappointing Silicon Valley sojourn, then the more satisfying DC years, the complicated detour in Luxembourg. He wonders if Paris will be the longest stage. With their kids in their cosmopolitan school, Dexter in his home office day-trading, his wife doing…what, exactly…?

  Doing whatever the hell Kate does.

  Dexter has been forced to accept that she’s entitled to her secrets. He’s had plenty of his own.

  * * *

  His day: first tennis, now coffee with his wife, then his computer for London’s opening, a couple of hours of trading before lunch, then New York’s bell followed by a tense afternoon, late pickup of the kids from school, and somewhere in there he must scour the city for Ben’s birthday present—something Dexter should’ve bought weeks ago, but didn’t—and finally the dinner party.

  A normal day, just a bit busier. And hopefully a bit more profitable.

  Scratch that: a shitload more profitable.

  Dexter has too much riding on today’s outcome, he understands this in the rational part of his brain, knows that this investment is not a levelheaded solution to his myriad and mounting financial problems, and the not-unrelated personal ones. He’s reluctant to even acknowledge the extent of the problems to himself, unwilling to write off his bad choices, situations that continue to deteriorate on an almost daily basis—

  He fights back the sense of doom, the tsunami, the hurricane, the uncontrollable force that threatens everything—

  It’s not uncontrollable, he tells himself. It’s not doom.

  Everything is going to be fine.

  Fine.

  He looks around at the manicured trees and shrubs, the neat tan-pebbled paths, the thoughtful orderliness of it all. When they first moved to Paris, this park was the kids’ favorite place in the world, queuing up for the zip line, scaling the tension-rope climbing pyramid, stopping at the café for juice, for candy, for ice cream. Dexter used to purchase playground tickets by the ten-pack, earning a tiny volume discount. French culture does not embrace discounts, and any markdown sales are generally illegal, except during specifically delineated periods—les soldes—when a blanket of ads proclaims the sorts of modest percentages that wouldn’t even convince American shoppers to slow down on their way to Walmart.

  Then at some point the kids simply stopped asking, “Can we go to the park? Please? Please?” Just like that. Finished not only with this particular playground but with all of them, with slides and swings and seesaws and sand pits, that whole stage of life was concluded; done and done, no sentimentality.

  Dexter quickens his pace through the tall wrought-iron gates, and turns to watch a police car zoom by at an unusual speed, a terrifying speed, from which he turns just in time to crash sideways into a woman—where the hell did she come from?—her groceries spilling, apples tumbling, potatoes, even her cheese is round, everything in her shopping bag seems to be rolling in different directions across the sidewalk, and Dexter is apologizing profusely, jettisoning his tennis bag, lunging for errant produce.

  “Je suis desolé,” he says, depositing the grapefruit into her bag, one of those big sturdy recycled-material things. Nobody uses plastic anymore.

  “C’est pas grave.”

  “Ça va?” he asks. “Sûr, ça va?”

  Most mornings Dexter doesn’t interact with anyone except his family, sequestered alone in the apartment with his computer. But today there has been Luc and the old man who spoke to him while waiting for the traffic light and now this woman, who stands up, her hands full of round fruit.

  “Oui Monsieur.” She smiles at him. “Merci bien.”

  It’s a nice smile. She’s an attractive woman, in fact she’s beautiful, and Dexter has a vague inkling that he’s seen her before, though he can’t place where, and realizes that he’s trying too hard to figure it out.

  6

  PARIS. 9:17 A.M.

  The van pulls to another stop. This one, Mahmoud suspects, is the final. This one is his.

  Mahmoud was never told the ultimate destination, and he did not object to being kept in the dark. But in the minutes since he identified the place Vendôme, he has been trying to guess where he will end up.

  He has no idea what other elements are involved, what other people, in what other parts of the city, of Europe, the world. He could be one piece of an immense puzzle; he could be a solo operator. In the end, it makes no difference, not to him.

  The driver is dressed like any other Frenchman, the type of outfit that can step out of a van and merge into the pedestrian flow, anonymous, unnoticed. Mahmoud does not even know his name.

  The man turns around. “Nous sommes arrivés.”

  * * *

  Mahmoud had been told that it would be a familiar shape, something well known to everyone, and even more well known to him than to most others. Like a riddle. He worried that he would not understand this riddle, that these people had overestimated the breadth of his knowledge, his powers of deductive reasoning, his overall intelligence.

  “Là-bas”—the driver points at the pedestrian passageway through the sturdy building. “Do you know it?”

  Mahmoud nods, of course he knows it, everyone knows it. Now that he is here, it is completely obvious, and he cannot believe he did not figure it out beforehand. Maybe he really is, after all, an idiot, just like his father used to yell at him.

  “Bonne chance.”

  That is what this guy is telling him? Good luck?

  When he met the driver for the first time this morning, Mahmoud was surprised that he was not from the Middle East, nor Africa, nor Asia. In fact he seemed like an American; spoke French like one too. And he was not the only American involved. For a mission that really did not seem like an American thing.

  Mahmoud does not know how to respond to the man’s good-luck wishes. Thanks? He simply turns away.

  “Hey!”

  Mahmoud looks back. The driver is now facing the other way, reaching toward the passenger seat, then back, extending something through the window—

  Ah, of course! How could he have forgotten?

  This heavy reinforced-steel briefcase is supposedly the only thing that will give Mahmoud any chance of surviving the next few minutes.

  He reaches up, takes hold of the smooth handle of the shiny case. His palm is sweaty, wet—he is growing more nervous with each second—and the metal
handle slips through his slick fingers, and both men gasp as the thing falls, clatters to the sidewalk—

  One second—

  Two—

  Three—

  Nothing happens.

  They both exhale.

  * * *

  It is just a few steps from the van to the gold-tipped gates at the entrance to the pedestrian passage, where it is cool, dark, moist, echoing with the sounds of footfalls, which are suddenly drowned as a city bus enters one of the roadway bores, filling the space with roars.

  On the far side he steps out into the bright light of the expansive vista, the little arch, the carousel, the trees and flowers, all under a tremendous sky, the Eiffel Tower on the distant horizon. The sky is often visible in Paris, there are many open spaces, the buildings are not tall. It is unfortunate that all this sky is so often gray.

  People had once tried to explain to him about the weather in Northern Europe, but he could not understand it, not until he lived here.

  Large marble spheres line the sidewalk, as well as square concrete blocks, protection against attack by car, by truck. But there are no closed fences, no police, no security guards, nothing to impede a pedestrian’s progress on this walkway.

  Mahmoud pauses at the lightweight movable fence. This is his last chance to turn around, to wade back into the scrum of vendors from sub-Saharan Africa selling Eiffel Tower keychains and water bottles and selfie-sticks, of pedicabs and tour guides, of every species of hustler preying on tourists who are lost in guidebooks and phones, double-checking the opening hour, wondering why there is such a long queue.

  Mahmoud knows: the queue is for security, which everywhere is increasingly tight these days, with everything that has happened in Paris, in France, in the rest of the world.

  It is a dangerous time to be alive.

  In truth it is always a dangerous time to be alive. But now it is dangerous for Western Europeans and Americans, not merely for the overwhelming majority of the world’s people who live and die all over the earth in places that are pretty much always dangerous, places where sizable populations are exterminated in genocides, in famines and epidemics, in floods and earthquakes and hurricanes, in civil wars and counterrevolutions and political purges and sectarian strife and tribal feuds and deeply ingrained religious conflicts that have been going on for decades, for centuries, for millennia.

  Yes, these metal detectors make people feel safer. But it is just a feeling, not a fact. In reality, none of these people are safe. There is no such thing as safety for anyone, anywhere. Not anymore.

  7

  PARIS. 9:18 A.M.

  Her arms are growing tired, with the big bunch of flowers, and the bag filled with a heavy dome of bread and a box of assorted gâteaux apéritifs for the obligatory cocktail hour, and fresh fruits and ripe cheeses and a bottle of Armagnac. She dutifully marinated her chicken in red wine, braised it last night, ready to reheat.

  Kate cooks, it’s now something she does, she even owns an apron, which was a birthday present supposedly selected by the kids, though it was probably a not-so-subtle gesture by Dexter; Kate pretended to be overjoyed. She has even started teaching the boys to manage for themselves, nothing complicated, no fingertips shaved off by a mandoline, forearms scalded by burbling oil. Just marinara sauce, grilled cheese sandwiches, those sorts of things.

  She spots Dexter across the boulevard, already installed with an espresso and Le Monde, still wearing his tennis clothes. As he crosses his legs, he kicks over the racquet propped against a chair, then bends to retrieve it and bangs his head.

  Jesus.

  She can’t help but smile. If she didn’t know better, she’d think it was an act.

  They’ve been in a simmering feud for the past few weeks—no, it’s months now, but it was that recent trip to Champagne that really put her over this edge. It was Dexter’s idea to go see the cathedral in Reims, go on a winery tour. Evincing an appalling lack of awareness of how his children want to spend a Saturday. This ill-conceived trip came fast on the heels of a recurrence of Ben’s health crisis, reminding Kate of Dexter’s role in failing to mitigate it, to manage it. Also her own disappointment with herself for not being home to prevent it. Her reason for not being home.

  But day by day, Kate’s anger has been ebbing away. She is once again willing to be amused by her husband. Though not yet willing to let him know it.

  The traffic light changes. Kate steps off the sidewalk, not especially paying attention—

  A flash of danger, coming fast on her left, it’s a truck swerving in her direction, turning onto the rue de Rennes, clearing out of the path of a pack of police cars speeding past, lights flashing but sirens silent, there must be a dozen of them. Kate leaps back, just barely not getting hit by the truck, which careens into the crosswalk, braking but not quickly enough, not before a few people scream as the tires screech and—

  Kate drops her shopping bag, her flowers, and sprints over, ready to help, her mind running through first-responder checklists, don’t move any neck or back injuries, examine pupils, apply pressure to lacerations, tourniquets—

  It’s a dog.

  It’s a brown-and-white springer spaniel, still tethered to its leash, whose other end is held by a natty old woman whose mouth is wide open in horror.

  The driver jumps out of the delivery truck, leaving his door open, and looks around like he’s coming upon the scene as a curious bystander, not his problem.

  The old woman starts to yell at him.

  People are converging from every direction. A young woman kneels to the dog, puts down her motorcycle helmet, wearing tight jeans and tall boots and a distressed leather jacket, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She examines the dog, who with no warning clambers to his feet and shakes himself off, a full-body electrocution shake, as if he has just emerged from the cool lake, ooh that felt good.

  The old woman bends over to stroke her pet gingerly, checking for injuries, the legs, paws, skull. Staring into the dog’s eyes, as if for signs of a concussion, asking the spaniel to count backward from ten, what’s today’s date, who’s the president.

  A few people have begun to berate the driver, and Kate can hear a hysterical woman phoning the police. But the dog is now wagging his tail, thrilled with all this attention from strangers, normally the morning walks are so uneventful, we just go get the newspaper and then return to the apartment, plop down at the door and wait for something fun to happen, maybe today is cleaning-lady day.

  Kate feels sorry for this truck driver, who’s trying to explain that the police were swarming in his rearview, it was his civic duty to get out of the way, the dog impossible to see down there…

  The guy’s points are valid; some people are nodding in agreement, others are still livid. A middle-aged man with a terrifically hooked Gallic nose has anointed himself moderator, he’s wearing magenta jeans and a puffy vest over his tweed jacket, the outfit of a man who sees his rightful place as the center of anything.

  Kate is finished here. She’s not going to get involved in any police reports about an uninjured dog.

  * * *

  “What’s all that about?” Dexter exchanges a peck with his wife.

  “Spaniel got hit by that truck. Dog fine. People up in arms. How was tennis?”

  He grunts, then turns back to the paper, studying up for another day at the computer, in this new career of his, which is not really so new. Kate thinks anything in the past decade is new—new to be a parent, new to live in Europe, new that Dexter is a day-trader. The Internet is new. Cell phones.

  “Hey,” she says, “what’s with this?” She points at his new cap, made by the preferred brand of French outdoors enthusiasts, the requisite head-to-toe outfit to faire de la rando in the Pyrenees or the Dolomites. This brand doesn’t really belong in the wardrobe of the man who’s Kate’s husband; Dexter doesn’t hike,
he’s not French, he’s not trendy. “What happened to your tennis cap?”

  In Luxembourg he’d belonged to a club built on the grounds of a noble family’s old estate, a place where the whole village used to come every year for a hunt, back when that things like that went on. The land eventually evolved into a suburban development surrounding a tennis club whose logo is a kneeling rifleman, which makes a small amount of sense if you know the club’s history, but otherwise suggests that the club is a hunting one.

  “That’s a good question,” Dexter says. “I can’t find it.”

  Kate’s phone vibrates. She doesn’t like being a person who jumps to attention at every electronic interruption, but with all the police zooming around, today is different. Many days, she tells herself something similar.

  It’s a text-message from someone who’s identified in her contacts app as Pierre, at the butcher shop, telling her something she already knows: Undetonated bomb at Gare de Lyon.

  The guy’s name isn’t really Pierre. He’s not a butcher.

  8

  PARIS. 9:19 A.M.

  The driver is trying to look like any other guy killing time in a tradesman’s vehicle, window down, arm on the door, waiting. His orders are to give it one full minute, in case the other man needs to return, for some unarticulated reason.

  He glances at the phone resting on the passenger seat, next to that bag that he sometimes has to carry around. Forty seconds more.