The Paris Diversion

by Chris Pavone

  “You.”

  60

  PARIS. 3:03 P.M.

  “Don’t move,” the guy says.

  This new arrival must be some confederate of Wyatt’s, backup, a bodyguard against the possibility that Chris would turn out to be a double-crosser. Which he was. So as a bodyguard, this guy has been a profound failure, what with the dead body he was tasked to guard lying right there. Maybe he was supposed to be a bodyguard, but decided to play it different. More lucratively.

  Chris should’ve seen something like this coming. What would he have done different?

  “I don’t wanna hurt you.” The drawl is Deep South. Alabama, maybe. Mississippi.

  “I appreciate that,” Chris says. “I don’t want to get hurt.”

  He can see that this guy is gripping his weapon firmly with both hands, sighting just below eye level, arms extended rigidly in front, with one leg slightly ahead of the other, his torso half-turned to the side. A trained pose. This is no mugger.

  “You’re gonna lie on the ground.” Of course—the accent is Louisiana. Just like Wyatt. “Facedown, legs spread, hands behind your head.”

  Chris looks down at the disgusting filth. “Come on, man, is that necessary? Let’s—”

  “Do not move. Not a fuckin’ muscle.”

  “Okay, let’s stay calm.”

  “I’m plenty calm, don’t you worry about my level of calm. You worry about your level of obedience.”

  “Okay.”

  “When you’re lyin’ down, I’m gonna walk over to you, reach into your pockets. Relieve you of your weapon. Your cash. Then I’m gonna walk away. You’re gonna remain lyin’ on that ground for a count-a hundred. You understand?”

  “Sure do.”

  “If you, um, deviate from these instructions, you know what’s gonna happen?”

  It’s apparently not a rhetorical question, so Chris nods.

  “I’m glad we understand one another.”

  Chris doesn’t give a damn about this cash, he’ll be making so much money today that this couple hundred grand will amount to a rounding error. But the money isn’t the only thing this guy is planning to take. This is not a guy who simply showed up here, noticed an opportunity, and seized it. This is not a crime of opportunity. And this guy is not going to let any witnesses walk out of here.

  This whole thing was a horrible plan. A greedy plan. An insane plan. Chris shouldn’t have agreed to this, he has known it all along. And now his child will grow up without a father, his wife without a husband. Although knowing Susanna, she may solve that problem quickly.

  He has always just gone along with other people’s schemes. Sometimes midstream he’d try to take ownership of a plan—a frat prank, a ski trip, a sting operation—by being confident and competent, by being a leader, he was all those things. But he was never the one with the ideas. He worries that this means he’s stupid, a self-awareness that’s arriving—among others—with the onset of middle age. And, as self-realizations tend to be, after their utility.

  “You waitin’ for somethin’ in particular?”

  “I guess not.”

  He wishes he’d had the chance to remove the various components of his disguise. Shaved off the ludicrous beard, cut away the long wavy hair, peeled off the cosmetic facial scar and the fake forearm tattoos, removed the colored contact lenses. If he’s going to die here, he wants his corpse to be identified as himself, an innocent American. Not as the mastermind behind today’s citywide terror siege and kidnapping.

  The primary witnesses, the most important actors, will be dead: Wyatt is dead already, and maybe even Mahmoud too. But there are also the bit players, the people who deposited the bomb-filled bags around town, and the ersatz cops waiting for him back in the condemned building, and Forsyth and his assistant, and the stray freelancers whose jobs had been to construct alternate narratives, starting conversations on street corners, planting physical evidence in residential courtyards.

  It was more than one narrative that they constructed: one to implicate their target, another to exonerate him.

  Any of these piecework freelancers will be able to identify the black-eyed heavily bearded American with the cheek scar and the tattoo sleeve, if this incarnation of him is what they’re shown by police.

  “Go ahead, then. On your knees.”

  Chris knows he’s out of time. He takes a deep breath, getting ready.

  “Okay.”

  He begins to kneel, but instead flings his body to the side, falling, meeting the ground with his right shoulder, rolling toward the dark wall—

  * * *

  The unmuffled gunshots sound like sonic booms in this tunnel, once, twice, the explosions echoing off the hard surfaces. A third shot strikes something metal, a loud ping, a ricochet.

  Chris has been hit, he knows this instantaneously, but he can’t yet assess the severity, can’t tell if he has absorbed a bullet into a fleshy part of his arm or if an artery has been severed, a vital organ punctured, his life slipping away in the next minutes or even seconds.

  He continues another rotation of roll, and as he comes to a stop he reaches into his pocket to grasp his own weapon, yanks it out with a tear of cloth—

  Another shot explodes from the other man’s muzzle—

  The source of the pain is somewhere on the upper left of his thorax, the chest or the shoulder, it’s a deep burning, it could be very bad, but he can’t afford to dwell on that as he lies in a puddle of urine, with the angle of his prone body presenting the smallest possible target, the only thing that could be shot now is his face, he has no time to spare, he squeezes the trigger once and shifts his aim and squeezes again and shifts again and squeezes again and once more, a cluster in the other man’s direction.

  He can’t hear the body hit the pavement. But Chris does see the man fall, completely limp. Is it possible that he’s playing possum? No, why would he do that, he had the drop, the upper hand, every advantage. And he has the most to lose by drawing out the duration of this exchange.

  No, this isn’t a ruse. The guy is down. Definitely. Permanently.

  The pain is now flooding through Chris, radiating from his shoulder in pulsating waves.

  His breaths are quick and shallow and extremely painful. Oh this hurts.

  Okay, what now, what now, what now…?

  He can hear voices beyond the tunnel’s entrance, in the street. This is a grubby neighborhood but not a violent slum, people here aren’t going to ignore gunfire, pretend they saw nothing, heard nothing. No sane person is going to come into this darkness to investigate an ongoing gunfight, but someone will call the police, very soon. Maybe already has.

  Would that be terrible? At least he’d get medical attention, have a chance to survive this gunshot, which is definitely not an incidental flesh wound.

  Then what? How could he explain this shootout? He’s in possession of all this cash, what can his story be? The passport in his pocket is fake, but his real identity will be confirmed quickly. Then what?

  Jail, that’s what. In France. Or America. Or worse: a black site in the mountains of Romania, in eastern Poland. No lawyer, no trial. No exit.

  Is he thinking clearly? He can’t tell. Can you tell when you’re not? Or is part of not thinking clearly not knowing that you’re not thinking clearly?

  Jesus, it hurts so much. But he needs to get up. And he needs to do it right now, or he never will again.

  61

  PARIS. 3:18 P.M.

  “Come on.” Kate hops off the scooter. She looks across the small spit of river that separates the Île de la Cité from the Left Bank, at the flashing lights of police cars surrounding Notre-Dame, an army truck as well. This is such a big production, today’s terror threats.

  “What happened back there?” Dexter is hustling to catch up.

  “I fired into the air. To di
vert the police.”

  There’s a good-size crowd in the small plaza here, as usual, mostly American tourists—loud bachelorettes in matching berets asking strangers to take group photos, middle-aged American men wearing golf-brand caps, teenagers in flip-flops staring at phones, Chinese-character tattoos on characters who aren’t Chinese.

  The attached café is packed, mostly coffee drinkers but also a few glasses of wine have appeared. Paris may be besieged by terror threats, but the afternoon is creeping along without any detonations, without any fatalities, and l’apéro hour is approaching.

  “Why do I need to be gotten away from the police?”

  Kate glares at Dexter, but doesn’t say anything.

  “What are we doing here?” he asks.

  English speakers come to this bookshop from all over the city to buy current magazines, or the latest bestsellers from New York and London, or the Lost Generation classics, paperbacks of The Little Prince. Or just to hear English, to interact in their native tongue with other college students, other expats. All Americans seem to find their way here, which means no one would remark upon another one or two showing up on a late afternoon, walking past the register and through the warren of low ceilings and uneven floors, books jammed onto every surface, shelves above your head when you pass through one room after another all the way to the very back, where they find the proprietor bent over a counter, peering at paperwork, presenting to the world a violent explosion of blond curls that emanate every which way, like a small-town Fourth of July fireworks display, the grand finale, streamers shooting willy-nilly, the point not art but just light and noise and—if everyone is being honest—more than a little bit of danger.

  “Bonjour,” Kate says. “I’m wondering if you can help me?”

  The woman looks up at Kate and smiles, then notices Dexter. “Delighted to.” She’s a younger woman than you’d imagine would own an old shop like this.

  “I’m looking for a gift. Could I ask you to show me some first editions?”

  Big smile. This is something booksellers love to hear. “Please, follow me.”

  Dexter leans toward his wife’s ear. “What the hell are we doing?”

  Kate still doesn’t answer. They follow the owner back the way they came, out the shop’s front entrance, and through an adjoining door, propped open by a workman’s pile of bricks. These stairs are rickety, uneven, and men are working on an elevator shaft, which is shored up with wood planks. They climb, and climb, then come to a stop. The woman flips through a big key ring, finds what she’s looking for. Turns a couple of locks.

  This is another book-lined room, with a dining table and chairs, a table with a printer and office supplies, a window that looks out onto the Petit Pont, the Seine, Notre-Dame.

  “This way.” Through the narrow kitchen, boxes of biscuits, tea, mismatched plates, old dishrags. Up a couple of steps into a utility room, washing machine, bathroom sink, linen cabinets. She unlocks another door, and they all step into a bedroom, blue walls, vintage posters, more bookshelves packed with old hardbacks, a small desk with a bright red typewriter. This window faces onto nothing, just another window whose curtains are drawn.

  Kate shuts the door behind them. “Thanks so much,” she says. “This is Dexter.”

  The two shake hands.

  “I’m sorry but I don’t have much time,” the woman says, turning to an armoire. “Look.” She pulls the armoire’s door open, there are a few things hanging, a rain slicker, a windbreaker, a cable-knit cardigan. She pushes the hangers to the side, revealing the furniture’s back panel.

  “You put your hand here, like this. And push.”

  There’s a soft click as she presses into a section of wood, and the panel releases on a hinge. It’s a small door, two feet wide and four tall, carved out of the wall behind the armoire.

  “There’s no light switch back here, so you’ll have to use your phone. There, you can see now. Come, have a look. We built this hatch during the Occupation.”

  Dexter peers in. It’s the landing of another staircase, not the one they ascended.

  “You follow this down to a short hall that leads to the backdoor, which lets out onto the other street. There’s an old bicycle hanging on the wall next to the door, if you need it.”

  Now she fumbles again with the keys, removes a couple. “Here.” She presses the keys into Dexter’s palm. “There’s a toilet across the hall, a shower round the corner, I’m sure a bit to eat in the kitchen.”

  She scans a bookshelf, yanks down a clothbound volume, opens to the endpapers, and scrawls a price with a pencil that she yanked from the hidden depths of her hair. “When you leave, pay at the front.” She thrusts the book at Kate. “I hope one day you’ll explain all this to me. Good luck Dexter.” She kisses Kate on both cheeks. “Kate, you too.”

  * * *

  “What the hell is going on?” Dexter asks.

  Kate watches her husband closely as she says, “Hunter Forsyth is missing.” It certainly looks like genuine surprise on his face. But then again, he’d be prepared for this.

  “Missing? I guess that’s why the press conference was canceled. You think he was kidnapped?”

  “I’m almost positive of it. Listen, Dex: how much money have you made today?”

  His eyes cut away. “I don’t kn—”

  “Dexter.”

  He winces at her tone. She’s pissed, and wants him to know it.

  “Last I checked, it was about two hundred K.”

  A lot more than she would’ve thought possible. “That’s just from shorting two-fifty worth of 4Syte?”

  He cuts his eyes away again.

  “Jesus, Dexter. What else?”

  He doesn’t answer. She’s fed up, and without really thinking about it she punches her husband in the arm.

  “Hey. What the fuck?”

  “Tell me right now, goddamn it.”

  “Okay, I also used funds from a Swiss account. Another two-fifty.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t even…”

  He’d lied to her, again. But at the moment that’s not what’s important. Which is that Dexter invested a total of five hundred, and so far has made a profit of two hundred. And although that’s certainly a profitable one-day return, it’s not anywhere near a sufficient order of magnitude to justify today’s conspiracy. Dexter is a man who once stole fifty million euros; he wouldn’t do something like this for two hundred thousand.

  Which means that Dexter can’t be one of the conspirators; he must be innocent, relatively. That’s a relief. But there’s still a conspiracy, and he’s in the middle of it.

  “Dexter, did anyone see you this morning, between say eight and nine-thirty? This is when I think Forsyth was being kidnapped.”

  “You’re asking for my alibi? Jesus, Kate.”

  She glares at him.

  “Okay: Luc, as you know.”

  His friend, tennis partner, and guy who served as the conduit for the insider-trading information to begin with. Luc is not an alibi. He’ll look like an accomplice. He’ll be arrested too, if he hasn’t been already. Maybe that’s what he deserves.

  “How exactly did you meet Luc?”

  “Message board.”

  “Were you identifiable as you?”

  “Um, not really. I guess.”

  “No? Or not really?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What’s your handle?”

  “LuxDayTrader.”

  “Really? A Luxembourg day trader who now lives in Paris? You don’t think that’s identifiable as you? Are you an idiot?”

  So that’s a possibility: Luc was a plant, used to lure Dexter. In which case Luc would definitely not be an alibi. He would no longer even be findable.

  “Okay, anyone else?”

  “Julien.” Their
everyday waiter. A guy who’d probably be willing to lie for a high-tipping regular customer; another non-airtight alibi.

  “What about people you don’t know? Did you stop somewhere to buy water? Wave to a baker?”

  “Yes, there was an old man waiting at a street corner with me—just Bonjour, comment ça va, chitchat while we waited for the light. And a woman too.”

  “At the same light?” That would be an awfully friendly corner.

  “No, she was right after tennis ended at nine. I kind of crashed into her, at the park. Spilled her groceries everywhere. I helped her pick up, and I apologized, but…”

  “What?”

  “I got the sense that I’d seen her before.”

  He’d seen her before. “She attractive, Dexter?”

  He looks like he’s about to say no, but changes his mind. “Yes.”

  What does this mean? Two alibis, at either end of the hour when he played tennis in the Luxembourg Gardens? That’s not a coincidence. But there’s no way to find these alibis, they’re just strangers on streets, no connection to anything. They’re useless.

  “Why are you asking about this?”

  “Because you’re being framed, Dexter.”

  “Framed for what?”

  “What the hell do you think?”

  “But there’s no way…how could…?” He shakes his head. “Why would I kidnap someone I’m well known to hate? No one would believe I’d be that stupid.”

  It’s true. Not at a trial, with lawyers, a jury, judge. But at first glance, he looks too guilty not to investigate, and the investigation wouldn’t even need to get anywhere near trial to ruin their lives. That, Kate now realizes, is exactly the point: not jail, just ruin. An eye for an eye.

  “Who’s framing me?”

  Kate turns back to her husband. “You know damn well.”

  * * *

  “Bonjour?”

  “Hi, it’s Kate.”

  “Kate! We’re so looking forward to tonight.”