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by Genevieve Valentine

  Grace was quiet for a second. “Don’t you think she’s just trying to punish Argentina a little after how they voted on the environmental amendment? It would make sense. So would you, as replacement. You did do that tour of their new toy in Norway.”

  Daniel held his breath until it hurt before Martine said, “Yeah, I guess it’s because of the tour.”

  The song changed, and people applauded. It was an excuse to look over at the cloud of vapor smoke above Martine, and the way Grace had gone still, looking at the dance floor and not her friend, so when she spoke it seemed a less piercing question than it was.

  “What are you worried about?”

  Daniel wondered about the odds that Kate would be true to her word about cutting his signal when it mattered, and then thought about Suyana holding a knife in her hand and doing what no one else had been able to do for her, and the thing in her eyes that had shifted and shuttered when she realized she’d been so alone.

  By the time he was thinking of anything else, he’d already slid into the booth beside Grace, and they’d frozen the conversation to look at him, the combined force of their stares nearly enough to send him scrambling back out.

  “You should ask Kipa,” he said. “She’s the one getting late-night visits from Margot.”

  “Why on earth?” Grace asked, at the same time Martine said, “What the fuck’s your problem, On the Record?”

  “Not tonight,” he told Martine, hoping it was true. “And I don’t know why, but if Margot was going to see her late at night, I’d be curious, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s more than I’m worth to be curious,” said Martine. She sat back pointedly, turned her face to the dance floor, and hissed out a stream of smoke.

  Grace was still looking at him, and if it didn’t seem like she quite believed him, she looked as if she wanted to. “What would Margot even have as a hold over Kipa?”

  Don’t lie, he thought, even he knew better than to lie now, but there were true things he didn’t dare say. He settled on, “Whatever she had a year ago, against Suyana.”

  From Grace’s face, it was close enough to what she needed to hear. Absently she curled one hand into a fist, perfectly painted nails vanishing under her knuckles, as she slipped into the hundred-yard stare he knew by now was a Face running through their options and calculating odds.

  Martine was watching them sidelong, the tips of her fingers bloodless against her cigarette.

  “If Kipa’s begun to pull away from the public,” Grace said, “we’ll need to—”

  “You sure you’re off the record?”

  They both startled and looked at Martine. Daniel said, “I hope I am, but that’s up to somebody else’s kindness.”

  The song over their heads was thumping into his bones. Martine shook herself once, sequined dress moving like a fish, and looked at Grace.

  “In the car on the way back from the airport, after Norway, Margot was checking her tablet every few seconds, and I thought how funny it was—it was deep night, all the press from our visit was over. I figured she was looking for vanity mentions. But she checked over and over, for a long time, until she saw something and sat back and turned out the light.”

  Beside him, Grace had gone perfectly still. Martine, who was no longer looking at either of them, ground the cigarette onto the table like that could snuff it out.

  “When I woke up later that morning, I heard the UARC outpost had been destroyed and Suyana was in the wind for it, and then I forgot it as hard as I fucking could, because that means I sat on some hotel stairs drinking myself stupid while Margot, the chair of the goddamn IA, was looking the place over so she could tell somebody how to blow the other one up.”

  Chordata. Daniel couldn’t imagine the entire organization in Margot’s pocket, but he could see her convincing one or two people—Columbina maybe, maybe a mole in the UARC branch of Chordata—to do what they could, and report whatever possible. There had probably been enough desire to blow the place that anyone with information would have been of use. Maybe someone in Chordata had even admitted to Kipa the new IA recruit they’d scored. If Daniel was in Margot’s shoes, that would be what he came over unannounced at night to find out.

  The world had been a singular fool. The IA Central Committee didn’t have a head of intelligence these days—a sign of transparency, they’d said when the position was dissolved, a sign of international trust—but of course there was one. She’d just been good at her job.

  A beautiful plan, really. Have a mole or two anywhere there’s dissent. Make waves whenever you need someone to be swallowed. Everyone on the Chordata side probably thought they had acted for the best in all this. Even the moles might believe they were outsmarting the system. Everyone did, until they learned better; he remembered that.

  He needed to go—everything was falling apart—but he felt as heavy as Martine in her scales, as heavy as Grace, who was looking at the dance floor without seeing anything, with her hands pressed at the edge of the table.

  The music was a booming line that never stopped, and Martine’s shoe came to rest beside his shoe to keep him from falling over or from running, and they sat for a long time as if waiting for the truth to fall and crush them.

  × × × × × × ×

  He buzzed at the door of Bonnaire until someone tripped the lock, and took the cellar stairs two at a time.

  “What’s Margot going to do to her?”

  Kate looked up and over at Dev, who had startled and was looking back and forth between them. Then he turned to a computer that faced away, reached for headphones, and slapped them on with great deliberation.

  Kate handed him a data card. “Everyone she’s spoken to in the last two weeks,” she said. “No idea who might be your man. I hope you find him before he finds Suyana.”

  He slid it into his pocket, fought off a sense of déjà vu from the last time he had pictures in his pocket that he hadn’t wanted anyone to see. (That had been for Suyana too; people got caught up with her somehow, the way a slow flood could carry away whole houses before you noticed anything wrong.)

  “Did I have a camera malfunction last night?”

  Kate look back at her screen. “Seems like you did. But it looked like a boring night anyway; they went into the club, they came out again.”

  “Don’t suppose I get to know what made you change your mind about Li Zhao.”

  Kate flinched, set her jaw. Dev turned up his music so loudly it bled through his earphones, off-key and tinny.

  “I haven’t changed my mind about anything,” she said finally. “I’m giving you a story. We get headlines no matter what happens. What headline it is, I’m leaving to you, that’s all.”

  “Good luck,” said Dev, without looking over.

  After a little silence, Kate said, “Good luck.”

  When Daniel wrapped his hand around the data card, the edges stung the pads of his fingers, just like old times.

  18

  “Do you remember the time we went for pizza in New York?” Ethan folded his arms and glanced at her.

  At the far end of the table, Magnus and two of the Americans were going through contract negotiations for post-marriage obligations and benefits. Magnus was winning nearly 70 percent of his points, which meant the Americans didn’t expect to have to honor it. She wondered what they’d bring out when they wanted to break the engagement. It would have to be oblique; she was so rarely without Ethan it was impossible to pretend she’d been in a compromised position.

  “Of course I do,” she said. “You risked mushrooms. I was very proud.” It had been weeks ago, and she had wanted to make sure of him.

  Ethan said quietly, “I think that was the happiest I’ve been in a long time.”

  If she hadn’t already suspected him as a spy, this pointed nostalgia would have done it. She’d offer him lessons, if he was going to last long enough to need them.

  “I’m really glad we did,” she said instead. True enough.

  “No, she’s
entitled to that security beyond any limitation of tenure,” Magnus was saying. “If they both retire somewhere—”

  “Yes, of course, fine,” Harold said, making a note.

  Ethan said, “We could do it again.”

  She looked down the table, where Stevens was dutifully entering changes. Magnus was folding up his paper copy (always paper, she didn’t know how he came by so much paper), and a printer was whirring quietly in the office.

  “As soon as we sign this thing,” she said, making a binding international agreement sound as much like a chore as she could, “we’ll sneak out for gelato.”

  For a moment he hesitated, and she wondered if he was going to risk it and ask her to leave before they signed. It would be tipping his hand. He’d have to be sure of Margot, to do it.

  “Sounds perfect.” He took her hand, smiled one second too late.

  She smiled back, as calm as she had ever been, until the contract was in front of them and their signatures were on it.

  × × × × × × ×

  She sent Magnus a message in the ten seconds it took Ethan to put on his shoes.

  So Ethan tucked her under an awning and out of a mist of rain, and she grinned and brushed droplets off his coat as he looked at her with hollow eyes, and just as the first tourists were asking for photographs and the gelato was dripping down her hand in sticky ribbons, a sedan pulled up and two of Ethan’s bodyguards got out.

  “Oh, come on,” Ethan said as he reached for someone’s map, more resigned than put out. “Hi, yes of course, and your name?”

  “It’s fine,” Suyana said, smiling for a photo with a teenager who scampered back to her friends, raincoat fluttering behind her. “Thank you for the thought.”

  Ethan fought a scowl. “I just—I wanted one nice thing.”

  She looked at him sidelong, watched him sign the glorified glyph that passed for his autograph. (You never signed with anything that looked close to legal. Your real signature was the stamp of a country. The doodle was your celebrity.) His hands never shook. She envied him.

  “Guys, thanks so much, but I gotta go,” he was saying, and someone oohed as he reached for Suyana, and she tossed a laugh over her shoulder as he folded her into the comfort of his arm and walked away to scattered applause.

  “Smooth,” she said, aiming for a compliment that could sound earnest.

  But his face had closed up in some benign, untouchable way, and he said, “The car’s probably around the corner. We should get to dinner,” and prepped his smile for the American photographer who would be waiting as soon as they came into sight.

  × × × × × × ×

  They didn’t drop Suyana and Magnus off from the celebratory dinner until the photographer had gotten a shot of Suyana and Ethan kissing candidly in front of the silhouette of Notre-Dame, which took nearly twenty minutes thanks to the barely-there rain that clouded the lens and made the shot look more like an Impressionist painting than a sneaked classic.

  Magnus clutched his tablet in one hand and looked anywhere but at them, as if it all bored him beyond words. Ethan glanced up a few times too many, scanning the bank for someone he never saw.

  Suyana didn’t look around. Bo was wherever served him best, and no one else was of particular importance. Ethan’s lips were dry and warm, and with every kiss, she thought, This one’s the last.

  It wasn’t the last until midnight, and Ethan’s kiss as he helped her out of the car at her building was so distant he might as well already be on the phone with the enemy. It was so quietly decisive it took Suyana a moment on the sidewalk to get her breathing under control, as Magnus shook hands with a group of handlers she hated and wished them all farewell. (This one’s the last, she tried to think, but it didn’t hold; she knew it wasn’t true.)

  Ethan was already in the car and pulling away, and at this hour the traffic wouldn’t hold him long, by the time she’d committed to what had to be done and admitted no one could help her but Magnus.

  “Follow him, please.”

  Magnus raised an eyebrow and glanced at Ethan’s car. “What exactly do you think he’s doing at this hour?”

  “Meeting Margot.”

  She might have escaped suspicion if it had sounded more sarcastic, or more angry, or more studied. Instead, she’d been distracted by the car, and now Magnus was staring at her, less in shock from the suggestion than that she’d admitted it without an agenda.

  There was no recovery. She met his eye. “You’re losing him.”

  Magnus made some genteel wave with one hand without ever looking away from her. Because he was Magnus, a cab pulled up out of the smoke, ready and waiting.

  “Keep me posted on where he goes and who he sees,” she said. “Do nothing till you hear from me.”

  With an expression more sincere than he probably intended, he said, “Yes, sir,” and vanished into the cab and around the corner.

  And just like that, she was alone for the first time since the engagement.

  She started to look around for Daniel out of habit, before she remembered. Instead she put on a smile and waved at the two bodyguards who had lingered behind Ethan to look out for trouble. But she wasn’t their brief until the wedding, and they waved good night and slipped back into their sedan and headed home.

  Suyana breathed in and out for a moment, just to savor a breath that had no expectations in it. Then she wondered if she could risk a quick walk to the Seine—four streets, maybe five—and spend a moment at the water, looking over at the glimpse of Notre-Dame before she went back upstairs and waited for news. She’d just as soon have nice scenery for that. She’d just as soon be suspended a little longer in mutual pretend, like Ethan was a man she really cared for, and she was someone he could be loyal to.

  She was nearly in view of the river when she felt the man step out behind her, and her stomach soured as soon as she saw his shadow in the streetlight—some shadows you just knew had trouble behind them—but before she could reach the café two doors down or the open walk along the river, she felt the knife along her ribs.

  Whoever it was, he was enthusiastic; the blade pushed through her clothes and scraped her side, and she’d hissed at him before she’d registered the whole of the danger.

  “Stop moving,” the stranger said quietly, tightly, and she did. It wasn’t the voice of a professional. He was nervous, angry. He must be a believer—no telling of whom. Both Chordata and Margot recruited their killers from far afield. Very urbane.

  She breathed in slowly so that her voice would be a little steadier when she asked, “Who sent you?”

  Behind her, he actually froze. Then she could feel the blade skim the edge of the cut to her rib cage as he craned his neck to get a better look at her.

  “Jesus,” he said, halfway between respect and disbelief, “how many enemies do you have?”

  Through the fog of panic, she could feel her face smoothing into complacence, the affable expression you put on when you were trying to find common ground with someone at the start of a difficult negotiation. She had enough enemies that one would call her Suyana and the other Lachesis, and if this stranger would hold still and listen, she’d tell him everything as she waited for a name and her chance at the knife.

  “Let me give you a list,” she said, as professionally as she could. Her elbows had been trembling, but as she spoke they went perfectly still as if she’d given them some outside signal. (She couldn’t do anything from within, somehow.)

  “Sorry,” he said, cooler and calmer, “no time, l—”

  Then there was a crack, and something muffled and rotten and metallic as the knife hit the ground, and she waited for the pain that would tell her what tendon the man had severed, which way her head would fall as she bled out.

  But a moment passed and she could still breathe and she was still staring out at a sliver of the street, and she realized the man at her shoulder now wasn’t the one who’d been holding the knife.

  That one was on the ground, on his stomach, l
ooking up at her too directly from a neck that had been wrenched until it snapped. The other one was taller and silent, and though it took her two breaths to be able to turn around without shaking, he waited.

  It was Bo. His hands at his sides were still slightly spread open, ready for all comers.

  It fell into place quietly, the last tumbler in a lock: Daniel picking a fight with the camera pointed right at her, the substitution to a man Daniel had promised she could count on (she’d never questioned it, it was something he seemed to mean, and that happened so little with him), the man in a lump at her feet.

  “Good to see you again,” she said, for lack of anything else. Fall back on manners, Hakan had told her; diplomacy is manners more than kindness.

  The last time she’d really seen him was a year ago, when he was showing her pictures of the assassination attempt to prove Daniel was a liar. He’d been there when she stood above the body of the man she killed, but his wasn’t the camera that had concerned her then.

  Bo must have reasons. He owed Daniel or he loved Daniel or he’d seen more of Margot’s methods than he liked and thought this time was the same as the last. She set it aside for later.

  “You gave me a good picture,” he said, as if she’d asked.

  Absently—her tongue felt heavy and thick, the man had started a word that could have been Lachesis, and the knife was on the ground and she couldn’t look at it—she said, “I gave you three.”

  He looked at her as if she was a spider. One corner of his mouth turned up.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  Her heart was slamming into her ribs. Daniel had sent this man to look out for her when he knew the worst was coming. The dead man’s arm was across her foot; he was already going cold.

  She chased possibilities up and out the branches of the tree, but they were narrow. Margot had sent the killer—under the canopy of Chordata or as a personal errand, it didn’t matter. Either way, there was no more careful maneuvering left to her. That branch had been sliced off clean.

  Now it was strike or nothing. Grow so large no one could rip you from the foundation without collapsing the ground under their feet. The mudslide that consumed the forest.