City of Spies (11 page)

As Dieter craned his neck and tried to follow Mercedes, Pagan darted through the door and into the kitchen once more. Devin had her by the elbow, and they hustled past several men in aprons, who gave them a nod, and out a narrow door to an alley and the cool evening air.

The musicians went one way, merging into the dark, and Devin steered Pagan the other way, back toward the front of the café.

Mercedes was waiting for them in a dark niche. Just around the corner, by the front door, Dieter was yelling at his friends. Something about
indios
and invasion and revenge.

Pagan went right to Mercedes's side. “You were amazing.”

Mercedes shrank into her. She was trembling. “Get me out of here,” she said. “Before I kill him.”

CHAPTER NINE

San Telmo, La Boca and Recoleta, Buenos
Aires,
January 10, 1962

PLANEO

Pivot, glide. May occur when the man stops the woman in midstride.

Men and women tangoed in tight circles through the golden squares of light shining through the windows of the Plaza Dorrego Café, while others leaned forward over tiny tables, holding hands. Trails of cigarette smoke wafted up through the lamplight to evanesce in the faint glow of the waxing crescent moon.

Pagan hustled Mercedes quickly over the red-brown bricks of the wide-open plaza toward the taxis waiting on the other side. The brisk block-long walk had begun to alleviate Mercedes's shivering rage.

“How did you know what to do?” Pagan asked Mercedes. “Somehow you did exactly the right thing.”

“It's like a dance, fighting,” Mercedes said. “You have to get to know your partner. I knew him the moment I saw him, but he had no idea what to make of me.”

“Those musicians would've gotten a bad beating if you hadn't stepped in,” Pagan said. “That was kind of heroic.”

Mercedes looked over at the dancing couples moving sinuously to the music, at the men and women laughing together over drinks. “No, it was necessary,” she said.

Pagan knew exactly what she meant.

She glanced over her shoulder. A number of people were leaving the café at the same time, and the plaza itself had more than one café open into the wee hours. But she saw no one in particular tailing them. Devin had followed them out of the café for half a block before he cast them one last glance and got into a black car with a rounded white top.

But that didn't mean the man in gray wasn't following her tonight.

Mercedes let herself into the backseat of a cab and said, “Alvear Palace Hotel,” as Pagan got in and slammed the door.

“Can we go south a few blocks first, though?” Pagan asked. Off Mercedes's weary look, she added in a low voice, “I want to see if anyone's following me. It won't take long.”

Mercedes took a deep breath. “Okay.” She leaned forward and said in Spanish, “A brief tour of La Boca, please. Perhaps some of the most colorful buildings?”

The driver, a lanky older man with a floppy mustache and a drowsy air, cast a puzzled glance at her via the rearview mirror. “At night?”

Pagan threw some pesos onto the seat next to him. “Yes, please. And I might ask you to suddenly speed up, or turn, or stop. Is that all right?”

The man's drooping eyelids flew open at the money. He scooped up the pesos with one hand and stuffed them in his pockets. “Of course,
señoritas
. Whatever you want.” He turned left, then right down a narrow street, and they rattled down tiny streets between darkened houses for a few blocks. Pagan kept glancing behind them.

A pair of headlights appeared, thirty yards back. They passed a park on their right. Their own headlights splashed up against the buildings, revealing bright walls of banana yellow, leafy green, royal purple.

“Turn left when you can, please,” Pagan said.

The driver shrugged.
“Sí, senorita.”
He turned left down a narrower street.

“You're squeezing too hard,” Mercedes said in a low tone.

Pagan realized she'd grabbed her friend by the arm in a death grip. “Sorry,” she said, letting go.

The headlights behind them reappeared.

Pagan squinted. “Is that car black with a white roof?”

Mercedes swiveled around to look. “No. It's blue.”

Pagan shot her a look. “It's not Devin, then.” To the driver: “Turn left again. Let's go back north.”

“Sure,” he said, glancing nervously in his rearview mirror, and slowed down to turn left into a street that was little more than an alley.

By the time they'd traveled two blocks, the same headlights were behind them again. For Pagan that confirmed it—they were still being followed.

She rested her chin on the back of the seat, staring out the back window, studying the car. “Who is it? And why?”

“Do you think it's the man in gray?” asked Mercedes.

Pagan shrugged. “And if so, who is he? I need to see his face, so I'll recognize him again if you're not around.” She turned to the driver. “Speed up a bit—let's get closer to the hotel first.”

“How are you going to see his face?” Mercedes asked as the cab picked up speed. “With the car headlights shining in our eyes, he's nothing but a silhouette.”

“I'll have to get another angle on him.” Leaning over the front seat, Pagan said to the driver, “Let me know when we're maybe seven or eight blocks from the hotel, please.”

“You're going to hop out once we're close to the hotel?” Mercedes asked.

Pagan grinned at her, skin prickling with excitement. “Exactly.”

“You still might not get a good look at him.”

“Or I might,” Pagan said.

It was after midnight. The broader avenues were dotted with occasional taxis picking up late-night revelers, but the smaller streets were deserted. That made it easy to tell when their shadow caught up with them again, which he did within a few seconds.

“We're about eight blocks from the hotel now,
señorita
,” the cab driver said. “Maybe seven.”

“Great. After I finish speaking, I want you to turn right and stop quickly after the turn. I'll get out, and then you gun it and keep going, as if I'd never left the car. Take Mercedes to the hotel.” She turned to Mercedes. “I'll meet you there.”

Mercedes was regarding her with a bemused look. “You're going to walk seven blocks to the hotel—in those shoes?”

“It'll be more like five blocks by the time we turn.”

“Lista, señorita?”
the driver said, motioning toward an upcoming intersection.

“Ready,” Pagan said, feet primed underneath her, fingers clutching the door handle.

The driver had gotten into the spirit of the evening. He didn't angle the taxi as if it was going to turn, but waited until the last possible minute before yanking the wheel over hard without braking. Pagan and Mercedes slid across the backseat from the force of it, then jerked forward as he turned the corner and slammed on the brakes.

Dislodged from her ready position, Pagan scrambled out of the cab much less gracefully than she'd planned, turned her ankle and hobbled across the sidewalk to a dark doorway, panting.

She had time to see Mercedes shut the door and wave to her before the taxi took off again, tires squealing like sneakers on a clean floor.

Pagan held her breath and waited, willing the blue car to zip around the corner and hover long enough in a slant of dim streetlight so she could see the man inside.

The waiting went on, the seconds dragging out. Had they somehow lost him? Or had time slowed down because she was waiting?

She heard the rumble of a car's engine before she saw it. The sound confused her, then she saw the submarine shape of the vehicle outlined against the glowing windows across the street.

He'd turned the headlights off.

She'd been sure the car was following her, but this confirmation sent goose bumps down her arms. He wanted to remain hidden and had suspected something when the taxi turned so suddenly, so he'd slowed down and turned off his lights, coasting down the street.

Was he scanning the street? Had he spotted her? What did he
want
?

The car floated down the street. Without the lights from the dashboard, she could get no sense of his coloring or any real detail of his face or clothing. Still, as the car came even with her, the cut of his profile was delineated before her like a cameo. A high forehead, long nose, firm mouth, strong chin.

A proud profile.

A familiar face.

She knew him. Somehow. She'd seen him before. But where?

Pagan almost cried out in frustration as his car kept going. If she had a few more moments more to stare at him, maybe she'd figure out who he was. But she didn't have those moments. As it turned left, the blue car accelerated, and the strangely memorable but nameless profile vanished from sight.

She didn't know how long she stood there, staring after him before the breeze made her shiver. She needed to get back to the hotel before Mercedes started worrying. She was so deep in thought that she barely noticed how her ankle smarted as she limped down the dark, deserted sidewalk. She was riffling through her memory, going through every person she'd seen recently, trying to place that face.

She turned left, pretty sure that was the correct direction, and took no note of the deserted courtyard to her left until a tall, slender form stepped out of it and said, “I told you I had this situation covered.”

Pagan leaped nearly three feet in the air and came down with her heart in her throat. “Damn you!” she said. “How the hell did you find me?”

It was Devin Black, of course, looking far too calm and debonair to be hanging out in the shadows of Buenos Aires after midnight.

“But no,” Devin continued as if she hadn't cursed him. “You had to pull an amateur's stunt to see who was following you. What if he'd spotted you?”

“But he didn't,” Pagan said, and kept walking doggedly toward the hotel, trying not to let him see her limp. “Instead, I saw him.”

Devin glided over to walk by her side, on the outside of the sidewalk, like a gentleman. “So you must also have noticed the type of car he was driving.”

Pagan thought hard. “Blue, a sedan. No one else inside it. Makes and models aren't my specialty.”

“And the license plate?”

She tried not to glower at him and said nothing.

“No? Then you must've noticed it was a rental car, registered to a local business not far off the Avenida de Mayo.”

“What I noticed,” she said, “is that he looked familiar.”

That jolted Devin out of his smug “I'm a better spy than you” lecture. He took her by the elbow and pulled her into a tiny shadowed alley, scaring off a couple of warring cats. There was no one else in sight.

“Who was it?” His dark eyes glittered in the faint light from the street.

She shook her head. “I can't put a name to the face. All I saw was the profile, but I know him. From somewhere, not that long ago. It'll come to me. If I hadn't pulled my amateur stunt, we never would've known that.”

Her caustic tone slid right off him as he pondered what she'd said. “Where could you possibly know him from? Did you spot him following you back in Los Angeles, perhaps?”

She hadn't actually seen the face of anyone following her in Los Angeles. “There was that Plymouth that might have been following me and Thomas after the party at Frank's,” she said. “But I couldn't see who was in it. We thought it might've been you.”

“Not me,” he said, dead serious. “Did they follow you all the way home?”

“Almost. To Laurel Canyon, but not up my street from there,” she said. “When we got home, Mercedes said someone had been lurking in our backyard, keeping an eye on the house.”

“So it's possible the same person or people have been following you since that night. Or even earlier.”

His words sent a chill through her. “So it wasn't one of your men?”

He shook his head. “I'll have to look into it. Now.” His gaze traveled down her body, stopping at her ankle. “How badly does it hurt?”

“Does what hurt?” she asked, not wanting to admit she'd messed up her exit from the cab. “I'm fine.”

“You're an excellent liar,” he said, hunkering down in front of her, and put one warm firm hand on her calf, lifting her foot from the ground. “But you're limping.”

His fingers probed the bones above her heel. “Ow!” she said when he hit a tender spot. “It'll be fine if you don't make it worse.”

“A sprain,” he said, standing up. “Not a bad one, but still a sprain. And you have a dance scene to shoot tomorrow.”

“I could outdance Tony Perry with both legs broken,” Pagan said. “Don't worry about it.”

“We need you to keep shooting the movie to maintain your cover story,” he said. “So we can't risk further injury.” And before she could stop him, he swept her up in his arms.

“What...?” She automatically put both arms around his neck. The strong arms firmly supporting her beneath her shoulders and knees brought back the physical memory of the only other time he'd held her like this, before she fainted at the end of her adventure in East Berlin.

Which automatically led to the memory of waking up next to him, fully dressed, in bed. Her body temperature rose a few degrees. “I'm okay, really.”

“I'd like to keep you that way,” he said. Their faces were very close. His warm strength enveloped her and the world spun.

She put her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes to stop the vertigo. “I'm sorry. Just dizzy.” She couldn't tell him that it was his fault for making her that way.

His arms tightened around her, pressing her closer. She could feel the slightly sped-up beat of his heart, smell his smooth clean skin. “It's been a long day for you. And you've done so well,” he said.

“Have I?” She lifted her head to find his mouth inches from hers.

His lips parted. She slid one hand up the back of his strong neck, wanting to bury her fingers in his hair, unable to think of anything but pressing her mouth to his, of his hands moving over her.

As if snapping out of a dream, he pulled his head back and stepped out of the alley still carrying her, moving down the street. “My car's very close,” he said. “I'll drive you the rest of the way.”

She settled her head on his shoulder again, pressing her forehead into his neck so she could breathe him in. “My hero.”

A laugh rumbled out of his chest. “Mercedes was the hero tonight.”

Pagan popped her head up, thinking. “Do you know any astronomers here in BA?”