“A bullet’s a bullet. Besides,” Buchanan returned her smile, “isn’t the plan for us not to have to use the guns? Aren’t we relying on him remembering us?”
“It’s not like we were BFFs. If it were me, and I wanted the guy, and I had access to Stillwater’s resources, I wouldn’t be wasting my time on a couple of convicted criminals. I’d put together a team and go get him. Besides, twenty grand apiece for catching up to someone outside his hotel room, passing a couple of words with him, then escorting him to an elevator: tell me that doesn’t sound too good to be true.”
“You know the way these big companies work: they’re all about throwing money around. Your problem is, you’re still thinking like a soldier.”
“Even so, why spend it on us?”
“Maybe Plowman feels bad about everything. Maybe this is his way of making it up to us.”
“Plowman? Seriously?”
Buchanan shook his head. “This isn’t that complicated.”
Vasquez closed her eyes. “Humor me.” She leaned her head against Buchanan’s chest.
“What have I been doing?”
“We’re a feint. While we’re distracting Mr. White, Plowman’s up to something else.”
“Like?”
“Maybe Mr. White has something in his room; maybe we’re occupying him while Plowman’s retrieving it.”
“You know there are easier ways for Plowman to steal something.”
“Maybe we’re keeping Mr. White in place so Plowman can pull a hit on him.”
“Again, there are simpler ways to do that that would have nothing to do with us. You knock on the guy’s door, he opens it, pow.”
“What if we’re supposed to get caught in the crossfire?”
“You bring us all the way here just to kill us?”
“Didn’t you say big companies like to spend money?”
“But why take us out in the first place?”
Vasquez raised her head and opened her eyes. “How many of the people who knew Mr. White are still in circulation?”
“There’s Just-Call-Me-Bill—”
“You think. He’s CIA. We don’t know what happened to him.”
“Okay. There’s you, me, Plowman—”
“Go on.”
Buchanan paused, reviewing, Vasquez knew, the fates of the three other guards who’d assisted Mr. White with his work in the Closet. Long before news had broken about Mahbub Ali’s death, Lavalle had sat on the edge of his bunk, placed his gun in his mouth, and squeezed the trigger. Then, when the shit storm had started, Maxwell, on patrol, had been stabbed in the neck by an insurgent who’d targeted only him. Finally, in the holding cell awaiting his court-martial, Ruiz had taken advantage of a lapse in his jailers’ attention to strip off his pants, twist them into a rope, and hang himself from the top bunk of his cell’s bunkbed. His guards had cut him down in time to save his life, but Ruiz had deprived his brain of oxygen for sufficient time to leave him a vegetable. When Buchanan spoke, he said, “Coincidence.”
“Or conspiracy.”
“Goddamn it.” Buchanan pulled free of Vasquez, and headed for the long, rectangular park that stretched behind the tower, speed walking. His legs were sufficiently long that she had to jog to catch up to him. Buchanan did not slacken his pace, continuing his straight line up the middle of the park, through the midst of bemused picnickers. “Jesus Christ,” Vasquez called, “will you slow down?”
He would not. Heedless of oncoming traffic, Buchanan led her across a pair of roads that traversed the park. Horns blaring, tires screaming, cars swerved around them. At this rate, Vasquez thought, Plowman’s motives won’t matter. Once they were safely on the grass again, she sped up until she was beside him, then reached high on the underside of Buchanan’s right arm, not far from the armpit, and pinched as hard as she could.
“Ow! Shit!” Yanking his arm up and away, Buchanan stopped. Rubbing his skin, he said, “What the hell, Vasquez?”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Walking. What did it look like?”
“Running away.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you, you candy-ass pussy.”
Buchanan’s eyes flared.
“I’m trying to work this shit out so we can stay alive. You’re so concerned about seeing your son, maybe you’d want to help me.”
“Why are you doing this?” Buchanan said. “Why are you fucking with my head? Why are you trying to fuck this up?”
“I’m—”
“There’s nothing to work out. We’ve got a job to do; we do it; we get the rest of our money. We do the job well, there’s a chance Stillwater’ll add us to their payroll. That happens—I’m making that kind of money—I hire myself a pit bull of a lawyer and sic him on fucking Heidi. You want to live in goddamn Paris, you can eat a croissant for breakfast every morning.”
“You honestly believe that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Vasquez held his gaze, but who was she kidding? She could count on one finger the number of stare downs she’d won. Her arms, legs, everything felt suddenly, incredibly heavy. She looked at her watch. “Come on,” she said, starting in the direction of the Avenue de la Bourdonnais. “We can catch a cab.”
—
III
Plowman had insisted they meet him at an airport cafй before they set foot outside de Gaulle. At the end of those ten minutes, which had consisted of Plowman asking details of their flight and instructing them how to take the RUR to the Metro to the stop nearest their hotel, he had passed Vasquez a card for a restaurant, where, he had said, the three of them would reconvene at 3:00 p.m. local time to review the evening’s plans. Vasquez had been relieved to see Plowman seated at a table outside the cafй. Despite the ten thousand dollars gathering interest in her checking account, the plane ticket that had been FedExed to her apartment, followed by the receipt for four nights’ stay at the Hфtel Resnais, she had been unable to shake the sense that none of this was as it appeared, that it was the setup to an elaborate joke whose punch line would come at her expense. Plowman’s solid form, dressed in a black suit whose tailored lines announced the upward shift in his pay grade, had confirmed that everything he had told her the afternoon he had sought her out at Andersen’s farm had been true.
Or true enough to quiet momentarily the misgivings that had whispered ever louder in her ears the last two weeks, to the point that she had held her cell open in her left hand, the piece of paper with Plowman’s number on it in her right, ready to call him and say she was out, he could have his money back, she hadn’t spent any of it. During the long, hot train ride from the airport to the Metro station, when Buchanan had complained about Plowman not letting them out of his sight, treating them like goddamn kids, Vasquez had found an explanation on her lips. It’s probably the first time he’s run an operation like this, she had said. He wants to be sure he dots all his i’s and crosses all his t’s. Buchanan had harrumphed, but it was true: Plowman obsessed over the minutiae; it was one of the reasons he’d been in charge of their detail at the prison. Until the shit had buried the fan, that attentiveness had seemed to forecast his steady climb up the chain of command. At his court-martial, however, his enthusiasm for exact strikes on prisoner nerve clusters, his precision in placing arm restraints so that a prisoner’s shoulders would not dislocate when he was hoisted off the floor by his bonds, and his speed in obtaining the various surgical and dental instruments Just-Call-Me-Bill requested had been counted liabilities rather than assets, and he had been the only one of their group to serve substantial time at Leavenworth—ten months.
Still, the Walther that Vasquez had requested had been waiting where Plowman had promised it would be, wrapped with an extra clip in a waterproof bag secured inside the tank of her hotel room’s toilet. A thorough inspection had reassured her that all was in order with the gun, its ammunition. If he were setting her up, would Plowman have wanted to arm her? Her proficiency at the target range had been well known, and while she hadn’t touched a gun since her discharge, she had no doubts of her ability. Tucked within the back of her jeans, draped by her blouse, the pistol was easily accessible.