“I understand more than I can speak.”
“Your folks were from—where, again?”
“Chile,” Vasquez said. “My dad. My mom’s American, but her parents were from Argentina.”
“That’s useful to know.”
“For when Stillwater hires her,” Buchanan said.
“Yes,” Plowman answered. “The company has projects underway in a number of places where fluency in French and Spanish would be an asset.”
“Such as?”
“One thing at a time,” Plowman said. “Let’s get through tonight, first, and then you can worry about your next assignment.”
“And what’s that going to be,” Buchanan said, “another twenty K to walk someone to an elevator?”
“I doubt it’ll be anything so mundane,” Plowman said. “I also doubt it’ll pay as little as twenty thousand.”
“Look,” Vasquez started to say, but the host had returned with their water. Once he deposited their glasses on the table, he withdrew a pad and pen from his jacket pocket and took Buchanan’s order of crispy duck and Vasquez’s of steamed dumplings. After he had retrieved the menus and gone, Plowman turned to Vasquez and said, “You were saying?”
“It’s just—what Buchanan’s trying to say is, it’s a lot, you know? If you’d offered us, I don’t know, say five hundred bucks apiece to come here and play escort, that still would’ve been a lot, but it wouldn’t—I mean, twenty thousand dollars, plus the airfare, the hotel, the expense account. It seems too much for what you’re asking us to do. Can you understand that?”
Plowman shook his head yes. “I can. I can understand how strange it might appear to offer this kind of money for this length of service, but . . .” He raised his drink to his lips. When he lowered his arm, the glass was half-drained. “Mr. White is . . . to say he’s high value doesn’t begin to cover it. The guy’s been around—he’s been around. Talk about a font of information: the stuff this guy’s forgotten would be enough for a dozen careers. What he remembers will give whoever can get him to share it with them permanent tactical advantage.”
“No such thing,” Buchanan said. “No matter how much the guy says he knows—”
“Yes, yes,” Plowman held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Trust me. He’s high value.”
“But won’t the spooks—what’s Just-Call-Me-Bill have to say about this?” Vasquez said.
“Bill’s dead.”
Simultaneously, Buchanan said, “Huh,” and Vasquez, “What? How?”
“I don’t know. When my bosses green-lighted me for this, Bill was the first person I thought of. I wasn’t sure if he was still with the agency, so I did some checking around. I couldn’t find out much—goddamn spooks keep their mouths shut—but I was able to determine that Bill was dead. It sounded like it might’ve been that chopper crash in Helmand, but that’s a guess. To answer your question, Vasquez, Bill didn’t have a whole lot to say.”
“Shit,” Buchanan said.
“Okay,” Vasquez exhaled. “Okay. Was he the only one who knew about Mr. White?”
“I find it hard to believe he was,” Plowman said, “but thus far, no one’s nibbled at any of the bait I’ve left out. I’m surprised; I’ll admit it. But it makes our job that much simpler, so I’m not complaining.”
“All right,” Vasquez said, “but the money—”
His eyes alight, Plowman leaned forward. “To get my hands on Mr. White, I would have paid each of you ten times as much. That’s how important this operation is. Whatever we have to shell out now is nothing compared to what we’re going to gain from this guy.”
“Now you tell us,” Buchanan said.
Plowman smiled and relaxed back. “Well, the bean counters do appreciate it when you can control costs.” He turned to Vasquez. “Well? Have your concerns been addressed?”
“Hey,” Buchanan said, “I was the one asking the questions.”
“Please,” Plowman said. “I was in charge of you, remember? Whatever your virtues, Buchanan, original thought is not among them.”
“What about Mr. White?” Vasquez said. “Suppose he doesn’t want to come with you?”
“I don’t imagine he will,” Plowman said. “Nor do I expect him to be terribly interested in assisting us once he is in our custody. That’s okay.” Plowman picked up one of the chopsticks alongside his plate, turned it in his hand, and jabbed it into a dumpling. He lifted the dumpling to his mouth; momentarily, Vasquez pictured a giant bringing its teeth together on a human head. While he chewed, Plowman said, “To be honest, I hope the son of a bitch is feeling especially stubborn. Because of him, I lost everything that was good in my life. Because of that fucker, I did time in prison—fucking prison.” Plowman swallowed, speared another dumpling. “Believe me when I say, Mr. White and I have a lot of quality time coming.”
Beneath them, a half-dozen carp that had been floating lazily scattered.
—
V
Buchanan was all for finding Mr. White’s hotel and parking themselves in its lobby. “What?” Vasquez said. “Behind a couple of newspapers?” Stuck in traffic on what should have been the short way to the Concorde Opйra, where Mr. White had the junior suite, their cab was full of the reek of exhaust, the low rumble of the cars surrounding them.
“Sure, yeah, that’d work.”
“Jesus—and I’m the one who’s seen too many movies?”
“What?” Buchanan said.
“Number one, at this rate, it’ll be at least six before we get there. How many people sit around reading the day’s paper at night? The whole point of the news is, it’s new.”
“Maybe we’re on vacation.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll still stick out. And number two, even if the lobby’s full of tourists holding newspapers up in front of their faces, Plowman’s plan doesn’t kick in until eleven. You telling me no one’s going to notice the same two people sitting there, doing the same thing, for five hours? For all we know, Mr. White’ll see us on his way out and coming back.”
“Once again, Vasquez, you’re overthinking this. People don’t see what they don’t expect to see. Mr. White isn’t expecting us in the lobby of his plush hotel; ergo, he won’t notice us there.”
“Are you kidding? This isn’t people. This is Mr. White.”
“Get a grip. He eats, shits, and sleeps, same as you and me.”
For the briefest of instants, the window over Buchanan’s shoulder was full of the enormous face Vasquez had glimpsed (hallucinated) in the caves under the prison. Not for the first time, she was struck by the crudeness of the features, as if a sculptor had hurriedly struck out the approximation of a human visage on a piece of rock already formed to suggest it.
Taking her silence as further disagreement, Buchanan sighed and said, “All right. Tell you what: a big, tony hotel, there’s gotta be all kinds of stores around it, right? Long as we don’t go too far, we’ll do some shopping.”
“Fine,” Vasquez said. When Buchanan had settled back in his seat, she said, “So. You satisfied with Plowman’s answers?”
“Aw, no, not this again . . .”
“I’m just asking a question.”
“No, what you’re asking is called a leading question, as in, leading me to think that Plowman didn’t really say anything to us, and we don’t know anything more now than we did before our meeting.”
“You learned something from that?”
Buchanan nodded. “You bet I did. I learned that Plowman has a hard-on for Mr. White the size of your fucking Eiffel Tower, from which I deduce that anyone who helps him satisfy himself stands to benefit enormously.” As the cab lurched forward, Buchanan said, “Am I wrong?”
“No,” Vasquez said. “It’s—”
“What? What is it, now?”
“I don’t know.” She looked out her window at the cars creeping along beside them.