That she had momentarily hallucinated, Vasquez had not once doubted. Things with Mr. White already had raced past what even Just-Call-Me-Bill had shown them, and however effective his methods, Vasquez was afraid that she—that all of them had finally gone too far, crossed over into truly bad territory. Combined with a mild claustrophobia, it had caused her to fill the dark space with a nightmare. However reasonable that explanation, the shape with which her mind had replaced Mr. White had plagued her. Had she seen the devil stepping forward on his goat’s feet, one red hand using his pitchfork to balance himself, it would have made more sense than that giant form. It was as if her subconscious was telling her more about Mr. White than she understood. Prior to that trip, Vasquez had not been at ease around the man who never seemed to speak so much as to have spoken, so that you knew what he’d said even though you couldn’t remember hearing him saying it. After, she gave him a still-wider berth.
Ahead, the Eiffel Tower swept up into the sky. Vasquez had seen it from a distance, at different points along her and Buchanan’s journey from their hotel toward the Seine, but the closer she drew to it, the less real it seemed. It was as if the very solidity of the beams and girders weaving together were evidence of their falseness. I am seeing the Eiffel Tower, she told herself. I am actually looking at the goddamn Eiffel Tower.
“Here you are,” Buchanan said. “Happy?”
“Something like that.”
The great square under the tower was full of tourists—from the sound of it, the majority of them groups of Americans and Italians. Nervous men wearing untucked shirts over their jeans flitted from group to group—street vendors, Vasquez realized, each one carrying an oversized ring strung with metal replicas of the tower. A pair of gendarmes, their hands draped over the machine guns slung high on their chests, let their eyes roam the crowd while they carried on a conversation. In front of each of the tower’s legs, lines of people waiting for the chance to ascend it doubled and redoubled back on themselves, enormous fans misting water over them. Taking Buchanan’s arm, Vasquez steered them toward the nearest fan. Eyebrows raised, he tilted his head toward her.
“Ambient noise,” she said.
“Whatever.”
Once they were close enough to the fan’s propeller drone, Vasquez leaned into Buchanan. “Go with this,” she said.
“You’re the boss.” Buchanan gazed up, a man debating whether he wanted to climb that high.
“I’ve been thinking,” Vasquez said. “Plowman’s plan is shit.”
“Oh?” He pointed at the tower’s first level, three hundred feet above.
Nodding, Vasquez said, “We approach Mr. White, and he’s just going to agree to come with us to the elevator.”
Buchanan dropped his hand. “Well, we do have our . . . persuaders. How do you like that? Was it cryptic enough? Or should I have said guns?”
Vasquez smiled as if Buchanan had uttered an endearing remark. “You really think Mr. White is going to be impressed by a pair of .22s?”
“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?”