City of Spies (19 page)

“You sure?” he said in a noncarrying tone. “Your ankle...”

“Is fine,” she said. “Come on!”

His smile lit up something inside her chest. “Listen,” he said.

Faint footsteps clicked at an angle she hadn't expected. She held her hand out to Devin, and he took it. This time he followed. They ran on tiptoes, nearly blind in the fog, toward the sound.

Tomb upon tomb flitted past. Once Pagan glimpsed the man's fedora, but then the vapor eddied around him, and he vanished. Within moments, she was lost. She had a vague feeling they were going in circles, as if the man in gray were a shark, circling as he looked for his prey. He didn't yet seem to know that the roles had been reversed.

Until Pagan nearly cannoned into a small statue of a dog and inhaled a gasp loud enough to bounce off the nearby stone gazebo festooned with cherubs.

“Oh, hell,” she whispered.

The footsteps had stopped.

Devin paused, seeming to hover in a murky batch of fog. “No, it's perfect actually,” he said. “But which way...”

The footsteps took off at a run, away from them.

“That way!” Pagan said, and they sprinted after.

They dashed between crucifixes and urns. Cats scattered through the fog before them. They bumped into the outer wall, too high and smooth to be easily scaled, and pelted alongside it, heading back toward the church.

“It's the only way out,” Devin said. “If the doors have been relocked, it might stop him long enough.”

But the doors into and out of Nuestra Señora del Pilar stood open. Pagan and Devin left them that way as they snaked through the bell tower and back out the front gate. The mist had thinned enough to see the lone figure of a man dashing over the groomed lawns, heading north.

Pagan didn't hesitate. How much more fun it was to be the pursuer than the pursued. Together she and Devin negotiated the fog, dodging trees and hopping small fences set up around flower beds, swooping around strolling couples, startling squirrels.

It was a fine summer night for a late supper in Buenos Aires. A perfect time for a nice Malbec with dinner and perhaps some dancing. Several dozen couples were doing exactly that as Pagan and Devin streamed past them in a picturesque plaza while an
orquestra tipica
ground out a sultry tango. It was exactly the sort of evening she'd had with Nicky back when she was drinking.

Now she was sober and tracking down a spy. Things had changed.

“We're dancing a different sort of dance,” Devin said breathlessly.

Pagan gave a quick laugh. “With a much faster pace!”

The fog thickened again on the far side of the plaza, and they had to slow down as they approached a wide road. Pagan's chest heaved as she scanned up and down. Which way could he have gone?

“Hold your breath for two seconds when I say go,” Devin said. “And listen.”

“Over the cars?” Pagan said. There weren't many engines rumbling up and down the avenue, but there was at least one every few seconds.

“Worth a try,” he said. “Ready?” Off her nod, he drew a very deep breath. “One, two, three—go.”

Pagan sucked in a last bit of air and held it, straining to hear something, anything, over the accordion music in the distance and the crackle of tires on pavement. She wiped impatiently at a trickle of sweat running down her temple.

A faint breeze shook the leaves, twirling the fog around like nebulous ribbons. A taxi growled by. As it drew away, familiar, barely audible treads ricocheted over the pavement.

Devin's head turned toward it the same moment hers did.

She released all her breath in a whoosh. “Across the street!”

He grabbed her hand, hesitated to let a truck rattle past, and they galloped across, earning a blared horn from a speeding sedan as it swerved around them.

Pagan waved at the driver and leaped up onto the sidewalk. More greenery here, lit with red, yellow and green lights bleeding through the murk from somewhere nearby. Muted carnival music floated over their heads.

“Italpark,” Devin said. “He's gone into Italpark.”

Before Pagan could ask what he meant, the mist parted to reveal the entrance to an amusement park lit by red and yellow arches of neon light with huge letters spelling out
Italpark
in loopy script above. Flying saucer–shaped bulbs of glowing red and blue decorated the gates, like friendly invaders from Mars. Beyond, towering loops of metal track and rumbling cars half full of screaming people announced a large roller coaster. Families with petulant children were exiting.

Only one person was entering. A tall man in a gray trench coat.

Devin was already at the ticket booth, shoving money at the weary woman inside, convincing her in excellent Spanish that they didn't mind if the park was closing in less than thirty minutes, and perhaps he could offer her a little something extra as a thank-you?

The woman perked up and seconds later they were pushing through the turnstile into the park against a tide of sticky, exhausted children and their sunburned parents.

“He's trying to lose us here,” Devin said, craning his neck to see over the heads of the departing crowds. “Not a bad plan.”

“Except he's the only one heading into the park instead of out,” Pagan said, pointing at the lone gray figure moving against the tide of brightly dressed park-goers.

“Not the only one!”

They wove past strollers and jumped over dropped ice-cream cones. One girl's eyes lit up with recognition when she saw Pagan, and she began to say something, to point...but then Pagan had flown past her.

The man in gray looked over his shoulder at them. It was too foggy, and he was too far away, for Pagan to distinguish his features, but the turn of his head, the posture of his body, gave her another jolt of unnamed recognition.

“So close,” she said, and darted forward.

“Pagan, wait!”

Devin ran to catch up as she zoomed around a ride featuring a large octopus, its arms spinning cups full of screaming kids. She was in time to see the man in gray leap the short line in front of the bumper cars. Pagan lost sight of him as he ran across the interior of the ride, ignoring the angry shouts of the operator.

“You go around,” Devin said, pushing her to the right. “I'll go left.”

Pagan pushed him back. “You go left. I'm going straight.”

Before he could catch her, she wormed past two young men smoking in line, leaped over the low railing and was running across the hard cement of the ride's floor.

A bumper car screeched past her, showering sparks from the pole scraping along the ceiling above. A very confused girl stared and screamed, heading right for Pagan, her hands frozen on the wheel. Pagan dodged the collision and stepped up on the hood of a young boy's car jammed against two others so she could vault over the far railing.

A haunted house ride to her left. Dumbo flying cars to her right, and a line of brightly colored gaming stalls straight ahead.

But the man in gray was nowhere to be seen.

A woman screamed, and the yelling of the bumper car operator increased markedly in volume as Devin leaped over the railing to land at her side. “With any luck, we'll all be arrested together,” he said.

“I don't see him,” she said. “Should we split up and look?”

His eyes narrowed with calculation. “All right. I'll find you again in two minutes. Where do you want to look?”

He was asking her instead of telling. He learned fast. “I'll go straight ahead, into the games. See you in a second.”

She was off before he could say another word. The brief glimpses she'd already had of the man had galvanized her. She had to see his face, remember his name, know she wasn't crazy.

The game booths were like ones she'd seen at parks and carnivals at home: throw the ball in the basket, shoot the gun at the moving target, race your miniature camel and jockey. Only the cartoons painted on the walls and counters were unfamiliar; the signs in Spanish and the brightly colored stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling were different enough to let her know she wasn't at the LA County Fair.

There weren't many people left playing, which made it easier to see that the man in gray wasn't one of the boys firing water pistols at the clown's nose, and he wasn't near the mother helping her crying daughter get cotton candy out of her hair.

Things were pinging, dinging and buzzing at lazy intervals, and several booths were closing their shutters. Pagan slowed and began checking the narrow spaces between stalls, making sure her man wasn't using the park's back alleys. She hunkered down to pull up a muddy cloth skirt ringing the bottom of a cubicle to see if he was crouching under there. But she found only half a moldering sandwich and the still-smiling decapitated head of a pink teddy bear.

She stood up, wiping her hands on her pants, and found him, his back to her, of course, inside a telephone booth.

Using the line of stalls as partial cover, she treaded closer.
Don't get too excited now.
It could be some other man in a gray trench coat.

But it was him. She'd know the line of those shoulders anywhere now. He was on the phone, glancing around him. His jaw moved as he spoke, but that's all she could see. She needed a better angle.

There weren't many people left in this area. A man in khaki shorts was examining the rubber duckies across the way, and a family was arguing as they walked together with the painful slowness of people who have done nothing but amble in circles for hours.

Pagan darted across the dusty walk between the line of games and weaseled her way in behind the family. The mother was rather wide, and the father rather tall, with three teenagers slumping along beside them. So Pagan pushed in as close as she could, matching their drowsy pace as she got closer to the phone booth.

The man in gray was hanging up the phone. Pagan allowed the family to move away as she focused on his face. He wiped his hand across his upper lip and tipped his hat back, looking away from her, to the left.

Any second now...

Something overhead creaked ominously. She looked up. The metal-framed canvas awning above her swayed.

A winch creaked. Pagan spun to see the man in the khaki shorts releasing a cable holding up the awning. It swung at her head, hard.

She threw herself at the ground. The edge grazed the slightly teased top of her hair and slammed into the wooden frame of the stall beside her. She stared at it for a second, disbelieving. If it had hit her, she'd be out cold. Or dead.

She twisted around to stare at the man in khaki shorts. He was two steps away, a shovel in both hands raised to strike her.

She rolled. The shovel smacked into the dirt where her head had been.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Stop!” Maybe Devin or someone would hear her.

Khaki Shorts Man squinted tiny hamster eyes at her and lifted the shovel with both hands again.

Pagan was on her feet. He lunged, lashing out with the shovel. But at the last second, she moved toward him instead of away.

The shovel hit dirt as Pagan slammed into Khaki Shorts' shoulder. He staggered sideways, and she booked it down the line of game stalls.

Khaki Shorts was only a pace behind.

He was fast for a short-legged, rat-faced man. Pagan vaulted over a counter into a booth featuring balloons and darts.

Moments before, its keeper had finished tying up a giant net full of stuffed animals to one corner of the ceiling.

“Oye!”
he barked.
“No mas!”

“No mas!”
Pagan agreed, ducking under his outstretched arm.

Khaki Shorts hurdled over the counter after her.

The gamekeeper stepped right into the man's face. “What the hell do you think you're doing!” he screamed in Spanish.

Khaki Shorts punched the gamekeeper in the solar plexus and stomped on his foot. The gamekeeper doubled over, hopping on his good foot, yelling in pain. Khaki Shorts shoved him to the ground and leaped for Pagan as she untied the net full of stuffed animals.

A fluffy rainbow avalanche bounced onto Khaki Shorts and the gamekeeper. The net appeared to be holding a year's supply of prizes or more, because they kept coming. The game guy, already injured, was knocked flat. But Khaki Shorts stayed up for several seconds, batting away purple kitty cats and blue turtles as he waded through the rising tide, until an orange carp the size of a Great Dane smacked him in the face. Down he went.

Pagan dashed out the other side of the stall before it filled up like a bowl of fuzzy water. Someone grabbed her arm.

She yelped, whipping it away.

“Pagan! Sorry—it's me!”

It was Devin, wonderfully familiar except for the blood trickling from a cut on his forehead.

“Are you all right?” he asked, staring at the sea of toys still pouring into the booth.

“Yes, are you?” She reached up. “You're bleeding.”

“A woman tried to hit me with a pipe,” he said. “Did someone...”

“Yes, and he's buried in there, so we better run before he digs out,” Pagan said. “This way.”

Devin jogged beside her toward the park's exit. “Our friend in gray has friends of his own. This must be their prearranged place to come when they're being followed.”

“I saw him in a phone booth,” Pagan said. “What happened to the one who attacked you?”

“Fast asleep under the roller coaster,” he said. “You
saw
the man in gray?”

“Not his face. His friend made sure of that.”

“Damn it,” Devin said. “With that kind of help, he's got to be a professional. And now we've lost him.”

“A professional—working for whom?” Pagan asked. “And how could I know him?”

They'd reached the turnstiles at the exit. Devin let her go out first, and they were immersed again in the fog. Their quarry was nowhere to be seen.

“Do you think they'll come after us again?” she asked. They crossed the street, moving once more across the shrouded plaza back toward the elegant apartment buildings of Recoleta.