Authors: Nina Berry
“I don't think they wanted us dead, just to stop us from following their man,” he said.
“Listen,” she said, and abruptly slowed their pace.
The echoes of their footsteps were a half second behind in slowing along with them.
“You learn fast,” Devin said.
“I'd bet a million dollars I don't have it's the man in gray again,” Pagan said. “He's relentless.”
Their eyes met. Devin raised his eyebrows in a question.
She raised hers along with a slow smile in reply.
He took her hand. “You sure? I could take you back to the hotel and...”
“He's my tail,” she said. “And I want to keep learning how this works.”
He nodded shortly, his eyes traveling up and down her body, still clad in practical capri pants, white shirt tied at the waist and white Keds. “At least you're not in heels. Lesson one, always wear shoes you can run in.”
“Oh, I can run in heels,” she said.
They headed south instead of toward her hotel. Devin had something in mind. “Lesson two,” he said as they crossed back in the general direction of Italpark, “try to go somewhere you find familiar that will be confusing for your followers.”
She considered this. “Well, I'm very familiar with my hotel suite, and...that's about it.”
“In lieu of that.” He allowed a smile into his dark eyes and reached for her hand. “Find someone who knows the location better than you do, and have them help you out.”
“You
are
useful,” she said.
They rounded the south end of darkening Italpark. Not fifty yards ahead, a freight train rumbled down some tracks. Its front lights were the only illumination, save for a few safety lights along the tracks.
“Lesson three,” he said, “stay in well-populated, crowded places. Don't turn down empty alleys or run through deserted rail yards.”
He pushed through an unchained gate onto the rock-strewn dirt of a railroad yard. To their right the tracks led to more lights and a large building that was probably the terminal station. Ahead and to the left lay nothing but blackness.
“Welcome to one of Buenos Aires' finest rail yards.” Devin pointed to the first set of tracks as he stepped over them. Behind them, the footsteps were getting closer. “Shall we pick up some speed?”
He ran a step or two ahead of her in a gentlemanly fashion, making sure she knew when a track or other obstacle was about to appear ahead of her. This was handier than she liked to admit, because it was shockingly dark and the place was littered with large rocks.
The man behind them had no such arrangement. At first he was gaining on them. But halfway across he tripped and fell over something with a scrape.
That gave them an extra forty yards, enough to find a hole in the fence on the other side of the rail yard, get them down an embankment and into a warren of brick buildings.
Here the darkness was nearly complete. The brand-new moon hadn't shown up yet, and when it did, the clouds and fog would keep its light at bay.
“Welcome to Villa 31,” Devin said, keeping his voice low. “Under no circumstances are you to leave my side while we are here.”
Pagan was about to give him a smart retort, but they passed by three men whispering and exchanging something in the shadows she was glad she couldn't see. They cast narrow glances at Pagan and Devin until they flitted past.
They weren't in the Argentina of broad, tree-lined avenues and gracious Parisian-style apartments anymore. The hand-built ramshackle buildings had graffiti-covered brick walls and roofs of corrugated tin. Trash crawling with rats littered the dirt path between buildings, and a stomach-churning smell of stagnant sewage and fresh urine kept wafting up from disgusting holes in the ground or through irregular doorways.
Without any source of light but what spilled weakly through the occasional door frame, they slowed to a walk. There weren't a lot of windows here. Many of the doorways were shrouded by tarps, or reinforced with broken-off pipes and uneven strips of steel.
“Who lives here?” Pagan whispered.
“The poor, the marginalized. You could call it a shantytown, but it's been here for over thirty years so it's become more permanent than that,” Devin said. “It started when immigrants from Paraguay and Uruguay weren't welcomed in the nicer areas, or couldn't afford them. Now their children's children are growing up here.”
Pagan shied away from a fat shape, then laughed when a trace of light revealed it to be a giant cardboard ice cream cone, advertising
helado
for sale. “So this place has ice-cream shops, but it's so dangerous, I can't leave your side.”
“People outside Villa 31 think all the residents are criminals and thieves,” Devin said. “But many are bus drivers and construction workers and owners of ice-cream shops. But after dark...”
“You're more prone to run into the criminals,” Pagan finished for him.
“One writer called it a
villa miseria
, but the locals gave them all numbers. This is Villa 31, or sometimes the residents call it Villa Esperanza.”
“Hopeville,” said Pagan. “They haven't lost their sense of humor.”
“No sanitation services, no electricity and no running water but what the residents fix up for themselves. Don't touch any wires you might come across. They hook themselves into the grid illegally where they can, but it's not exactly reliable.”
Pagan caught a whiff of campfire smoke. That must be how some of the residents kept warm on cool nights like this, or how they cooked their meals. She jumped over a pile of garbage and risked a look back. Her eyes were adjusting to the lack of streetlights, but the darkness was too thick to allow her to see how close their pursuer was.
“We have bad neighborhoods in Los Angeles, too,” she said. “But at least they get city services.”
They passed an open door with firelight casting writhing shadows on the ground outside. Inside, two guitars competed in a sparkling, rigorous duel. Pagan risked a glance through the door and saw two seated, mustached men playing the instruments while another in a sort of cowboy hat, boots and puffy pants tucked in at the knee clicked his boot heels in a vigorous, demanding tap dance.
“Gauchos,” Devin said. “Argentine cowboys.”
Pagan watched them for another moment. “That dancer would make a better costar than Tony Perry.”
The narrow passage between brick buildings had widened into a broader expanse with a few poles and odd-shaped structures planted in the middle. As they passed, she could see tall swings, an abandoned child's red wagon and a jungle gym constructed from sturdy pipe. Someone had put quite a lot of work into a homemade children's playground.
Behind them, footsteps clicked, perfectly in time with their own.
“He's there,” Pagan said.
“Let's see if we can get him to show you his face,” Devin said, letting go of her hand. “Grab that wagon for me, will you?”
They were on the other side of the playground now, approaching a lopsided three-story building with a white cross painted on the front door and a battered but recognizable wooden statue of the Virgin Mary holding a glowing oil lamp out front. She was nearly as tall as Pagan.
“You'll help us do a good deed, won't you,
Madre
?” Devin asked the statue as he grabbed it around the waist, dragging it toward another murky opening between buildings. Pagan wheeled the wagon after him as he shuffled into a courtyard darker than the cemetery crypts.
“In the corner,” Devin said shortly, conserving breath. Pagan rattled the wagon over to the darkest corner of the courtyard. Devin followed, setting Mary down carefully onto the wagon. Her oil lamp swayed, sending their shadows crawling up the walls like monstrous spiders.
“Wait by the entrance to the courtyard,” he said. “Keep your eyes peeled, and when I tell you to run...”
“I run!” she said. She galloped over to the eerily lit entrance to the courtyard and flattened against the wall beside it. She nearly knocked over a shovel, and sent a nest of cockroaches squirming in all directions. Pagan had never been one to squeal and bolt at the sight of a bug or a mouse, but that was enough to make her grunt and grab the shovel in case any of them came closer.
The wagon squeaked as Devin got it into position. The Virgin's silhouette was cast larger than life-size behind her by the lamp. Devin took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. Then he removed the lantern from her hand, and placed it at her feet.
The shadow loomed larger now, with more manly shoulders. Seized with an idea, Pagan bolted back over to him and handed him the shovel. “My prayers go out to Our Lady of the Spear,” she said.
He took the shovel thoughtfully. The light from the oil lamp, striking his face from below, sent diabolical shadows up from his eyebrows. “Or perhaps Our Lady of the Spar,” he said. “Good thinking. Now get back there!”
She hurried back to her hiding spot, watching as he laid the shovel horizontally across the Virgin's hands, yanked his fine leather belt from its loops and used it to secure the shovel athwart the Virgin's waist. The shadows from it swept outward, so that the Virgin appeared to be some knight of old, brandishing an antique weapon in each hand.
Devin crouched behind his creation. At the same moment footsteps approached the courtyard. They slowed and went silent. A cockroach crawled up the wall near her ear, and Pagan fought the urge to scream and smack it. She should have kept that damned shovel.
At first the man in gray was nothing but a moving spot in the blackness. Then he stepped into the weak light from the oil lamp. He was holding a gun.
His eyes were as gray as his trench coat, and steely. His nose was hawk-like, his chin strong, with what could have been a charming dimple between it and his full lower lip. He would've been handsome but for the coldness in his gaze.
And then she remembered.
The cute one. The relentless one.
Alaric Vogel.
The man in gray was the East German soldier who'd nearly killed her the night the Berlin Wall went up. He'd been a grunt then, unspooling wire along the border at 1:00 a.m., when she'd stolen his gun, made a fool of him, gotten her friends across the border and then run away. He'd chased her for miles.
The last time Pagan had seen him, five months ago, he'd been lying unconscious at her feet after she knocked him out using a bronze bust of Karl Marx. She'd looked at his identification card and memorized his name. Alaric Vogel.
The cool night air that had seemed refreshing after all her exertion was now clammy, cold. Why the hell was Alaric Vogel following her?
A terrifying rattle erupted from the looming shadow in the courtyard, and Mary trundled forward, brandishing her weapons. Devin was invisible behind her in shadow. Pagan was positioned perfectly to see Alaric Vogel's eyes widen in surprise.
He raised the gun. “Halt!” he shouted, exactly as he had once shouted at Pagan. “Halt!”
But the Virgin was picking up speed. Alaric Vogel shouted once more and fired. The bullet broke off a few wooden folds of her veil and put a hole in Devin's suit jacket.
But it didn't stop Mary. Propelled by Devin, she lurched forward, shovel ends scraping the side walls of the courtyard's opening.
Uncertain and unwilling to face a looming giant immune to bullets, Alaric Vogel turned to run.
Not fast enough. As the Virgin passed her, Pagan darted in behind the statue to join Devin and push it. The extra speed sent the blade end of the shovel into Alaric Vogel's shoulder.
He stumbled, but didn't go down. Shadows danced.
“One...” Devin said under his breath. “Two...three!”
They each gave the Virgin one last huge push. She teetered dangerously and hurtled forward. The shovel's shoulder smacked into Alaric Vogel's back. He went down in a heap.
“Run!” Devin said.
She ran. Past the moaning Alaric, and around the Virgin, now trundling to a stop.
“This way!” Devin guided her with a hand on her waist, and they angled to the right.
Pagan glanced back one last time at the East German who had followed her all the way from Berlin. Auburn hair, that's right. It was closely cropped. She'd thought he was attractive until she got close and saw that cruel look in his eye. Remembering it now made the hair on her arms stand on end.
The Virgin ground to a stop on her wagon. A breeze caught Devin's jacket and blew it around her like a cape.
Alaric Vogel was still lying facedown as they rounded a corner.
“Did you see his face?” Devin said, turning down another dirt alley, hopping some low-strung wires.
“Yes,” she said, still not quite believing it. “It's Alaric Vogel.”
It took a second for the name to register. “The soldier in East Berlin you brained? Are you sure?”
“Sure as shooting,” she said. “Which is what he did at me.”
“From soldier to spy,” Devin said. “Not bad for five months.”
“Or he's working for himself, stalking me,” Pagan said.
“He's no amateur. He had professional help at the ready,” Devin said. “That means he's part of some larger organization.”
“And he's East German, so that means Stasi.” Pagan didn't like how that made her stomach tighten. “They must've found out it was me who helped Thomas and his family escape.”
“Vogel probably figured out the girl who cut him down to size was the famous Pagan Jones, so he used the knowledge to get an assignment working for the Stasi. He's ambitious.”
“Why would they give a damn about me?” Pagan rubbed her upper arms. The cold was sinking into her bones.
“In case you were working for the CIA or MI6.” Devin put his arm around her, now that he no longer had a suit jacket to give. “Which you weren't, technically, back in Berlin.”
“But I am, technically, now.” She huddled in close to him. “Do you think they know what's going on with Von Albrecht?”