City of Spies (5 page)

How had he known? Or was it only a guess?

She was accustomed to the hatred that came her way for killing Daddy and Ava in the car crash. But most of the world didn't know the intimate details of the ten months she'd dated Nicky. Pagan's image until the crash had been sweet and spotless. Good girls didn't sleep with their boyfriends. Good girls waited for marriage, and she'd seemed like a good girl till it all came falling down.

After the crash, few people ever learned she'd started drinking at age twelve. The studio's publicity team had made sure any previous, smaller incidents were never brought to light.

Fewer still knew that she'd gone further with Nicky than good girls allowed.

Jared took Tony by the shoulder and pulled him aside to speak with him alone on the other side of the room. Tony looked over at her, his nose wrinkled with contempt, and she had to look away.

Pagan had started dating Nicky when she was fifteen and deep into the bottle to numb herself after Mama's suicide. Having Nicky's delighted attention, knowing he desired her above all else, had been almost as intoxicating as the martinis. He'd nearly filled the dark hole in her heart. For that reason alone she would've done anything he asked, as long as he loved her.

And Nicky had truly loved her. He still might, even though he'd impregnated and married another girl, a girl who looked an awful lot like Pagan.

Whether or not she'd truly loved Nicky, Pagan wasn't so sure now. The alcohol had clouded her judgment, to say the least. She'd done a lot of things she might not have, if she'd been sober. She regretted so much, but before the accident there had also been good times. That period in her life could be smeared with either a gritty or a rosy haze, depending on the day.

She realized she was leaning against the bare wall, shoulders hunched, so she forced herself to stand up tall. Good posture was the key to faking self-assurance, Mama had said. And once you fooled everyone else into thinking you were confident, somehow you fooled yourself. Right now she needed to fake it, hard.

Jared left Tony and came to stand in front of her, a watchful look in his eye. “How are we doing?” he asked.

“I'm fine.” She kept her tone cool, distant. At least she wasn't trembling.

“I've asked Tony to change his attitude, and he has agreed. We need to make this work. How do you feel about that?”

Pagan glanced over at Tony. He was staring fixedly at a chalk mark on the floor.

“I think we should take a break for the rest of the day and try again tomorrow.”

Jared shook his head. “We need to get you both back on the horse immediately, to mend this. Then I'll let you go.” He paused, trying to get a read on her face. “You're still not up to speed, my dear. You need the practice.”

Pagan kept her face very still. She could do this. “Then let's practice.”

Jared smiled and leaned in to speak in a lower tone. “You know he's an insecure little bitch and you're going to dance him off the screen, right?”

It was a transparent attempt to bolster her, but she couldn't help a tiny smile. Underneath her humiliation, a little spark ignited and began to burn it away.

People said ugly things because they were ugly inside. Or at least that would be her theory until she got through the rest of this rehearsal.

“Excellent. Tony, let's do it a few more times, please. Nadia?” Jared cued the wizened one at the piano as Tony got into position and Pagan began her lonely initial steps.

Tony stepped in and grabbed her hand vigorously. Stiff, Pagan turned toward him and did her back ocho in surprise. As he pulled her in again, she couldn't help it; her resistance was real, and his grip on her hand tightened until her finger bones cracked.

Only a few more steps. She forced herself to melt, to yield as they went through the dance. She twirled around him, resentful planet to his glowing, annoying sun, yielding to his pull.

The last flurry of intricate moves involved hooking her leg around his, then withdrawing, followed by a series of little flicks of her heel as she pivoted within his embrace. As they began, Tony shoved her this way and that.

“Angle, angle your hips!” Jared shouted at Tony. That was how you guided your partner, not by force.

But Tony wasn't listening. The angry glitter in his eyes, the power in his grip, was frightening, as if he might throw her instead of dip. He pushed her hip too hard and squeezed her hand cruelly. Pain shot down her arm.

She managed the first two kicks perfectly, anyway, but on the third she pivoted too far. The pointed heel of her dance shoe jabbed right into Tony's groin. He let out a sickened grunt of agony and released her.

She hadn't meant to do it.

Had she?

Either way, his anguished grimace was very satisfying. She stepped back as he doubled over, hands clutched between his legs.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice calm, as if she'd stepped on his toe. “My fault.”

Tony fell to his knees, sucking in air. “You bitch,” he said with a groan.

Oh, yes, she was feeling better now. Amazing what a little accidental violence could do for your spirits.

“Your face is purple,” she said. “You might want to change your tanning oil.”

Jared rushed to Tony's side, eyes wide. “Are you going to be able to keep dancing?”

Tony shook his head. His lips completely disappeared as he pressed them together.

Pagan gathered up her trench coat and purse. “Same time tomorrow?”

Tony's burning glare as he struggled to sit up was a balm to her soul.

“I think tomorrow maybe we'll go through your little rumba number with David instead,” said Jared.

David was Pagan's other costar, a dim, sweet boy she could wrap around her finger with one flutter of her eyelashes.

“If you think that's best,” she said, and sauntered out the door, even as her spirits sank. Tony Perry and the terrible script were only the first challenges this movie was going to throw at her.

CHAPTER FIVE

Buenos Aires,
Argentina
January 10, 1962

CÓDIGO

The code of behavior which governs the dance.

Eight days of rehearsal and several grueling flights later, Pagan and Mercedes landed at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires, rumpled and grouchy.

Devin Black was not waiting for them.

It was at a sunny eighty-five degrees as they made their way down the rickety metal stair onto the tarmac. A strong humid wind nearly snatched Pagan's pillbox hat off her head and whooshed the skirt of Mercedes's Zuckerman pink cotton piqué sheath dress so high her garters showed. The Pan Am stewardess in her chic blue uniform ran easily down the stairs after them to ask for an autograph for the captain, smiled her regulation Revlon Persian Melon lipstick smile and trotted back up the stairs.

“How does she look so unwrinkled?” Mercedes asked as they straggled into the terminal.

“I know,” Pagan said. “My garters have found a new home, embedded in my thighs.”

Inside they found a short, square man in a neatly pressed black uniform and cap holding a sign that said Señorita Jones.

“My name is like a terrible alias,” Pagan said to Mercedes.
“Buenos días, señor. Soy Pagan Jones.”

He blinked at her and Mercedes, then looked down at his sign and back up at them.
“Buenos días, señoritas,”
he said. Under his formidable black mustache, his uneven teeth flashed in a smile. “I'm sorry. They didn't tell me you spoke such beautiful Spanish.”

Pagan laughed and continued in Spanish. “Mercedes is the real expert. What's your name?”

“Yo
me llamo Carlos Cavellini,”
he said, except he pronounced
yo
and
llamo
with a
zsh
sound at the beginning of the word instead of a
y
. He gestured for them to follow him and they fell in as he led them through the airless, bustling airport. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Pagan said, “Cavellini. That's a beautiful name. Is it Italian?”

Carlos's smiled widened. “There is an old saying. A Porteño—that is what we who live in Buenos Aires call ourselves—a Porteño is an Italian who speaks Spanish, lives like a Frenchman and wants to be English.”

They tucked themselves into the backseat of his big black car as Carlos and a porter loaded their luggage. Beyond the airport were green fields, but as they drove, the gray smudge of a city lurked on the horizon.

“They weren't kidding when they said it's summer here,” Pagan said, rolling her window down to feel the wind in her hair.

Half an hour later they pulled up in front of a ten-story building that looked like something from a movie about Paris in the 1920s, with flags from a dozen countries waving over the grand entrance. The entire neighborhood reminded Pagan of Europe, with grand boulevards, green parks and many-storied gracious buildings dotted with window boxes and fancy decoration over the doorways.

“The Alvear Palace Hotel,” Carlos said. “Finest in the city.”

“Which barrio is this?” Mercedes asked, folding up a map she'd been studying. She'd read two books on Argentina before the trip, and had agreed to do a report for her social studies class at school when she got back. Pagan, as usual, was going in blind.

“We're in Recoleta,” Carlos said. “North of the city center, where there are many colleges, museums, churches and fine homes.”

Devin wasn't waiting for them inside the ornate hotel lobby, either. The place had a sort of between the wars grandness and Pagan half expected to find Devin there chatting with girls dressed in sparkly flapper dresses, like something out of
The Great Gatsby
. But no matter how hard Pagan scrutinized the gold-bedecked marble columns, the red brocade benches or the high-ceilinged archways, he did not appear.

“Where the hell is he?” she muttered to Mercedes as Carlos ordered the bellboys to take their luggage and walked soundlessly along the thick Persian carpet to hand their passports to the hotel clerk.

Mercedes shrugged. “Maybe his flight was delayed.”

Pagan shook her head, irritated. “His flights are only late if he wants them late.”

“Will you require the car this afternoon,
señoritas
?” Carlos asked.

Pagan exchanged a look with Mercedes. They were both exhausted from the trip. “Thanks, Carlos. I'll see you down here tomorrow morning to go to wardrobe fittings.”

As he touched his cap and walked off, the hotel clerk, a thin woman with ash blond hair and sharp blue eyes, was writing their information down on some cards. She looked up, pushing an official smile onto her lips. “
Buenos tardes
, Señorita Jones. We're so delighted to have you staying here for the next few weeks. We have the suite ready for you and your maid.” Her eyes flicked to Mercedes briefly, dismissively, then back to Pagan.

Heat rose up from Pagan's heart. Beside her, Mercedes got very still.

“My maid?” she asked, as if not quite understanding, although she understood all too well.

The woman nodded. “Did you not want her in the same suite?”

“Do you mean my sister?” Pagan blinked innocently and linked her arm through Mercedes's, leaning into her warmly. Mercedes's whole body was rigid, but she didn't push Pagan away. “Did you hear that, sis? She thinks you're my maid. What would Daddy have thought of that?”

The clerk's eyes got wide, first with surprise, then with disbelief. Pagan and Mercedes were close in height, one skinny, the other strong, one pale and perfectly platinum blonde, the other darker with a strictly controlled mass of black curls. But they both had brown eyes, and they were both staring right at the hotel clerk.

“Daddy would've checked us into a different hotel,” Mercedes said in a low tone. “One with better service.” Mercedes wasn't half as good a liar as Pagan, so she kept her voice low on the rare occasion when she did it. The louder your voice, the more likely the strain of lying would show.

“And he would've told the studio and everyone he knew what a horrible mistake they made,” Pagan said to her. “Do you think other people from my movie are staying here? We'll have to tell them all about this.”

The clerk's eyes bounced back and forth between them, a nervous sweat dotting her upper lip. But Pagan could see that she still didn't believe them. “I'm so sorry, ladies. You have different last names on your passports, so naturally I assumed...”

“Mercedes Duran equals maid?” Pagan said, smiling prettily. “Sure. There's no possible way I could have been born a Duran, changed my last name to Jones and dyed my hair. No one in Hollywood ever changes their name. Just ask Rock Hudson.”

The woman paled. “My mistake,
señoritas
. I do beg your pardon. Sisters. Sharing a suite. How nice...”

“We'd like to speak to the manager, please.” Pagan's voice was still sweet, but edged with iron. “And we'd like anyone other than you to serve us for the duration of our stay.”

An apologetic manager showed them to their lush suite, ushering in a bellboy with a complimentary bottle of champagne to earn their goodwill, only to have Mercedes tell him to take it away. The rooms were opulent, shiny with gold-patterned wallpaper, fresh flowers on the marble tables and two large bedrooms with giant satiny beds. The heavily draped windows featured a view out over the rooftops and the busy boulevard below.

As the door shut behind the last bellboy, Pagan took off her white gloves and threw them on the gold brocade sofa. “What the hell? We're in Latin America. You'd think the name Duran would be a badge of honor down here instead of Jones!”

Mercedes shook her head with resignation, which somehow made Pagan angrier. “From what I read, most people in Buenos Aires are of some kind of European descent. The indigenous people were driven out and mostly disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Pagan put her hands on her hips. “You mean killed.”

“Probably. But that woman who checked us in, her family probably came from Germany originally, or maybe England or Sweden. Anyone who doesn't look European here is considered lower class and referred to as
indio
, or
negra
.”

Pagan shook her head. “I'm sorry, M. I wanted to smack her.”

“You can't smack them all.” Mercedes slumped onto the sofa. “But you did confuse her. You're good at that.”

“Everyone needs a specialty.” Pagan came over and flopped next to her on the couch, leaning her head back against the carved gilded wood lining the back. “Does that happen to you a lot back home, too?”

“Not in my old neighborhood,” Mercedes said, using her right toes to tug her left shoe off her heel, then switched to do it with the other foot. “But where we're living now? They all think I'm your live-in maid.”

“What!” Pagan swung up to her feet again in agitation. “What do we do with these people? It's not like we can put a big sign over your head saying I'm Your Equal, You Sons of Bitches.” She paused, thinking. “Can we?”

“Stop trying to save me,” Mercedes said. “I'm fine.”

Pagan stopped pacing and looked at her friend. Mercedes had leaned sideways onto the fat pillows on the sofa and closed her eyes, feet tucked under her. Pagan kicked off her own shoes and flung them into her bedroom. They thumped satisfyingly against the wall. “Okay. I'm ordering us some sandwiches and putting up the Do Not Disturb sign. I need to rest up before wardrobe tests tomorrow.”

“But what if Devin Black comes knocking?” Mercedes said with a sly, sleepy smile.

“Damn you,” Pagan said. Without even opening her eyes, Mercedes knew exactly why Pagan was so agitated.

Mercedes started giggling, burying her face in the pillows as her shoulders shook. She must be tired indeed to descend into such girlishness.

“While I'm at it, damn him, too,” Pagan said. “Devin Black can sit on it. And rotate.”

* * *

Devin did not appear that night, and he still hadn't called by the time Pagan left for costume fittings the next morning. She'd awoken at 2:00 a.m., unable to fall back asleep while her mind raced, wondering whether she'd made the right decision to come all this way to shoot a terrible film.

She was risking her career, a career that had recently been revived on the brink of death due the accident and her conviction for manslaughter. The comedy she'd shot in Berlin had started to warm the public to her once again because it was actually funny. And
Daughter of Silence
was likely to win over the critics. But one truly terrible picture and not only might the audiences turn away, but the studio might rethink using her in anything else of quality. She was still a box office risk. Taking this part in
Two to Tango
might turn her into something worse—box office poison.

And what if Devin never showed up? What if he'd been hurt or killed? Okay, so that was a farfetched late-night fear whispering in her ear. But he could've been pulled into another assignment, in which case they'd stick her with some idiot who didn't understand her, someone who wouldn't allow her to get what she needed out of this whole patriotic mission thing.

And now, fittings. Given how much she hated the character she was playing in the movie, Pagan was not looking forward to seeing the clothes Daisy would wear.

“If there are too many frilly dresses, I'm rioting,” she said, finishing her second cup of coffee.

Mercedes didn't look up from the morning paper. “Trying on hand-tailored clothes is such a chore.”

Great. She couldn't even be grumpy with justification. Because Mercedes was right. It was one of the most irritating things about her.

“Girdles are torture devices,” she muttered, and put her cup down with a click.

“Bras are worse,” Mercedes said. “But on the plus side, they make your chest look like it's about to launch two rocket ships. And rockets are cool.”

Pagan laughed, threw a long trench coat over her jeans and wrinkled white shirt and left to find Carlos waiting for her in the hotel lobby.

The day was already slightly breathless with heat as she walked out of the hotel. Overhead, the flags flapped in a strong summer breeze. Sunshine blared off the windshields of passing cars. Carlos drove her by the gates of what he said was a famous cemetery and north to an area called Palermo.

Through her open car window, Pagan watched stylish women in pencil skirts walking small dogs on the sidewalks and men in summer suits eating outside at cafés or gazing at shop windows. Large leafy trees lined many of the streets, and between the tufts of greenery she caught glimpses of multistoried blocks of gracious stone buildings and open parks with splashing fountains.

What a contrast to the divided city of Berlin. When she'd been there in August, Berlin had been visibly recovering from the huge destruction wreaked by the Allies during the war. Buenos Aires had avoided the war altogether, like all of mainland United States, but with these magnificent mansions and wide, well-kempt avenues, this city was more like a dream of Paris than New York.

The wardrobe department was lodged on the second floor of another genteel stone building with decorative flower finials over the windows. The door at the end of the dark hallway led to a huge open room with sunlight cutting yellow squares on the hardwood floors and racks of clothing. A sewing machine whirred invisibly nearby. Between the headless mannequins and shelving with metal bins for accessories, Pagan could see that the opposite wall was covered in mirrors.

“Hello?” she called out, brushing past a rack of black jackets. Tony Perry's name was scrawled on big yellow tags attached to each one. “Madge?”

“Pagan, honey!” a woman's scratchy voice called from somewhere to her right. “Over here!”