Книга - City Of Spies

City Of Spies
Nina Berry


Celebrating her escape from East Germany and the success of her new film, teen starlet Pagan Jones returns to Hollywood to reclaim her place among the rich and the famous.She's thrilled to be back, but memories of her time in Berlin and elusively handsome secret agent Devin Black continue to haunt her daydreams. The whirlwind of parties and celebrities just isn't enough to distract Pagan from the excitement of being a spy or dampen her curiosity about her late mother's mysterious past.When Devin reappears with an opportunity for Pagan to get back into the spy game, she is eager to embrace the role once again, all she has to do is identify a potential Nazi war criminal. A man who has ties to her mother. Taking the mission means that she'll have to star in a cheesy film and dance the tango with an incredibly awful costar, but Pagan knows all the real action will happen off-set, in the streets of Buenos Aires.But as Pagan learns more about the man they're investigating, she realizes that the stakes are much higher than they could have ever imagined, and that some secrets are best left undiscovered.







Pagan Jones is back!

Celebrating her escape from East Germany and the success of her new film, teen starlet Pagan Jones returns to Hollywood to reclaim her place among the rich and the famous. She’s thrilled to be back, but memories of her time in Berlin—and elusively handsome secret agent Devin Black—continue to haunt her daydreams. The whirlwind of parties and celebrities just isn’t enough to distract Pagan from the excitement of being a spy or dampen her curiosity about her late mother’s mysterious past.

When Devin reappears with an opportunity for Pagan to get back into the spy game, she is eager to embrace the role once again—all she has to do is identify a potential Nazi war criminal. A man who has ties to her mother. Taking the mission means that she’ll have to star in a cheesy film and dance the tango with an incredibly awful costar, but Pagan knows all the real action will happen off-set, in the streets of Buenos Aires.

But as Pagan learns more about the man they’re investigating, she realizes that the stakes are much higher than they could have ever imagined, and that some secrets are best left undiscovered.


Praise for The Notorious Pagan Jones (#ulink_d838558d-9c07-57f8-9a92-e750917a6ec9)

“Blends the blinding spotlight of Hollywood, the sexy world of espionage, and a smattering of real-life events and figures to create a fast-paced spy thriller.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Well-paced historical thriller. Scary in all the right places,

with a strong setup for the sequel.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Fast-paced and furious, this work will be a certain hit with those who love historical fiction, Hollywood, and stories of redemption.”

—School Library Journal

“A well-plotted balance of Hollywood glitter and international political conspiracies during the Cold War, and the historical backdrop is meticulously set. Pagan is a smart, charismatic heroine given depth by her struggles with alcoholism.”

—Booklist

“With a hint of Hollywood glam, mystery and a time period unique to the YA genre, Berry treats readers to a can’t-miss story. She finds a winner in Pagan, creating a Marilyn Monroe–like teen actress with a tale that will appeal to younger and older fans alike.”

—RT Book Reviews




City of Spies

Nina Berry







www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


NINA BERRY was born in Honolulu, studied writing and film in Chicago, and now works and writes in Hollywood. She is the author of the Otherkin series and The Notorious Pagan Jones. When she’s not writing, Nina does her best to go bodysurfing, explore ancient crypts or head out on tiger safari. But mostly she’s on the couch with her cats, reading a good book.


For Paul “Doc” Berry.

Father, writer, teacher.


Contents

COVER (#u0764c2fc-fa3a-5725-a13b-2575dec7b09f)

BACK COVER TEXT (#ue69e85fb-d7b7-53eb-9555-084344ecf11d)

Praise for The Notorious Pagan Jones (#u0291c702-26b9-5002-b993-4a08d25cddf9)

TITLE PAGE (#ub411eaa8-2554-5519-a45c-cbc226fb9aab)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#u0b108de3-f695-50f8-a455-22ba5c499702)

DEDICATION (#uf31e2fa6-2cd0-5193-9034-fb699e3ac0b1)

QUOTES (#u4685134a-76aa-50a1-9138-f38349a97c72)

CHAPTER ONE (#u660d61fc-e8d3-558e-a3f8-00e4f6b1000d)

CHAPTER TWO (#ud30facbc-bac3-53ab-9837-eb4bfd42d3d5)

CHAPTER THREE (#u89745265-c9a8-5e43-8a10-a6c1c40e2bcb)

CHAPTER FOUR (#u16210805-e555-5b03-b48d-1e06b5d01602)

CHAPTER FIVE (#u6127dd24-086c-54f2-8619-23a28bf25d6b)

CHAPTER SIX (#u397a2132-1e70-5025-8419-3c194a06f834)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u99af85a1-4fef-5528-8a12-e84f4e27542e)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#u60ca03da-8502-5d79-ad83-1ecf53f73abb)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

EXTRACT (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)


Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn’t like it is either crazy or sober.

—Raymond Chandler

We dance tango because we have secrets.

—Marilyn Cole Lownes


CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_e7651c77-87c2-5b68-a1d0-ee7d37d5c563)

Chatsworth, California

December 15, 1961

MILONGA

A tango party

Going to Frank Sinatra’s after-party was a mistake. But it wasn’t the raucous laughter coming from darkened dens, the half dozen nearly naked women splashing in the fifty-foot swimming pool or Frank and Dean Martin fighting over Angie Dickinson that bothered Pagan Jones.

No, the trouble for Pagan came from the gentle clink of ice in a tumbler and the quiet sloshing of Scotch, vodka and rum. It came from the overstocked bar in every room, dozens of tiny paper umbrellas discarded on tables and the bright scent of cut limes.

Pagan clung to Thomas Kruger’s muscular forearm with one hand, a bottle of Coke in the other, as they wound their way into the half-lit, high-ceilinged house with its glass walls and low-slung black leather sofas.

Thomas had been a big star back in his home country of East Germany before he and his family escaped to the West. Here in Hollywood he wasn’t a star yet, but he was tall, blond and ridiculously handsome, with comedic timing that made casting directors swoon. He and Pagan had bonded as friends for life during a movie shoot and a secret, breathless escape from East Berlin back in August.

“My first big Hollywood party,” he whispered to her, trying not to stare at the sparkling company lurking in every corner of the house. “That’s Jack Lemmon!” He stared at the dapper, Oscar-winning actor, who, pool cue in hand, was playfully holding it up to his eye like a telescope, pointing it at a petite blonde actress with the world’s tiniest waist. She aimed her own cue back at him like a rifle, sticking out her tongue. “He’s playing billiards with Janet Leigh! From Psycho!”

“If you get too overwhelmed, imagine them naked,” Pagan said, an in-joke they’d shared many times whenever actor nerves overwhelmed them. She caught a powerful whiff of Scotch as two men tottered past, drinks in hand. Suddenly she needed to breathe anything other than alcohol-soaked air. “Let me show you the rest of the estate.”

They stepped out onto the long, roofed arcade beside the pool. The cool night air banished the scent of liquor, but not her longing for it. Above, the quarter moon was a silver barrette clipped into the clouds.

“Sorry,” she said, knowing Thomas would understand. “It’s my first big party since the night we danced on top of the Hilton in West Berlin. Don’t let me get too close to the booze.”

He put a hand over hers. “Of course.”

She didn’t say it, but the real problem with parties like this was how fun they were. Here everyone was an adult, and anything was permitted so long as you did it with style. Sinatra’s parties were secret and exclusive, and once you were in, nobody but Frank himself could question you.

Pagan hadn’t attended a Hollywood party since the car accident where she’d driven drunk off Mulholland Drive, killing her father and little sister, and this was her first party of any kind since her last drink, back in August. She’d forgotten how much she craved the rampant creative juices fueled by a gathering of talented people, ramped up by alcohol, music and laughter. Random couples danced entwined in dark corners; heated debates became sudden duets.

Before she stopped drinking Pagan had attended many get-togethers like this one, some in this house, and she’d danced on top of a piano or two. She and her now ex-boyfriend Nicky Raven had been buddies with Nancy Sinatra and her husband, singer Tommy Sands, and Nancy’s father, Frank, had taken Nicky under his wing, tried to win him away from his record contract to record with Sinatra’s label.

But that was a lifetime ago. Nicky was married, for crying out loud. His wife was due to have their baby in a few months.

Pagan watched Thomas tug on his beer, eyes wide as he took in the sleek modern marvel of Farralone, Sinatra’s current digs hidden high on a hill where no one ever complained about the noise, and all the beautiful, famous faces inside it.

“Was that Marilyn Monroe?” Thomas asked, glancing over his shoulder to watch a platinum-blond head disappear into the darkness at the edge of the grassy lawn.

“She’s staying in Frank’s guesthouse,” said Pagan.

Thomas squinted at the distant white building gleaming next to its own pool. “That’s a guesthouse?”

“It’s a bit different from East Berlin, isn’t it?” She shot him a half smile.

“A little.” He tilted his head toward the splashing limbs in the pool. “It’s December. Why aren’t they freezing?”

Pagan contemplated the women in bikinis pulling on the arms of grinning men in suits at the water’s edge. “Frank’s money generates a lot of warmth.”

Thomas shot her a look.

“And the water’s heated.”

“There you are! Looking marvelous.” Nancy Sinatra emerged from the house, smiling. Her dark hair was piled high; the scooped neck of her black dress was cut low. Waving from the doorway was her husband, Tommy Sands, sucking on a cigarette, his thick dark hair swept back in an Elvis pompadour. “We so enjoyed the movie tonight. I hope it makes a million dollars.”

“Oh, Nancy, a million’s a lot!” Pagan released Thomas’s arm to take Nancy’s hand and leaned in for a cheek kiss, catching a whiff of hair spray and Chanel No. 5. “You look fantastic. And the honor of attending your party after his first Hollywood movie premiere has gone straight to Thomas’s head.”

Nancy’s long-lidded eyes, heavily lined in black, slid over the tall, tan hunk of man that was Thomas Kruger. She pursed her lips and extended her hand. “You were even more gorgeous and hilarious than Pagan in the movie tonight.”

Thomas lifted her hand to his lips, bowing as he did so. “A delight to meet you, Mrs. Sands. Thank you so much for your kind hospitality.”

One corner of Nancy’s wide mouth deepened in approval. “We like ’em fancy, don’t we, Pagan? To hell with Nicky Raven. Don’t worry, we didn’t invite him.” To Thomas: “Please. Call me Nancy.”

Thomas didn’t bother to correct her, and neither did Pagan. But she and Thomas weren’t dating, not in the way Nancy meant. Their bond of friendship and trust went far deeper than that. But no one could ever know why. Just as no one could know that Thomas preferred the romantic company of men.

“You okay?” Thomas murmured to Pagan as Nancy turned to say something to Tommy. Nancy’s cavalier mention of Nicky might once have upset Pagan. But now her thoughts drifted off to an annoyingly charming dark-haired, blue-eyed Scot with a gift for accents and intrigue. Devin Black may have blackmailed and lied to get her out of reform school and back in the Hollywood game after her family tragedy, but he’d done it so MI6 could track down a double agent in Berlin, not to help her. Well, not at first. He’d posed as a publicity exec from the movie studio to recruit Thomas Kruger as a spy for the West and then used Pagan’s desire to learn more about her mother’s past to lure her to act in a movie shooting in Berlin. He’d gotten a judge to temporarily declare him Pagan’s legal guardian, even though he was barely two years older than she was. All to use Pagan’s fame to get Thomas to a garden party thrown by the leader of East Germany so he could search the place. Thomas had been caught, and it had taken every ounce of Pagan’s determination and cunning to help get him and his family to safety.

Pagan could still remember the relief as she collapsed into Devin’s arms. How safe she’d felt, how tenderly he’d cared for her. But even after all that, after all those nights sharing a hotel suite, after all their flirtations, deceptions and secret investigations of each other, when you got right down to it, one amazing kiss was all they’d shared.

“Damn Devin Black, anyway,” Pagan whispered back. “I know I’m single. Why don’t I feel that way?”

“Have you heard from him since Berlin?”

“Not a peep.”

She’d been kissed before. And more. So why couldn’t she stop thinking about him?

“I said, thanks!”

Pagan focused. Nancy was waving a 45 at her, the record Pagan had brought her as a hostess gift. Thomas had kindly carried the 45 in from their car, tucked under his arm, and she must’ve daydreamed about Devin Black right through him handing it over to Nancy. They were all now in the crowded living room with its white baby grand and Mark Rothko paintings.

“You’re going to love it,” Pagan said, gesturing at the record. “It hit the R & B charts earlier this year, but it should’ve been a huge crossover hit. She sings like nobody you’ve heard before.”

“Aretha Franklin, ‘Won’t Be Long,’” Nancy read off the label. “Let’s play this hot plate.”

She pushed through the crowd toward a huge console where they kept the record player. “Hang on, Sammy,” Nancy said to the slender man noodling on the piano. “Pagan says we need to check this out.”

Pagan shrank back a little. She hadn’t planned on her record taking over the party or interrupting Sammy Davis, Jr., at the piano. She was already infamous thanks to her drunken exploits. The last thing she needed was to upstage anyone.

But Sammy shrugged, took his hands off the keys and flashed her a grin. “Hey, Pagan, baby,” he said. “Looking good.”

“Same, Sammy,” she said, smiling back. “Sounding good, too.”

Nancy dropped the needle and stepped back. A jazzy piano riff and some cymbals ruffled over the conversational murmur in the room. Sammy nodded his head in time with the beat. Nancy followed suit.

“Baby, here I am...” A woman’s voice cut through the air like a preacher’s, lit with heavenly inspiration, except she was singing about how she couldn’t wait for her lover to return.

Nancy’s eyes widened. She elbowed her husband, and he nodded, his foot tapping. Three tipsy women sprawled on the couch stopped talking and sat up.

The beat was good, if conventional. The piano riff was catchy, and the woman’s longing for lovemaking was a tad scandalous. But that voice. It lifted everything higher and then tore it all apart, igniting a desire to move.

“Dig it!” Sammy said, and grabbed Pagan’s hand to spin her around. He had a light touch and lighter feet. Others watched as they danced in a low-key, exploratory way. The beat became familiar, and they picked up speed.

Nancy tapped her feet as she sidled up to Thomas, holding out her hand. He bowed and expertly swung her out. Her skirt fanned like a cape.

The piano rumbled with anticipatory joy as Aretha sang, “My daddy told me...”

Frank wandered in with Juliet Prowse and watched as the girls on the couch jumped up to jive. Juliet pirouetted, and Frank took her hand out of midair to do the Lindy Hop.

“Her voice—it’s like a lightning strike,” Thomas shouted to Pagan. “Or no, maybe my English isn’t good.”

“Sounds cool to me!” Sammy said, twirling Pagan as he brought her back in. They circled Nancy and Thomas, then crossed, changing partners in one smooth move on the beat. Nancy was laughing, waving at her husband, who grabbed a girl from the couch and jumped in to join the fray.

A few men in casual suits watched by the sliding glass doors, until the bikini girls from the pool noticed the crowd moving in time and stormed the living room to dance in their own wet footprints. The room filled with hoots and shimmying bodies. They were one now, connected by that clear, dangerous voice.

It reached a crescendo, crying out to her lover to hurry, hurry! The urgency convulsed inside Pagan’s heart. It became her voice, calling out to Devin Black.

The song ended and the girls in bikinis, Frank, Thomas—everyone was laughing, raising their glasses in salute, yelling at Nancy to play it again. Who was that?

But Pagan’s head was spinning. Her self-control was diffusing like cherry syrup in a Shirley Temple. She took a deep breath of the ever-present cloud of cigarette smoke. The pungent scent pushed a pang of longing through her. When she drank, cigarettes and alcohol had been twin siblings in her hands. She had a vivid memory of Devin Black handing her a pack of Winstons, and the longing for the old days before she’d become a killer, for a drink, for Devin, all tangled up into a huge knot under her breastbone.

But Devin wasn’t here. She might never see his sardonic smile again, and the martini in Sammy Davis, Jr.’s hand would go very nicely with a cigarette instead.

Who do you want to be, Pagan? After four months of daily AA meetings, weekly therapy and gratitude for every sober breath. She could be the girl who didn’t drink. Or she could be the messed-up loser who did.

“Going to get some air,” she said to Thomas, and wound her way through the bodies, out into the clear air of the arcade. The swimmers and couples drinking and talking out there pushed her farther past the lounge chairs out onto the lawn.

Peace at last. She took a deep breath, removed her heels and sank her stocking feet into the damp grass. Above, the stars were startlingly clear, and the noise from the glowing glass mansion sank away into the night.

A shadow moved to her left. She startled, spinning.

“Well, if it isn’t the notorious Pagan Jones.”

Out of the darkness beside the arcade stepped a familiar form, tall, knife-thin, with dark hair and eyes like the ocean during a storm.

Her whole body wanted to open itself, to stretch out to him. Her pulse thrummed through her veins all the way down to her fingertips.

Devin Black was back.


CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_32ad6a84-470f-533a-acc7-7894724b9c7c)

Chatsworth and Hollywood, California

December 15, 1961

BAILAMOS

More of a statement than a question the man asks a woman: Shall we dance?

“Devin.” She breathed it more than said it. Had she conjured him with her thoughts? She took two steps toward him, on her tiptoes. “Are you real?”

“That’s a matter for debate.” He smiled at her with a delicious fondness that sent blood rushing to her cheeks. “You, however, look very real.”

The impulse to obliterate the distance between them, to throw her arms around him, was almost irresistible. The fierce way he’d kissed her the last time they met was imprinted on her body like a brand. But something made her pull herself up short.

His gaze may have been more than friendly, but he hadn’t walked up to her or taken her in his arms. He stood at a distance, all coiled grace in his custom-made suit, keeping a good six feet between them.

It had been four months and two days since they last saw each other. Anything could’ve happened. She needed to reverse the overeager impression she’d given him, and fast.

“Delighted to see you haven’t been slaughtered in the line of duty,” she said, keeping her tone light. Years of actor training came in handy at times like this. “Last thing I needed was to be haunted by your ghost.”

He took a step toward her. “It’s good to see you.”

His natural Scottish accent, which he could turn off or on, depending on which persona he needed to be, warmed as he spoke more personally. It fanned the tiny flames dancing inside her heart.

“Took you long enough, laddie,” she said, using her own deadly accurate Scottish accent. “I was in your neighborhood a little over a month ago.”

“Shooting Daughter of Silence in London.” His voice flattened into a flawless American accent, as if answering an unspoken challenge. “Becoming an emancipated minor, and turning seventeen. Happy belated birthday.”

“Thanks,” she said, dropping the accent. “I got the flowers you didn’t send.”

He winced. “I’m sorry. I was rather busy. I promise.”

It sounded like the truth, but with Devin you could never tell. “Oh, that whole ‘I was away serving my country doing unspeakable things’ excuse. Very handy.” She smiled.

“I hear that the director is so happy with the movie, and with your performance, that he’s submitting it to the Cannes Film Festival.”

“So you’re still pretending to be in the movie business?” she asked.

“I’ve stepped back in actually. That’s why I’m here.”

“And you’re keeping tabs on me,” she said. “Should I be scared?”

“Could you be scared?” His smile was knowing.

“Don’t ask me to drive a red convertible.” The only way to deal with the paralyzing anxiety brought on by memories of the accident was to puncture it with jokes. “Or wear something off the rack.”

“How’s your Spanish?” he asked.

It sounded like a non sequitur, but all at once she knew why he was here. It felt so good that it scared her. She took a moment before replying to steady her voice. “Why don’t you ask the real question you came all this way to ask me?”

Admiration shone in his eyes. “No more facade between us, is that it?”

Of course he’d understood her immediately. But she hadn’t been prepared for him to look at her like that. She clasped her hands to stop them from trembling. “We’ve pretended with each other enough for one lifetime.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I’ve come to ask you to help us out, one more time.”

“Us?” she asked. “Are you an American now? The last time I saw you...”

“I work for MI6, the British secret service,” he said. “The CIA has asked to borrow me for this particular mission. I’m on loan.”

“Because they think you have some kind of power over me.” It was half question, half assertion.

“To be fair,” he said with a smirk, “that’s only one of my many valuable skills.”

Her eyes fell to his lips. “I remember.”

It was hard to tell in the dark, but she could’ve sworn he flushed. “It would be better if you didn’t.”

Her throat tightened. He was pushing her away, all right. But she’d gotten a reaction, however much he might try to deny it. “Who is she?”

He glanced away from her briefly. His expression didn’t change, but it was enough to make her feel like someone had stabbed her in the gut.

Carefully, he said, “What matters is that I never should have...done what I did the last time we met. I truly thought I’d never see you again. I thought...” He broke off and tilted his head back, eyes heavenward, inhaling a deep breath. “I’m not here to renew our acquaintance.”

So after all they’d been through together in Berlin, after they’d shared a kiss that nearly burned down a hospital, he wasn’t here to be with her. It shouldn’t have surprised her, or hurt her. She should’ve been over him by now, on to some new sweetheart who didn’t come and go like a thief. But it hurt so bad she had to shore up her face with a sarcastic look she’d overused in Beach Bound Beverly.

“You mean the CIA didn’t send you all the way to Los Angeles to make out with me?” She raised her eyebrows. “But what better way to spend our tax dollars?”

He exhaled a small laugh. “If you’re interested in helping us out, then you should accept a starring part in a movie shooting in Buenos Aires, which will be offered to you very soon.”

“Argentina?” She knew very little about the country. Something about grasslands and cattle and Eva Perón. “I do all right in Spanish, but there’s no way I could pass for a native speaker, even with all of Mercedes’s coaching.” Her best friend, Mercedes Duran, had grown up in a Spanish-speaking house and was fluent. Pagan, who had learned some French and Italian during her lessons on set and grew up speaking German and English, had picked Spanish up from her fast.

“You won’t need to be anyone but yourself,” Devin said.

Argentina. Something in her memory was stirring about that country. “Why send Pagan Jones to South America?”

He shook his head, regretful. “I’ll tell you after you say yes.”

“So I’m going to say yes?”

He paused, lips twisting sardonically. “Yes.”

She eyed him. If he was that annoyingly certain about it, he was probably right. “Why?”

“Because you want to,” he said.

He was right about that. Even her disappointment at him keeping his distance hadn’t dulled the buzz in her fingertips, the lift to her ego at the thought that they wanted her back, that they needed her. No one before had ever thought she could make the world a better place, even in the smallest way.

“I am a glutton for punishment,” she said. Or maybe she was addicted to it.

He took a step toward her now, his eyes intent. “But mostly you’ll say yes because it has to do with the man from Germany who stayed with your family back when you were eight.”

A chill ran down the back of her neck. That man, her mother’s so-called “friend,” had come to stay with the Jones family for a few weeks and then vanished. She couldn’t remember his name, but he’d been some kind of doctor, a scientist, and this past August she’d discovered that he’d written letters to her mother in a code based on Adolf Hitler’s birthday. “You mean Dr. Someone?”

Devin nodded. “The same man who gave your mother that painting by Renoir. You told me you remembered what he looked like, what he sounded like.”

“Oh, yes, I remember.” She did easily recall the man’s angular height, shiny balding head, arrogant nose and sharp brown eyes draped with dark circles. His voice had been the most distinctive thing about him—high-pitched, nasal, commanding, speaking to her mother in rapid German behind closed doors.

Devin was watching her closely. “The Americans think they’ve found him in Buenos Aires. But photographs and living witnesses are scarce. They need someone to identify him. You may be the only one left alive and willing to help.”

“May be willing to help,” she said, but it was an automatic response. Her thoughts were a cyclone of questions and confusion. She hadn’t told Devin about the coded letters. They’d been signed by Rolf Von Albrecht, who had to be the same person as Dr. Someone.

“Why would they want to track him down?” She had her suspicions, but they were too horrible, too unproven. So she let them stay unexamined in the darkest recesses of her mind. She’d recently discovered that her own mother hated Jews, and that she’d helped this German Dr. Someone quietly leave the United States nine years ago. There were only so many reasons the CIA would bother to find such a man.

The thought of Mama, the bedrock of the family, hiding her bigotry and helping Germans illegally kept Pagan up late many nights, trying to untie the knot that was her mother. She’d kept it all from her family and then unexpectedly hanged herself in the family garage one afternoon while everyone else was out. Pagan still didn’t know why Mama had decided to die, and more than anything—well, looking at Devin she realized more than almost anything—she longed to find out.

“I’ll tell you why,” he said. “After you accept the job.”

She glared at him. “We said no more lies between us.”

“An omission,” he said. “Which I’m telling the truth about.”

Damn him. She was going to do it—because it made her feel good to be trusted, it was the right thing to do and because it involved Mama. It was Mama’s death that triggered Pagan’s alcoholic spiral, and it was Pagan’s decision to keep drinking for years after that which led to the accident that killed her father and sister.

Mama hadn’t left a note; she’d shown no sign of distress or depression. Pagan still had no idea why she’d taken her own life, why she’d left her two daughters without their fierce, controlling, adoring mother. A mother with her own dark secrets.

Thinking about it made it hard to breathe. But more than anything else, Pagan wanted the answer to that question. All the other terrible events had been her own damned fault. She couldn’t help feeling responsible for Mama leaving, as well. But maybe, if she found an explanation, one corner of the smothering blanket of guilt and self-recrimination would lift.

“By taking the job,” Devin said, “you’ll help persuade the CIA to let you see that file they have on your mother. It may be the thing that does the trick.”

“‘Help persuade’?” she quoted, voice arching with skepticism. “It ‘may’ do the trick? You’re the one who told me to be cautious if they asked me to help them again.”

“Glad to see my warning sunk in,” he said. “And I stand by it. But I know how badly you want to know more. And I’ll be going with you, so I can be a buffer.”

She lifted her head to stare up at him, her heart leaping into her throat. “You...”

“I will act as your liaison to the agency while you’re in Buenos Aires,” he said.

So that was why... “And there’ll be no fraternizing because you’ll technically be my supervisor,” she said.

“It’s not technical,” he said. “I will be your boss while we’re down there, and it’s important that nothing get in the way of that. Your life might depend upon it.”

“You’re such a rule-follower,” she said. “What if the rules are wrong?”

“You’re such a rule-breaker,” he retorted. “What if you’re too blind to see why the rules exist?”

“That’s what rule-makers always say,” she said. “Rules are made to be broken.”

“Rules are made for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men,” he said in an exasperated tone that secretly delighted her. “Guess which one you are?”

She paused. “Was that Shakespeare?”

“Douglas Bader, fighter pilot,” he said abruptly. “Those are the terms of the deal. If you say yes, a script for the movie will be sent to you tomorrow. All you have to do is call your agent and tell him you want the part. The movie starts shooting after New Year’s. When you get to Buenos Aires, I’ll contact you.”

“Hmm.” Two could play at being distant. And it might help keep her sane while she was working with him.

With her heels still dangling from one hand, she stepped carefully around him in her stocking feet, making it clear she was keeping at least an arm’s length between them as she headed back toward the mansion. “I can’t make decisions when my toes are wet and cold,” she said. “Send me the script.”

She paused, turning to look over her shoulder at him. “Maybe I’ll say yes.”

“Very well.” He nodded curtly. The English accent was back, and a veil of formality fell between them. “Say hello to Thomas for me. I look forward to seeing you again soon.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“There you are!” a voice called through the moist night air.

Pagan whirled to see Thomas’s golden blond head bright under the low lights of the poolside arcade, moving toward her. “I’ve been wondering where you went,” he said, striding over the grass now. “Are you all right?”

“Remember this old friend?” Pagan gestured toward Devin.

But Devin Black was gone.

Again.

* * *

“Typical Devin,” said Thomas as they sat in the back of their limousine on the way back into town. “How did he look?”

“Amazing.” Pagan shot Thomas a knowing glance. He’d developed a crush on Devin back when Devin was recruiting him to be an agent for the West in Berlin, a crush Devin hadn’t discouraged until the hook was set. “You know how it is when he’s wearing one of those perfect dark suits...”

“His hair gelled back except for that one lock of black hair that falls just so over his eyebrows. Ugh!” Thomas threw himself back into the deep leather seat. “Good thing I’m seeing Diego or I’d be jealous.”

“You’re seeing him tonight?” Pagan had known about Thomas’s preference for men since Berlin, but few others did. He was a handsome young actor trying to make it in Hollywood as a leading man. Pagan thought he was good-looking and talented enough to get to the big leagues, if no one discovered his secret. It was horrible, him having to live like that. But it was a fact of life. Even Thomas’s mother and sister, with whom he shared a small bungalow in West Hollywood, didn’t know.

Thomas nodded. “I’m going to his place after we drop you off. Mother doesn’t expect me until late because of the party.”

“You are...over Devin after what happened in Berlin, aren’t you?” she asked.

Pagan harbored hopes, which she shouldn’t still be harboring. But she tended to do things she shouldn’t.

“Occasional flare-ups of resentment and memories of lust past,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t mind if you fly off to paradise with him. You deserve it.”

“Well, it’s better to date a man who’s actually, you know, around. I probably won’t see Devin again unless I take the job,” Pagan said.

Thomas shook his head. “He is the worst tease. But I bet he still likes you.”

Pagan frowned. “He did look very happy to see me. But he made it very clear there won’t be any of that on this trip.”

“The two of you, working together, facing danger in a beautiful city far from home?” Thomas grinned. “There’s absolutely no chance he’ll change his mind.”

Pagan smiled over at him. “I can be persuasive.”

“And you said he knew all about your movie shoot in London, knew you’d been legally declared an adult, had a birthday... None of those things are connected to this new mission of his. He’s probably following us right now.” Thomas turned to look out the back window of their big-finned limousine, half in jest, and froze. “I was joking, but I think the same white Plymouth Valiant was behind us on our way to the party, as well.”

“Very funny,” Pagan said, frowning out the back window. It was hard to tell in the dark, but the 1960 Valiant behind them did look familiar. “There must be a million cars like that in LA.”

“There’s a million of every kind of car in LA,” Thomas said. He’d frequently remarked on the ridiculous number of vehicles populating the city’s roads, but of course anywhere would appear jammed with cars compared to East Berlin. “But how did he know where you’d be tonight?”

“It wasn’t exactly a state secret,” Pagan said without conviction. Devin had posed as a studio publicity executive when they first met, and he’d exercised some kind of power, probably blackmail, over Pagan’s agent, Jerry. He’d also somehow persuaded the judge who convicted her of manslaughter to let her out of reform school more than a year early. “He is a man with a lot of powerful connections.”

“So it’s probably not him following you personally,” Thomas said, turning back to settle into his seat again. “It’s someone working for him.”

“Or it’s just another car heading home on a Friday night.”

She changed the subject to the party—Thomas was still agog at having met Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin—and the white Plymouth Valiant stayed behind them all the way through the Valley and up Laurel Canyon. But when they turned up the tiny side road leading to Pagan’s house in the Hollywood Hills, the Valiant kept going down the hill toward the city. Pagan saw Thomas eye its red back lights with relief before it vanished around a curve.

“Don’t worry, no one would be following you,” she said. “No offense, but you’re not famous enough yet.”

“I’m sorry,” Thomas said. “I shouldn’t be so paranoid. But if anyone ever found out about me...”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry that you have to worry about that.”

The limo had stopped in front of the house. The porch light illuminated the big wooden front door and part of the slightly ramshackle two-story building that climbed up the hill behind it.

“Say hi to Mercedes for me,” Thomas said as the driver opened the door, and Pagan gathered up her stole and her handbag.

“She’s probably up studying,” Pagan said, glancing out at the house. The front porch light was off. That was odd. Maybe Mercedes had gone to bed after all, and turned it off automatically. “You and your family are still coming over for Christmas Eve, right? I’m determined to start some new traditions. Mercedes is going to make tamales. They’re delicious.”

“I’ll call to see what we can bring,” he said, and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “You’re going to take the job with Devin, aren’t you?”

She kissed him back and then wiped the lipstick trace from his tan skin with her thumb. “See the world by spying on it!” she said. “That’s my plan.”

She was fumbling with her keys in the dark, waving at the limo driver to go on and leave, when the porch light flicked on, blinding her. The front door swooshed open.

“Mercedes?” She blinked into the dark doorway.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s been a weird night.” Mercedes took her arm in an unnervingly tight grip and tugged her inside.

“What’s wrong?” Inside, the house was dark, and Mercedes didn’t let go of her gloved wrist. They’d been best friends since they met in reform school, but Pagan could count on one hand the number of times they’d touched. “You okay?”

“Someone’s watching the house. Or they were.” Mercedes released Pagan to give the limo driver a quick wave, and shut and locked the door. “I haven’t seen anything in the last two hours.”

Pagan glanced around the quiet house, instantly focused. Until recently, Mercedes had been an enforcer for one of the toughest gangs in Los Angeles, and her nose for danger was not to be trifled with. She must have turned the house’s interior lights off to see outside better. Pagan said, “Thomas and I think a car might have followed us here from the party.”

Mercedes nodded. “Your people, then.”

“Probably.” Pagan’s past experience with the CIA, MI6 and the East German Stasi wasn’t extensive, but if anyone was following her and watching the house, it was most likely connected to that. “Where were they?”

“I was doing homework at the kitchen table, when I saw someone moving down the hill in the backyard.”

“Did they notice that you saw them?” Pagan got up and padded over the wood floors down the hall and into the kitchen, a large room at the back of the house with big windows and its own door opening onto the backyard. The upward slope was nothing but darkness and moonlight shifting through the trees.

“Not at first. He had binoculars. I was just thinking about calling the police when he left.” Mercedes came to stand next to her. “I’ve been keeping a lookout, but no sign of anyone else.”

“If they come back, they’ll have an exciting night watching us sleep.” Pagan flipped on the lights and opened the back door. Cold night air rushed in, infused with the sweet medicinal tinge of eucalyptus.

She stepped out onto the back patio. The backyard was a short stretch of lawn followed by a series of grassy terraces cut into the hill rising behind the house. Pagan’s mother had insisted on orange, lemon and avocado trees on some of the terraces, and a small pond with a waterfall. The pond had once contained Asian carp, but the raccoons had made short work of them.

“Maybe it was someone come looking for me,” Mercedes said. “The gang was not happy when I decided not to go back after reform school.”

“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” Pagan shivered. “Let’s go inside.”

She clicked the lights off, locked the door, and followed her roommate into the living room. Mercedes sat down heavily on the couch. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I should have called the cops right away, but given my past history with them...” She shrugged. “I never should have moved in with you.”

Pagan went over to sit next to her and couldn’t resist tugging slightly on her thick black ponytail. “Stop it. Having you as my roommate is the best idea I’ve ever had,” she said.

“Are you okay?” Mercedes nodded, turning to look Pagan in the eye. “What if my old gang has followed me here and they want revenge? They could break in, steal something.”

“I couldn’t care less if anything got stolen,” Pagan said. “They could burn our house down—they’d probably be doing me a favor—so as long as you got out safe, it wouldn’t matter. Don’t you see?” Her throat tightened, aching, as she stared at her friend. “After everything that’s happened, you think I give a damn about things? About stuff?”

Mercedes’s cheeks were red. Her eyes glittered in the dim light. Pagan had never seen her cry, but she looked darn close.

“No,” she said shortly. “I know you don’t. But you say ‘our house,’ and you welcome me here. And what do I do? I study, and I can barely pay a few bucks toward the bills.”

“You don’t need to work. My parents left me enough money for us to live for ages. But still you work harder than I do sweeping floors at that comics store while getting your high school diploma at the same time,” Pagan said.

Mercedes frowned at her. “I’m not going to sponge off you or anyone.”

Pagan smiled. “Well, you’re contributing the brains to this sorry partnership of ours, sweetheart, because I sure as heck don’t have them. And I know you want to try for college. If that happens, this crazy world might stand a chance.”

“College.” Mercedes swallowed, her dark-lashed eyes flicking wide to stare into the distance. Pagan almost didn’t recognize her for a second. Was that what M looked like when she was scared? “I have to pass my exams first.”

“As if that’s in any doubt.”

Going to high school without distractions had given Mercedes an appetite for learning that left Pagan in awe. It was like her brain had been starved, and now she couldn’t wait to eat up every piece of knowledge the teachers and librarians cooked up for her. The principal hadn’t wanted to let her into the physics class. He’d said girls didn’t belong in science except for cooking class. But Mercedes had promised him she’d get an A, and he’d finally given in.

It made her the weird girl at school, but she didn’t care. Her affinity for formulas coupled with her access to comics thanks to her part-time job at a comic book store had made her one of the most popular kids in her physics class.

“All that time I wasted, fighting people.” Mercedes gave her head a small shake, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “Violence is so stupid. I’m never going to fight again.”

Pagan peeled off her gloves, easing her feet out of their punishing heels. The bottoms of her stockings were black from walking around the yard at Farralone. She leaned her head back and gazed up at the beautiful swirl of gem-like color that was the Renoir above them. The figure of a woman with a blue parasol was just visible through the press of lilacs and sun-dappled leaves. It was, literally, a masterpiece, and a grateful Dr. Someone had given it to Mama back when Pagan was eight years old.

Pagan had always loved the painting, and had moved it from above her parents’ bed to the living room so she could see it every day. The move had marked the beginning of a new era. The house and the painting belonged to her now, not to her parents, and she’d gotten legally emancipated last month so that she no longer had to answer to a legal guardian.

But if Dr. Someone was who Pagan thought he was, the painting might not have been his to give. It would always be glorious, but maybe it no longer belonged in her living room. Its home was a mystery, a secret probably lost forever in the midst of the looting, murder and deceit of the Second World War. Seeing it now only made her throat tighten. Was there any part of Mama’s life that wasn’t tainted by her lies and secrets?

Never mind the dang painting. The night had been full of its own drama.

Pagan slapped her gloves onto the side table. “You totally should have come with us to the party. You would’ve enjoyed it.”

“And I told you I have to study.”

“I know, I know. I’m still getting used to this whole ‘taking school seriously’ thing. And guess what? Devin Black came to see me at the party tonight,” Pagan said.

“He’s like the Shadow,” Mercedes said, referring to her favorite crime fighter with psychic powers who posed around town as a wealthy playboy. She had never met Devin, but Pagan had told her everything that had happened in Berlin back in August. “You think he came here afterward to loiter in your bushes?”

Pagan snorted. “Can you imagine him in his thousand-dollar suit, crouched behind a cactus with binoculars? It wouldn’t be him personally, but it could’ve been someone from the CIA. They’ve been keeping tabs on me because they want me to do them a favor.”

Mercedes smiled one of her rare smiles. “What if a government spook staking out your house ran into one of my old friends casing the joint?”

“A convention of ne’er-do-wells that would put Frank Sinatra’s party to shame. All in our backyard.”

She started to tell Mercedes everything that happened that night, so they broke out the Oreos and milk. “Tell me everything about the party,” Mercedes said, dunking her cookie. “What was Nancy Sinatra wearing?”

Pagan gave her the details, dwelling on the things she knew Mercedes would like most—the tension between Frank and Dean Martin over Angie Dickinson, Tony Curtis trying hard not to stare at Juliet Prowse’s legs, Jack Lemmon’s gentlemanly manners.

Mercedes watched Pagan’s face as she talked about Devin and sometimes frowned down at her own strong fingers, the nails clean, unpolished, short but not too short, lying relaxed on the polished wood of the table.

“They could dangle your mother’s file in front of you for years to keep you on their string,” she said. “The file might not exist. Devin himself told you not to trust them.”

“I don’t trust them. But I know Mama was up to no good,” Pagan said. “She was helping this Dr. Someone, or Rolf Von Albrecht, or whatever his name was. Mama’s gone, but he might be down in Argentina, doing more bad things. If the CIA doesn’t give me what I want, at least maybe I can help stop him, bring him to justice.”

Mercedes said nothing, her eyelids at half-mast as she stared at Pagan.

“What?” said Pagan.

“You were eight years old when this German man visited your house,” she said. “You were twelve when your mama took her life. A little girl.”

“I know,” said Pagan. “But I’m not little anymore, and if I can make a difference now...”

“If you can right your mama’s wrong, you mean.”

“She was my mother!” Anger at her friend surged through her. How could she try to take away Pagan’s strong connection to her mother, good or bad? “Everything she did had a big effect on me! And if she was a bad person...” She stopped, not knowing where that sentence was going.

Mercedes leaned forward, dark eyes ferociously intent. She tapped her index finger on the table with every word as she said, “What she did is not your responsibility.”

A surge of emotion flooded up from Pagan’s chest. Her eyes filled with tears. “But what if Mama died because of me?”

Mercedes did not relent. She shook her head. “That woman had all kinds of things going on, way over your head. You could be risking your life here—again. Why are you doing that?”

Pagan got up and grabbed a kitchen towel, wiping her eyes. The cloth came away streaked black with mascara and eyeliner. “I don’t know, M. But even if I never find out why Mama killed herself, I want to help them get this guy. My mother aided in a Nazi escape. Isn’t that reason enough? Right now I’m the only one left alive who might be able to identify him.”

“Okay,” Mercedes said. “Let’s call it patriotism and justice for now and see what happens. But I’m going with you.”

Pagan’s mouth dropped open. “But school—that’s really important to you. I wouldn’t want you to miss...”

Mercedes considered this. “Okay, I’ll go for the first week, as long as I can get the reading assignments in advance.”

The corners of Pagan’s mouth turned up into a huge grin and she darted across the room to throw her arms around Mercedes’s neck.

For once, Mercedes didn’t grumble and pull away. She patted Pagan’s arm awkwardly. “Guess that’s okay with you.”

Pagan laughed and stepped back. “It’s great with me! I promise I won’t suck you into it too much. No violence.”

“We should review the self-defense moves I taught you back in reform school. And when we get back here, we should get a dog.”

“A big dog.” Pagan looked out the kitchen window at the backyard and switched off the lights. “And maybe some electric fencing, snares and booby traps.”

Thump!

Pagan jumped two feet in the air as something slammed into the front door of the house. Mercedes frowned. “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to come back.”

They walked side by side down the hallway to the foyer. Mercedes sidled up to the side window and peered through the curtains. “A man’s walking back down the driveway. Nobody I know. And there’s nobody else.”

“Well, then, what...?” Pagan unlocked the door and tugged it open a few inches.

A large brown envelope flopped down from where it had been leaning against the door. In black marker someone had printed Pagan Jones on it.

Pagan stooped to pick it up, pulling up the flap.

About a hundred pages of three-hole paper slid out, bound together with metal fasteners in the top and bottom holes.

The print on the front page said Two to Tango. A Universal Pictures Production.

Pagan laughed. “It’s the script for the Buenos Aires movie.”

“It better be good,” said Mercedes, and locked the door.


CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_1f03130e-230e-5752-a253-4db97d0a5293)

Hollywood, California

December 16, 1961

SEGUIDILLAS

Tiny, quick steps, usually seen in orillero style tango.

The script had been written by monkeys pulling random phrases out of a hat full of Hollywood clichés. After reading a few pages, Pagan had trouble forcing her eyes over the hammy dialogue and overwrought scene direction.

The plot was something she’d seen a thousand times—a girl on the cusp of womanhood from the US goes to exotic Buenos Aires on vacation, where she can’t decide between the two men vying for her affections. One was a tall handsome blond American—kind, but a little boring. The other was a darkly handsome Argentinean gaucho, their version of a cowboy, whose seductive tangos and moonlit serenades on his Spanish guitar were too much for the naive girl to resist.

Ten pages in, Pagan knew her character ended up with the American boy. It was too obvious that the “exotic” man was up to no good, and that his dangerous foreign ways and wandering hands would send the silly American girl scurrying back to the safety and security of the American boy.

Mercedes threw it down after five pages. “You’re going to have to tango and sing and say these terrible lines. You’re going to have to—” she grabbed the script and read from it out loud “‘—fall under the gaucho’s tropical spell.’”

“Is Buenos Aires tropical?” Pagan frowned.

Mercedes snorted. “Don’t you know? All dark-skinned people live in jungles.”

“I wouldn’t count on his skin being all that dark. They’ve cast a Broadway actor named Tony Perry as Juan, the seductive Latin man who—” Pagan grabbed the script from Mercedes “‘—tangos with the dangerous stealth of an enormous black panther.’”

Mercedes let out a scornful laugh. “And plays the guitar while riding a horse.”

“Excuse me, but don’t you mean—” Pagan read from the script again “‘—caresses the neck of his smooth wooden instrument with the consummate skill of a virtuoso’?”

Mercedes shook her head. “His instrument’s wood? Don’t let him get anywhere near you with that.”

Pagan gasped with mock horror. “Dirty jokes before breakfast! I better make us some eggs.”

After breakfast, Mercedes went back to studying for her exams, nose in her astronomy textbook, while Pagan called her agent, Jerry Allenberg. “Tell them I’ll do this Two to Tango movie,” she told him.

“I’m sorry, what?” Jerry said, speaking as if to an idiot or small child. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Maybe, but I’m doing it, Jerry. I’ll need to brush up on my tango before it starts shooting in January.”

“And dance your way right out of a career? No way, Pagan. I’m not letting you do it.”

Pagan took a deep breath. Jerry’s concern over her career went straight past paternal to pathological now that she was on the wagon and doing better. “You don’t get to decide what I do, Jerry,” she said.

“But you’re in the middle of a comeback!” Something in the background thumped, as if he’d dropped his feet off the desk to stand up and yell at her. “I never thought I’d say this after your disasters last year, but Bennie Wexler thinks you’re gold and Tony Richardson loved working with you so much on Daughter of Silence he’s talking awards at Cannes. Not for the movie, but for you. Did you hear me? You could be nominated for Best Actress at Cannes, Pagan! Somehow you’re moving away from movies like Beach Bound Beverly into A-list material with the best writers and directors. It’s a miracle! Don’t do this turd of a script and mess it all up. I’m begging you.”

“Most people don’t yell when they beg,” Pagan said. What he said made her uneasy. “You really think one mediocre movie could cancel out the good ones?”

“This could cost you the award at Cannes,” he said. “And, I didn’t want to say anything, but they’re talking about a possible Oscar campaign, too.”

Once upon a time, getting an Oscar had been Pagan’s biggest dream. But now, when she weighed that against the chance to find out more about her mother, to help her country, to catch a Nazi who probably escaped from justice? The awards seemed like Tinkertoys.

Time for the trump card. “Do you remember our friend Devin Black?”

Silence. Then a thump and a squeak of chair springs as Jerry sat back down. Jerry had caved in to Devin before, when he’d negotiated Pagan’s contract for Neither Here Nor There in Berlin in August. Pagan had never learned exactly what hold Devin had over Jerry, but it seemed to involve blackmail. Jerry probably didn’t know who Devin worked for, but he was no fool. “Devin Black’s involved in this tango turd?”

“He asked me to do it. And I want to do it,” Pagan said. And waited.

Another silence. “Okay. So. You’re doing it,” Jerry finally said. “But if at any point you or Mr. Black wish to extricate yourself from this awful picture, you let me know. It’ll be worth the penalties to your contract.”

“Thanks, Jerry,” Pagan said.

“Yeah, yeah.” He paused. “The studio’s going to owe you big for this one. Anything special you want during the shoot I can demand? Caviar every day, maybe? A personal masseuse?”

Pagan glanced over at Mercedes, who was underlining something in her book. “I want to bring my best friend along with me for a week. They could pay for a nice hotel suite for the two of us, and her airfare as well as mine. If you think you can manage that.”

“Best friend, airfare, hotel suite,” he pronounced, as if writing it down. Sharply, he added, “Is Devin Black okay with her being there?”

Pagan hadn’t thought of that. The CIA might not want her to have someone living in her suite with her, for secrecy’s sake. Well, that was too bad. “If anyone kicks back over her being there, you tell them she comes or I’m out.”

“If we’re lucky, they’ll kick back,” Jerry muttered. “When producers ask me about this horrible movie later, can I tell them you were back on the bottle when you agreed to do it?”

“Jerry!” Pagan scolded.

“Yeah, yeah, that would be even worse for your rep. I know.” He sighed heavily. “You really okay with this, kid?”

Which was as close as Jerry Allenberg would ever come to making sure Devin Black wasn’t blackmailing her into doing this movie.

“I’m great, Jerry. Really. If we’re lucky maybe the movie will be so bad they won’t release it.”

“Your lips to God’s ears,” he said.

“Have the studio’s dancing instructor call me so I can brush up on the tango, okay?”

“Sure, sure.” And he hung up.

“Jerry doesn’t think it’s a good idea,” Pagan said, setting the handset back in the cradle of the phone on the kitchen wall.

Mercedes didn’t look up from her astronomy book. “Too late. You’ve crossed the event horizon.”

“Is that a tango step?” Pagan grinned.

“It’s a boundary that surrounds a black hole.” Mercedes looked up from the book. “Do you know what a black hole is?”

“What Jerry Allenberg has instead of a soul?” Pagan shrugged off Mercedes’s look, “Oh, come on, you know I was either drunk or distracted between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. My high school diploma’s strictly ceremonial, thanks to Universal Pictures and all those lovely tutors fudging my scores.”

“A black hole is this area in space with gravity so strong it sucks everything, even time, into itself. Nothing, even light, can escape.” Mercedes wasn’t reading from her book as she spoke, and her eyes lit up as she went on. “This physicist, Finkelstein, discovered the event horizon, which is like a boundary around the black hole. Once you cross the event horizon, you can’t go back. You’re trapped forever.”

“So you’re saying I’ve been sucked into a one-way pit of darkness?” Pagan nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Mercedes went back to reading. “The constellations are different in the southern hemisphere,” she said. “Maybe I can find a telescope while we’re there so I can see them.”


CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_17c5951a-4dcc-52f0-baf7-c07788b1f79a)

Burbank, California

January 2, 1962

PATADA

A kick between the legs, usually executed by the follower.

The Warner Bros. studio lot lay shrouded in morning fog at the foot of the January-green Hollywood Hills. Pagan rolled down the window of the limousine as the guard waved them through the gate to inhale the crisp air and get a better view of the famous water tower perched like a long-legged heron over the blank-faced soundstages and trees still leafy for the California winter.

Pagan had always loved the bustle of the Warner lot, but she hadn’t been there since they’d shot exteriors on its Western street for Little Annie Oakley, when she was ten. It was 7:00 a.m., and the studio was abuzz, an uncanny small town all its own, but one populated by time travelers and circus folk.

Transferred from the limo to a golf cart driven by an assistant in a Yankee hat, Pagan watched an eight-seat electric vehicle hum past, carrying a flock of flappers in feathered headbands and spit curls.

Her cart zoomed by the commissary, turned left and nearly smacked into a clutch of cowboys, guns at the hip. Nearby, three ten-year-old girls practiced a soft-shoe in an empty parking space. Their mothers sat in folding chairs nearby, knitting or watching critically. “One and two and ba-da bam!” one woman shouted, smacking her hand hard on her thigh. “Do it again.”

Hang in there, kid, Pagan thought. She’d been that girl. Mama had been that woman. No tap dance had ever been good enough. No line reading was ever exactly right. That was how excellence was earned, Mama had said. She may have been right, but it was so very exhausting.

The cart purred onward. The soundstages loomed like windowless mausoleums on either side as grips and wardrobe assistants ambled along, paper coffee cups steaming.

“What are you shooting?” Pagan’s driver asked.

“Not shooting yet,” she replied. “We’ve been rehearsing at a dance studio since Christmas, but now we need a soundstage big enough to choreograph this big number before we head to Buenos Aires to shoot.”

“All the stages at Universal taken?” He shook his head. “Didn’t know they had such a busy slate.”

“Maybe yours are just better,” Pagan said. “But don’t tell anyone over there I said so.”

He laughed as they pulled to a stop in front of Stage 16 and she alighted from the cart. “But I’ll be sure to tell everyone here you said it.”

Smiling, she sailed through the door cut into the side of the soundstage with its Authorized Personnel Only sign, and stepped into the echoing dark of the stage. She stopped to let her eyes adjust to the spot of light along the back wall. A dusty piano crouched there. A wizened woman with a face like a walnut, her hair pulled severely back in a bun, sat on the bench smoking and flipping through sheet music.

“She’s here!” More lights flickered and came to life, illuminating the empty cavern of the space and a tall, graceful man she knew, the movie’s choreographer, gliding toward her. He wore flowing black trousers and a black turtleneck over his long, sinewy limbs, and he paused to extend one leg in front of himself, bowing with hands to his chest to her as if he were a courtier paying homage to the queen.

“Jared!” Pagan leaned in as he rose and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You look marvelous. How was your New Year’s?”

“Busy, my beautiful. Busy and scandalous and everything New Year’s should be!” Jared said, taking her arm as they walked toward the piano together. “And yours?”

“Sober and boring and everything my New Year’s should be,” she said.

He laughed. “Which means you won’t have forgotten everything we practiced last week.”

“I better not,” Pagan said. She’d spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s with Jared at his dance studio, learning the steps to the dances for Two to Tango, with him standing in as whatever partner she had in the dance. Today was the first time she’d be dancing with one of her costars. That must be him in the T-shirt, trousers and scuffed dance shoes, stretching out his calf muscles by the back wall.

“Do you know Tony Perry?” Jared left her to take the man by the elbow and tug him toward her. “Tony, you’ve heard of Pagan Jones, of course! Your delightful and delicious dancing partner.”

“Miss Jones,” Tony said, taking her hand in a grip that was a shade too tight. “I’m a big fan.”

Tony Perry was a hair under six feet, with thick hair dyed so black the bright stage lights didn’t reflect off it. His dark tan, overlaid with a new painful pink burn, had been so recently acquired she could still smell the coconut oil. His lips disappeared when he smiled. It was a tight, fake, assessing kind of smile. His eyes did the elevator, riding up and down her body in a way that made her want to throw off her trench coat and yell, “How’s this?”

She’d heard of him vaguely: he’d recently starred in some semipopular Broadway musical. Two to Tango was his first movie, and his overly curious, voracious energy announced that he was on a mission. He was going to be a big star if it killed him. Or her.

She hoped he’d relax a bit so they could dance together, but she didn’t tell him to call her by her first name. “Miss Jones” was fine with this guy for now. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

“Not at all, not at all!” Jared lifted a finger at the piano player, who carefully rested her half-finished cigarette on the edge of the piano before hitting a chord. “But shall we warm up a little? I have such plans for you, my lovelies.”

“Can’t wait.” Tony lifted an eyebrow at Pagan and smirked. “Shall we?”

Pagan removed the trench coat and threw it and her purse into the corner. “Let’s.”

Jared led them through a quick series of ballet warm-ups—pliés, ports de bra, coupés and posés, while the wizened one pounded out stately chords. Tony looked limber enough. But then the tango didn’t require great kicks, leaps or lifts. It involved close, complex footwork between the two partners and perfect timing, but you didn’t have to be a complete athlete to look good doing it.

Until Tony started pointing out how Pagan’s turnout could be wider, how her extension was limited, how, when he’d danced with Gwen Verdon, she hadn’t done it that way. He did it with long, lingering touches on her knee and thigh and in a patronizing “I’m here to help” tone low enough that Jared didn’t overhear him as he paced in front of them, declaiming over the chords from the piano.

Pagan stopped herself from swatting Tony’s hand and edged away from him. It was tempting to wonder out loud whether his bony arms were strong enough to lift her when required, but at this early stage of rehearsal, creating more conflict would only backfire. She was the one with the bad reputation. She was the drunk, the killer. So she had to continually earn everyone’s trust and respect. She found a halfhearted smile somewhere and produced it.

“And now, the tango,” Jared said. “A labyrinth of emotion, as it is a labyrinth for your feet. To truly dance the tango, you must have experienced great sorrow, yet still be open to joy. You must surrender to the music, yet remain alert. The tango is relationship as movement. It is the most demanding of dances, the most intricate. Yet at bottom it is very basic—listen to the music, pay attention to your partner, and love. That’s what the tango is—love. And we will use it to show how our characters may—or may not—be falling in love.”

He finished with his hands clasped in front of him, his head bent over them, as if in prayer.

Oh, the drama. Jared never failed to milk it for all it was worth, but that was part of a choreographer’s job. She didn’t mind it in small doses, but she couldn’t help hoping the director would be a little more no-nonsense during the shoot.

The scene they were rehearsing involved Tony’s seductive gaucho character, Juan, following Pagan’s lonely character, Daisy, as she walks down a deserted street in Buenos Aires after she’s left a party where no one would dance with her.

Pagan had been followed down empty streets before, but by men who wanted to kill her, so the idea struck her as the opposite of romantic. Nonetheless it was in the street that Juan would lure the reluctant Daisy into a passionate tango after a convenient accordion player shows up.

Jared used chalk on the floor to map out the lines of the “street” Pagan and Tony would walk and tango down, with the back wall of the studio serving as the line of buildings. Pagan had done this a hundred times with Jared in his cramped studio, but here in the soundstage she could take the longer steps he wanted up and down this pretend street in Buenos Aires.

Pagan began it seemingly all alone. The accordion would start (cue the wizened one at the piano hitting some mournful chords) and Daisy would do a few little dance steps sadly to herself, dreaming of doing them with a partner.

Jared put himself in front of Pagan and had her follow him as he reminded both of them how it went. Slow, slow, step forward, side. Then back, back, quick, quick, slow—and cross. The pace picked up as he did it again, moving into a forward ocho.

Pagan followed him easily. These were the basic steps of the tango, the first thing beginners learned, moving into slightly more complicated flourishes. She mimicked Jared’s sad little slump in the shoulders and the dreamy tilt to his head, so that he clapped once, loudly, in approval. People always thought you were doing it right if you did it exactly like them.

“And that is when you—” he gestured to Tony “—take her hand and begin the dance for real. All right? Now, together at last!”

Tony stepped into Jared’s spot and took Pagan by the waist with one hand, taking her other hand in his. His grip, like his handshake, was a little too firm. But she stepped backward in a surprised back ocho, as she’d rehearsed it, and Tony did a good job of keeping up.

Pagan’s character went through a predictable series of emotions as her solo dance became a duet. Taken aback at first, she then tried to run away from Tony, only to have him interpose and show her a few more beguiling steps. Pulled in for a few seconds, she would reject him again, and again, as he pursued and persuaded, until at last she was swept up in the dance.

The more she thought about it, the more obnoxious Tony’s character became. If a girl doesn’t want to dance with you, leave her alone! The more she thought about the script, the worse it seemed. But she’d said yes to it. She was as much to blame for the darn thing as Jared, Tony and Universal Pictures. Might as well give it her all.

Clearly Tony had been rehearsing in New York with someone, as Pagan had been practicing with Jared here in LA. They promenaded smoothly through the first part of the dance three times.

However, Tony’s eyes kept dipping down to her cleavage. His hands pushed and pulled her roughly. Whenever he could, his hot hands pulled her hips in so close his hip bones poked her waist, which was both nauseating and wrong, tango-wise. Jared had to keep correcting him.

But Tony seemed to think that because Pagan’s character was playing hard to get, Pagan must be doing the same. He dug his thumbs into her waist and stroked her palm with a finger at odd little moments, and when she startled or pulled away, he treated it as part of the dance.

You didn’t have to like your costar to act with them. But the more Tony Perry manhandled Pagan and flashed leering smiles at her neckline, the tenser and more resentful she became. Her shoulders tightened, her arms stiffened to keep him at bay.

Maybe it was good for the dance because the fifth time they did it, Jared clapped twice, nodding. “We are getting there. Your resistance is excellent, Daisy, but you need to melt more when we get to the sentada. Again, but with more feeling, please. Remember, Daisy—” he’d taken to calling them by their character names “—Juan here is the center of gravity, and you circle around him, like a planet around the sun.”

Or like a girl around a black hole, Pagan thought. She really did not want to cross Tony’s event horizon.

Tony grinned, his lips vanishing against his teeth, which gleamed unnaturally against his newly tan skin. “I’ll make sure she stays in my orbit.”

Men. Always the center of everything.

She did her damnedest to set aside her percolating dislike as they ran through it again. Pagan was a better actress than a dancer, but years of lessons and hard work enabled her to keep up with anyone and give it a bit of flair. She tried to make up for anything lacking in her dancing with her acting, lending her reluctance a subtext of longing and desire. Rex Harrison couldn’t sing for beans, but he’d acted up a storm while he sang in My Fair Lady and it turned out wonderfully. Maybe she could do the same for dancing.

It finally started to flow. She was feeling confident, graceful, sexy, until Tony threw her backward into a deep, romantic dip, brought his cheek to hers and whispered, “We’re gonna do it after this, right?”

Pagan’s head reared back, and she shoved at him with her free hand, trying to get her feet back under her. His grip on her right hand tightened painfully, and they struggled, with Pagan still dipped over backward.

“Let me go!” Pagan snapped, and he dropped her. She thumped to the floor, flat on her butt.

“What is this?” Jared spread his arms wide. “It was going so well.”

Pagan got to her feet, roping a leash around her mounting rage to keep herself from striking Tony. “That,” she said to her costar between clenched teeth, “was not appropriate.”

“Oh, come on,” Tony said, pushing greasy hair out of his narrowed eyes. “You put out for Nicky Raven, and I’m better looking than him. No reason you won’t put out for me.”

Pagan’s stomach contracted; her throat closed. For once she had no smart remark. She was shrinking inside, getting smaller and smaller. Soon there’d be nothing of her left.

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 (#ulink_921dfc07-b125-5d59-870d-e6bec30aecbe)

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!”

Pagan spotted a column of smoke trailing up near the ceiling and wound her way between ball gowns, shelves of hats and rows of linen trousers toward it. “They’ve buried you alive, Madge. I’m here to save you.”

She rounded a trestle of frilly yellow skirts to find Madge Popandreau, wardrobe mistress for Two to Tango, seated at a huge black sewing machine. She had her eternal cigarette clutched between narrow, red-lipstick-smeared lips, her sharp black eyes following the line of white tulle as she threaded it under the bobbing needle. Madge had frizzy unnaturally black hair pulled back in a giant bun, square, deft hands and an eagle gaze that could spot the head of a pin on a sequin-covered dress.

“I’m just finishing up your petticoat for the big rumba number. Throw on that black suit for me in the meantime, will you, sweetie? Mind the pins.” She jerked her head toward a rack of clothes with tags that bore Pagan’s name. “Rada!”

“Coming.” The voice was gloomy and Russian. A lanky young woman with a leonine mane of dark blond hair emerged between racks of fur coats. “Hello,” she said to Pagan in the same sad tone. “I will help you with the clothes.”

“You wearing a girdle, honey?” Madge asked, still sewing, and didn’t wait for a reply. “If she’s not, get her one, will you, Rada?”

Rada nodded and scanned Pagan’s hips as she took off her trench coat. “No girdle today?”

“I’d rather jiggle like Jell-O,” said Pagan.

Rada nodded mournfully, as if Pagan had announced a sudden death, slid the tape measure from around her neck and whipped it around Pagan’s hips. “A full-body one is required for this suit.” She shook her head. “It is very tight.”

“I don’t need to breathe,” Pagan said as she slipped off her sneakers and unbuttoned her jeans. Near-nudity was the norm in wardrobe. Rada turned, and pulled a black sheath of elastane and straps off its hanger attached to the suit.

Pagan wiggled and wrestled her way into it, adjusting the bra straps, as Rada slipped the silky wool suit off its hanger. The pencil skirt was tight as hell at the waist—Rada hadn’t been kidding—and it clenched tighter still as it slid down her hips.

“I know you’re all about the A-line Dior these days, honey,” Madge said. “You like to be able to move, maybe have a snack, like a real-life person. But this director, Victor, he didn’t want you looking human and told me to make it as close-fitting as possible. I said okay, since you don’t have to dance in it.”

Victor sounded like a treat. Pagan hadn’t met him yet, and was dreading it more each day. “I might need to walk,” she said, squeezing her feet into the four-inch black heels that went with the suit. “I don’t think I could sit down in this.”

“We’ll get you a slant board,” Rada said.

The dreaded slant board, a simple contraption that allowed actresses to recline on a wooden board that could be leaned back at an angle to take the weight off your feet.

“Those things make me feel like I’m about to be buried at sea,” she said.

“Before you die, this director wants to see every twitch of your derriere. It’s a part of his ‘vision,’” Madge said tartly.

“Twitching, but not jiggling,” Pagan said, eyeing her clearly outlined rear end in the mirror. “So he likes ’em fake.”

“We are here to create illusion,” Rada said, her sorrowful voice lending the sentence an unexpected profundity. “Reality is of no importance.”

“Film’s an illusion, honey,” Madge said tartly. “Might as well make it pretty.”

“It’s not how we feel that’s important,” said Pagan, reciting the old, sarcastic Hollywood line. Madge joined her in saying the next part of it: “It’s how we look.”

Madge moved expertly from sewing tulle to repinning the black suit, pegging the skirt hem a shade narrower to emphasize the curve of Pagan’s hips. She had to take mincing little steps in it. Good thing she hadn’t had to run around in this boa constrictor the night the wall went up in East Berlin.

But then good girls didn’t do things. They liked being hobbled in tight skirts and heels so they could have things done for them, and to them. But heaven forbid they climb scaffolding or crash through a barricade manned by armed members of East Germany’s most feared soldiers.

Or damned well walk normally.

Not that she, Pagan, would ever do such things. Bless you, no. She was nothing but a silly teenage girl, and the most you could expect out of her was to make faces at a camera.

Before her adventure in Berlin she’d thought that way about herself, too, if she thought about herself at all. But then she’d ended up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall the night it went up, with people she cared about in danger. Desperation had forced her to realize that people’s condescending expectations could be used against them. She’d pretended to be exactly what the leaders of East Germany thought she was so she could escape and get Thomas and his family to safety.

Give most people exactly what they expected and they never bothered to look deeper.

She’d thought she could pretend to be the sort of girl who wore a suit she could barely move in, for the sake of this sad little movie. But it was challenging these days to act like a shallow little dimwit.

On screen, sure. But in real life? Now that she knew a bit better who she was, the facade was becoming difficult to maintain.

Madge and Rada wrestled her out of the mummifying black suit and replaced it with the foofiest big-skirted ball gown Pagan had ever worn.

“I knew it,” she said, flicking the ruched trimming that wound around her torso. She was a fish caught in a very fancy net. “I know Daisy’s a small-town girl, but...”

“The director wanted frills,” Madge said flatly. “So he gets frills.”

“And I get chills,” Pagan said, swaying the hooped skirt to and fro. “Fit’s great, but I’m going to knock over every piece of furniture I walk past.”

“Can you waltz in it?” Madge asked, her lips moving around the cigarette lodged in her mouth.

“If Scarlett O’Hara can do it, so can I.” Pagan did a tentative one-two-three around the sewing machine. The skirt swung like a large white gauzy bell. “I could signal ships at sea with this thing.”

“Pearls,” ordered Madge.

Rada draped a multistrand pearl necklace with a large rhinestone clasp around Pagan’s bare shoulders.

“It’s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s set in the Civil War,” Pagan said.

Madge snorted. “Exactly what Victor requested. I told him it was derivative, that we should set the style, not follow it. He said, ‘It’s not that kind of movie.’ Of course it isn’t if you think of it that way! Ach.” She made a helpless gesture with both hands, exhaling smoke through her nose. “I’m going home tomorrow, and you’ll get to deal with him. Rada will be here for the shoot.”

“The suit will tear,” Rada said gloomily. “The netting will rip. It is inevitable.”

“Is he that bad?” Pagan lowered her voice, even though they were the only ones in the large cluttered room. “Victor?”

“You haven’t met him?” Madge lifted her painted eyebrows and paused to remove the burned nub of her cigarette from her mouth. “You won’t like him.”

“Tony likes him,” Rada said, and raised a melancholy eyebrow that said it all.

Pagan’s heart sank. Why couldn’t things ever be easy? The thought of a man who was anything like Tony Perry in charge of an important movie in her career made her want to dive straight into a martini glass. But then a nice, sunny day sometimes did the same thing.

“There should be a word for men who prefer the company of other men—not to sleep with, mind,” Madge said, stubbing out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray by the sewing machine. “But who cannot abide to speak to women unless it is to condescend or seduce.”

“I believe the word for men like that is jerk, Madge,” Pagan said.

Madge snorted and lit another smoke. “Sorry to be so blunt, honey. But you should be prepared.”

“I’m always ready for men like that,” said Pagan. “My whole dang life has prepared me.”


CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_373c1d66-1f22-5077-9367-eb35a04b318d)

Avenida de Mayo, Buenos Aires

January 10, 1962

AMAGUE

From amago, meaning threat. An embellishment done on one’s own before taking a step.

“I hate this movie,” Pagan said.

She and Mercedes had changed into cotton frocks and were walking down the grand avenue to end all grand avenues in Buenos Aires. Pagan had returned from the wardrobe fittings in a baleful mood, and at Mercedes’s request, Carlos had dropped them off in front of the Casa Rosada, or “Pink House,” where the presidents of Argentina lived and worked. The casa was indeed as pink as the desert hills outside Los Angeles, squatting like a sun-baked birthday cake at the eastern end of the plaza. This was where Eva Perón and many others had spoken to assembled crowds from the balcony. Now, beside the yellowing grass and weary jets of the water fountains, tourists wandered, and women in sensible shoes supervised tours of shuffling schoolchildren.

Mercedes kept consulting her guidebook, telling Pagan the history of each statue and plaque in an eager voice that was cute for the first fifteen minutes. After that Pagan tuned her out and tried to enjoy the sunshine until Mercedes finally asked how the wardrobe tests had gone. The whole story about her first rehearsal with Tony and what she learned about Victor the director at the fitting today came pouring out.

“I almost feel guilty about kicking that snake Tony that first day,” Pagan said. “I was so angry, but at least he’s behaved since then. What is it?”

Mercedes had stopped by the ubiquitous statue of some guy on a horse in front of the Casa Rosada and was staring up at the huge baby-pink arch over the entrance. “There’s a museum inside,” she said, and smiled at Pagan.

Oh, God, Mercedes and her eternal thirst for knowledge. It made Pagan feel positively stupid sometimes. She should go to more museums probably, to fill up all the empty places in her brain. But right now she was too restless and discontented to stand in front of display cases listening to M drone on about political movements and population growth.

“Maybe some other time, if that’s okay.” Pagan took a few steps away from Casa Rosada, trying to pull Mercedes away from it. “I’m starving. Where’s that café you wanted to go to?”

“Down the street that way.” Mercedes pointed toward a tall white, elongated, pyramid-type monument with a small Statue of Liberty on top. “We could eat soon, but I might not get a chance to come back here...”

“You can come back while I’m on set. Time to eat.” Pagan turned decisively and walked toward the pyramid thing.

Education and history were important and all, but...you know what? No. To hell with them. To hell with books and museums and, most of all, to hell with Devin Black. What was she doing here, ruining her career in a terrible film, putting up with handsy jackass costars and rendered immobile in ugly outfits for a guy who didn’t bother to show up?

Through the heat of the day, a tantalizing mirage of a glass filled with ice, rum and lime swam into her view. She was more of a vodka-martini girl normally, but when the weather was warm, her thoughts turned to rum.

Mercedes caught up to her silently, a line between her brows, and they moved in silence through the plaza, keeping to the shade of the leafy green trees. The strain between them tightened like a guitar string being tuned too high.

The huge, open square narrowed to a broad, busy avenue lined with tall, European-style buildings and bustling with sharply dressed pedestrians. The warm summer air was filled with dust, and the scent of grilled meat wafted out of the restaurants and cafés as they passed.

Pagan’s stomach growled. She really was hungry. And cranky.

A cranky, hungry alcoholic. That pretty much made her the worst person in the world.

“God, I want a drink,” she said. “I just... Holy hell, M. I’m ready to jump that street vendor for a beer.”

Mercedes’s face cleared. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Pagan said. “I do think food will help, though. Just don’t let me order a rum and Coke.”

“We’ll eat soon,” Mercedes said. “It’s not far. And don’t feel guilty. About Tony.”

Dang, M was savvy, changing the subject from drinking to the crap underlying her need to drink. Pagan’s shrink had told her that while she was out of town and unable to go to an AA meeting or contact her sponsor, she should to talk to her friend. She’d almost forgotten that advice.

“Tony thinks I’ll put out because that’s what everybody thinks about a girl who isn’t pure,” Pagan said, head down staring at the sidewalk moving slowly under her feet. “No one’s ever going to want to date me properly if they know my history. I’m ruined.”

“Pure?” Mercedes looked her over from her brown oxfords to her pink flowered sundress to the ribbon holding her ponytail. “It’s strange that I hadn’t noticed you were ‘ruined.’”

“Mama would be ashamed of me if she knew,” Pagan said, her voice small.

“Your mother—the Nazi sympathizer?”

Pagan swiveled her head to stare at her.

Mercedes shook her head, not backing down. “Your mother had plenty to be ashamed of herself. You remember the Nazis—people who thought those with blood that didn’t fit their definition of pure should be wiped out.”

Mercedes had an irritating way of making sense that clashed with Pagan’s self-pity.

“Okay, so much for pure,” Pagan said. “And maybe Mama’s opinion would be questionable. But everyone thinks girls who don’t wait for marriage are dirty.”

“Well, everyone can get bent,” Mercedes said.

She talked tough, but she had to know as well as Pagan that the mixed messages were everywhere. Society loved it when you were sexy, like Marilyn Monroe, but they thought you were morally bankrupt if you fooled around, like Marilyn Monroe. So you had to keep the fooling around very quiet.

They walked in silence for a few moments. “Do you think Devin knows?” Pagan asked. “About me and Nicky?”

“Ah,” Mercedes said in a tone that said, So that’s what this is about. “What does it matter? He said no monkey business during this trip.”

“He knows everything else. Why wouldn’t he know that?” Pagan’s heart was made of lead. “Maybe that’s really why he said no monkey business.”

“You think Devin’s the same kind of guy as Tango Tony?”

A small laugh escaped Pagan in spite of herself. “Yeah, no. They’re nothing alike.”

“Your past is nobody’s business but yours,” Mercedes said.

“What about your past?” Pagan glanced over at her friend. “Is that none of my business?”

Mercedes wrinkled her nose, suddenly a little shy. “What do you want to know?”

“Have you ever...?” Pagan didn’t know how to say it. She and Mercedes had shared their worst deeds and fears during their months as roommates in reform school. But M had never talked about a boyfriend, or dating, or any kind of romantic interest. “Did you ever get really serious with a boy?”

Mercedes took her time, the way she did, pondering the question, as Pagan’s heart beat hard and fast, hoping she hadn’t offended her. “I thought about it,” Mercedes said, her eyes screwed up tight, like she was wincing. “I had a few chances. Cute boys, too.”

“But you had more self-control than I did.” Pagan tried not to feel disappointed that she was the only one with a stained reputation. “Figures. You weren’t a drunk.”

“No, I just didn’t want to.” She looked over at Pagan as if she’d said something dirty or wrong.

Pagan bumped her shoulder into her friend’s. “Very funny.”

“No, it’s true. So...” She swallowed hard and seemed to force herself to keep talking. “I went to a bar where women go to meet women. To see if that’s what I wanted.”

Pagan stopped in her tracks. Mercedes glanced back, but she kept walking. Her cheeks were pink. Was she actually blushing? Pagan hustled to catch up. “Was it?”

Mercedes shook her head, staring down at her feet as she walked. “Nope. Girls are nice and pretty and all, but I didn’t feel a thing.”

“But then...” Pagan didn’t know where to go from here. “You probably haven’t found the right person.”

“Maybe.” Mercedes frowned. She actually looked worried. “So far no one’s tempted me. All I want to do is read the next issue of Fantastic Four and study astrophysics.”

“So—you don’t want to get married? Have children?” Pagan was trying to wrap her head around this.

“It just never occurred to me. Do you?” Mercedes asked.

“Of course!” Pagan said automatically, then thought more. “But I’m not sure why.”

“Everybody says that’s what makes women happy,” Mercedes said. Her voice was unusually uncertain for her. “So if I don’t want it, what does that make me?”

Pagan frowned. “You’re still a girl! You’re still a woman. What else would you be?”

Mercedes said nothing, staring fixedly off into the distance. A couple of young men lounging in a doorway pursed their lips and made kissing noises at them as they walked past. Pagan resisted the urge to throw them a rude gesture.

“Well, nobody’s going to want to marry me, so we can be spinster old ladies together,” she said.

Mercedes thought that over as they passed a shop filled with colorful glass bottles, and another selling shiny leather goods.

Mercedes glanced over her shoulder, then back at Pagan, her expression softening. “As long as I do the cooking.”

Pagan laughed. “Deal.”

Mercedes squinted at her thoughtfully. “Except, you like kids.”

Kids. Ava. Her little sister, dead for more than a year now.

How Pagan missed pressing her cheek against that soft head of blond hair, missed making crazy faces to turn that that serious, frowning expression into a laugh. Pagan’s and Ava’s fingers had warred over the piano keys in furious duets. Their voices had meshed and clashed as they read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe out loud in tandem. They were so different yet so close.

What would Ava be like now if she had survived the accident Pagan had caused? What would Ava say about Pagan’s quest to find the mysterious Dr. Someone who had visited them so many years ago?

“I wouldn’t mind having kids if they were like Ava,” Pagan said. It was getting easier to say her sister’s name, but still it made her throat close, her fists clench.

“You’d be a fun mom,” Mercedes said.

“I’m still figuring out how to go a day without drinking,” Pagan said. “One thing at a time, please. Mostly I wish I didn’t have to go back to the movie shoot tomorrow. I used to think the tango was wonderful, but now...”

“Maybe you haven’t found the right partner,” Mercedes said tartly. She glanced over her shoulder again and a frown had creased the smooth skin between her eyebrows. Her almond eyes flicked briefly over her shoulder again. But she kept walking.

“What?” Pagan said.

“Don’t look. But the same man that’s behind us now was behind us before, in front of the Casa Rosada.”

It took all of Pagan’s self-control not to look over her shoulder. Her stomach tightened, but inwardly she told herself to remain calm. “He’s probably a tourist, like us. You said this is a popular street.”

Mercedes shook her head. “He’s not acting like a tourist. The café’s a block up on the other side. Let’s cross here.”

Pagan didn’t want to question M’s instincts. In reform school, she could look at someone once and know if they were an actual threat or bluffing. But the real world was more complicated, and Mercedes wasn’t running with a gang now.

They crossed to the southern side of the street, and Pagan took a casual glance back the way they’d come. Two men talked and smoked as they walked together, a young woman pushed a stroller and a bent old woman all in black crossed the street behind them.

Mercedes scanned the same people as they reached the other side. “He’s not there now. He was wearing a gray suit and hat. He must’ve seen that I noticed him.”

They reached the dark-wood-and-glass doors of the Café Tortoni with its flamboyant art nouveau sign above in red.

Pagan opened the door as Mercedes said sharply, “There he is again.”

“The man in gray?” Pagan stepped back out and looked down the street, but saw no man in gray.

“Gone again,” Mercedes said. “I took my eyes off him for one second, and poof!”

“Maybe he thinks you’re cute,” Pagan said, and hauled open the heavy door again.

M gave her the side eye and walked in. Past the curtained-covered glass door, the Café Tortoni became a glorious high-ceilinged fin de siècle restaurant, its glittering chandeliers shrouded in cigarette smoke. Greek columns with curlicues on top held up a ceiling with a stained-glass skylight in the center. The murmuring voices of the patrons bounced off the glowing wood walls covered with Cubist paintings and autographed photos of patrons. Pagan recognized the shock of white hair belonging to Albert Einstein in one of them. The warm smell of steak make her stomach grumble.

“My guidebook called it one of the ten most beautiful café’s in the world,” Mercedes said.

It was indeed trés elegant. They could have been in the chicest café in Paris. A waiter in a white shirt and black pants ushered them over to a table under the gold-and-black stained-glass skylight. The chairs were red leather and dark wood, the table plain but polished. They ordered iced tea and a cheese plate to share to start, followed by steaks and French fries, please and thank you and as soon as possible would be nice.

The drinks and hors d’oeuvres arrived, and Pagan began devouring the slices of apple and brie. Mercedes sipped her tea and glanced around uneasily.

“You’re worried,” Pagan said, wiping crumbs off the corner of her mouth. “About that guy in gray.”

“I’m telling you, he was up to no good.” Mercedes tapped her fingernails on the tabletop. “Do you mind if I go outside for a minute to make sure he’s not still there?”

“’Course not,” Pagan said. “As long as I eat a large steak soon, I’ll be the happiest girl in the world. The beef in Argentina’s supposed to be the best.”

“Great.” Mercedes, distracted, was already standing up. She didn’t carry a purse and never wore gloves, so she set the guidebook down on her seat. “Back in a moment.”

Then she was gone, moving quietly with her determined stride toward the front door. Pagan finished off the brie and speared a few olives from their tiny bowl with a toothpick. Olives made her think of martinis, which made her miss the icy bite of vodka moving down her throat, but she was too hungry not to eat them, and the sharp need for alcohol was dulled as her hunger abated. The waiter came by and she ordered more iced tea.

As the waiter moved off, the weird dizzy feeling in Pagan’s head and its accompanying depression brought on by the confrontation with Tony, hours of dancing and lack of food faded.

What had she been so worried about? She could handle this whole silly movie situation. She’d made some choices she regretted in the past, but she wasn’t going to let Tango Tony, as M called him, get on her nerves about it. Maybe now that he had some reason to fear her, he’d behave. And she’d find a way to charm the director, even if she did have to pretend to be the silliest clown in the circus.

“Alone at last.” A familiar voice floated over her shoulder.

Pagan’s heart beat once, very loudly. She turned to find Devin Black lounging at the table behind hers, a coffee and folded newspaper before him, his dark hair, gelled back, curled slightly around his temples in the summer humidity. His dark, turbulent eyes, like the ocean at twilight, took their time looking her over.

Pagan swallowed her last bite, her pulse accelerating, and dusted the crumbs off her hands. “Just you, me and the cheese. I think I’m in love.” She paused. “With the brie.”

One corner of Devin’s mouth turned down in amusement. It had been weeks since she’d seen that characteristic smirk of his, and it was as annoyingly beguiling as ever.

“Wait till you try the steak,” he said.

Why, oh, why did that remark make her flush? Or was it the way he was looking at her? Either way, her cheeks were hot, damn him.

She shook her ponytail, rallying. “Mercedes is going to laugh. She thought someone was following us with evil intent, but it turns out it was you. Or wait...” She surveyed his long, slender form again in its freshly ironed white shirt and crisp khaki pants, slightly scuffed brown leather oxfords on his feet. He was the picture of effortless summer sophistication, but he was not wearing a gray suit and hat. “That couldn’t have been you.”

He frowned, leaning toward her subtly, eyes scanning the room. “Mercedes saw someone following you here?”

“Yeah, but...” She was about to say Mercedes was being paranoid, but the look on Devin’s face stopped her. He dropped his paper on the table and signaled the waiter. “You think it’s true?” she asked.

He was reaching for his wallet, pulling out paper Argentine pesos. “Buenos Aires is a hotbed for espionage, especially since the Israelis kidnapped Eichmann in ’60.”

Pagan had a vague memory of hearing about Eichmann in the news—an infamous Nazi war criminal in hiding who’d been captured in Buenos Aires by Israeli intelligence agents and whisked away to be put on trial in Jerusalem. He’d recently been convicted of orchestrating the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews and sentenced to death. His capture had been daring and illegal. Because of it the little-known Israeli secret service, the Mossad, had emerged as bold and utterly ruthless. She had a vague memory of that caper causing a lot of tension between Jews and non-Jews in Buenos Aires when it was discovered.

Devin was saying, “You know Mercedes’s background. She of all people would recognize a threat when she saw one. This man in gray must’ve realized she’d spotted him and may be gone by now. More likely, he got a follow-up man to take his place. I’ll meet you back at your hotel room. They’ll have finished sweeping it by now.”

He was settling his bill with the waiter, so Pagan canceled the order for steaks and asked for her bill, as well.

“Sweeping?” she said when the waiter had gone. “For dust bunnies?”

“Every afternoon while you’re out, some friends of mine will sweep your suite for listening devices.” He took a linen jacket off the back of his chair and slid his wallet into the breast pocket. “That way we’ll always have a safe place to talk. So you might want to keep your unmentionables put away.”

“What!” She managed to keep the exclamation low in volume and not to stare at him dramatically. The angle of his body and his gaze told her they were supposed to be acting as if they were in casual “we just met” conversational mode for anyone watching. “Every day? Is it really that dangerous here?”

“Having fun yet?” He grinned, sliding his gaze back to her.

There was an impact as their eyes met, like a meteor striking the earth. She was flushing again. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”

“I’ll meet you back at your suite.” He started to get out of his chair.

“Wait!” She resisted putting her hand on his arm. They were still faking casual chitchat, acting as if they were strangers. “Shouldn’t you be staying to protect us from this guy?”

“Fear not, fair lady. He’s got to be tailing you in these public places for information, not assassination,” Devin said. “And I don’t want him tailing me. So act as if you’re leaving because you changed your mind, and don’t let him know for sure you’ve made him.”

“So we shouldn’t try to lose him?” she asked. “If we see him again.”

“No. He probably knows where you’re staying by now. See you soon. Give my best to Mercedes.” And with that he was gone, weaving toward the back of the restaurant, no doubt to slip through the kitchen and out a back door the rest of the world had no idea existed.

Pagan was finishing paying the bill when Mercedes came back, looking frustrated. Her eyebrows drew together as she saw the table being cleared and Pagan sliding her purse strap over her shoulder.

“Devin sends you his best,” Pagan said. “I told him you thought someone was following us. He’s got a full file on you, so he figured you knew what you were talking about, but he says we’re not in any danger. I need to meet him back at the suite to talk.”

“That explains the look on your face,” Mercedes said. “I couldn’t find the man in the gray suit again.”

So her excitement at seeing Devin did show on her face. How aggravating. “Devin said he probably noticed you noticing him and left, or got replaced with a follow-up man. I wonder if that’s a technical term. Oh, and they’re sweeping our suite every day for bugs.” She put down a few pesos for the tip. “You’re probably hungry. Stay if you like.”

Mercedes snorted and shook her head. “And miss a chance to finally meet Devin Black?”

They caught a cab back to the hotel. Pagan tried not to keep glancing out the back window to see if anyone was following them, but she caught Mercedes looking in the driver’s side-view mirror more than once.

“Anything?” she asked.

M shook her head. “Hard to tell.”

Devin was waiting in their suite. It was a little unsettling to walk into their private space and see him lounging in the side chair, reading the paper. He stood and held out his hand to Mercedes, smiling while she shook it. “I was going to introduce myself,” he said. “But I’m thinking that might be unnecessary.”

“I might have heard a thing or two about you,” Mercedes said, taking her hand back. “But apparently nothing like the research you’ve done on me.”

Devin gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s research like that which makes my job so interesting.”

Mercedes’s lips pursed in an appreciative little smile. “A compliment that doesn’t sound like a compliment. Pretty smooth for an art thief.”

“Former art thief,” Devin said. Pagan could see he was tickled by Mercedes tweaking him. “I never stole cars, but compared to taking a Picasso out of a guarded museum, it doesn’t sound that hard.”

Pagan opened her mouth to shush him, and then shut it. As Devin well knew, Mercedes had stolen her share of cars, and other things. She was in reform school for armed robbery and extortion because she’d been one of the top enforcers for the Avenidas, one of the most powerful Mexican gangs in Los Angeles, a gang headed by her brother, who’d been shot and killed. A gang that still wanted her back.

Mercedes’s eyelids dropped to half mast as she reassessed Devin. “It’s not hard,” she said, “unless Clanton 14 has six guys chasing you from both ends of Rampart Avenue and the only car you can get to has two more of them inside it.”

Clanton 14 was the rival gang to the Avenidas. Reform school had taught Pagan a lot of things Hollywood could not.

Devin lifted an impressed eyebrow. “I retract my statement.”

“Look at us, three little criminals,” Pagan said.

Mercedes and Devin turned as one to look at her, faces wearing identical looks of skepticism.

“You think she qualifies?” Mercedes asked Devin, as if Pagan wasn’t standing right there.

“As a criminal?” Devin shook his head. “She lacks the killer instinct.”

Pagan blinked at them. “But I...”

“She’s got a thing for the criminal type, though,” Mercedes said.

“Obviously,” said Devin, turning back to her. “Now this man in gray you saw following you. Can you describe him?” He ushered Mercedes to take the gold brocade chair behind him. “I ordered steaks for you both, by the way. The hotel cook’s pretty good.”

“Hooray,” Pagan said, still trying to deal with the two most important people in her life bonding without her. “I’m starving.”

She took the sofa while Mercedes lowered herself into the chair and said, “He was young, maybe early or midtwenties, over six feet, white, reasonably handsome with reddish brown hair under a light gray fedora. Gray suit, white shirt, narrow gray tie.”

“Thorough,” said Devin. “And what made you think he wasn’t a fellow tourist?”

Mercedes squinted, thinking. “He wasn’t looking around. He had no curiosity about the things or people around him. No guidebook. He kept staring at Pagan.”

Pagan straightened. Devin said, “He wasn’t some fan of her movies, maybe?”

Mercedes shook her head. “I thought of that. But he didn’t want an autograph, and not because he’s shy. He was intent, focused, and he didn’t want her, or me, to see him.”

Pagan was impressed, and convinced, and Devin was taking everything Mercedes said very seriously. “Will you let me know if you see him again?” he asked.

“Sure. Do you know who it is?”

It was like being at a tennis match, her eyes bouncing back and forth between them.

“No,” Devin said. “But we’ll find out.”

Mercedes nodded. “He’ll be back.”

“I knew Berlin was a garrison of spies,” Pagan said, turning to Mercedes. “But Devin says Buenos Aires is, too, even more so since the Israelis kidnapped that war criminal Eichmann back in ’60.”

“I did some research for my school report that said there’s a large Jewish population here,” Mercedes said. “But also a large German ex-patriot population.”

“Exactly,” said Devin. “And those are only two of the factions that come into conflict. Many of the old aristocracy resent elements within the German community and the former Perónist government, which harbored Nazis like Eichmann and Mengele. Then there are local gangs who follow various brands of fascism and Perónism, who agitate against the current government and target Jews. Not to mention that the Israelis and other foreign agencies are still active, all with their own agendas.”

“Why would any of them want to tail Pagan?” Mercedes asked. “For all they know she’s a harebrained movie star. Sorry.” She shot an apologetic look at Pagan.

Pagan grinned. “I drank a lot of martinis to give that impression. Glad they didn’t all go to waste.”

“Much as I’d like to discuss this with you in more detail, and much as I appreciate your sharp eye,” Devin said to Mercedes, “I can’t officially talk to Pagan about her job for us with you here.” He turned to Pagan. “Shall we adjourn to my room, perhaps? It’s down the hall.”

Pagan was on her feet. “You’re staying down the hall?” It was silly how that news made her pulse race.

“Don’t leave,” Mercedes said, getting up. “Pagan needs her steak, and it’s coming here. Send mine in when it comes.” And she sailed into her adjoining bedroom and shut the door.

Pagan was alone again with Devin Black.


CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_02da973c-98b1-5394-84b6-a95a37ec9fd7)

Alvear Palace Hotel, Buenos Aires

January 10, 1962

CORTINA

Curtain. A brief musical interlude between dance sets.

“Alone at last,” said Pagan, echoing Devin’s words back to him as she sat back down with a thump. Devin took the chair beside the sofa with his usual careless grace, an arm’s length away.

Now that Mercedes was gone Pagan was free to notice how the long, powerful muscles in his shoulders pressed against the fine cotton lawn of his white shirt, and how narrow his waist was where the shirt was tucked neatly into his pants. She pulled her eyes away so he wouldn’t see her staring.

“Sorry it took me a little while to get in touch,” he said. “I had some background research to do before I talked to you and...”

He broke off, staring at her. His eyes, normally layered sapphire and indigo, caught sunlight coming through the hotel window and glowed nearly royal blue. His high cheekbones and long straight nose had tanned since she’d seen him at Sinatra’s house in December. He looked fit and coiled for action.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You seem agitated.”

She relaxed slightly. “I’m fine, but this morning wasn’t fun. The wardrobe is derivative, dated and way too tight, which is exactly how this whole movie’s going to be. The script is terrible. I keep hearing the director’s a jerk, and my costar thought dance rehearsals back in California were the right time to proposition me.”

He didn’t move, but something behind his eyes tightened. “Which costar?”

The protective note in his voice was strong, immediate. She looked down so he wouldn’t see how happy it made her. “Tony Perry. He’s...” She wanted to tell him how Tony’s assumptions about how “easy” she was had made her feel awful, to hear Devin’s reassurance that he didn’t see her that way, but instead she trailed off and finished, lamely, “He’s just a jerk.”

“I’ll have a word with him,” Devin said. “For all he knows, I’m still a studio executive.”

“Oh, I think I fixed that particular situation,” Pagan said. “But thanks. He’s finally able to walk around now without help.”

His eyebrows quirked together. “Ouch?”

She nodded. “You look like you’ve been lounging at a resort since I saw you back in Los Angeles.”

“Not unless you call staking out the home of a possible war criminal resort living,” he said. “The summer sun down here is relentless.”

“Where does Von Albrecht live?”

The astonishment in his face was gratifying. “How did you know his name? I never told you he goes by that name. Did I?”

“No, but in a way, my mother did.” She got up and went to the fancy mirrored desk in the suite’s living room, where she’d laid one of her smaller suitcases and pulled out an accordion file. She tossed it to Devin, who caught it easily. “Rolf Von Albrecht wrote to my mother in coded letters in the summer of ’52, a few months before Dr. Someone came to visit us. I assume they’re one and the same person. I found the letters in my father’s safe last August. I broke the code in Berlin.”

He looked up at her from the file. “In Berlin? When?”

“The night before I went to Walter Ulbricht’s little garden party, the night I saw Nicky with his wife and had a couple of drinks. You remember.” She paused, recalling it well herself. As Nicky had started playing on Pagan’s sympathy, trying to win her back, Devin had literally shoved him away and told him to go back to his wife.

Devin’s mouth curled at the memory, too. She continued. “It was something you’d said about Hitler’s birthday before that which helped me break the code. Take a look at the letter on top.”

Devin pulled Von Albrecht’s letters out of the file and untied the string holding them together. His eyes swept over the first letter, taking in all its innocuous phrases, until he came upon a notation in different handwriting. “Twenty, four, eighteen eighty-nine,” he read. “April 20, 1889. Hitler’s birthday.”

“That’s the code, in my father’s handwriting. I don’t know how he figured it out, but it worked. I used those numbers—twenty, four and the numbers in eighteen eighty-nine—and found the real message. In them, Von Albrecht says Mama was a ‘sympathizer.’ He asks her to help him—specifically to give him a place to stay and arrange to get him on a ship leaving the country.”

“Did he say anything about coming to Argentina?”

Pagan shook her head. “No destination is mentioned, and nothing concrete about exactly who he is, why he needs to leave or what my mother was a ‘sympathizer’ to, but given that the code is Hitler’s birthday...”

She trailed off. Director Bennie Wexler had made it clear Eva Jones was anti-Semitic. He’d experienced her bigotry personally. That was bad enough. But if this Dr. Someone aka Von Albrecht was the type of person Pagan feared him to be, her mother was something worse.

“Who is this man you want me to identify?” she asked, coming back to sit on the sofa. “What did he do?”

Devin set the letters and file aside. “Early in 1952, a Nazi war criminal named Rudolf Von Alt escaped detention in the United States and fled the country. We believe that he changed his name to Rolf Von Albrecht, keeping the two names similar to make it easier to respond to, and that he found help from sympathizers all over the country. A sort of evil Underground Railroad. They housed him, kept him safe, funded his journey across the country. The evidence indicates that he stayed at your house in the summer of ’52.”

Pagan inhaled sharply and nodded as Devin threw her a look. It was exactly what she’d feared after decoding the letters. Her mother wasn’t only a woman who hated Jews. She’d helped a Nazi war criminal escape justice.

“It’s okay,” she said, although it was far from okay. “But I feel a little sick.”

He got up and poured her a glass of water. “After his stay with your family, Von Alt left on a ship from the port of Long Beach. We don’t know his exact route from there, but we think we’ve tracked him down here, to Buenos Aires.”

“Tracked him—how?” She took the glass from him. Although none of this was a surprise, it was unsettling to hear the story coming from Devin, who was as close to an official government source as she could get.

“I don’t know all the details, but during the war, the FBI knew that your mother was a Nazi sympathizer and kept a file on her. They didn’t think she was dangerous and weren’t actively watching her in ’52, so Von Alt was able to get away. Later, I don’t know how, they learned that she had helped a man who resembled Von Alt. Meanwhile, I learned that Walter Ulbricht’s daughter was a fan of yours.”

She sipped her water. How could the FBI have known about Mama during the war when Pagan herself had just found out? Mama had been an excellent actress in her own right. “And you got me to Berlin, using my desire to learn more about Mama to get me there,” she said. “You knew by then she had helped the Nazis.”

He nodded, eyes on her as if braced for a bad reaction. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

She raised her hand briefly, waving off his apology. She’d forgiven him long ago. He’d been doing his job, and they’d had no connection then, no relationship, if that was the right word for whatever lay between them now. But could she trust him?

“Do you know anything else about my mother or father now that I don’t know?” she asked. She held her breath, not knowing if she would believe the answer, whatever it was.

“No.”

He looked right at her, brows steepled sadly, his eyes concerned, and warmth spread through her chest, like hot tears, melting away her uncertainty.

“All right,” she said. “I had to ask.”

He gave her a small smile. “Keep in mind, the CIA does know more. I can tell that the file they gave me on your mother was only part of the story they have on her. I knew she was the daughter of your grandmother Ursula, and that Ursula claimed to have married Emil Murnau and said he was the father of her baby.”

“But Emil Murnau wasn’t my grandfather,” she said. “He probably never knew Grandmama. He’s someone who died at the right time so she could cover up the fact she had a baby out of wedlock.”

“I wonder if your mother knew.”

Pagan considered this. “Grandmama would never have told her. She was too proud. And Mama was so sure of herself, of her place in the world...” She trailed off.

“Until the end.” Devin’s eyes were fixed on her, steadying her as the bleak, heavy thoughts about Mama’s death came over her. It was always like this, a smothering weight pressing the breath out of her. She’d started drinking to erase that weight, and it still made her long for the icy bite of vodka sliding over her tongue. She concentrated on breathing and pushed through it all.

“That’s not enough,” Pagan said, thinking out loud. “Mama wouldn’t have been happy if she learned that she was born out of wedlock, but it wouldn’t be enough to make her leave us. I know she wasn’t the best person in the world, that she helped this Nazi escape, that she pushed us hard. But she loved us. She loved me and Ava more than anything in the world. She wouldn’t have left us for that.”

She still couldn’t quite bring herself to say that Eva Jones had been a bad person. But maybe she had been. Loving your children didn’t absolve you of everything.

Devin was nodding, accepting her verdict. “So, if the Rolf Von Albrecht living and working here is the man you knew as Dr. Someone when you were a child, the same man who wrote those letters, then we can confirm we’ve found Rudolf Von Alt, Nazi war criminal, in Buenos Aires.”

“And I’m the only person who can connect the man living here to the one who wrote these letters?” she asked.

“We think so. I hope it won’t be too dangerous or difficult for you. Seeing him may not be enough to identify him because he may have had plastic surgery. And he will have aged since you saw him last.”

“I remember his voice better than his face,” Pagan said. “If you get me close enough to overhear him, I’ll know.”

“We’re hoping that won’t take very long. Once that’s done, you can wrap up your movie and go home.”

“But the US can’t prosecute him here in Argentina. If it’s the right man, do they plan to kidnap him like the Israelis did with Eichmann? Take him back to the US and put him on trial?”

Devin shook his head very slightly. “They haven’t told me what the long-term plan is, and they have to be careful. After the Israelis took Eichmann, there was a wave of anti-Semitic violence. The fascist gangs haven’t forgotten and are always looking for an excuse to lash out at the local Jewish population. But if this man is indeed Rudolf Von Alt, then he deserves whatever they have planned for him.”

“What did he do?” Pagan said, her voice quavering ever so slightly.

Devin hesitated. “He’s a doctor. A medical doctor with a second degree in physics. He started off working on the German version of the atomic bomb, but when that program collapsed, he started...experimenting. On the prisoners in the camps.”

Pagan pressed the palms of her hands against her closed eyes, trying to keep the images those words conjured from appearing in her mind. It didn’t help. She swallowed hard against her rising nausea. “He experimented on people.”

“With doses and implants of radiation, used without anesthetic, often combined with other typical Nazi experiments like limb transplants, using twins and pregnant women and anyone else he could get his hands on. Hundreds of them,” Devin said.

She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. “A doctor,” she said stupidly. “Dr. Someone. My mother’s friend.”

“Your mother may not have known his crimes,” Devin said.

“Maybe,” Pagan said, remembering how her strong, stylish mother had laughed over dinner with the angular, balding Dr. Someone while her father sat stony-faced. Ava had been there, too, only four years old, piling her peas into the center of her mashed potatoes, seated on a booster next to a man who had done the unspeakable.

Pagan’s skin was going to shudder right off her body. She jumped to her feet, pacing over to the suite’s bar. It hadn’t been stocked with the usual welcoming bottles of Scotch, vodka and rum, and she was grateful. Nothing like Nazi atrocities involving your mother to make you want a good stiff drink.

“I’m sorry,” Devin said, getting to his feet. “I almost didn’t tell you.”

She leaned on the bar with shaking hands. “I don’t want to know, but I need to.”

Two sharp knocks on the front door made her pivot.

“Probably your steak,” Devin said. “You still up to eating?”

“Maybe in a bit,” she said, starting to move to the door.

“I’ll get it,” he said, and was at the door in one swift move, tipping the server right at the doorway and wheeling in the cart himself, pausing to knock on Mercedes’s door. “Steak’s here.”

Mercedes poked her head out. “Thanks.” She grabbed her plate and utensils off the tray. “Hey, do you know if they sell American comics here? I’m missing the second issue of Fantastic Four because Pagan’s a spy.”

Devin let out a surprised laugh.

Pagan smiled in spite of herself. “You can get it when you go home next week!”

“Might be sold out,” Mercedes said, raising her eyebrows. “It’s a whole new thing for Marvel, you know.”

“So you keep saying,” Pagan said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Devin said. “No promises.”

“Thank you,” Mercedes said with a sly grin, and vanished once more into her room with her food.

“You do not have to get her a comic book,” Pagan said. “You’re not her butler.”

“I don’t mind asking,” he said, picking up a covered dish and a cold bottle of Coke off the tray.

Pagan walked up, hands out to take the food from him. “She is obsessed! Thanks.”

“Sit down,” he said, his lips softening. “I’ll serve.”

She bit down a smile and sat down in the chair by the suite’s desk as Devin set the plate down and opened the Coke bottle. He handed it to her. Her fingers slipped on the outside condensation and touched his. A brief touch, then his hand was gone.

“They don’t call it Her Majesty’s Secret Service for nothing,” he said, and lifted the cover off her plate with a flourish.

A cloud of fragrant steam rose from the large, beautiful steak lying there. Pagan leaned in to inhale, as Devin unfurled her napkin and laid it on her lap.

He leaned over her as he did it, and her shoulder brushed his chest. For a moment the heat from his skin enveloped her reassuringly. A whisper of his breath touched her temple.

She turned to him and looked up. He was looking down at her. Their lips were inches apart. Any moment now he’d close the gap to kiss her, pull her close.

Then he stepped back.

“You don’t have to do this for us.” Devin walked over to stare out the window, his back to her. “I know you want to, but maybe it’s best.”

So they weren’t going to make out. Fine.

“I’m going to do this,” she said, and took a fizzy sip of Coke to settle her nerves.

“You’re not responsible for what your mother did,” he said. “You don’t have anything to prove.”

“Mercedes said that, too, but neither of you grew up loving your mother only to find out later she hobnobbed with war criminals. She helped them.” Pagan took another sip of Coke. The saturated sweetness coated her tongue, a memory of hot summer days playing tag with Ava in their terraced backyard while Mama yelled at them not to get too dirty before dinner. How could that woman be the same one who welcomed Dr. Someone into their home, who helped him escape?

“Do you think she regretted it?” Pagan asked suddenly.

“Your mother?” Devin turned from the window, puzzled, until realization eased the line between his brows. “You’re thinking that’s maybe why she committed suicide.”

“Is it strange that’s the answer I’m hoping for?” she said.

“No.” Devin’s voice was gentle. “But whatever else she did doesn’t cancel out the fact that she really did love you. And Ava.”

“Why do people have to be so complicated?” She didn’t expect an answer. “I want to understand why she did it, but if I do figure that out, what good does it do me?”

“You’re the only one who can figure that out,” he said. “Identifying Von Albrecht might not get you the information about your mother that you’re looking for. It might get you her file, and it might not. You could go through all of this and still not have any answers.”

Pagan picked up her fork and knife. “All the stuff with Mama is secondary. If the man you’ve found here is the one who did those experiments on people, he needs to be brought to justice.” She cut a tiny piece off the steak. Slightly pink inside, the way she liked it. “Tell me more about him.”

Devin took a seat, watching her eat. “The man we found here named Rolf Von Albrecht is the right age to be Von Alt, the right height, we think, and he has the right sort of knowledge. He’s a professor of physics at the University of Buenos Aires, not far from here. He also lives nearby. He moved to Buenos Aires in March of 1953, which jibes with him leaving your house in November of 1952.

“He was later joined by his two children, Dieter and Emma, and his wife, Gerte. We know Von Alt had a family back in Germany during the war, but the records of their names and ages were destroyed. So we can’t trace him that way. Gerte died in 1960 of cancer. Dieter goes to a high school right next to where his father teaches and has been accepted into the university. He’s also part of a dangerous gang of teenagers that split off from a larger fascist gang recently. We think he may even be their leader.”

“He sounds delightful,” Pagan said.

“It makes all kinds of sense if he’s the son of a Nazi war criminal,” Devin said. “That’s another reason we think Von Albrecht’s our man. The fight between the gangs seems to have been over how ‘pure’ bloodlines were. Dieter and his friends are children of recent German immigrants, too new to Argentina for the leader of the other gangs.”

“So even the purest Aryan son of a Nazi wasn’t pure enough for this other gang?” Pagan shook her head. “If the fascists are fighting among themselves, they should do us all a favor and kill one another off.”

“Unfortunately, they haven’t forgotten that they hate the Jews more than anyone. The barrio where Dieter’s school is, and where Von Albrecht teaches, has a large Jewish population and a history of anti-Semitic violence. So it’s very lucky for us that you’ll be shooting a scene of your movie on the grounds of that school tomorrow.”

“The big dancing-in-the-courtyard scene?” Pagan had memorized the entire horrible script in spite of its awfulness, as well as the shooting schedule. “How’d you manage that?”

Devin raised his eyebrows in an exaggeratedly innocent way. “Who says I had anything to do with it? To round out the report, Von Albrecht has a daughter, Emma, two years younger than Dieter, sixteen.”

“Von Albrecht’s a professor, so maybe I can wander into one of his classes tomorrow—a lecture,” Pagan said through a mouthful of steak. It was tender and succulent. “As soon as I hear him speak, I should be able to tell you if it’s the man I knew.”

“We thought of that. But he took a sabbatical, a full year, and won’t lecture again until the fall.”

“Why have the movie shoot near his workplace, then?” Pagan asked. “And don’t keep pretending you had nothing to do with that.”

“Dieter and Emma will be there,” Devin said. “And it might be useful to have you near them, perhaps to meet them.”

“Maybe I could join Dieter’s gang,” Pagan said, waving a forkful of steak airily. “I could establish my bona fides by telling them how I foiled the Communist East German army in Berlin.”

“A gang of fascists might elect you their leader if they learned how you humiliated those Communist leaders,” Devin said in the same light tone. “Let’s hope gang membership won’t be necessary. But you do have a connection to their family via your mother. Emma and Dieter likely don’t know about her at all, but Von Albrecht will remember.”

Pagan nodded, chewing. Perhaps she could use Von Albrecht’s sense of obligation to her mother to her advantage somehow. But first she needed a way to meet the man. “The more we know about him, the better, right?” she said. “Even though he’s not there, this is where he works and where his kids go to school. I could potentially learn a lot.”

Devin stood up to pace over to the window, look down onto the tree-lined road and then pace back. “We’ve been following Von Albrecht for the past two months, hoping to find a pattern so we could set you up to run into him. But for the past three weeks he hasn’t left his house at all. Not once. He’s always spent the bulk of his nonworking time at home, but not to poke his head out of his own front door once in three weeks is very odd.”

“Maybe he’s dead.”

“Doubtful. Nothing else has changed. His children come and go in the same pattern—to school, errands, to parties with their friends and so on, with no sign of mourning or visits from mortuary personnel. The daughter, Emma, buys the same amount of food every week. So we’re pretty sure he’s still alive. No doctor visits, so he’s probably not ill, at least not seriously.”

“Personnel,” Pagan said. “Never heard you use that word before. Sounds...military.”

“I’m officially a lieutenant in Her Majesty’s Navy.” He pronounced it leftenant. “Unofficially, the men who face real combat wouldn’t consider me very military.”

“So how do I get to see and hear this guy if he’s locked up in his house?” she asked. “I’m way too messy to be convincing as his new maid.”

“I told you that you wouldn’t need to pretend to be anyone but yourself. I’ve got an idea.” He stopped pacing. She detected a challenge in his stormy gaze. “You’re a movie star of German descent, after all. And a lonely girl in a strange city.”

Pagan, who didn’t feel the least bit lonely, met his eyes with a small, pleased smile. “So empty inside and in need of rescue. How well you know me.”


CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_b51d037f-5fcd-51d8-8038-87a847e17069)

San Telmo, Buenos Aires

Evening of January 10, 1962

CONFITERIA BAILABLE

A café-like establishment where one can purchase refreshments and dance tango.

The tires rumbled over cobblestones. Dim light from streetlamps flashed through the dark interior of the car, over the back of Carlos’s head, flashing bronze on Mercedes’s dress as she stared out the car window.

Pagan was headed out to a bar. She, an alcoholic. The things she did for Devin and for her country...well, they were dangerous in all kinds of ways and she enjoyed them. That probably meant something was wrong with her, but that fault could get in line behind all the others.

She glanced over at Mercedes, calm and glowing in that knee-length burnished dress, her thick, curly black hair teased at the crown. The winged black eyeliner Pagan had drawn on gave her dark brown eyes a newly mysterious look.

“Cobblestones on the streets, and the buildings are shorter here,” Pagan said, watching the two-story edifices fly past, their window boxes overflowing with flowers, closed up for the night.

“The guidebook said San Telmo’s the oldest barrio in Buenos Aires.” Mercedes glanced over at Pagan. “You may be a little overdressed for it.”

Pagan glanced down at her Dior ivory silk dress, covered in tiny silver beads that glinted as she moved. It was a thing of beauty, tailored perfectly to hug her waist and flow like a waterfall down her hips. And it was a good dress for dancing. She’d brought a dark coat in case she needed suddenly not to glow like a sky full of stars.

“Overdressed? It’s not even floor-length,” she said half-sarcastically. Her silver heels weren’t exactly casual, either. “I need to be noticed tonight. Devin said the bar was casual. So I figured I wouldn’t be.”

“You’ll be noticed,” M said. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

Mercedes not only didn’t approve of Devin’s plan; she hated it. At first she’d refused to go with Pagan that night, hoping to keep Pagan home that way. But Pagan was not easily deterred, and M’s need to help her out had trumped her resistance. She’d put on her own casual dress and black heels, and only fought Pagan for five minutes when Pagan offered to do her hair and eyeliner.

“It’s what I need,” Pagan said. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s a public place. Nothing’s going to happen. Well. Nothing bad’s going to happen. To us.”

They pulled up in front of a graffiti-covered wall, two doors down from the bright windows of a café. The light spilled onto the sidewalk and the cobblestones, revealing the entwined silhouettes of several dancing couples swaying right outside. Laughter filtered through the warm night air, peppered with beats from an unseen band and the clink of bottles being cleared from a table.

“We’ve reached Gläubigen, señoritas,” Carlos said, turning in the driver’s seat. “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait?”

Pagan reached over to hand him a fistful of paper pesos. “For all your help today, Carlos. Thanks. But you should go home. We’ll catch a cab back.”

Mercedes looked around the quiet street. The bar was the only sign of movement and life. “If we can find a cab.”

“Walk one block that way,” Carlos said, pointing to the right. “You’ll be sure to find one near Plaza Dorrego.”

“Gracias,” Mercedes said. “Wish us luck, my friend.”

Carlos looked her up and down. “You are going to need it in there.”

Pagan froze, about to open the car door. “Why her in particular?”

“Look at them.” Carlos jutted his chin at the young people crowded in the doorway of the bar. “None of them look like her, like me.”

The people spilling into the street and hanging out in the doorway were all fair skinned with a high percentage of blondes. The name of the bar was German for “Believers,” and Devin had said it was a mostly ex-patriot crowd, but not always.

After what they’d encountered at the hotel reception desk, Pagan hesitated. “Maybe you should go home, M.”

“Am I a liability to you?” Mercedes asked, her voice level, reasonable.

“No, just the opposite. But I don’t want to push you into anything dangerous,” Pagan said.

“I didn’t like it before,” Mercedes said. “This doesn’t change anything. But are you sure?”

Pagan caught her friend’s eye and gave her a sly smile. “I want to be noticed, don’t I? Let’s go.”

Carlos got the door for Mercedes while Pagan let herself out and raised her bare arms to the sky, stretching luxuriously. Over at the bar, a few heads turned.

“Gracias, Carlos,” she said, and clicked over to the sidewalk with as confident a stride as the cobblestones allowed to join Mercedes. “Que tengas buenos noches.”

“Ustedes tambien, señoritas,” he said, touching his hat.

Pagan looped her arm through Mercedes’s and they walked in sync toward Gläubigen. “How are we supposed to know which one is your guy?” Mercedes asked in a low tone.

“Tall, dirty blond hair, blue eyes, mole on his right cheek,” Pagan muttered. “Let me know if you spot him first.”

The music got louder as they approached. It sounded like a local band’s version of “Blue Hawaii,” sung in a pretty good imitation of Elvis with a slight German accent.

It was time to turn the movie-star wattage up to supernova level. Channeling all she’d learned during many walks down the red carpet, Pagan breathed deep and imagined herself as the center of the universe, filled with light and power. She wasn’t just a movie star; she was an actual star, brighter than the sun. Everyone would revolve around her tonight.

If she could pretend to believe it long enough. The thoughts were ridiculous, but they had never failed.

The swaying couples turned their heads. Chatter near the doorway died slowly as they sauntered up. Well, Pagan was sauntering. Mercedes kept to her usual neutral tread.

“It’s not as cute as they said,” Pagan said in English to Mercedes, loud enough to be heard.

Mercedes shrugged. “The band sounds pretty good.”

“We shall see,” Pagan said skeptically, and favored those near the doorway with a dazzling smile as she sashayed inside.

There was no bouncer, no cover charge, no maître d’. The place was more café than club, but as Pagan and Mercedes paused on the threshold, several young men turned to stare. The place was packed with teenagers and college-age kids, and after hearing what Carlos had said, Pagan noticed that all of them were fair-skinned. The girls were mostly wearing stretchy skirts with their button-down shirt tied at the waist and ponytails, while the boys favored linen short-sleeved shirts left untucked over khakis and pompadours. Pagan stood out like a princess at a barbecue.





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