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.”