The Paris diversion

American expat Kate Moore drops her kids at the international school makes her shopping rounds and meets her husband Dexter at their regular café: a leisurely start to a normal day St-Germain-des-Prés. Across the Seine tech CEO Hunter Forsyth stands on his balcony perplexed that his police escort just departed and frustrated that his cell service has cut out; Hunter has important calls to make not all of them technically legal. And on the nearby rue de Rivoli Mahmoud Khalid climbs out of an electrician’s van and elbows his way into the crowded courtyard of the world’s largest museum in the epicenter of Western civilization. He sets down his metal briefcase and removes his windbreaker. That’s when people start to scream. Everyone has big plans for the day. Dexter is going to make a small fortune finally digging himself out of a deep financial hole via an extremely risky investment. Hunter is going to make a huge fortune with a major corporate acquisition that will send his company’s stock soaring. Kate has less ambitious plans: preparations for tonight’s dinner party—one of those homemaker obligations she still hasn’t embraced even after a half-decade of this life—and an uneventful workday at the Paris Substation the clandestine cadre of operatives that she’s been running not entirely successfully increasingly convinced that every day could be the last of her career. But every day is also a fresh chance to prove her own relevance never more so than during today’s momentous events. And Mahmoud? He is planning to die today. And he won’t be the only one.