“Hang on, Dara,” Maggie whispered in her friend’s ear as she gripped her hand, hunched forward in the ambulance winding in and out of traffic down rue de Four. With her other hand, Maggie pressed down on a thick blood-soaked bandage on Dara’s chest. The wailing of the siren filled the traffic-jammed street with an electronic whoop that reverberated inside the vehicle.
Dara moaned, a sound barely audible over the siren and the oxygen mask hissing on her face. Her eyes opened for a moment, blue and glazed, giving Maggie a fearful stare, hinting that she understood death was a possibility.
“We’ll be there soon,” Maggie said, squeezing Dara’s clammy fingers.
A paramédique in green scrubs and neon-red sneakers sat perched on the bench seat doubling as a second bed alongside Dara’s gurney, administering QuikClot and bandages to another shooting victim. The middle-aged man helped him by gripping the bandage in place on his neck with an unusual calmness. His large belly jiggled in a once-white shirt mostly red now as the ambulance careened around a bus.
“How soon?” Dara wheezed through her mask.
Soon was a fluid term. Hospital Necker, the nearest emergency facility, was a five-minute drive from Café de la Nouvelle in the middle of the night at high speed with no obstacles. But Paris’s rush-hour traffic tripled that time, according to the ambulance driver. He was skillful and fearless, using the oncoming lane to corkscrew in and out when he could.
Dara’s head bobbed to the side as she lapsed into unconsciousness. She’d been shot at least twice, but the chest wound had received the paramédique’s primary attention. He’d filled the gaping lesion with QuikClot powder and not spared the bandages. But a sucking chest wound was still that—not a strong indication of survival.
Maggie gulped back her anxiety as she pressed down on the bandage. Dara awoke, moaned through her mask. Her head jerked and she twisted against the restraints.
“Don’t you have anything to kill the pain?” Maggie shouted in French to the paramedic. “Any ready-to-use morphine shots?”
“I’ve got my hands a bit full at the moment,” he snapped, taping the bandage on the portly man’s neck.
Dara cried and shook.
“I can take care of it!” Maggie shouted. “Where are they?”
Without looking at Maggie, he said: “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“I’ve got an EMT certification,” she lied. “Back in the US.”
He nodded at a yellow soft pack about the length of a shoebox and half as tall on the shelf above the gurney.
Maggie hopped up, grabbed an overhead bar to steady herself as the ambulance lurched out into an oncoming lane amidst a blare of horns. She nabbed the yellow pack and sat back down, unzipping it in a hurry, rifling through the contents until she found several ready-to-administer morphine-sulfate injection units in a side pouch. She extracted one, pulled the plastic cap off with her teeth as she lifted Dara’s soggy abaya cloak to expose her thigh, midriff, and bloody underwear.
“Let me see that!” the tech shouted at Maggie, his shaved head turned her way, his hands still on his patient’s neck.
She held up the disposable one-shot syringe. He squinted to read the label.
“That’s good,” he said, turning his attention back to the big man.
“Can you lift your butt, girlfriend?” Maggie said to Dara.
Dara grunted, then did her best to arch her back, to no avail. Maggie jabbed the side of Dara’s buttock through her blood-smeared panties, pushing the plunger in slowly, grabbing the overhead bar again with her free hand as the vehicle rocked. Dara exhaled a blast of air, as if a mountain of suffering had been lifted, and her body slumped back down onto the gurney. Maggie pulled the needle out gently, recapped it, tossed the unit into the trash bin on the wall, then resumed her position at the head of the gurney in the jump seat, holding Dara’s now-limp hand.
“Shukran,” Dara puffed through her oxygen mask, thanking her. She had relapsed into Arabic.
“You’re welcome,” Maggie replied in Arabic, patting her hand. Watching fretfully as the tension eased out of Dara’s face, she bent her head down and pulled off Dara’s head scarf, speaking directly into her ear. “Feel any better?” She caressed Dara’s head, stroking her matted, damp hair.
Dara raised her hand to her mask, pulling it half off. “Better enough to know that I’m not going to make it.”
“Don’t even think that,” Maggie said. “We’ll be there any minute.” But even as she said it, she knew what the reality most likely was.
“No, we won’t. It’s my time. I can feel it.”
Dara’s voice contained such a note of finality that Maggie didn’t doubt her. She pulled the oxygen mask back over Dara’s face and chewed her lip as she ran through options. Then she bent back down. “Don’t pull your mask off again. Just nod yes or no in answer to my questions. The phone Kafka gave you, the one you two use to communicate with, is it in your pocket?”
Dara nodded, tried to reach it.
“No,” Maggie said. “I’ll get it.”
When she retrieved the phone, she said, “Is there a password? Security gesture?”
Dara gulped as she made a sign in the air with a shaky hand, an upside down L. Maggie executed it on the phone and it unlocked the screen.
“Do you know if Kafka’s tracking you?” Maggie slipped Dara’s phone into her jacket pocket.
Dara shrugged. She wasn’t technical.
“Do you think Kafka set up the suicide-bomber attack?”
Dara shook her head no.
“So someone in his Jihad Nation cell found out about him? That he was planning to defect?”
Yes.
“Any idea who?”
Another shrug.
“Do you think you can still trust Kafka?”
Dara gritted her teeth while the ambulance cut a sharp corner before she shrugged again.
“Maybe you can still trust him?” Maggie asked.
Yes.
“Have you ever met him in person?”
No.
“Videoconference?”
She held up one shaking finger.
Dara tried to pull the mask off her mouth. Maggie intercepted. “No! Keep breathing. How many live phone calls have you had with Kafka?”
She seemed to think about that.
“Less than five?” Maggie said.
Yes.
“Does he have a picture of you?”
Nodded yes.
“And you’ve got one of him, I know. I’ve seen it.”
Another nod.
“What makes you think you can trust him?”
Again Dara motioned to move the mask. Maggie pulled it to one side, put her ear close to Dara’s mouth.
“I just . . . know,” she said in a tortured voice.
Maggie replaced the oxygen mask firmly over Dara’s mouth. “Are you positive Kafka has access to those Darknet folders?”
A weak smile appeared. Yes.
“Do you think I can pass as you, Dara? Physically? Long enough to meet Kafka?”
Dara nodded. Then she coughed. Blood splattered the inside of her oxygen mask. The sound of gurgling followed.
“I’m going to need your laptop,” Maggie said. “Waleed has to let me have it.”
Dara spluttered and the inside of her mask became a percolator of blood. She tried to raise her hand to her neck. She wouldn’t last much longer. Maggie put her hand over Dara’s and squeezed, then realized Dara was indicating a gold pendant hanging around her neck. “The pendant?”
Dara had slumped to the side and her hand fell on her chest, motionless.
“Oh my God,” Maggie said, pulling back the mask, trying to wipe the blood from Dara’s mouth, blood that wouldn’t stop bubbling up from her chest. “Can’t you help her?” she said to the attendant. “Please?”
He turned around quickly, swiped Maggie’s arm out of the way to get a look at Dara, then hopped up and powered on the defibrillator mounted to the wall behind the driver. “Clear her chest!” he shouted.
Maggie opened Dara’s abaya and pulled the soggy bandages out of the way as the paramedic pressed the two black pads to her chest. An electric snap made her torso bounce, but it was dead muscle memory.
Repeated attempts did nothing.
The only sound coming from Dara was the whisper of the oxygen mask on the side of her bloody face.
“She’s dead,” he said, “I’m sorry.” Tossing the paddles aside, he returned to the other patient.
This was no time to stand on decorum. Maggie brushed Dara’s hand away, yanked the chain and pendant off in one swift movement, and quickly slipped them into her pocket where Dara’s phone was. She felt through Dara’s robe until she located her wallet. She took that as well. For the time being, no one would know who Dara was. Her only contacts in Paris were the Incognito group she worked for and the aunt she lived with. Nothing on her body would identify her.
Maggie pulled the abaya cloak back over Dara’s body and buttoned it before removing the oxygen mask. She cleaned Dara’s face with an antiseptic wipe. Then she turned off the oxygen, the relative silence enveloping her with a sense of defeat and despair.
She slumped back in the jump seat, stroking Dara’s hair. Hung her head. Tears welled up, even though she was trained for this eventuality, had been party to failed operations before. The death of a colleague was no stranger. It came with the territory. But this was different. Dara had taken such a risk for her people, slaughtered and raped by the jihadists. Drawing Kafka out, getting him to commit to a defection that would cripple Jihad Nation financially. Her companions, the volunteers of Incognito, the notorious international network of activists and hacktivists, took risks, too, but it was Dara who put her life on the line. Literally.
They’d gotten so close. Kafka—whoever he was—was a strong candidate for defection. In the time she’d known Dara, Maggie had learned to trust her instincts, and Dara knew Kafka better than anyone. If she believed Kafka was still ripe, then Maggie believed that too. If she’d learned anything in this business, it was to trust her instincts. Truth was a fickle beast. You had to trust your gut.
The ambulance swerved into the vehicle dock at Hospital Necker with a screech of tires, jerking to a halt.
The paramedic flung open the back door of the ambulance and the driver leapt out to assist him.
Dara’s phone vibrated in Maggie’s pocket.
Maggie pulled the phone and swiped the upside down L security gesture with her finger.
Incoming call from Kafka—the no-show defector who had somehow caused this huge tragedy.
Her heart thumped wildly.
She couldn’t talk to him, not if she was going to continue the operation posing as Dara, leveraging everything Dara had given her. There was no way Maggie could mimic Dara’s voice, accent, her command of Arabic. She let the call roll over to voicemail, then immediately retrieved it, pressing the phone close to her ear. A youngish man with a cultured Baghdad accent left a beseeching message in a dialect Maggie could just follow.
“Did you get away safe, habiti? God, I pray that you did. I’m so terrified that you didn’t. I had no idea they were going to do that. How could I know? Madmen! You know I would never allow that, my dear habiti. Please, please call me as soon as you get this. I must speak to you before I go mad.” Then one last sentence before he clicked off: “La astatee’a an a’aeesh bedonak.” I can’t live without you.
Kafka’s use of the word habiti—an Arabic term of endearment—gave Maggie pause, as did the last sentence. She scrolled back through previous texts to get a feel for the language Dara and Kafka used.
Many of the interactions contained romantic terms. A revelation. Dara had always been vague on her communications with Kafka, merely saying she was grooming him after he’d shown interest in her when she’d reached out to him at Incognito. But in addition to his desire to get his parents safely out of Iraq, there was enough side conversation about his wish to meet Dara to make Maggie wonder.
She switched the phone keyboard to Arabic and struggled to pick out a message. Arabic was much more difficult to write than speak, and it was challenging enough to speak. Slowly, she typed: “Dearest habibi, I was wounded, but God willing I am alive . . . but they are watching me and I cannot call . . . too dangerous . . . you do understand? . . . text only . . . please be safe and wait for me to call.”
Then she typed one final phrase, one she had seen Dara use over and over in her texts to Kafka: “Enta kol shay’a.” You are my all.
She closed her text messenger and went through Dara’s recent call list until she found the number of her contact at Incognito. She pressed the speed dial and Waleed answered on the first ring.
She pictured the young muscular Arab with his wild hair and passionate, intense eyes.
“Are you all right?” he said breathlessly in Arab dialect. “We’re watching the news now. I can’t believe it! Thank God you called, Dara. We were so worried . . .”
“Waleed,” Maggie said, drawing in air, not wanting to deliver the wretched news. “It’s Maggie.”
After a pause, Waleed said, “Oh.” Then, “No. But no!”
“I don’t know what to say. Except that I’m so sorry.”
There was a gap while the paramedic and driver got the big man on a stretcher and lugged him away.
“Those bastards!” Waleed hissed into her ear. “Those murdering bastards.”
“I need to ask you a huge favor.”
“What?” Waleed’s voice sounded distant.
“If anyone asks, Dara is in intensive care. She’s alive, fighting for her life, but can’t accept visitors. Is that very clear?”
She could almost see Waleed nodding in agreement. “Dara’s not dead. Yes, I see what you’re doing. Yes. Got it.”
“It’s very important that you don’t tell anyone the truth. I debated whether to tell you. But I decided you needed to know.”
A distant siren whined.
“You have my word.”
“I’ll tell Dara’s aunt next. I’m going to call her now. I’ll swing by later when I get the chance. I need to pick up some of Dara’s things.”
“Yes,” he said in a hollow tone. “It’s best that you tell Aunt Amina.”
Maggie dialed Aunt Amina, taking another deep breath, preparing herself for more emotional carnage.
No answer. A sick kind of relief fell over Maggie, knowing she’d only have to call Amina later.
A squeal of tires and the flash of blue lights alerted her to a police car pulling up behind the ambulance. A compact Renault, headlights blinding. Turning to one side, Maggie pulled the Sig Sauer from her jacket pocket, shoved it into the trash bin full of medical waste on the wall of the ambulance. While she was at it, she pulled her own phone, removed the battery, dumped both items in the trash as well. She didn’t need two phones on her. That might look suspicious if she were searched. She still had Dara’s phone, the one that counted.
The doors to the police car opened and two blue-clad National Police officers emerged.
Maggie waited for the policemen, wondering what feelings Dara had truly harbored for her mysterious would-be defector.