“Get off the motorway,” the man called Kafka said in halting French to the taxi driver. “Then let me out.”
“Here?” the chauffeur de taxi said, squinting in the rearview mirror. The tall Arab man with fine features was wearing sunglasses, even though it was early evening. The man’s face was taut, although he did a good job of concealing his nervousness.
“Yes,” Kafka said. The truth was, he’d changed his mind—about running. His masters would find him eventually. His life would be worth nothing. Less than nothing considering what they’d do to him before they ended it. His parents too. But now, it was the worst of all worlds: He was blown.
“I see,” the cabbie said, a smirk now on his unshaven face as he took the off-ramp in northern Paris. He had been eyeing the Arab with suspicion ever since he picked him up outside the Denfer-Rochereau metro, where multiple police vans had been parked as they searched trains after the shooting at the café in the place de la Sorbonne. “It’s still thirty euros,” he reminded his passenger. “You agreed.”
“Yes, yes,” Kafka said. Blatant thievery. But it was the least of his worries.
The cabbie pulled over on the edge of La Courneuve, where the middle-class suburb gave way to vacant lots and forgotten buildings. The runway lights and tower of Le Bourget Airport loomed in the distance.
Kafka handed the cabbie two twenty-euro notes, told him to keep the change. A ludicrous tip but he didn’t need an irate taxi driver calling the police about some Arab with a daypack getting out in the middle of nowhere so soon after the shooting. The cabbie drove off without thanking him, a whine of gears as he fled the poor neighborhood tucked away in the shadows of the wealthy city.
Kafka stood in a shantytown that kept rematerializing even though the authorities cleared it out every few years. The Roma who occupied the slum were too tough, too mean, to take their efforts with anything less than amused disdain and increased vigor.
Kafka could blend in here. He couldn’t go to the safe house. His masters had sent suicide bombers to the rendezvous. He’d make his own way. Hide for a day. Let the dust settle.
He pulled the knit watch cap down over his ears, hiding more of his classic features. He was a pale-skinned Arab, in his thirties, trim, tall, and his striking good looks drew too much attention for his own good. He wasn’t being bigheaded; he just needed to be incognito. What a choice of word: Incognito—the very place Dara had worked.
He thanked Allah that she was still alive, albeit in serious condition.
Madmen! His madmen.
Jihad Nation. How had they found out? That he was going to run? Either someone betrayed him or they always suspected him. He was never truly one of them. How could he be? He wasn’t insane. He couldn’t go back to Iraq without knowing exactly what lay in store. He’d make contact in a day or two. Play stupid. Play along.
But if he didn’t return home, his parents, living in Mosul, a city ruled by Jihad Nation now, would pay the price. His defection would have carried his mother and father to safety, but now it was up in the air, at best. At worst, cut off. Over.
Dara. Thank God she was still alive. Although they’d never met in person, he’d become attached. He thought of her soothing voice, calm and reassuring, speaking his language well, and her dark features and long hair, accentuated by piercing blue eyes. He’d spent too much time looking at the photographs she’d sent him.
He heard sirens in the distance as he walked down a dirt road. It was starting to rain again as night took hold. Winter was coming early this year.
Kafka—a name so ingrained he thought of it when he thought of himself now. He no longer recognized who he used to be. That didn’t matter. He didn’t want to be who he used to be. He needed to become someone new again. If he wanted to survive. If he wanted his parents to survive.
He’d do what he always did, whatever it took. It had always been that way. And it was that way now.
He headed into the slum. It would be his home tonight.