In the morning, the front desk at our hotel called—a message had been dropped off for me. It was a plain envelope with my name scrawled on it, and inside was a slip of paper with two phone numbers. One, labeled HG, began with +27, the South African country code. The other, VW, began with +44, for the UK.
When we’d gotten back to the room the previous day, I’d told Laura what Alexandra had asked of me but avoided mention of Haroun. To my surprise, she didn’t immediately explode with anger. Thoughtfully, she said, “But she wouldn’t use your name, right?”
“That’s beside the point!” I yelled. “It’s too much of a risk.”
Now I brought the phone numbers back to the room, where Laura was already packing for the next day’s flight home. I said nothing about the message.
After breakfast, we stood in a hot line for an hour, waiting to take an elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Once we were up there, looking over the grand city, Rashid suicidally trying to climb the railings, Laura kissed me firmly on the lips. We aren’t the kind of couple who show affection in public, so it was a special thing. She said, “What matters is that you know you’re doing right.”
It took a second for me to realize she was finishing yesterday’s conversation. Then I wondered—what kind of “right” was she speaking of? The basic right of keeping your family safe, or the grand, historical right of protecting people from the onslaught of Big Brother?
In the afternoon, we went to the Louvre. When faced with paintings, Rashid slumped in boredom and didn’t perk up until the museum store, where he found a comic book he begged us to get. It didn’t matter that it was in French—the superhero, a teenaged Muslim girl, in a hijab no less, was the coolest thing he’d ever seen. Back at the hotel he and Laura crashed, and I went down to the hotel bar, ordered coffee, and took a quiet seat in the corner to look over notes for the evening’s panel. I’d spent weeks boning up on cybersecurity so that I wouldn’t look too ignorant onstage, but I still wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull that off. Besides, I couldn’t focus with those phone numbers in my pocket. I took them out and, after knocking it back and forth in my head too many times, called HG.
The transcontinental line crackled as it rang four times; then it connected and he said a hesitant “Yeah?”
“Brother. It’s me.”
There was a long pause, and when he finally spoke he sounded choked up. “How’d you get…” He coughed. “This means they’ve got it, too. Do you know how long I have?”
“I got your number from Milo Weaver’s sister.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding relieved.
“How are you?”
“Well, I’m glad you can’t see the flea trap I’m living in now. But anything to stay off the radar. What about you? Where are you?”
I told him about the conference, and he asked pointed questions about Rashid and Laura that I answered calmly until the emotion built up inside me. “Come back, Haroun. Come back to America.”
“An American jail?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s better than running.”
“I’d never make it to a jail cell.”
“You don’t know that.”
He coughed again, then said, “Your people won’t let me.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re all gone. The ones I stayed in contact with are gone. A traffic accident in Mumbai. A suicide in Stockholm. A shooting in Brisbane. I don’t know, brother. I might be the last one.”
“How,” I began, then hesitated. “How do you know it’s CIA?”
“They’re getting rid of people who know about Nexus, and all of us did.” He snorted a cynical laugh. “Turns out the Agency isn’t as incompetent as I thought.”
“There has to be a way,” I said. “Maybe I could—”
“Remember what I said in Switzerland?” he cut in. “If I had another life, I would try another path. But I made my bed, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s fine. Despite the things I’ve done I never wanted to hurt you. I hope you believe that.”
I did, but I didn’t tell him. Instead I asked if I could do anything to help him.
“No one can help me, brother. But you know what you can do? Live your life well. Take care of that family of yours. I need to know you’re happy. I need to know you’re good.”
Afterward, I ordered another coffee and sank into a quiet depression. Haroun couldn’t start again and live another life, just as I couldn’t. We’d made decisions early on, and those decisions had changed everything. Neither of us could go back in time and try the other path.
Back upstairs, Rashid was looking at his comic book on the toilet, and I brought Laura out to the terrace. The noise of traffic enveloped us, and I had to lean close for her to hear my words. As she gradually absorbed Haroun’s story, she turned to gape at me. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was frightened, maybe.”
“Of what?”
“That you would see him in me.”
She held my face and kissed me deeply.
Two hours later, I made it out to the same Hotel du Collectionneur stage I’d used before, this time to join the three other guests—an Algerian, a Russian, and a Frenchwoman. I was shocked by the size of the crowd and the presence of television cameras embossed with the logos of France 4 and i24. None of this was for me, of course. I just happened to be sharing the stage with an Algerian intellectual whose controversial book on Islam had made him momentarily famous. He was well prepared for his fifteen minutes of fame, speaking in a thoughtful, measured manner about the contradictions between Islamic rules and the image gratification of social media.
The Russian professor spoke about the use of deep fakes in Moroccan media, and its influence on the country’s political stability. The Frenchwoman delved into history, arguing that France’s colonial history, and the West’s responsibility for these new media, obliged the Macron government to take the lead in securing North Africa’s data protections.
After their erudition, I felt there was nothing for me to say. But I was the only American representative; I couldn’t go down in flames. Not here, in front of these cameras.
“My concern,” I said hesitantly, “is the security of the individuals using these services. In March, Egypt passed sweeping regulations fining purveyors of so-called fake news fourteen thousand dollars. The government has the authority now to decide what news is or isn’t fake. This is a dangerous precedent for the free press.”
“And that’s why Nexus is so popular in North Africa,” the Algerian cut in suddenly, throwing me. He was leaning back in his chair, legs crossed at the knee. Not only was he prepared for stardom; he relished it. He said, “Not a single group has been able to crack its encryption, and governments have no way to trace users. That will change the face of North African democracy. Don’t you think?”
As he waited for a reply, I looked to the audience, and in the glare of the bright lights they momentarily disappeared. I was enveloped in white. But I wasn’t alone—beyond the crowd, through the cameras, were thousands, maybe millions. What was right? What was right for Rashid, now and in the long run? For Milo? For Haroun? For Laura? For me?
“Actually, no,” I said. “Nexus was cracked a long time ago.”
“Is that so?” the Algerian asked doubtfully.
“Yes,” I said. Then I told him how.