Max stared out the window at the Ryanair plane pulling up to their gate.
“That’s us,” Inspector Fontaine said in French.
Max didn’t respond. He hadn’t said a word to Fontaine since they’d left Kiskunhalas, not on the two-hour car ride to Budapest, nor as they’d waited in various lines at the airport. Fontaine had tried—he’d offered him a sandwich, a Coke, a candy bar; he’d asked him about Scouts, school. But even his kindness felt like treachery, like he was enticing Max to forget about Ahmed and accept the better treatment freely given to him as a white American boy. Every attempt Fontaine made to help or comfort him just made Max angrier and angrier. It was Ahmed who needed apologies and second chances, not him.
A few minutes later, they boarded the plane, and Max took the window seat Fontaine pointed him toward. Fontaine sat beside him.
“Your parents will be waiting to meet us in Charleroi,” he said in French.
Max had seen on the monitors playing CNN International in the terminal that the Brussels Airport was still closed after the attacks. They would fly into Charleroi, which was an hour’s drive to the south. Max guessed that Fontaine had flown to Hungary out of Charleroi as well.
“How did you find us so fast?” Max asked him in English. “Claire didn’t know where we were going.”
A smile flickered on Fontaine’s face, though Max couldn’t tell if he was proud of his effort or was just happy Max was finally talking to him.
“After you ran off, I asked the directrice to show me Ahmed’s identification card. When I saw it, I knew there was only one boy who could make an actual card of identification at the commune. So I found Oscar.”
“He told you?”
Fontaine laughed. “He claimed not to have made the card, to know nothing about this affair. Of course, he was lying.”
Max was glad to hear that Oscar had protected them. He hoped from the way Fontaine seemed more amused than angry that Oscar hadn’t gotten into too much trouble.
“It took some time,” Fontaine admitted, “but then Madame Pauline mentioned the girl, Farah—”
Max stiffened. Farah had been in the room when Ibrahim had told him that Ahmed’s father was at Kiskunhalas. Max hadn’t told her their plan, but she could have easily guessed.
“But she too said she knew nothing. Her father said he was very strict with her, that she does not involve herself in mischief.”
Max gently let out his breath, relieved that Farah also had defended Ahmed. But he was sorry he had put her in a situation where she too had to lie, especially to her family.
Fontaine gave a small shrug, as if he didn’t quite believe Farah or her father but didn’t much care. “That afternoon, I looked at the history of recent searches on the computer Oscar used in the commune. I found a search for an address for an Ibrahim Malaki in Molenbeek—”
Their plane picked up speed. The engines roared and the cabin vibrated; it was too loud for Fontaine to continue. But Max already knew the rest. Fontaine had spoken to Ibrahim and learned that Ahmed’s father was at Kiskunhalas.
The nose of the plane lifted off the ground. Normally, Max loved this moment, when the plane seemed to defy gravity and escape the weight of the earth. But now all he could think about was Ahmed: He’d never had the freedom to fly above borders and barriers. He didn’t even have the freedom to leave the detention center.
A hand seemed to pull the plane directly up into the sky. Fields shrank into green squares, highways into gray lines. Ahmed was a dot on a dot on a dot somewhere below. Max wanted to scream but instead he turned to Fontaine.
“How could you think Ahmed was a terrorist?”
He wanted Fontaine to apologize, but the police officer just gave a shrug.
“You must admit, he did act like one. Hiding, breaking the law—”
“Taking care of your grandfather’s garden.” Max stared at him hard. “He loved it. Like you do.”
“Mex,” Fontaine said gently, “he could not love it like I do. It is my garden. I played in it as a boy.”
“You’ve told me,” Max snapped.
“I have such happy memories of life there—football with my cousins, my confirmation party, the summer fête when all the neighbors would come and Grandfather would set up a tent by the roses. My childhood was peaceful, serene. But my parents’ was not—”
“Because of the war,” Max cut in.
Fontaine nodded. “You have never lived through a war, Max. It is a terrible thing.”
Max didn’t even bother to conceal his irritation. “Ahmed told me.”
But Fontaine didn’t seem to hear him. “Europe was in ruins in 1945, but by the time I was a boy, just a few decades after, it had rebuilt itself. There was unity, cooperation in Western Europe—even between countries that were once enemies.”
“What does this have to do with Ahmed?” Max interrupted.
“Migrants are threatening this unity. Do you realize that more than a million of them came to Europe last year? Our union is young, Mex, fragile; if it breaks down, Europe could fall again into chaos.”
“But chaos and war is exactly what Ahmed was escaping! If you know how horrible this is from your own history, you shouldn’t turn your back on people like him. You should have compassion, like Albert Jonnart!”
“Jonnart?”
“The man they named my street for. He saved a Jewish boy during the war. Your grandfather must have—”
Fontaine glanced away.
Max stared at Fontaine, amazed it hadn’t occurred to him earlier. “Was it your grandfather who betrayed him?”
Fontaine turned back, a fierce scowl on his face. “My grandfather did nothing! He was not a hero like Jonnart, but he was not a collaborator either.”
Even if Max believed him, there still wasn’t anything honorable about doing nothing. “But you agree Jonnart was a hero because he helped a refugee—”
“Ahmed’s situation is different—”
“Ahmed just wanted to go to school,” Max said. “What’s so dangerous about that?”
Fontaine waved his finger. “I don’t think you understand. Ahmed broke the law by staying in Belgium, and you did too by registering him in school. The law is important, Mex. Society cannot function without it.”
“What if the law is wrong?”
“What if the heart is wrong? What if you let all these people into your country, your home, and they turn out to be bad people who want to harm you and change your way of life? What if they are not worth your sacrifice?”
Max wished he could tell Inspector Fontaine that until Ahmed had come into his life, he hadn’t felt worth much himself. But instead he just said, “You can’t know what anyone’s worth unless you give them a chance.”
“Ah, to be young,” Fontaine said. He shook his head. “Cheer up, Mex. Ahmed is with his father, where he belongs.”
Max could grant Fontaine that. But there was something else he was just as sure of: Ahmed belonged in school, not in a prison.