“We’ll conduct this interview in English,” Maggie said.
“Because you can’t speak Arabic well enough?” Kafka replied, his voice spiked with contempt.
The two of them were in one of the sterile green interrogation rooms in the basement of SDAT headquarters, a windowless box bearing a hint of disinfectant. Kafka sat upright in a straight-back chair, his hands bound together in one long chain looped through an arm of the chair, loose but restrictive. His ankles were chained through the bottom rung. Maggie sat at a Formica table, across from him. Bellard and John Rae were monitoring the session from Bellard’s office on the third floor, via a camera mounted in the ceiling in the corner of the room.
The temperature was 14°C. Even though Maggie wore her jacket, she was cold. Kafka wore just his shirt and trousers, torn at the knee, spotted with blood. She could tell he wasn’t warm at all.
All part of the breaking-down process.
Kafka stared at the wall past her ear, stiff with rage, at having been tricked into thinking Maggie was Dara. Maggie understood. She’d spent time in a similar place, after she realized Kafka had been intent on killing her—Dara.
“I speak Modern Standard Arabic well enough to conduct this interview,” she said. “But our viewers don’t speak any Arabic.” She nodded at the camera. “And, truth be told, your French is a little wanting, friend.” She smiled.
He looked away.
Maggie said: “But we need to move quickly. You and I don’t have a lot of time before you’re all theirs.” Meaning SDAT. She raised her eyebrows.
Kafka continued to stare straight ahead but his mouth slackened.
“Oh, yeah,” Maggie said. “You shot a cop. He’s still alive, but what do you think that’s going to mean?”
No answer.
“You’re going to spend the rest of your life in a French prison,” she said. “But if you work with me, I can still get your parents out of Mosul.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“That’s why you tried to kill Dara, isn’t it?” Maggie said. “Because Jihad Nation are holding your parents?” He’d implied they were in danger in his texts. “They told you to kill Dara, clean up the mess you made when you tried to defect, didn’t they?”
He gave a weak frown, the first sign she’d broken his shell.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked.
“I know you’re a fake.”
“Because I assumed your lover’s identity?”
“She wasn’t my lover,” he said.
“No,” Maggie said. “But you were hoping.”
“To talk about Dara in such a manner shows utter disrespect for her memory.”
“Even though you tried to kill her.” Maggie shook her head. “Dara’s the real reason you came to Paris. Oh, sure, you wanted a better life for your parents but let’s not kid ourselves. What you wanted most of all was . . . Well, in honor of Dara’s memory, what word would you like to use?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Let’s talk about me again,” Maggie said. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Some lackey on loan to French intelligence?”
“That’s actually pretty close. I was working with Dara at Incognito. After she cat-fished you.”
Kafka squinted at Maggie, incensed again.
“That’s right,” Maggie said. “She played you.”
He looked away.
Maggie said, “What Dara really wanted was to strike a blow, cut off Abraqa, so that her people, the Yazidi, might escape Jihad Nation’s genocide. And that’s what I want. That’s why Dara and I were working together, before she died in the café attack. When you didn’t show up.”
She could tell he wanted to know more.
Always leave them wanting more.
“So,” she said. “I’ve got a little time with you before SDAT sends me on my way. If you and I move quickly, nail down Abraqa, we can get your parents out of Iraq. And my people can do their best to make sure you get as lenient a sentence as possible. They have some influence.”
Kafka was looking at her again, obviously trying to get a read. Could he trust her?
“I know a little about your family,” she said. “Your father is a university lecturer in Mosul. Was. Not working now, thanks to Jihad Nation shutting down the university, but still . . .” She caught his look of upheaval. “They’re not in Mosul anymore?” She eyed him sideways. “Did Jihadi Nation arrest them? They did, didn’t they?”
He gave a deep sigh, hung his head. “Yes,” he whispered.
She had managed to get him to show some raw feelings.
“I can’t imagine what that must be like,” she said softly. “Only that it must be hell. Pure hell.”
She let that sink in.
“My people can get your parents out. Why make them pay for your mistake?”
He looked up at her. His eyes were glistening. Again she saw his anguish.
“You hungry?” she said. “There’s a decent little café down the street. Middle Eastern. We could order takeout. Well, we’d have to.” She smiled. “It’s not like you’re not going anywhere, are you?”
He gave a smirk. “What were you thinking? Adana kebabs? Is your auntie going to cook them?”
“You’ve still got a sense of humor.”
He frowned.
“Want some coffee?” she asked. “I could use some. It’s freezing in here.”
No response.
Maggie continued: “While we are sitting here in this room, kept abnormally chill to keep you uncomfortable, think about this—it’s really going to behoove you to be my friend.”
“Friend?”
“Yes. Even though you shot an SDAT officer. A popular one, as it turns out. Even though you potentially organized the café bombing.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“I know that,” she said. “And you know that.” She nodded at the camera in the ceiling. “But you’re a perfect fit for it, my friend.”
“Stop calling me your friend.”
“I agree it’s a stretch right now. But you are in some deep yogurt, and you need someone on your side. For your parents’ well-being, if nothing else.”
He raised his hands to the point where the chain through the arm in the chair became taut, demonstrating his lack of movement. “What kind of friend does this?”
“You tried to shoot me. What kind of friend does that?”
“Then I guess we’re not friends, after all.”
Maggie stood up, pushing her chair back, which squeaked on the floor. She zipped up her jacket, crossed her arms over her chest, walked a couple paces, then back.
“You’re not a true jihadi. You’re too smart, for one thing.”
He looked up at Maggie. “Can you really get my parents out?”
A surge of victory flowed through her. She was breaking through.
“For a price,” she said. “Access to those Darknet folders that contain the Bitcoin transactions that Jihad Nation uses to fund their efforts. And full knowledge of how the process works. I know Jihad Nation hired you because you had the technical savvy to set it up. But you need to make a decision to work with me—and work fast. As I’ve said, I only have so much time before I’m out of here.”
He pressed his lips as he scanned her face. “How do I know this isn’t all some sort of trick?”
“Dara,” she said. “Our proxy. She’s the only reason I’m trusting you. So you need to trust me just as much as you did her. Until you tried to kill her.”
“My parents are being held in a camp manned by jihadi fighters. A jail, essentially. What kind of guarantee can you give me that you can actually get them out?”
“Where? Mosul?”
“About twenty kilometers outside.”
Another revelation. Things were going well. “We’ve got helicopters that cost the taxpayers forty million dollars apiece, loaded up with gadgets that would make your head spin. Heat cameras that can spot footprints half an hour after they’ve been made. A team of Navy Seals or Army Rangers, in one of those forty million dollar choppers, can be in and out in half an hour with your mother and father. On the way to Turkey. Then Europe. Or the US. Or wherever you prefer—within reason, of course.” She uncrossed her arms, went over to the table, put both hands on it, leaned down, looked him in the eyes.
“Hopefully they make it out,” he said. “Iraq is littered with military equipment that failed in its mission.”
“We’re talking the same people who killed Osama Bin Laden,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Compared to that, this op is child’s play.”
She watched Kafka take a deep breath, uncertainty flickering across his face.
“What’s the alternative?” Maggie said. “Leave your parents at the mercy of Jihad Nation? That outcome is definitely guaranteed. We’re not only the best hope you have—we’re the only hope you have.”
Finally Kafka nodded, seemingly in agreement. He held his hands up. “Can you take these off, then? Since you trust me so much?” He smiled, shook one ankle, rattling the chains.
Negotiations. “Let me see what I can do,” she said. “Want some coffee now?”
He seemed to think about that. “Tea.”
“Something to eat?”
He hesitated before he spoke. “Is it halal?”
“Absolutely. All kosher. I’ll pick it up myself, from the little café I told you about.” She patted the edge of the table.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, looking at the floor.
She smiled. “Good. This is going to work out. I’ll be back.”
Kafka nodded once, and stared straight ahead. But his eyes had a softness to them that hadn’t been there when they’d started.
“You’re getting nowhere,” Bellard said.
“Now just a minute,” Maggie said, standing in Bellard’s office, with its glass walls supposedly implying that all SDAT did was transparent. “I just made some pretty good headway. In only a few minutes. This is only the first interview.”
Bellard was leaning back in his desk chair, hands clasped tightly behind his head, dark patches of perspiration in each armpit of his blue shirt. John Rae was slumped in a guest chair, his long legs stretched out, ending in his favorite pair of cowboy boots, mahogany brown with tooled leather and brass tips. Maggie could tell he wasn’t enjoying his role as advisor. But that was the op.
“He’s toying with you,” Bellard said to Maggie.
“He told us where they’re holding his parents. He’s beginning to confide in me.”
Bellard sat up, folded his hands over his desk. “He was supposed to be a friendly agent to begin with. A walk-in.”
Maggie nodded. “The only person he thought he could trust is dead. And he was duped into meeting us.”
“He shot one of my agents!”
“He shot at me, too, Bellard. He was ready to shoot John Rae.”
“Neither of you are in the hospital at the moment, getting a 9mm bullet pulled from your intestines.”
“I told Remi three times to hold off,” Maggie said.
Bellard’s nostrils flared.
“With all due respect,” John Rae interrupted quietly, “I think Maggie’s got a valid point. Kafka is talking to her. And, from where I sit, he wants to work with us. And we really should have anticipated more resistance in the first place.” It was diplomatic of John Rae to use the word we since it was Bellard who put the plan together and his team had been undermanned. Not to mention that Remi rushed in to grab Kafka, despite Maggie’s many warnings to wait.
“Well, you’ve had your interview,” Bellard said to Maggie. “He’s mine now.”
“Wait a goddamn second,” Maggie said. “I got ten minutes.”
“You were lucky to get that.”
“I handed Kafka to you, Bellard, all wrapped up in a red ribbon. I get him until I crack Abraqa. Then he’s yours. That was the deal.”
“That was before he shot one of my men.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No.”
Bellard looked at his watch.
“You want a pissing contest?” Maggie said. “You’ll get one. Don’t cross me on this.”
Bellard took a deep breath through his nose, looked at her with a flat-lined mouth. “You’ll get another chance—when I’m through.”
“Look,” Maggie said. “Just give me a little more time with him now. Get some tea and food into him, soften him up a bit more. That’ll benefit you, too.”
They all seemed to be looking at the computer screen on Bellard’s desk, the CC camera showing a sullen Kafka sitting in his chair.
“You can have him in the morning,” she said. “Then I’ll take him back. Good cop, bad cop.”
“What’s it going to hurt, Bellard?” John Rae said. He looked at his watch. “You and me can go out and grab a beer.”
Bellard eyed John Rae as if he had asked him to shoot heroin. “We’re on duty.”
“Glass of wine, then,” John Rae said. “Wine’s not considered drinking in France, is it?”
Bellard shook his head and actually cracked a smile. John Rae had a way of getting people to like him.
“I could use a bite to eat, too,” John Rae said. “Something that doesn’t come out of a vending machine. I’m buying.”
Standing up, Bellard grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and slipped it on. “D’accord. I need to make a phone call first.”
Thank you, John Rae, Maggie thought, giving him a wink. She grabbed her temporary ID, went out to order the food. She could have called it in but she needed the walk to clear her head. And she needed time for Kafka to ponder her offer. It was all part of the process.
The cell door opened.
Kafka looked up from his chair, where he was still restrained. And saw four French police officers standing in the hall, three men and one woman, wearing blue fatigues. All had their faces covered. One tall man wore a ski mask, one short man a blue handkerchief tied around his mouth and nose, one older, heavy-set man some silly plastic mask with vertical red, white and blue stripes—the tricolor, something someone might wear to a party. The woman had blonde hair showing, with a red and white Paris St. Germain soccer scarf wrapped around her head like an Arab naqib, showing only her blue eyes.
All four guards stared at Kafka.
They wore plastic gloves. The man with the tricolor plastic mask had a dark blanket folded under one arm. The woman had a roll of masking tape in her hand.
Kafka’s heart began to thud, more powerfully than his terrified body needed to survive. He was overcome by fear, immediately feeling weak and sickly.
The tall man in the balaclava entered the room first, staying close to the wall, then nodding at the woman who followed him in the same manner, out of range of the ceiling camera pointed at Kafka. Both guards stopped directly underneath the black camera.
The woman tore off a three-inch section of tape. The tall man squatted, wrapped his arms around her legs, lifted her up with a grunt. She placed the section of tape over the camera lens. Then she disconnected the black wire from the back of the camera.
Kafka tried to stand up. The chair scraped the linoleum floor, but his hands and ankles were held back by the chains.
He knew what was coming.
The tall man let the woman down, said to the other two guards, “D’accord.”
The two guards entered the room. One man placed a radio on the floor, turned it on. A commercial for automobile insurance came on.
“Something else, I think,” the woman said brightly. “A little party music for our friend, yes?”
They all laughed.
Kafka did not speak good French but his fearful intuition made up for any lack of understanding.
The short man squatted, turned the dial until he found a dance station, playing Numa Numa, of all things—a bouncy Eastern European song full of high, operatic voices at first, settling in on a grinding dance groove.
“That’s it!” the young woman shouted, breaking into a playful dance, her arms and legs pumping as she twirled, her baton on her web belt swinging. It was as if she were out at a club. She was a good dancer. The little man who had set the radio down jumped in and started dancing with her, not well at all and laughing about it. The third man laughed and joined in too, crossing his arms and doing a jaunty Cossack dance, which caused much merriment as his tricolor mask tilted to and fro. The tall man joined in, getting the hang of it, and the dancers formed a circle.
The tall man broke away, came over, shoved the Formica table out of the way with an angry screech.
He stood directly in front of Kafka.
Chestnut eyes underneath thick brown eyebrows glared through the eyeholes of his ski mask.
This drove Kafka back down in his chair with fear, his breath coming and going in desperate gasps as blood pumped wildly in his head, out of control.
“Look up at me, you filthy Arab.”
Fighting every natural instinct in his body, Kafka looked up. His head shook uncontrollably on his neck.
The tall man’s fists clenched by his side.
“Did you enjoy shooting a policeman, you filthy fucking Arab? A Frenchman?”
The three dancers broke their circle and began to wend their way over, still dancing. The two men had drawn their batons, the older man making figure eights in the air with his as he approached. The girl pulled more tape from the roll, giving Kafka a wicked look, smiling with her pretty blue eyes.
It was 11:00 by the time Maggie got back to SDAT headquarters with the food. The mouthwatering scents emanating from the Styrofoam containers in the plastic bag she carried had her stomach growling as she rode down in the elevator with the tall slender officer with the chestnut eyes. She was feeling good about the progress she had made. It would take some finessing to work with Kafka, but she knew they could hammer out a deal.
“Oh, but that does smell delicious,” the tall guard said in French as the elevator doors opened in the basement. His heavy eyebrows contrasted his otherwise delicate features. “Buzkashi’s, am I right? On the corner?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a good thing they stay open late.”
He put his hand out to hold the elevator door for Maggie. “Après vous, mademoiselle.”
“Merci.”
He accompanied her to the interrogation room where they were holding Kafka. He punched a code into the access pad to the right of the door.
“Do you need to inspect the prisoner’s food?” Maggie asked holding up the plastic bag. “And I don’t mean eat it.” She smiled.
He smiled back. “No, I think we can trust you. Although I wouldn’t mind.”
She laughed. She couldn’t get over how lax they were. None of this would’ve passed back home. But then again, sending a junior agent out in the line of fire wouldn’t have been on the agenda either.
“You need to stand guard while we eat?”
“Only if you wish, mademoiselle. But I think it’s fine.” He spoke in that flirtatious manner common to Frenchmen, never missing the opportunity to be playful. American men could learn a thing or two.
“Merci encore,” she said.
He stood back, held open the door.
“Bon appétit,” the guard said as he shut the door.
Maggie’s heart jumped.
Kafka lay on his side, still fettered to the chair, a gray blanket covering his head and torso.
A smear of blood on the floor told the rest of the story.
Under the blanket Kafka panted, his breath coming and going in little gurgles.