The 15:17 to Paris

by Anthony Sadler

  Anthony rejoined, catching the tail end of the guide’s speech, and shaking his head. “That’s just a big-ass statue to take. How do you steal a whole statue? It’s the size of a building.”

  The guide took them to Checkpoint Charlie. He showed them the Führerbunker, where, he reminded them, Hitler killed himself as Russian forces closed in.

  “Wait, for real?” Spencer was confused; he looked over at Anthony. Anthony looked confused too. “I thought Hitler killed himself in the Eagle’s Nest when American forces closed in on him.”

  “Your textbooks are wrong. By, oh, about seven hundred kilometers. The Kehlsteinhaus is down in the south. Hitler was here, with his wife Eva, when he killed himself. And it was the Russians who were closing in, by the way. You Americans can’t take credit every time evil is defeated.”

  As he thought about it, it wasn’t all that surprising to Spencer. Maybe it wasn’t all that uncommon. When you told stories, sometimes you made yourself the hero. Hadn’t he and Anthony done that? In their airsoft reenactments out in front of Spencer’s house, and in the epilogues they cowrote on Sunday afternoons after Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan?

  The guide shooed them on, the next stop was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews. They parked their bikes and walked through a field of stones. From the outside, it seemed rigid and ordered, like a well-planned and sterile cemetery, but when you walked in, it was disorienting. Some of the stones were only a few inches off the ground; some were two or three times taller than him. It was a maze that swallowed him up when he walked in, so one moment he was totally in shadow, and the next sharp strips of light fell across him.

  One moment he was totally alone, and the next he was bumping into a mass of other tourists at a blind intersection.

  Anthony followed him, a few paces back, holding his camera up high.

  Then the guide pointed to the victory column, another monument Anthony marveled at. “That’s a lot of gold to just be out in public. People never go up there to steal it?”

  They stopped for lunch, and Spencer learned more about Christy’s background. It turned out their newest travel companion had a lot of useful advice about the rest of their trip. She knew France well, because even though she grew up in Florida, she worked in Paris.

  “So what do you think,” Anthony said. “What should we do there?”

  “Well, do you speak French?”

  “Ha! No, none. Neither of us.”

  Spencer laughed. “We barely speak English.”

  “Oh. I’m fluent in French.”

  “How long did that take you?”

  “I’ve lived there for four years,” she said, and then, she said something surprising. “But I don’t think you should spend much time there. Actually, I don’t know if you should go at all.”

  “What, like we should skip Paris altogether?”

  “Yeah, maybe just skip it. I’d skip it if I were you. People can be kind of rude to you if you don’t speak French. It’s also pretty expensive. And they don’t really like Americans.”

  Spencer thought about it; he looked at Anthony.

  “No one’s really high on Paris, maybe we should just skip it.”

  Anthony shrugged. “I just need my picture with the Eiffel Tower. That’s crucial.”

  “Yeah, but is it worth a whole trip?” Spencer was starting to think that if people kept saying bad things about Paris, it might be time to take it off the itinerary. “Let’s at least think about it. Maybe just go straight to Spain.” Anthony nodded, and took a bite of his sandwich. “Hey, Christy,” he said after a moment. “What do you do there anyway?”

  “Do where?”

  “In Paris, I mean. What’s your job?”

  “Oh! I work for a news channel.”

  19.

  AFTER THE BIKE TOUR they headed back to the hostel. Anthony had to take care of some errands and said he was going to stop off and use the Wi-Fi in the room to write his friend John to see if they were any closer to each other.

  Spencer went to wait for him in the hostel bar.

  He sat down, thinking more about Christy’s advice. It nagged at him. When he ordered his beer, he decided to ask the bartender for his thoughts on skipping France.

  Two stools down, another patron interrupted. “Where you headed next?”

  Spencer looked over. This man was out of place. In his midfifties at a youth hostel, his hair was long and ratty, everything he wore was leather and a little too tight. His voice raspy, with an accent that was hard to understand and harder still to place, but that Spencer assumed was German.

  “We’re supposed to go to France, then finish in Spain,” Spencer said. “The thing is, people keep saying to skip France. We’re all most excited for Spain anyway.”

  “And Amsterdam?” His voice was so raspy Spencer had to lean closer to try and make out what he was saying.

  “No, no Amsterdam. We’ve thought about it, there’s not enough time.”

  The man shook his head. “Make time for Amsterdam.”

  Spencer considered him. He looked like the kind of guy who’d lived hard and aged faster than his years, then tried to offset the wrinkles by growing long hair and dressing . . . courageously.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I just got back from there with my band.”

  “You—sorry?”

  “Band, my band, we were just in Amsterdam.

  “Oh! You’re in a band? What kind of music?

  “Hard rock mostly.”

  “Wow. Are the other members all German?”

  “Not German,” he growled. “I’m from Sweden.” He pulled from his beer. “But I tell you, one of my favorite things to do when we go up there,” Spencer leaned in close to try and make out what he was saying, “we get some truffles and head out to the countryside. And you know what I do then?”

  Spencer humored him. “What?”

  He smiled, milking the pause. “Nothing. I don’t do anything. I just look around.”

  Spencer laughed. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “You know what else they have? Even if you don’t do all the drugs like I do, they have the nicest people in the world there. And most of them speak English, by the way.” Then he winked. “Beautiful women too. And history.”

  Spencer nodded. He could feel himself warming to the idea. The plan shifted in his mind.

  “My friend, forget about France. Go to Amsterdam. You have to go.”

  Behind him the door opened. Anthony slipped in and took the stool next to him. “Making friends?”

  “Yeah. And listen, I think we need to change our plans.” He looked down the bar at his new friend.

  “Anthony waved at the bartender. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I think we need to go to Amsterdam.”

  * * *

  WITH THE BARREL FACING Spencer’s head, the gunman pulls the trigger. Spencer hears the click. He’s still alive—how? How many times has he almost been shot? Will the man pull the trigger again? Alek already has his hands over the gunman’s hands, wrenching the pistol away before he can try to shoot Spencer again. Spencer sends strength to his arms to try and squeeze the man into being still, but something yellow flares across his vision—light glinting off a blade. The pistol is gone now, but Spencer is still trapped, and as the blade comes arcing back all he can do is duck into the gunman’s neck. He feels cool contact, a dragging across his neck, sees more blood, then their bodies move in opposite directions and Spencer catches a glimpse of his own thumb over the gunman’s shoulder. A bolt of fear courses through him. That’s bone—I can see my bone. His thumb is bent backward and sliced almost completely off, so he doesn’t recognize it at first; it’s not totally his own, and it feels like he’s watching someone else’s body in a movie. Spencer hears himself yelling, feels himself struggling, feels the desperate need to create space between their two bodies. He hears himself yell, “He’s got a knife!” and flops his body to kick the gunman away, driving the man forward into the middle of
the aisle.

  Where Alek and Anthony are standing, ready for him.

  Spencer scrambles to his feet.

  Alek is ready on his left.

  Anthony ready on his right.

  The gunman crouches in the middle.

  The four of them just stand for a moment. Three friends and a terrorist. No one knows what to do now. They stand there in the aisle, and a look of recognition passes between Spencer and the rest, as if all four of them in that moment acknowledge the same thing—So this just got awkward.

  A beat passes. Spencer is suddenly conscious of an alarm inside the train. When did that start? The noise is awful, aggravating, too much. Has this been going all along?

  Another moment passes.

  Anthony swings at the gunman first, driving him back toward Alek who jabs twice, and then they’re all swinging at him, trying to pummel him into submission, but he won’t go down, until Spencer feels a new flood of rage and gets his good hand around the man’s back, palms his head, and levers it down, slamming it against the table. Alek jumps on to help pin him down, and the gunman squirms violently, again the wiry strength that surprises Spencer.

  “Stop!” Alek yells, putting the pistol right up against the man’s head. He doesn’t stop; he rotates powerfully, Spencer leans in, using his weight to try and keep his head down against the table. The man torques so hard it seems like he might spin his body right off his own head.

  “Stop struggling!” Alek yells again. “Stop! Stop moving! Stop resisting!”

  Spencer knows what’s about to happen. He can see it as if it already has. Alek is going to shoot him while Spencer holds him down. His head is going to fly all over me.

  Alek cocks the pistol back.

  Spencer thinks, We are about to execute this man.

  Alek pulls the trigger.

  Nothing.

  Alek cocks the gun to load a round into the empty chamber. This time he offers the gunman no chance. He holds it up to the man’s head, and pulls the trigger again.

  Again the gun does not go off. The man’s struggling kicks into an even higher gear. Now Spencer grabs him around the shoulders, spins him around and jumps backward again, again flying across the seat, again trying to work his forearm under the man’s chin, wedge it in against his neck, compress the arteries, choke his brain of blood.

  Spencer can’t see.

  He has a second wind now, but it won’t last much longer. Blood is running down his face from the wound on his forehead that has swollen his eye almost totally closed, down his neck from a wound he can’t yet see, his hand is soaked in blood from his nearly severed thumb. None of the weapons seem to work, so there’s no way to subdue the terrorist, and now the box-cutter blade is nowhere to be seen.

  The gunman is punching him again, arcing his fists back and up into Spencer’s face.

  “You don’t have it,” he hears Alek yell, his best friend trying to guide him to a better chokehold. “Get it deeper.” Spencer adjusts, still can’t choke him, then, a memory: the jujitsu group in Portugal, the lieutenant colonel yelling at him, “Put your hooks in, put your hooks in! It’s not just the arms, it’s the legs!” Spencer shimmies his heels up over and in between the gunman’s legs, and he pulls, begins to slow the gunman’s torquing, and feels his forearm set satisfyingly under the gunman’s neck, right where it fits, a puzzle piece finally settling into place.

  He leans back and squeezes hard, using his weight to tighten the chokehold, which now feels snug.

  Fists keep coming back so Spencer leans into them, taking the punches, keeping his hold tight, trusting his training, trusting Alek, until he thinks he can feel the punches begin to weaken, and soon the gunman’s hand is just dragging, open palmed, over Spencer’s face.

  Then he’s asleep. The alarm wails.

  * * *

  AYOUB

  Ayoub followed his father to Europe in 2007.

  Ayoub’s father was trying to make a go of it in the capital, so that’s where Ayoub went to join him, but he began getting in trouble.

  In 2009, he was arrested on suspicion of selling hashish.1 He wasn’t a user, there just wasn’t much else to do for money.

  And anyway, he was not extreme in his faith; he never minded sitting with the people who got high. Mostly, he considered himself an athlete, five-aside soccer his favorite pastime.

  In 2013, the family moved down to Spain to the mouth of the River of Honey, Rio de la Miel, a city called Algeciras on the bay of Gibraltar.

  It was a place of uncomfortable contrasts, a weigh station for oil traveling across the Atlantic, where small fishing skiffs bobbed next to giant cargo vessels. A rich fishery but also one of the busiest transshipment points in the world, a place where millions of dollars’ worth of commerce occurred in the space of every second, and yet Ayoub lived among poor immigrants, and almost half the city was unemployed.2 Ships passed with thousands of tons of cargo, but in Ayoub’s neighborhood there was little to do for money besides sell scrap, sell hashish. All around was natural beauty, but Ayoub lived in decades-old dilapidated public housing with peeling white paint.3

  Legend held that there was once a giant 150-foot statue of the prophet Muhammad, one theory being that it was built to warn the Muslims of an impending Christian invasion.4 Another was that the statue protected the land with magic, with winds and currents, and only when the giant prophet was toppled could ships pass and international trade begin.

  Modern Algeciras was a place in whose alleys and side streets you could become lost and anonymous, yet was situated in a province known for the proliferation of watchtowers. The place Ayoub moved to had once been a merchant paradise; the towers were places from which merchants could watch people and cargo arriving. In Ayoub’s family there were merchants too. His father sold trash. Ayoub sold hashish. Each dealt only in the things he himself didn’t use. They had no watchtowers. From the housing project in which they lived, they could not see the people and cargo arriving, mostly from America.

  Ayoub was a normal young man; he took advantage of the beaches with other friends5 and played soccer often, but like most others his age, he was constantly looking for work. In 2012 he went back to Morocco, and was arrested again on suspicion of selling drugs.6 When he came back to Spain, he was done. He wanted out of the drug world.7 He’d had enough, and wanted something better.

  This city though, Algeciras, was a major transit point between two continents with a huge unemployed underclass—in that way, a city tailor-made for drug trafficking. Staying out of it was hard; it was hard to find other sources of income when an obvious one was always there, but Ayoub was trying.8 He sought discipline in prayer, found some structure there, and began worshipping with a half dozen different congregations.9 Near his home, in the space between a market10 and an immigration detention center,11 his father helped convert an auto repair shop into another mosque.12 It followed the concept of Taqwa,13 which means “God fearing,” the idea being that followers must always have the Almighty in mind. Always be on guard, lest they do anything that would displease God.

  It was a good fit for a young man trying to avoid a world of crime around him. It was a mosque in which men and women prayed together.

  But Spanish police believed it to be a threat. They had it under surveillance the moment it opened, and the moment Ayoub stepped inside it he brought upon himself a new problem, though it was one he was not yet aware of: He was placed under surveillance, and marked as a possible threat.14

  He could not know how this mark would stick with him. He did not know how it would affect his future. He kept working hard; he stayed out of trouble. When he wasn’t praying, he worked in a teahouse.

  He lost that job too.

  He couldn’t find another.

  Ayoub was seeking refuge in religion just as, twenty-five hundred miles15 due east, in the direction he prayed, there were rumblings that would affect his own life and millions of others. Two groups of Islamic extremists had merged. One a division of the Syrian re
sistance called the Nusra Front, the other calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq; together, they rebranded as the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS. Their mission was so bold that for a long time they were dismissed as dreamers. Other radical groups rejected them as fantastical, and even Al Qaeda cut ties with them. What ISIS wanted was no less than to bring about an actual Islamic state. They wanted to restore the caliphate from over a millennium ago. And just as Ayoub was looking for a way out of the drug game, ISIS was becoming a movement that demanded to be taken seriously.

  In January, it actually took over a city, Fallujah, frighteningly close to the capital of Iraq.

  A few weeks later, it took an even bigger city, one on the north bank of the Euphrates, called Raqqa. This was important not just because Raqqa was a major metropolis, and not just because ISIS had effectively erased the border between Syria and Iraq. The city had been the capital of the Abbasid caliphate, twelve hundred years before, when the Muslim world was the center of science, discovery, fairness, and order.

  ISIS was holding the old capital of the state they sought to restore.

  The idea of an Islamic state was beginning to seem not just possible, but imminent.

  As it made a stronger and stronger case that it could conceivably achieve its goals, it offered disenchanted youth everywhere a chance to be part of a world-changing cause. The places it fought were rich with people easy to demonize. In Syria, freedom-loving rebels were underequipped and poorly organized, trying to stave off a brutal dictator who sent a professional military to push barrel bombs out of helicopters and onto children.

  The ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, issued a recruiting call.

  His message was calibrated precisely for young men struggling to find meaning. He wanted to inspire “volcanoes of jihad”16 all over the world, which would drive away the infidels whose meddling in Muslim lands had poisoned them, and turned them into places where honest young men couldn’t find dignity. If the meddlers could be driven out, the world of justice and peace and discovery—the caliphate—would emerge again.