The 15:17 to Paris

by Anthony Sadler

  “Spencer, man,” Alek overheard Anthony saying, “we might need to stay here for the weekend!”

  Anthony said Amsterdam reminded him of home; the weather was like home, sunny but breezy, the topography favored Sacramento. Plus the only reason they were supposed to leave was to go to Paris, and Spencer said people they’d run into along the way kept trying to divert them from it. “We met this girl at our hostel in Berlin,” Spencer said. “She told us Paris is just really expensive. She said it’s actually pretty boring, and people are like—they’re actually kind of rude.”

  “And Lisa in Venice was the same,” Anthony said. There’d been a girl on their train to Amsterdam too, an Australian who’d already done all of Europe, and tried to convince them not to do France. So why not just skip their train and catch a later one? There were at least a dozen trains a day.

  They went on a bike tour out to a farm, Rembrandt Hoeve on the Amstel River, owned by an eccentric Dutchman who made clogs and smoked gouda. They biked past houses along the canal that Alek could’ve sworn were cockeyed, and then the guide explained that they were, that they leaned over the water so that things hoisted up from the canal wouldn’t swing into the façade; it had the effect of making it look like the world was about to fall on top of them as they rode past.

  They rode by the Amsterdam Bos, a giant park, bigger than Central Park in New York City, where the wealthy held fox chases and protesters had chanted against the Vietnam War.

  Everything was easy, the weather was perfect, the people were perfect; Alek had so many things left to do.

  So why leave? Why leave Amsterdam? No one had a good reason. Why not just stay here longer? He wanted to get a haircut here. Anthony and Spencer had gone without him while he was on the bus up from Mannheim. They’d stumbled across a Jamaican barber while biking to the laundromat, and Anthony was so excited to find someone in the Netherlands who could cut a black man’s hair that he made Spencer get the same haircut. The two looked sharp; Alek wanted in.

  Then there was the club they kept hearing about that Anthony wanted to go to. But it was only open on weekends, so if they kept their train reservations they’d miss it.

  Plus the girls were kind here, and the boys all agreed that Dutch people were attractive. “I think it’s cause everyone bikes,” Spencer said, “so they have nice legs.”

  Alek laughed. “Is that your medical opinion?”

  And they hadn’t been able to see Anne Frank’s house yet; they could do that if they stayed. It was history, after all, that had brought the three of them together, in middle school, and was part of what brought them to Europe in the first place. They couldn’t leave without seeing it; it wouldn’t be right, like making a pilgrimage and skipping the temple at the end.

  “So I guess it’s decided,” Alek said. They sat outside a bar after walking through the red-light district, logged on to Wi-Fi so they could look at maps and pick a new train time. “We’ll just skip Paris.”

  “Yeah, or at least delay the trip,” Anthony said. Paris would still be there next week. Anthony wanted to stay, Alek definitely wanted to stay, and Spencer wasn’t about to stand in their way. So the plan was they were going to skip the 15:17 to Paris.

  They would leave tomorrow, or even Sunday, or maybe just wait until Monday. Alek would get his hair cut, they’d go to the club, they’d have plenty of time to see Anne Frank’s house. It was decided.

  AND THEN ALEK FELT SOMETHING nudge up against his thinking, like a small voice in a distant room, urging him to leave this place.

  He didn’t know how to explain it to the others and didn’t quite understand it himself, but he realized he’d changed his mind.

  He asked Anthony. Anthony had changed his mind too. Anthony also didn’t really have a good reason. “Maybe we should just stick with the first plan,” was all he could muster by way of explanation for his own reconsideration.

  There were a dozen good reasons to stay. There was no good reason any of them could think of to leave. And yet, they all agreed to leave. None of them knew exactly why, but they all felt it.

  27.

  AT THE TRAIN STATION in Amsterdam, Anthony asked Alek to take candid pictures of him looking off into the distance. “They’re not candid if you ask me to take them.”

  “Just get me from the side.” Anthony was in a pensive mood, or at least trying to look like he was in a pensive mood. He put his arms across the bench and gazed off into the distance. When he lifted his arms, his fleece hiked up and Alek could see the purple of the T-shirt he was wearing underneath.

  “Anthony, you’re not wearing a Lakers shirt are you? We’re in Europe, wear a soccer jersey! Borrow one of mine. Or borrow one of Solon’s, I have extras.”

  “I’m good, no shame in it! I’m proud to support Kobe.” Anthony looked off across the platform and said, as if to himself, “The Black Mamba.”

  “The what?”

  “The Black Mamba.” Alek was still confused. “It’s Kobe’s nickname. You didn’t know?”

  “That’s weird, I went on this roller coaster in Cologne called Black Mamba. All Africa themed.”

  “No shit?”

  The train finally dinged into the station, and Alek picked up his bag, but as he moved toward the train, a woman approached. “Excuse me,” she said with a British accent, and an arm out toward him, “would you boys help my father board the train?”

  Behind her, a frail old man with wisps of white hair offered an embarrassed smile.

  “Sure, ma’am.” Alek held the man by his elbow while Spencer got the other, and Anthony grabbed their suitcase with his free hand. When the train doors whisked open, Alek helped him up the high stairs, then helped them get settled in their seats while Anthony loaded their luggage.

  “Bless you, boys,” the man said. “Thank you for your help.”

  “No problem,” Alek said. He turned to Spencer. “You know where our seats are?”

  “We have first class. I think it’s up there, but this seems fine to me.”

  “Yeah, fine by me.”

  They sat down and settled in.

  Fifteen minutes passed.

  Half an hour passed.

  SPENCER GOT UP.

  “All right, tired of this,” he said. “I’m bored. I’m gonna go check Wi-Fi on the other cars.”

  Spencer disappeared into the forward cars. More time passed. Spencer burst through the door with his fists in the air.

  “Found it! First class is that way. And the Wi-Fi works there.”

  They waved to the elderly man and the woman who’d diverted them from their reserved seats up front, and moved forward through carriage fifteen, through carriage fourteen, up to carriage twelve.

  Up in first class, a train attendant brought them snacks and tiny Coke cans. “Oh my God! So adorable!” Alek was in a bored, giddy mood and found the smaller than average soda endlessly funny. “They’re so cute! Spencer, look at this baby soda!”

  Spencer groaned. “Alek, shut the fuck up.”

  “Well, Spencer’s in a grumpy mood.”

  “All right, I’m putting my headphones on.” Spencer, the noise canceling headphones firmly affixed to his head, slumped back in his seat and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  THE TRAIN SLOWS. People rise, people reach for their bags, a sea swell of arms and leather and canvas. Spencer and Anthony don’t stir.

  Alek watches absently as passengers get off, passengers get on. Brussels. He takes a picture of the station. He decides it’s boring.

  Then, out of corner of his eye, a person on the platform catches his attention.

  A curl of blond hair, a confident walk: the attractive train attendant he flirted with earlier, leaving the train. No!

  Alek looks around and sees more people in uniforms leaving. Crew change, he thinks. Damn, she’s gone. She probably thinks we’re a bunch of idiots. Then, We are a bunch of idiots.

  He watches her leave with a hint of disappointment. He does not see that as she wal
ks away, a North African man passes going in the opposite direction, approaching the train.

  The man crosses the platform, angling just out of Alek’s field of vision, and boards behind Alek.

  He has enough firepower to kill nearly everyone on board.

  ALEK TAKES PICTURES as the train pulls out of the station. He thinks about waking up Spencer. He wishes something would happen. He tracks on his phone how far they are from Paris; he follows on Google Maps to see what route they’re taking, and if he recognizes the names of places they pass. He looks out the window, watches more countryside pass by. He messages the girl in Germany. He messages a friend from his deployment. He messages a girl in Oregon. He looks out the window some more. He looks down at his phone again, playing a little game with himself, trying to predict exactly what time it will be when the train crosses the next border. He texts the two girls. He tells them where he is; he watches the route he is taking on his cell phone.

  At approximately 5:55 P.M., just after the little blue dot moves across the screen into France, everyone stops receiving messages from him.

  ALEK HEARS LUGGAGE DROPPING off a shelf behind him. Something with a weighted base, because the sound is extremely loud and he hears a tremendous cascade of broken glass. Before he can turn around, a man in uniform blows past his vision at a full sprint, and without thinking, Alek falls to a crouch and turns in the foot space, looking back through the gap between the seats where he can see, swaying in and out of his narrow alley of vision, like some kind of specter moving through a nightmare, a shirtless man with a machine gun, walking slowly toward them.

  Adrenaline hits. His vision narrows. The train evaporates around him and all that exists in the whole world is one man with a weapon thirty feet in front of him. Alek’s vision is a single sphere, like looking through binoculars; he is watching a video game through a gun sight. He thinks, Go—let’s go, but means it only partly, feebly; a message to his friends next to him whom he can sense are now awake, he only knows he’s said it aloud because he feels it vibrating from his lungs, hears the words returning as an echo. Then Spencer blurs across his vision and Alek realizes he’s sent his best friend to charge the gunman.

  Another clear thought: that Spencer is defenseless, exposed, and alone.

  * * *

  28.

  MEANWHILE, 150 MILES to the south, Alex Daniels, the press attaché for the US embassy in Paris, was finishing dinner. One of the perks of the job was you could host friends on long layovers, and these were a few Palestinian citizens of Israel on a fourteen-hour stay with their kids. Daniels was only five weeks on the job at the embassy, and had tried, and then given up on, meeting press contacts. No one was around. The press, like just about everyone else in France, was on vacation for the month of August. After a week of trying, he’d decided he would wait for la rentrée, the grand French tradition of coming back to work in the fall.

  It turned out, he wouldn’t need to wait that long.

  First, his work phone rang.

  It was a Friday night, so he let it ring, and said goodbye to his guests, whose taxi had just pulled up.

  His work phone rang again.

  When it rang a third time, he figured it might be something important, so he picked it up. “This is Agence France-Presse, we just learned three marines stopped a terrorist attack on a train from Amsterdam to Paris. Would you care to comment?”

  Daniels cleared his throat. “I don’t have any more information at this time, I’ll have to get back to you.”

  He took down the name and number. And then he did what all good press attachés do when blindsided by a story: he turned on the TV.

  The phone rang again. Another reporter. Then another, and the blizzard began. Daniels tried to get in touch with his deputy, who was already buried because he was the duty officer that weekend, which meant he was getting not only press calls, but calls from every worried American in France.

  “I’m sending all the press to you,” he told Daniels, “and I’m going to take all the duty calls.” But by that point Daniels was already hopelessly behind. He was already forgetting who had called from which outlet. He needed triage, and he no longer had a deputy to help, so he started making a list of everyone who’d called and in what order, but it was fighting a hydra, the list growing longer than he could keep up with. He’d never seen anything like it. While up in Arras, Alek and Anthony sat together in a hotel room well into the night trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Alex Daniels was doing the same down in Paris.

  Across the city, not far from the embassy, Rebecca Robinson woke up Saturday morning to an urgent call from her colleague Rick Holtzapple. Robinson was the ambassador’s assistant, and Holtzapple was a political affairs officer, but since August was the slow season, the embassy had fewer people on hand than usual. The deputy chief of mission—the second in command to the ambassador—was back in America on annual leave, so Holtzapple was filling in for her. But the ambassador was gone too, taking a weekend away with her husband, which left Holtzapple effectively in charge of the whole embassy. Robinson was getting a call from the most senior person on staff. On a weekend.

  “Something’s happened,” Holtzapple said. “We need to call the interior minister.”

  Robinson took a shower, put on a sundress and sandals—it was a Saturday in August after all—and went down to the embassy. The calls started before she could sit down. She learned that, coincidentally, an embassy employee had been on the same train everyone was talking about, and had called the embassy’s security officer. Embassy personnel had known almost the moment it happened, but no one, not even the employee on the train, knew what had happened. All he’d been able to report was that the train stopped, rerouted, and a bloody man was carted off; the news outlets were all repeating the same thing: three marines stopped a terrorist.

  Daniels arrived several hours after her, having tried to triage from home for most of the morning. Before he got to his desk, Robinson stopped him. “Alex,” she said, “this is your Charlie Hebdo moment. Welcome to Paris.”

  Robinson went about setting up calls with French government officials, per Holtzapple’s request, starting with the minister of the interior, who was in charge of the national police and the other law enforcement bodies. Then she, the executive staff, and the consular team all switched their attention to what had become the most pressing task: securing the safety of Americans who had been in harm’s way, and for all Robinson knew, still were. Here the consular staff was critical, since they were the ones specially trained in providing emergency services to American citizens abroad. If an American was seriously injured, they needed to know what hospital he was taken to and whether he was receiving good enough care. America needed to take care of its own.

  But there was a problem. Robinson and the rest of the staff felt responsible for the well-being of three young Americans, but didn’t know where any of them were. All they knew was that the one named Spencer Stone was in the hospital, not even which hospital, and the other two were completely in the wind. By now Robinson had learned their names, Anthony and Alek, but those two could have gone anywhere. Were they okay? Were they targets? Would they get back on a train and leave before the FBI could debrief them?

  And there was a second problem. Robinson and the consular team needed to make sure the one named Spencer was getting adequate care, but even if she could find him, she had no authority, and the consular team didn’t either. The boys were marines; the embassy’s consular services didn’t extend to active-duty military. It had to be military to military.

  Robinson called the defense attaché, Lieutenant Jim Shaw, who’d already set out for Arras with what amounted to a satellite embassy—two vehicles, two assistants, and a team from the FBI’s legal attaché office. Here a key piece of misinformation proved fortuitous. The fact that everyone still thought the boys were all marines compelled Shaw to bring enough personnel, and enough vehicles, to accommodate all of them. For now, his focus was finding out h
ow badly Spencer was hurt, what hospital he was at, what kind of care he was receiving, and trying to find out where the hell the other two were.

  First, Shaw found out that Spencer was transferred to a hospital in Lille. He’d nearly severed a thumb, but he was doing okay. And that was another extraordinary stroke of luck, an act of God, or just an uncanny coincidence: when the terrorist attacked, the nearest station happened to be thirty miles from a leading medical center with a renowned orthopedic program. At the moment Spencer’s thumb was cut, the nearest train station was Arras, so when the train was diverted, it delivered him right to one of the best places in the world to repair precisely the injury he’d sustained.

  Spencer was conscious and stable but he didn’t immediately know where Alek and Anthony were; he’d been surrounded by French-speaking people and wasn’t sure what was going on, but through the French officials buzzing around him, Shaw was able to reverse engineer the last several hours and track the other two boys down to a hotel in Arras.

  Then, yet another problem: someone had leaked their location, or else a wily reporter had trailed one of the military attaché vehicles, but either way, there were hundreds of reporters set up outside both the hotel and the hospital. The boys had become rock stars, literally overnight.

  Back in Paris, Rebecca Robinson had spent much of the morning into the afternoon frantically trying to help Shaw find the boys and fielding phone calls from an already immensely grateful nation. The president of the railroad association called, the president of the train company, ministers and other government officials called, all this on a Saturday in August when they shouldn’t even be in the city—all calling to thank America, to thank the embassy. She’d never experienced anything like it. Not only had those boys performed just about the greatest act of heroism, as far as she was concerned, that had ever been performed, but now she was receiving appreciation from every corner of the country. It was like an immense gift the boys had allowed her, without even needing to show their faces and claim credit for themselves.