Yael presses forward, while I follow a pace or two behind. After twenty minutes or so, we cross a border into yet another Paris I never knew. Here there are no cheap sex shops, no visitors from America giggling at the freezing strippers from their café chairs, sipping espresso and smacking their lips at just how naughty and so very non-American it all is. This is the Paris of the Tunisians who wash the visitors’ coffee cups, the Paris of the Senegalese who sell them little Mona Lisa magnets from blankets spread out on the curb by the Seine. The awnings over the shops are faded and torn, the buildings they’re attached to chipping and tired, long ago having passed from quaint decay into the real thing. Halal butchers and travel agencies offering the very best prices on flights to Algeria. Kiosks that sell SIM cards and newspapers in languages with unfamiliar alphabets. The place is called Goutte d’Or, Yael tells me. Drop of gold.
The sun is almost gone by the time we find a small trapezoidal park. There’s a fine mist in the air, barely rain at all. Yael fishes a newspaper from a trash can and wipes the seat of a bench dry.
“We’ll wait here a minute,” she says.
I sit beside her. “Where are we?”
“Hush,” she says. “Let them get used to us before we talk. We’re no one, just a couple of women in a park. Use the time to observe.”
We’re quiet for a while; then I see what Yael wanted me to observe. Directly across the street from the park, right on the corner, is a small restaurant. CAFé DURBIN, the sign says.
I stop breathing. The air is suddenly frigid and I wrap my arms tightly around my chest. “That’s the place?” I say in quiet French.
Yael places a gentle hand on my leg. “It is.”
From here I can see inside. It’s dingy and small, but lively, each tiny table packed with two or three men, drinking coffee or tea or red wine. I try to imagine my father there, entering the café, looking around for Feras. I try to ignore the shudder in my belly. Stay focused, and in the now, I tell myself; it’s the only thing that will get him back.
“What does ‘Feras’ mean in Arabic?” Yael says quietly.
“It’s a first name,” I answer. “But I think in some places it can also mean ‘lion.’”
“Exactly.” Yael takes another look around, then leans in close. “In this case, Feras isn’t a first name as I assumed, but a code name the Americans use for him.”
“How do you know what the Americans call him?”
“Even allies spy on each other. For a time when they’re not.” Yael pauses as an old woman in a headscarf passes. “The boys in Tel Aviv searched their databases and found a hundred-something informants worldwide with the first name Feras, none of them in Paris. However, as a code name, Feras has a single hit: Hamid Tannous. He lives not far from here, somewhere over in the 19th arrondissement.”
“He’s an American spy?” I ask.
“Informant. But he’s ours, too. He’ll talk to anyone who pays him. The consensus in Tel Aviv is that he’s the guy we want.”
“How do we get in touch with him?”
“There’s a protocol we use. He’s something of a regular customer with us.”
“So let’s do it.”
Yael turns to me, gives me the same smile she uses before kicking my legs out from under me. “Practice is over, Gwendolyn,” she says. “Time for the real thing.”
*
We cross a trestle bridge leading over into the 19th. Below us, trains creep slowly along the tracks like snakes in a moat. The neighborhood itself is old and crumbling, a forgotten or ignored corner of Paris. A man in a white thawb and sandals, down ski parka thrown over his shoulders, stands outside a computer repair shop, smoking a cigarette. He wishes us good evening in Arabic as we pass.
We take a left on Rue Marx Dormoy, then a right, then another left. Yael seems to know this neighborhood like she’s lived here her whole life. The cars on the street form a narrow canyon with the building walls, echoing Arab pop music from inside the shops. Smells of grilling meat and peppers and sweet shisha smoke dance through the air in little swirls and eddies.
Yael pauses before the door to a little tabac kiosk where they sell newspapers and cigarettes and passes for the Metro. She looks at me. “Say nothing, understand?”
I nod and follow Yael into the shop. A bulky man with a mustache stands behind the counter, while a young man looks through the soda case and a pair of women in headscarves pore over a rack of magazines.
“A pack of Sobranies,” Yael says in French, nodding to the rack of cigarettes behind the counter.
“Sobranie black or blue?” the man behind the counter says.
“The gold ones,” she says.
He squints at her for a few awkward seconds. “We’re out,” he answers. “And I don’t think we’ll be getting any more.”
“That’s too bad. I’m buying them for a friend who’s absolutely desperate for them.”
The man straightens some papers on the counter, his eyes never leaving Yael. “Then your friend should come back tomorrow, in the afternoon. We might have some then.”
“Any particular time tomorrow afternoon?”
The man shrugs. “The afternoon.”
“You sure?” Yael says.
The man shrugs. “Hard to tell these days. I think they were discontinued.”
Yael thanks him and leaves, with me right behind. Outside, I come up alongside her.
“Translate,” Yael says when we’re on the sidewalk.
“The cigarettes, the gold Sobranies. You were talking about Feras. He said Feras might be gone, but that he might be able to reach him. You should come back tomorrow afternoon.”
“Very close,” she says. “That was our need to see you now procedure.”
“So now what? We just wait?”
“We’ll be back soon enough.” Then she smiles. “In the meantime—how about I buy you dinner?”
*
We take a different Metro line back, and I’m not sure where we are. The doors of the subway open at a stop called Place Monge, and Yael grabs my elbow. “Come on,” she says, and tugs me through the doors just as they’re about to close. “Time to celebrate your first night in the field.”
Is this a new Yael? Some kinder version of the merciless asskicker I’ve known these last few weeks? I’m wary of her motives, but the idea of a celebration appeals to me. Trying to make contact with Feras is the first real progress I’ve made. And there’s something buoyant, almost giddy, in my chest. I had felt only powerlessness, frustration, fear since my dad disappeared, and now I’m feeling something else. Excitement? Yes, it’s exactly that. This clandestine life—maybe it suits me.
We climb out of the Metro station into a neighborhood I don’t know. It’s shabby in a Brooklynish sort of way with people everywhere, streets lined with bars and boutique stores and restaurants advertising Indian and Thai food on hand-painted signs.
Yael guides me into a little bistro. It’s packed with people and throbbing with laughter, clinking glasses, and the sizzle of a grill. There’s a crowd of customers waiting in the tiny foyer for a table, but a waiter recognizes Yael and waves her in. We’re seated at a tiny table covered with brown butcher paper.
“My niece is down from Belgium,” Yael says to the waiter.
“Well then, welcome,” the waiter says to me. He’s a good-looking guy, maybe Moroccan or Algerian, and he winks as he hands me a menu. “Keep your auntie out of trouble tonight.”
Yael orders a c?te de boeuf with frites for us both, a glass of house red for herself, and a bottle of mineral water for me. When the waiter leaves, Yael leans across the table. “No wine for you. The first rule of fieldwork is you need to stay conscious of your surroundings. Tactical awareness, it’s called.” She scans the room for a moment. “The table at your six o’clock, directly behind you,” she says. “What color shirt is the man wearing?”
I rub my temples. I had hoped there wouldn’t be any more training today, but Yael clearly has other plans. “Blue?”