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Technical Support
Drancy isn’t the Paris you see in guidebooks. It’s a banlieue on the city’s edge, a place where the grand boulevards dissolve into cracked concrete, graffiti, and the occasional burnt-out car. At first, it seems like just another neglected suburb. But park the car, step out, and you’ll feel it: the weight of too many eyes.
The air is charged, not with energy, but with something heavier—resentment, mistrust. Packs of young men linger in doorways and at street corners, their conversations dropping off as you pass. If you’re a stranger and alone, you’ll know quickly you’re not welcome.
Isabelle wasn’t alone. She had Aurélien, one of our security team, walking beside her. His imposing presence—a six-foot-four mass of Cameroonian muscle—turned the stares into silence.
Al-Dar
The organization has a cause we can’t entirely dismiss. Their anger at imperialism is real, their grievances against the banks and oil corporations valid. We’ve seen the damage—exploitation, stolen wealth, entire communities crushed.
But their methods? Their values? They come from another era, and their violence never touches the real culprits. Instead, it spills into the lives of ordinary workers. People who’ve done nothing except try to survive.
Still, when they asked for help, we agreed. Not because we sympathized entirely, but because every connection is an opportunity.
Isabelle
The parc Ladoucette was their choice—a scrappy patch of grass and gravel, framed by skeletal trees and abandoned kiosks. Nabeel and Raja spotted us first and crossed the lot with purpose. They didn’t look like leaders: late twenties, slight builds, the kind of wiry energy that hinted at more anger than direction.
“Isabelle,” Aurélien murmured, keeping a half-step behind her. She didn’t acknowledge him, her focus already on the approaching men.
They stopped in front of her, close enough to convey confidence but not so close as to challenge Aurélien. Still, their hesitation was obvious. A woman leading the meeting wasn’t what they’d expected.
She opened with an explanation—her degree in network engineering from ParisTech—but it landed like a foreign word. Their expressions didn’t shift. Not impressed. Not interested.
Aurélien spoke next. “Phones.”
Nabeel hesitated, but Raja handed his over, then jabbed a thumb toward a knot of hangers-on loitering by a dilapidated ice cream stand. Their menacing presence had not gone unnoticed.
“Let’s walk,” Isabelle said.
Aurélien fell back, keeping a casual but watchful distance. Isabelle adjusted the dial on her radio, filling the space with faint pop music. It wasn’t enough to drown out the tension.
“What’s the music for?” Nabeel asked, his tone more challenging than curious.
“To keep our conversation ours,” Isabelle said without looking at him. “What are you using for comms security?”
“WhatsApp,” he said, almost defensive.
She stopped mid-step, turning to face them. “Do you really trust Meta when they promise end-to-end encryption?”
His hesitation was all the answer she needed.
“IMSI-catchers,” she continued. “Fake cell towers that intercept everything. They’re cheap, and I guarantee there’s one near every mosque in this arrondissement. They already know who you’re calling and what you’re saying.”
Raja scoffed, spitting onto the cracked path. “And you know all this how?”
Isabelle raised an eyebrow. “We’ve been dealing with surveillance since before you were born.”
The tension cracked, giving way to unease. Isabelle pressed on, gesturing toward the lampposts. “You think those cameras are for traffic? They’ve logged every house you meet in. Your mobiles? Compromised the moment you switched them on.”
Nabeel looked skeptical, but Raja’s defiance was fading, replaced by something like doubt.
“You don’t even know about the keyloggers, do you?” she asked. “They track every letter you type. Doesn’t matter what app you’re in. You think encrypted apps like Signal or Telegram make you invisible? They don’t. And then there’s AI—always watching, always analyzing.”
Nabeel glanced at Raja. Neither spoke.
“Bin Laden avoided all of this,” Isabelle said. “Paper and couriers only. And still they found him.”
Raja finally broke the silence. “What do you want from us?”
Isabelle softened her tone, just enough to make her next words sound less like a lecture and more like an offer. “We understand the stakes. We’ve fought our own battles with state surveillance. We have phones. Clean ones. No spyware. They’re yours, if you want them.”
She let the words hang. No pressure, no push. Just the offer.
Nabeel nodded slowly. “We’ll think about it.”
“Do that,” she said, already turning back toward Aurélien.
Later, over a cup of bitter coffee, I asked Isabelle how it went.
“They took the bait,” she said.
“And the phones?”
“As clean as ours.”
“And our trackers?”
She allowed herself a faint smile. “Installed, of course.”
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