Page 119 of Under Cover
“My paints and pencils?” Tienne asked, feeling pitiful and trying manfully not to cry as he scooted out from behind the couch.
His father’s hands in his hair comforted him, and he worked hard not to tremble. “I will carry your paints and pencils,” his father said gently. “We artists cannot be expected to exist without them, no?”
“No.” Tienne offered his papa a timid smile and got a kiss on top of his head in return.
“Now go. Pack your treasures and your clothes.” He heard a bit of tortured parent in his father’s voice then. “Leave your schoolbooks. I suppose we shall obtain others, wherever we land.”
Tienne nodded, also sad. Other boys hated school, but Tienne loved it. He could read and write fluently in English and French beyond his grade level, but other things too—math, science—it was all beautiful.
“It is okay, boy,” Tienne’s father said to his retreating back. “We shall land on our feet, if only we will jump now!”
Nine years ago—Marrakech
“SO,” ANTOINEsaid, holding tight to Tienne’s hand as they made their way through the crowded streets of the bazaar. “What did you do today in school?”
“I kissed a boy!” he said excitedly. At twelve, he was well ahead of his peers, even in the Arabic language he’d needed to learn relatively quickly in the three years since they’d left Europe altogether and come to Morocco. Given that he was so far ahead of his peers in studies, Tienne had developed other goals.
He was not prepared for his father’s sudden tightness on his hand.
“That is fine if you like to kiss boys, Tienne,” his father said, pulling him to a quiet place in the bazaar right before their tiny apartment. “But here there are many devout Muslims who would kill you for doing so. Wait until you’re in a place where kissing a person won’t lose you your head.”
Oh. How disappointing. Tienne had liked the boy immensely—Kamel had such amazing dark eyes. “Where would that be?”
Antoine laughed softly. “France, my boy. It would be in France. Two more years, I think. Give us two more years here. I have our passports made and ready for us. We need to be ghosts for a little while yet.” His father was always so good at planning ahead.
“Being ghosts is not as much fun when there are no boys to kiss,” Tienne said glumly, and his father laughed.
“Quieter, my son, or we will be ghosts for real.” The rebuke was gentle, but Tienne took the hint. They’d been on the run for five years, since his father had betrayed Andres Kadjic. Yes, his father had finished the passports, but he’d purposefully included a flaw, a red flag, and some of Kadjic’s men had been jailed.
It had been, as Antoine had confessed one particularly miserable night during which they’d been camped on a street corner, hiding under the eaves to avoid the rain, a stupid thing for him to do.
But Kadjic had threatened his son, and Antoine had reacted out of panic.
“Understood, Papa,” Tienne said now, silently bidding the sloe-eyed Kamel adieu. “But someday…?”
Antoine smiled. “Someday you shall kiss anyone you—” He didn’t trail off so much as stop abruptly, his eyes widening at someone behind Tienne, his tanned face leeching of all color, as though he’d seen a ghost.
“My boy,” he said, voice unnaturally loud, “it’s time to pack for Casablanca.”
For a moment, Tienne was going to argue. But they’dmovedfrom Casablanca, not a year ago! But then he remembered his father’s code. When they were going to run, always talk about the place they’d runfrom, not the place they’d be runningto.
“Immediately,” he said, and without another word, he turned on his heel and went running up the tiny set of steps between adobe buildings to their one-bedroom apartment above the bazaar.
They were packed in ten minutes but spent the next five hours eating, drinking, andwaitingfor the cover of darkness. This time, as Tienne was bigger, he got to carry some of his father’s equipment and some of their art supplies as well as the requisite three changes of clothes. Tienne thought wistfully of the next time they could paint. After they found a place, there was always a frantic bit of activity as they forged passports and plane tickets and papers of provenance and whatever other criminals needed from them before they could finally settle down to what they both loved: art!
It would be a long time before they could paint together, he mourned, but still, he and his father turned their eyes to the horizon and the coming veil of night. When it finally came, they did not leave by way of the stairs, but out the window and up and across the roof, jumping two more roofs before they finally slid down a drainpipe.
And landed right in a group of men—slick touristy men wearing leather jackets and leather coats—and one brothel boy in loose harem pants and a velveteen vest.
“Hello,” said the inebriated brothel boy, who sounded much older than those men usually got. “What have we…? Andres, put the knives down. It’s a man and his son. Why would you—”
“Go, Daniel,” said the shorter, more muscular of the men in the leather jackets. He was clearly their leader, judging by the way the others kept seeking his approval as they shouldered Tienne’s father against the adobe wall of the building at their backs. He was squat, this one, dark-haired, with a brutally planed face, and he spoke with a thick Slavic accent. “You like pretty things. You don’t need to know the ugliness here.”
The brothel boy—but wait. He was older than most brothel boys. Perhaps he was simply a kept man—shook his head hard, as though trying to dispel some of the alcohol or whatever had impaired his senses. “Andres, you are not going to harm these people,” he said, pulling authority into his voice. “You cannot. It’s a father and his son—”
“A father who has put two of my men in jail by betraying me, thinking he was protecting his son. They will not live another day!”
“Then you and I won’t see another night,” Daniel said, pulling himself up to his full height and moving, almost imperceptibly, in front of Tienne. “I won’t sleep with a man who could do this—particularly not to a child, but not to anyone. So they saw jail time. It’s the logical end for our sort. You know it, I know it. If you threatened his son, he had every right!”