The Streets of Brussels

Heinous plots are often hatched in unassuming places. The young men who killed a hundred and thirty people in Paris, in November, and thirty-two in Brussels, last week, finalized logistics in drab apartments, like the one on the top floor of 4 Rue Max Roos, in Schaerbeek, on the outskirts of the Belgian capital. It was there that Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui lived with the ISIS-trained bomb maker Najim Laachraoui, mixed chemicals, and summoned a taxi to transport explosives-laden suitcases to the airport. When their landlord noticed unpleasant odors seeping through the walls, he thought of bleach or drugs, not a terrorist attack.