The Believer

by Joakim Zander

  Brother Dakhil is standing in the snow in the middle of the glade where I met them for the first time a few months ago. It’s so dark now that we can only see him because his face is illuminated by the screen of his phone. When he notices me and brother al-Amin coming up the slope, he walks toward us with a smile on his face, arms held open for an embrace.

  When we’ve greeted each other and praised Allah and the Prophet and he’s kissed me lovingly on both cheeks several times, he holds out his hand in front of him.

  “Your phone, brother Ajam,” he says. “For security’s sake.”

  I take it out of the pocket of my jacket and give it to him, surprised. He turns it off and puts it in his own pocket.

  “Brother al-Amin?” he says then.

  Brother al-Amin fishes a small, black box the size of a cigarette pack with three short, rubbery antennas out of his pocket. When he presses a button, a small red light illuminates on the box. He nods to brother Dakhil to continue.

  Brother Dakhil turns to me with a little smile on his face. Snow flies between us, and I wonder why we have to be here, why we can’t be in his apartment as usual. Despite the darkness, his thick red beard seems to shine as he gently strokes it.

  “We can’t be too careful,” he says, pointing to the box in brother al-Amin’s hand. “That’s a signal jammer. It knocks out all frequencies within twenty-five meters of us. No cell phone signals, no eavesdropping. ”

  He points to a thick blanket he’s laid out on top of the snow, and we sit down. Brother Dakhil looks at me without saying anything, and I don’t know what to say or what’s expected of me. So I stay quiet, rest my gaze on the railway tracks, which look cool and quiet under the electric lights of the bike path. Beyond that stand some mangy birches, concrete towers, dark and menacingly frozen in the light from the shopping center.

  “You’re a devout Muslim, brother Ajam,” Brother Dakhil says at last. “Devout and impatient.”

  He laughs, leans forward, and pats me on the cheek.

  “It’s good,” he says. “You’re young and passionate to serve your God, just as you should be.”

  He stops again and looks at me calmly. I sense something serious in his green, shallow eyes now. I still say nothing, just try to meet his eyes as calmly as possible in the dark.

  “It was easier a year ago,” he says. “Now we have to be more careful. That’s why we meet out here. That’s why brother al-Amin jams phones with his little device. We keep our congregation small for now, and we don’t think we’ve attracted any attention. And you are also clean. A few run-ins with the police in your past life, but who hasn’t had that? We think there will be no problems if we act fast.”

  I clear my throat.

  “Excuse me,” I say, my mouth dry. “What’s going to happen fast?”

  Brother Dakhil says nothing at first. Instead he digs something out of the nylon backpack lying beneath his caftan-clad legs. It’s three letter-size pages, which he places on the rug in front of me. The snow whirls and lands as small dots on the top page. I brush off the flakes and lift the papers in order to read the text, then flip quickly through them. There are two flights with different airlines. From Stockholm Skavsta to London. Then from London to Istanbul. Departure is tomorrow morning at 7:35, and I feel my throat close up. Brother Dakhil doesn’t release me from his gaze.

  “Thanks to Allah, may he be glorified and exalted, your dreams have come true,” he says. “You leave tomorrow and someone will meet you by car to take you to the border. Someone else will help you over. You’ll be in Syria before the week is out.”

  I swallow and hope the world will soon go back to its true colors, that everything will stop jumping and shaking.

  “You’ll be placed in a Scandinavian brigade. Brother al-Amin has explained it all.”

  But I don’t hear what he’s saying anymore, I see only the tickets.

  “Brother al-Amin will take you to the airport tomorrow morning,” brother Dakhil says. “It’s an early flight.”

  He stops and regards me calmly.

  “Often, it’s better not to tell your family if you’re not sure they support the struggle, brother,” he adds.

  Brother al-Amin takes me back to the parking lot, down the hill, and over the snow-covered field, where a cold wind whips ice crystals at us. His car is a surprisingly new and shiny blue Volvo V70. I want to ask about it, but I’m too stunned by what has happened, and what is going to happen that it feels like I’ve lost the ability to speak. He opens the trunk and removes a black rolling carry-on, the kind used on business trips.

  “This is yours,” he says. “Pack light, brother.”

  Then he falls silent and takes what looks like an old, bulky Nokia phone from his bag. There’s something almost mournful in his eyes as he presses it into my hand.

  “This is a satellite phone,” he says. He puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “You are important to us, brother Ajam,” he says. “We want to be able to reach you, and we want you to keep us informed of whatever progress Allah, may he be glorified and exalted, allows you to make.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for doing this for me, giving me the chance to serve Allah, may he be exalted.”

  He looks deep into my eyes, leans toward me, and lowers his voice.

  “There is one thing you should know: There are traitors in Syria,” he whispers.

  I’m not sure I heard him right so I take a step toward him and shake my head slightly.

  “What did you say?” I say.

  “There is a traitor in the unit you’ll be fighting with. It consists of brothers from Sweden, Fadi. All are from the projects. But someone there is khain, brother. Someone is a traitor who leaks information to al-Assad’s troops. Do you understand?”

  I shake my spinning, whirring head and feel the weight of the phone in my hand.

  “We don’t know who it is,” al-Amin continues. “But there have been too many coincidences, brother. Too many operations at the front where the brothers have prepared to attack, but al-Assad’s troops were already there to stop them. Too many times it seemed the enemy knew what we were thinking. Do you understand?”

  I nod my head, doubtfully.

  “But we don’t know who this rat is,” he continues. “Just that he’s there. And it’s good for you to know about it.”

  Now he lets go of my shoulder and takes hold of my face with his warm, slightly damp hands. I can smell the garlic and peppermint on his breath as he pulls me closer.

  “You have to keep the phone on you, brother,” he says. “And you have to keep us informed if anything unusual happens. It’s the only way. Do you understand?”

  I nod again.

  “And most important of all,” al-Amin continues, “you can’t tell the brothers down there.”

  He releases my face and kisses me on the cheek.

  “I’m proud of you, brother,” he says, smiling. “Allah will richly reward you.”

  19. LONDON—WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2015

  THE WINDOWS OF Klara’s studio apartment are open, and she’s awakened by the early deliveries rolling across the cracked asphalt of Navarre Street. Klara stretches out her hand for her phone and is relieved to see it’s six-thirty, a totally reasonable time to get up. The night has been an uneasy one, filled with disjointed dreams in which she lay stretched out on a cold street, unable to move, while whispering voices approached her. She had repeatedly woken up in a state of terror just as she felt the breath of someone bending over her.

  When she sits up, she realizes that the headache at least seems to be gone. She’d gone to bed early yesterday evening, just two glasses of Chardonnay and a few cigarettes out on the fire escape overlooking the courtyard. But it feels as if she’s hardly slept at all, and when she stretches out her arm a pain shoots from her elbow. She grimaces and massages her arm gently as she walks over the wood floor of her tiny kitchen and turns on the coffeemaker.

  The night in the alley still won’t let
her rest. How could she be so damn irresponsible? Anything could have happened in that dark alley. Something much worse than being mugged—that is, if mugging was all that happened to her.

  She sits down at her small kitchen table. She’s almost certain someone was with her in that alley. It’s more than just a feeling. That breath and arms pulling on her.

  Why would anyone want to get to her or her computer? It couldn’t just be some junkie who saw her lying there and seized the opportunity to grab her backpack?

  “Damn, damn, damn,” she murmurs to herself. “Why the hell did I have to get so drunk.”

  She shakes her head and opens the computer she borrowed from the institute.

  The last site she looked at last night pops up. She’d been curious enough to look up Stirling Security, one of the names Patrick had written on the whiteboard in his office. Lots of hits, but nothing that she could connect to anything. After that, weariness overcame her.

  But now that she’s feeling more alert, she sees something farther down on the search screen that might be interesting and clicks on the link:

  Stirling Security is one of the world’s leading security companies. We offer consulting and comprehensive security services to individuals, companies, and governments worldwide. The question you need to ask yourself: Are you safe enough?

  She opens a new tab and Googles “Ribbenstahl,” the second name on Patrick’s whiteboard. Again she has to search through Facebook and LinkedIn profiles before finding something that might be of interest. There seems to be a private bank named Ribbenstahl & Partners in Liechtenstein.

  She’s never heard of Stirling Security before, but she knows there are hundreds of companies more or less like it. They perform everything from intelligence analysis to missions in war zones to personal security for companies in the Western world. Mahmoud’s doctoral thesis had more or less been about companies like that. The only thing new here was an arrow that pointed to the King’s Centre for Human Rights. And that arrow to the Russian Embassy. Maybe she should simply ask Patrick?

  She pours a cup of coffee before turning on a Swedish morning television program to distract herself. It’s a habit left over from her years in Brussels, where it was part of her job as political secretary to keep an eye on what was said on those morning sofas. Nowadays it’s just a reflex, part of a routine, she doesn’t even like the artificial coziness, but it’s too early for the cold objectivity of the public television alternative.

  She turns her back to the computer and opens the door of the empty refrigerator. Damn, she completely forgot to go shopping. All she sees is the package of chocolate bars she bought at the airport.

  When she gets back to her computer, her mouth full of sweet, melting chocolate and her nausea increasing, there’s a policeman, famous from a stint on Swedish Idol, talking about the upcoming demonstrations expected to take place during the meeting between EU ministers of justice. The whole segment is so silly—what would a singing cop know about demonstrations and the EU?—but the discussion still sets her pulse racing. This concerns a meeting she’s going to be a part of. Sure, she’ll be on the periphery, but it still feels huge that she’ll be there.

  She picks up her phone to text Gabriella. She suddenly misses her intensely, and the singing cop who’s babbling on without the least bit of self-consciousness on a subject he could hardly have any expertise in, cheerfully egged on by the two tan and speedy presenters, is exactly the sort of thing she’d find hilarious.

  If it hadn’t been for Gabriella, Klara wouldn’t be here today, would never have climbed out of bed at her grandparents’ house.

  It was Gabriella who got her to go back to Stockholm, Gabriella who got her to quit the job in Brussels and finish Mahmoud’s dissertation, and it was Gabriella who got her to accept the job in London when the opportunity arrived.

  And what has Klara ever done for her?

  Just used her. First, putting her life at risk last Christmas, and then forcing Gabriella to solve all the problems Klara had been facing. She hasn’t even thanked her.

  This is what I’ve become now, Klara thinks. That’s who I’ve been for the past year. Someone who other people take care of, fix things for, coddle. Darkness washes over her again and takes away that moment of joy she had at the first thought of Gabriella. She closes her message app.

  There’s so much she wants to say to Gabriella, so much she wants to repay. But it’s as if she’s still too weak. She has to get stronger, and she has to do it herself, without help. Just as she’s putting down the phone, it pings. It’s a Facebook message from Pete. She hasn’t given him her cell phone number, but on one of those blurry evenings when she went home with him, he managed to ensure they became Facebook friends.

  The message is short:

  Hope you’re okay. We found your computer last night. Come and pick it up at the bar when you can.

  She puts the phone down and stares out at the red brick on the other side of the courtyard. From the other side of the apartment, she can hear traffic and voices coming from the street. A warm breeze blows through the apartment and a ray of sunshine has found its way from Navarre Street, across her wood floors almost reaching the kitchen. That fleeting fragment of memory from the alley skips and flickers through her mind. She’s sure she had the computer with her when she left the bar. Something isn’t right. It wasn’t at the bar—it was stolen.

  And on the computer screen behind her, the news shows archival footage from a demonstration where young people in Guy Fawkes masks march in step through an unknown capital, flanked by helmeted riot police in an absurd theater where rebellion is just as faceless as the oppression.

  20. STOCKHOLM—WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2015

  YASMINE HAS FORGOTTEN how light it is here, how it never really seems to get dark. In the gray light, she sees ships docked all along the quays that surround the new hotel. Many of them are antiquated beauties—old, dented, rusty, and badly painted. Still there’s something glamorous about them. As if they denote a special class of people she’s never before been aware of, a class for whom it’s completely normal to keep a berth for your old hulk right in the center of Stockholm. She wonders what would happen if someone set fire to one of those ships, if they burned instead of the cars in the parking lots of Bergort.

  She sits up in the Egyptian sheets of the Lydmar Hotel. This was where she ended up. She couldn’t have stayed one more second at Story after what happened. She’d asked her cabdriver where the hip-hop stars stayed when they were in Stockholm. He’d suggested Grand Hotel or Lydmar. The Grand felt too old, so here she was, paid for by Shrewd & Daughter’s credit card, booked under an assumed name and with repeated assurances from the skinny, blond guy at reception that no one would enter her room, not even the maids.

  She tosses and turns. There are a thousand things she can’t let go of, a thousand things that make her unable to relax, a thousand imaginary footsteps in the corridor outside her door, a thousand thoughts like needles pricking her skin. When her body no longer has the energy to fight, it’s like falling off a cliff. As she falls swirling images of cats and stars fly past her, images of Fadi when he was small, behind the snowball trees in winter, his hand in hers, her mouth to his ear.

  I will never leave you.

  The room is dark when she wakes up, but she knows it’s late in the day, she feels it in her bones, she slept deeply and for a long time. It’s not until she pulls back the curtains and looks out over sparkling waters, shaking her head at the complete absurdity of the Royal Palace towering on the other side of the bay, that she remembers where she is. It’s as if she has to scroll through Tokyo, Crown Heights, airplanes, and Story Hotel to finally end up here at this window, looking out onto this gorgeous August morning.

  Turns out it’s nearly twelve and breakfast has been officially over for several hours, but apparently there are advantages to staying at the Lydmar Hotel with Shrewd & Daughter’s credit card. One seems to be that you can get breakfast whenever you want. S
he orders eggs Benedict from a menu that a serious-looking twenty-year-old with glasses and a well-groomed beard hands her, mostly because he recommended it, and she has no clue what it is.

  The breakfast room is like a library in a modern, tasteful castle and the eggs are “poached” according to the earnest waiter. They’re served with some sort of bread and a light, yellow sauce so creamy and smooth it takes Yasmine’s breath away. Right here, for this brief moment, she feels cared for and maybe even safe. No wonder all the Swedes strive for this, she thinks. Nobody’s eating eggs Benedict in Bergort.

  But for her, this is nothing more than a tear in her existence, an illusion, and she’s on the subway again before the waiter even has time to take away her scraped clean plate.

  She touches the thick cardboard-like paper of the photograph she found on her pillow, which lies inside her pocket now. Why did she even save it? And above all, who left it in her room?

  She sees Ignacio’s eyes in front of her. How they only glanced at the phone when she showed him the symbol. How his eyes changed to something else, something much harder and colder. Despite all of Bergort’s alliances and ties, all the winding paths of loyalties, she thought she could trust him after everything they’d been through. If anyone, him. Her first love.

  But she’s been gone a long time, and loyalty is short-lived in Bergort. It’s obvious someone feels threatened by her asking questions about that symbol. Why she’s not sure yet, but Fadi is involved in some way. And apparently even Ignacio. But that he would threaten her, or tell someone to threaten her, she hadn’t expected. She hadn’t thought there was any risk in contacting him. The quiet glow she felt for Ignacio transforms into another kind of heat. He betrayed her. He should pay for that.

  As the subway starts to shake into motion headed back in time, toward Bergort, she takes out the photograph of the cat. She carefully tears it into the tiniest pieces she can and throws them in the first trash can she sees at the station in Bergort.