‘What are you up to now?’ she asks.
‘You won’t believe it,’ he says.
‘You started working for the Social Democrats in the European Parliament?’ she says with a smile.
‘Worse,’ George says. ‘I’m moving home.’
‘What? Moving back to Stockholm?’
Klara thinks she must have heard wrong. George is so much a part of Brussels for her that she never imagined him leaving, it feels like the city itself wouldn’t be the same.
‘But what will you do there?’
He looks so uncomfortable that Klara almost starts to laugh, despite her condition. ‘I got a job as an official at the Ministry of Enterprise,’ he says.
Now she does start to laugh. ‘You’re becoming a bureaucrat?’ she says. ‘Well, I don’t know what to say.’
He shrugs. ‘It’s a good job,’ he says quietly. ‘And I haven’t felt so great lately either. Been through a lot.’
She turns to him and looks into his eyes. ‘Seriously, it is a good job. A dream job for a lot of people. Just odd to think of you…’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘Seriously, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?’
She hesitantly puts her arm around him and can feel herself getting goosebumps. He looks so different in his grown-up glasses and tousled hair.
‘Damn it, George,’ she says. ‘I’m proud of you.’
They end up at L’Ultime Atome on Rue Saint-Boniface, at a table in a large, bright room. George orders some kind of complicated and potent amber beer for them. This is apparently also part of his new persona; Klara never pegged him as a beer drinker. Champagne and cocaine were more his style.
She looks around at the other tables in the room, which are slowly filling up as darkness falls. L’Ultime Atome is a modern grande café, a classic place where she used to go for a beer on Sunday or a drink before dinner along with all the other newcomers in Brussels. She’d almost forgotten it, but it feels homey and safe to be back. With every gulp of beer, every minute spent with George, she feels better.
‘But you haven’t told me why you’re here,’ George says.
Klara takes another gulp, and realizes she’s almost drunk it all. George is barely halfway through his. After Ralph’s and the intense anxiety she felt there, she almost managed to suppress her reason for being here, but now she hears that slight buzz in her ears again. She downs the rest of the beer and stands up.
‘Do you have a smoke?’ she asks.
*
They’re standing outside the bar in the dark, cold drizzle, and George lights her cigarette with a silver lighter. The facade of the church on the short side of the square is illuminated, and above it hang the Christmas lights the city puts up every year.
‘Gabriella was arrested yesterday,’ she says.
‘Excuse me?’ he says. ‘But she’s a…’
‘Lawyer, yes,’ Klara says. ‘But that doesn’t seem to matter to a national SWAT team.’
It takes her a whole cigarette to tell him what happened yesterday, and George listens without interrupting. They stand in the grey twilight while Klara tells him everything she knows. About the letter Gabriella wrote to her, and the men who were following her, and who now seem to be following Klara.
‘We need another beer,’ is the only thing he says when she’s done. ‘At least one more.’
They have two more beers, then three and Klara can feel herself almost floating out of her chair, her head finally empty and manageable, her breathing easy.
‘Shall we have one more?’ she says.
But George just stretches a hand over the table and carefully, unexpectedly, takes her hand.
‘You’re gonna meet this guy Karl tomorrow,’ he says gently. ‘Tomorrow is the twenty-fourth. You have to be sharp for that. No more beer for you now.’
She pulls her hand away and leans back in her chair. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ she says, barely slurring. ‘I drink as much beer as I want.’
His eyes seem worried now, and it makes her furious. Where did she put her bag? She looks around. There, on the floor. She bends down and gets her wallet, heads over to the bar. George can do whatever the hell he wants; she’s having another drink.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asks before she’s made it to the bar. ‘What hotel?’
She stops. Staying? The pleasant, blurry feeling in her head scatters and gives way to something else lurking beneath, something sharp and stinging. She hasn’t even thought about where she’s going to stay tonight.
‘I…’ she begins.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You’re staying with me. We’ll have another drink when we get there. I promise.’
14–15 November
Beirut
How long does he lie in the garden without moving a muscle? He doesn’t know, just notes that darkness has fallen by the time his strength starts to return, and he realizes he’s next to the bench that he and Yassim sat on that night in August. The temperature is falling fast as the sun goes down, and he grabs his backpack off the sparse grass next to the bench. He takes out a sweatshirt and pulls it on. He takes his phone out of his pocket, mostly to check what time it is. But it’s turned off at Yassim’s request.
‘Always turn it off and throw it away if anything strange happens,’ he told Jacob. ‘They can track everything.’
If anything strange happens. He takes a last look at the phone and throws it into the bushes. You can’t describe the last twelve hours as anything other than strange.
He sits up straight on the bench, but then has to lean forward with his head between his knees as a wave of dizziness hits him.
What has he done? Yassim’s face flickers by. His warm, deep eyes. Myriam’s indifferent expression. The man with the white hair. The sting of the wound on his back. He can’t think about it any more. He has to trust that Yassim has a plan. And he has to stay alive until they’re together again.
Slowly, he lies down on the bench and adjusts his shirt. Tomorrow he has to go to the Gefinor Centre, to the bookstore. A wave of exhaustion hits him. Even if he had a plan or knew where to go, he wouldn’t have the strength to leave this garden now. He closes his eyes and falls asleep instantly.
*
It’s light out when he opens them again. He shivers a little and stretches, stands up, and steps out into the sunshine on the yellow, scraggly lawn. He hears a single car out on the street; it’s still early. He takes a few deep breaths and walks over to the gate.
The street is deserted, but his legs tremble as he presses his way through the opening in the gate and out into reality again. Myriam’s men are gone. He drags his backpack out behind him and grimaces when he puts it on. The wound on his back aches – if it weren’t for that, this might all seem like a dream, too blurry and terrifying to be real.
He wanders around for hours, walks towards the centre of the city from eastern Beirut, down towards the sea. Buys a coffee and a croissant, constantly glancing over his shoulder.
He has almost no memories of the morning, barely any of yesterday either, and he doesn’t know how he got here, but suddenly he’s in Hamra, near the main entrance of the American University.
Why is he here? He doesn’t know where else to go, and maybe the university offers some sense of security, stability and order in the midst of this chaos.
His legs ache from walking. He flinches and looks around. It feels as if he’s been walking in his sleep, as if he hasn’t been conscious, but his legs have carried him here of their own accord. He looks up towards the tops of pine trees peeking out above the university’s grey wall and still feels drowsy. He runs his eyes along the wall up the street, the traffic noise washing over him, and then overwhelming sadness settles on him, and for a second he’s dizzy again.
He’s standing on the street just fifty metres from the entrance. He never hesitated for a second, he realizes. Not when Yassim asked him. Not at the museum with Myriam. Not in the garden. But now he feels like he’s looking a
t himself from the outside: just a confused, naive Scandinavian lingering on a street in Beirut.
He starts to walk slowly towards the main entrance. The university feels like a sanctuary. The green tranquillity inside those walls, away from Beirut’s frenzied energy, replaces the chaos of the Middle East with an atmosphere of learning and sober conversations. He wants so badly to be inside there again, to catch his breath; he doesn’t know if he can stand to just be swept along. He can’t go to the embassy – Vargander is involved in this somehow. He knows he’s completely alone there. But maybe he could talk to Rafi, the teacher he interviewed and got a coffee with sometimes? Maybe he has a contact after all? A wasta as it’s called here, a connection to some influential person who can help him?
Everyone has a wasta in Beirut, Rafi told him, and Jacob needs help; he can’t handle this on his own. In fact he should probably have reached out for help a long time ago, before he ended up in this insane situation. But he knows it’s too late now, and he sinks against the wall with his head in his hands. There is no one, no matter how influential, who can help him with what he’s landed in.
He stands up again, hesitantly heading towards the main entrance, without even knowing exactly why. He’s almost reached the security guards at the entrance when he stops mid-step.
He doesn’t exactly know what it is about the black SUV across the street from the entrance – Beirut is full of black SUVs – but there’s something about how carefully it’s been parked with a proper distance in front and behind it, while every other car is squeezed in bumper to bumper. And there’s something about the European-looking man on the street ten feet away from him, in jeans and a windbreaker. Something about how still he is while everyone else around him is on the move.
It has to be one of Myriam’s men, there’s no other explanation. Jacob is fifty metres from the man. No way to hide from him, the sidewalks are full of people, but not enough for him to disappear into the crowd. The man’s eyes pan over the entrance to the university, then out over the dense, sluggish traffic and the sidewalk, on their way to where Jacob stands. It’s only a matter of time before he sees him. The sound of the traffic blurs together into a roar in Jacob’s ears.
The man lights a cigarette and turns his head in the opposite direction from Jacob, then he pauses and quickly looks back. Their eyes meet, and Jacob’s heart stops. The man looks surprised, as if he never thought he’d be the one to find who they’re looking for.
His lips move quickly, as if he’s rattling something into a headset. At the same time he starts to move through the crowd of students on the sidewalk towards Jacob.
He runs. The sidewalk is narrow and uneven, and he stumbles and weaves with his arms out in search of something to catch hold of. He grabs a man walking in front of him and manages to stay upright. The man says something, but Jacob has already run by.
The street branches, and he turns to the right, towards the American hospital and Hamra Street. He crosses between honking cars and people on their way home or headed to restaurants and shops. The hill is steeper than he remembers and he goes as fast as he can while panic threatens to paralyse him. He looks back over his shoulder and sees the man in jeans and headset is only fifty metres behind him.
The man is faster. Just like yesterday, but now there’s nowhere to hide. This will soon be over.
Jacob’s up by the grey concrete hospital now, panic pounding inside him. The street is full of honking cars trying to make their way into the hospital’s improvised parking lot. He’s passed by here before, amazed by the chaos allowed to reign even here, outside the hospital.
Like everywhere where crowds gather in Beirut, there are several makeshift guard posts. Sandbags, rolls of barbed wire and rusty bars. Tired soldiers and police officers carrying heavy automatic weapons and caps around their necks. He feels his fear rising: what if the guards are looking for him too? What if he’s heading straight into the lion’s den?
The man is close to him now; Jacob doesn’t even dare to turn around. It’s as if he can hear the man’s steps even through the street noise, as if he can feel his breath on his neck. In any case, the soldiers in their worn camouflage uniforms just follow him listlessly with empty eyes as Jacob heads up the street.
That’s when the idea hits him. He doesn’t know where it comes from, maybe it’s just the lack of any other options. Jacob heads for a couple of young soldiers standing and smoking at their post. He opens his mouth and screams as loudly as he can in Arabic: ‘Bomb! He has a bomb!’
It’s as if his words cast a spell that makes the whole world freeze. The flow of people between the hospital and the parking lots halts. This is Beirut. They know all about bombs here, and it takes no more than a millisecond for the world to switch to a whole other tempo.
The soldiers are on their feet now, cigarettes thrown to the ground, the automatic weapons raised, stress flashing in their eyes.
‘He has a bomb!’ Jacob screams again and points to the man behind him.
He lets all the pent-up terror erupt in those words, and they sound believable and genuine.
The man has stopped now. He has his hands up, and he’s backing away slowly. The people on the street are taking their children by the hand, lifting them up, and running away from the threat of terror as fast as they can go.
The soldiers have their rifles on their shoulders, screaming at his pursuer. The last thing he sees over his shoulder as he joins the rest of the terrified crowd that’s moving away, down towards the Gefinor Centre, is the man kneeling with his hands on his head, one of the soldiers putting a foot on his back, and pushing his head down against the cracked concrete.
Jacob continues running until he’s at the cool concrete of the Gefinor complex. The polished stone floor is slippery under his rubber soles as he finally slows down. His whole body aches. He looks around. He’s ended up very close to the Armenian’s bookstore. He must have headed in this direction unconsciously when the panic took hold of him.
He looks around at the enormous complex. The Gefinor Centre feels so clean and clear and modernist, not at all like the rest of Beirut, and it fills him with immediate relief. Straight lines, glass. No hidden agendas or lies.
He turns around and scans the direction he just came from. Everything is calm again, as if nothing happened. Drama is close at hand all the time in Beirut. Bombs and weapons are a part of everyday life, part of the city’s DNA. Tragedy flares up, like now, then dies out again. No one has time to ponder on it, everyone just wants to get home after work.
He wonders what happened to his pursuer, if the soldiers released him immediately when they discovered there was no bomb. Did he contact his colleagues?
Jacob hurries towards the international bookstore. With determined steps he walks over to the store and opens the door. An electronic chime rings when he steps inside.
The little Armenian who owns the place is standing at the counter, smoking a cigar, just as Jacob remembers, just as Yassim promised, and Jacob nods to him and walks by the paperbacks and the shelves with Middle Eastern history and politics, into the dim interior of the boutique where the art books are hidden, while he gathers his courage to approach the owner.
He randomly flips through a heavy volume, waiting for his breathing to return to something resembling normal. The door chime rings as the only other customer in the shop disappears out into the sunshine. Jacob sees that he’s alone in the shop with its owner, who’s now headed up the aisle towards him.
‘Can I help you with something?’ he asks in English.
The man’s question is completely neutral, an offer he makes fifty times a day. But there’s something in his eyes, something hidden, a secret.
Jacob clears his throat. ‘Did you receive any new deliveries?’
The man studies him calmly. ‘You’re the Swede,’ he says. ‘We have a common friend.’
Jacob nods, then raises his gaze slightly, looks through the display window above the man’s shoulder, out towards the bi
g, empty, dark space outside. But the square isn’t empty any more. A grey van with tinted windows has pulled onto the middle of it. Four men jump out in short jackets and bulky khaki trousers or jeans. Earpieces in their ears. He tries to swallow, but his mouth is very dry. He thought he’d escaped.
The men don’t even look at each other, just move quietly in formation towards the entrance of the bookstore, as if following some perfectly obvious and straightforward choreography.
Jacob freezes. The wound on his back aches, he feels pressure in his chest.
Is this as far as he goes?
23 November
Brussels
They walk in silence past the bars and small Pakistani grocery stores that are open late, up towards the wide Avenue de la Toison d’Or, which leads to the luxury stores near Place Louise. The drizzle is constant but barely noticeable.
‘Should we grab a taxi? I live just behind Place Stéphanie,’ George says, stopping outside the cinema at Toison d’Or.
Klara looks around. Her head has cleared a bit. George was right, of course – she didn’t need another drink.
‘Let’s walk,’ she says and starts down the street again.
Even though it’s not much past eight-thirty, the sidewalks are almost empty. Monday and the weather has kept the flâneurs at home.
‘How long have you been feeling like this?’ George asks quietly outside the entrance to Marks & Spencer. The English department store wasn’t here when Klara left Brussels, and she lets her eyes sweep across the display window.
‘I don’t feel any particular way,’ she says quietly. ‘Is it really so strange to end up a little shaky after your friend is rounded up in an anti-terrorism operation, and you realize you’re being followed by the Russian mob or whoever the hell they are?’
George grabs hold of her elbow gently, and she pulls it away, but regrets it immediately. It would have been so nice to be held by him.
The Friend Page 18
