The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  But why did they go down here to the harbour? Jacob is so cold he’s shaking. When he lifts his eyes, he sees the grey, solid concrete of Öresund Bridge to his left and the dim, ghostly contours of Copenhagen on the horizon, straight ahead.

  ‘We will go to the police,’ George insists. ‘We have to assume that if we have the plans, the terrorists can’t carry them out. Klara just has to meet Gabi first, and we need to find out what the documents contain before we do anything else. Then we’ll know what this means for you and for her. For all of us.’

  He stands up and stretches out a hand to Jacob, pulling him up. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘We can’t sit here; it’s too cold.’

  He turns his wrist and looks at his huge watch. Several times Jacob has thought about asking to look at it, he’s never seen anything more enticing, a concrete symbol of success and competence.

  ‘Besides, we don’t have long until our train leaves.’

  Jacob stands up and they walk in silence, past the newly built apartment buildings with a view of the sea and Copenhagen, past the spacious balconies of the comfortable bourgeoisie with a year’s worth of salary in the bank and excellent credit. Past everything that will be out of reach for him now.

  ‘I like your watch,’ Jacob says quietly. ‘It’s… serious.’

  George looks at him with something like suspicion in his eyes. ‘Did you talk to Klara?’ he asks.

  ‘About your watch?’ Jacob says.

  ‘She thinks it’s vulgar. But you know what?’ George turns to Jacob and smiles easily. ‘Maybe it’s okay to be a little vulgar.’

  Jacob shakes his head, feeling his panic rise again. They’re in the middle of chaos, and they’re walking around talking about watches.

  ‘We could get caught anytime,’ he says, his voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘Maybe Klara got caught already.’

  ‘Anything can happen,’ George interrupts him. ‘At any time whatsoever. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few years it’s that. All we can do is focus on the task at hand and do it as well as we can. We have to get to Stockholm. Then we’ll figure out a way to solve this. We’re taking the train, so the risk of being discovered will be much less than flying. Don’t think about the big picture, the fucking terrorists and being wanted and all that other shit. You just take it one step at a time: we head to Stockholm, and we don’t get caught. And then we solve this.’

  He looks at Jacob again. They’re almost to the central station now.

  ‘You follow me?’ George continues. ‘Just imagine this is a normal day, long before any of this happened. You’re just taking the train to Stockholm to hang out with some friends. Nothing strange about that.’

  Jacob takes a deep breath and tries to smile. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  But almost as soon as the words leave his mouth, he sees two police cars parked outside the central station and a voice starts to scream: ‘There they are! There they are!’

  Jacob twists his head to see a woman with a stroller screaming at the top of her lungs while simultaneously backing away, her eyes glued to them. She’s no more than fifteen metres away.

  Jacob stops, but he can feel George still pulling him along. ‘Oh fuck,’ he whispers in Jacob’s ear. ‘Just when I was telling you to calm down. Ignore it, people think she’s crazy, okay?’

  But the people coming in and out of the departures hall turn towards the woman and then to where she’s pointing.

  Jacob stops and wrenches himself out of George’s hand. Slowly he pulls his hood down and takes off his hat and turns to the woman.

  ‘What the hell!’ George shouts. ‘Come on, Jacob!’

  But it’s too late. Two police officers are on their way out of the arrivals hall. They see her, see where she’s pointing. The people around them are screaming and jumping away from them in every direction.

  ‘Come on!’

  George tugs Jacob, drawing him into the crowd as if they were just part of the screaming, terrified masses. They stumble down the street; he can barely see straight, doesn’t know if he’s up, down, underwater.

  ‘Stop!’ he hears one of the police officers shout behind him. ‘Stop or I shoot!’

  They’re still hunched over, but Jacob feels George’s arm loosen at his wrist. ‘No matter what happens…’ George says, ‘stay calm.’

  From the corner of his eye, Jacob sees George start to raise his hands to show the cops he’s unarmed. And at that very moment a grey car stops in front of them, and he hears a voice shouting in English from the driver’s seat, sees the passenger-side door thrown open ahead of him.

  A shot goes off from inside the car. Then another. Then he hears the screaming and the panic behind him. He feels it in his chest, his throat. He hasn’t been hit. They weren’t shooting at him.

  He turns to George, who looks as shocked as Jacob feels – and just as unscathed. Jacob turns to the car again and sees the face leaning out of it. And before he knows it he’s in the back seat with George on top of him, and the car is speeding away, as surreal as a bullet or a dream.

  25 November

  Bergort

  At first, in the darkness, she sees only the silhouette of a man, but as he gets closer, she can make out his face in the dim light shining from inside the building. Jacob told her his old Arabic teacher is in his sixties, with thick, neatly trimmed grey hair, that he usually wore suits and carried a brown suitcase. The man in front of her fits that description perfectly.

  ‘I’m looking for Hassan Rahamin,’ she says.

  The man looks at her for a moment, then passes by her, punches the code in and opens the door.

  ‘I don’t know who that is,’ he says, stepping inside.

  Before Klara can react the door shuts behind him, and the light in the staircase flickers on.

  ‘Damn,’ she mutters, going over to the door where the lights are still on. She pushes her cheek against the glass and reads the names on the board in the stairwell. A Rahamin is listed as residing on the second floor. She pushes on the door, but it’s locked. She sighs and turns around. She settles against a bike rack opposite the door. Nothing to do but wait.

  *

  It takes no more than ten minutes until a woman with a stroller and some grocery bags approaches the front door. Klara takes a couple of quick steps towards her as she struggles to punch in the code while keeping her paper bags off of the wet ground.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Klara says, gently squeezing past her and pushing the door open just as the code has been accepted.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ the woman says. ‘I’ve got a lot on my hands right now.’

  ‘What floor?’ Klara says. ‘I can carry the bags for you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s so sweet,’ the woman says. ‘Thank you!’

  Klara leaves the bags on the third floor and waits until the woman has closed the door to her apartment. She walks down the stairs to the next landing and looks at the names on the three doors. The door marked ‘Rahamin’ is on the left. She takes a deep breath and rings the doorbell.

  Nothing happens. She rings it again. And again. But with the same miserable results. Maybe the man she met in the entrance wasn’t Rahamin, after all.

  She rings it again and again, almost desperate now. Then she bends down and pushes the letterbox open. The door is cool against her forehead as she leans into it.

  ‘Hassan!’ she shouts. ‘I really need to meet you. I’m supposed to tell you hello from Jacob Seger.’

  The slight echo of her words hangs in the air of the stairwell after she falls silent. But she hears something else, something from within the apartment. She puts her ear to the letterbox and can swear she hears someone on the other side of the door. Small, muffled movements. Breathing.

  ‘Please!’ she says. ‘Jacob Seger says hello!’

  The door rams into her forehead before she has a chance to get away, a quick thud of pain. She takes a step back, rubbing her head. The man she saw downstairs is standing in the
doorway.

  ‘Hurry inside,’ he says. ‘You can’t just stand there screaming.’

  Klara rubs her forehead as she steps into his apartment.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I need your help.’

  *

  She takes off her shoes and follows Hassan into a small, tastefully decorated living room. He gestures to a low, brown leather sofa and settles himself into a matching armchair on the other side of the coffee table. Klara looks around. The walls are covered with neatly organized bookshelves, and there’s not a trace of dust on the glass table. Hassan turns on a floor lamp in the corner and warm light falls onto a beautiful rug. There are two small lamps with green shades in the window overlooking the street, which contributes to the impression that this is an English gentlemen’s club rather than an apartment in the suburbs. There’s no doubt that Jacob’s former teacher is a very proper sort of man.

  ‘Thank you for listening to me,’ Klara begins. ‘We have—’

  Hassan holds up a hand to interrupt her. ‘I trust Jacob,’ he says. His Swedish is perfect, Klara can only detect the slightest hint of Arabic in it. ‘But I’ve also read the newspapers. I’ve seen what they’re writing about him. And about you, because you must be Klara Walldéen.’

  She nods. She talked to George and Jacob about it, about how they’re pariahs now.

  ‘I don’t want to get involved in anything,’ he says. ‘I’m a simple man, I live a simple life. And I want to keep it that way. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I really do. Believe me. And I understand that it’s selfish of us to try to pull you into something you haven’t asked to be a part of. But Jacob is not a terrorist. I’m not a terrorist. I think you know that.’

  Hassan looks at her. Then he stands up and takes a few steps over to a cabinet inside one of the bookshelves. ‘Forgive me my rudeness,’ he says.

  Klara catches a glimpse of mirrored glass and bottles when he opens the door.

  ‘What can I offer you? I have most things, I’m afraid.’

  He glances at her with a slight smile. Klara feels a familiar urge, a kind of low-intensity euphoria awakening.

  When he turns around he’s holding a very nice bottle of malt whisky and two glasses in his hand.

  ‘I think this evening requires whisky,’ he says, putting two coasters on the table before setting down the glasses.

  Klara swallows deep and pulls her eyes away from the bottle. ‘Nothing for me, thank you,’ she says.

  ‘No?’ Hassan says, disappointed. ‘You don’t like whisky? I have other options to choose from.’

  Klara turns to him and looks straight into his eyes. ‘I like it too much,’ she says quietly. ‘Please don’t offer it to me again. I’m not sure I can resist.’

  Without a word, Hassan collects the glasses and the bottle and puts them back into the cabinet.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Klara says. ‘I didn’t mean you couldn’t drink.’

  Hassan sits down in the chair again. ‘I should be the one apologizing. I didn’t know.’

  She shakes her head. ‘How could you? I barely do myself. This is… I’ve had some hard years.’

  Hassan smiles quietly. He doesn’t need to say anything. Those eyes. Those dignified, gentlemanly eyes are proof enough that he knows more than a little about hard years. Maybe that’s part of the reason he doesn’t want to get pulled into all this trouble.

  ‘Jacob is a climber,’ he says. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  Klara nods.

  ‘He wants to move forward, upward. I’ve seen more than a few in my days. They don’t turn into terrorists. There’s something else going on here, I think.’

  He rises again and goes over to the bookshelf, pours a few fingers of whisky into a glass after all. He takes a small gulp, turns around, and looks at her again.

  ‘We’re exposing you to risk,’ she says. ‘I know that.’

  ‘Yes. But it occurs to me that at my age a man should be grateful for any chance at risk. And I’m a curious person. I want to know what this is all about, what Jacob’s done to make the powers that be so furious with him. Do you want to tell me?’

  ‘I hoped that you might tell me,’ Klara says.

  She takes out the computer they bought in Malmö from her bag, and sets it on the glass table. With a few quick clicks on the keyboard, she opens the folder where she saved the documents and slides the computer over to Hassan.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she says. ‘Jacob met a man in Beirut who asked him to carry something out of the Middle East. It turned out the information wasn’t what Jacob was led to believe; in fact it seems to be something much, much more serious. Something connected to what happened in Paris. Or a new Paris.’

  ‘And you don’t want to go to the police because Jacob is in danger of getting hurt?’

  ‘We know too little,’ Klara says. ‘We need to know what it’s about first, and I think we do in broad terms, but the documents in front of you are in Arabic. We need your help to understand what they contain.’

  Hassan fishes a pair of reading glasses out of his front pocket and pulls the computer closer. Slowly he starts to scroll through the first document without saying a word. Klara can feel her legs twitching; it’s so difficult to stay still with all this nervous energy coursing inside her. She glances at her phone. The time is half past six. One and a half hours until the meeting in Bergort.

  Finally, Hassan looks away from the screen, takes off the glasses and meets Klara’s eyes. His face is quite pale, his eyes wide and serious.

  ‘This is a plan for a terrorist attack at the Opera House,’ he says. ‘Detailed instructions. What weapons they should have, who they are, names, where to meet, all of it.’

  ‘Damn it,’ she says. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘Klara,’ Hassan says, looking away from the documents, turning them back to her. ‘They write about coordinated attacks. Are there any more documents?’

  She nods. ‘Brussels, London and Rome,’ she says quietly.

  Hassan bends over the table towards her. ‘The plan is supposed to take place tomorrow evening,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  Klara is overcome by dizziness and she closes her eyes. ‘But they can’t carry it out without these documents.’ Hassan doesn’t answer, and Klara opens her eyes. ‘Right?’ she says. ‘How can they attack without plans? That’s the whole point.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Hassan says. ‘Unless each cell has a set of documents. Maybe Jacob’s job was to get these to the Brussels cell? Maybe there’s a Jacob for every cell.’

  The air stands still between them while this thought penetrates Klara’s mind. Perhaps there are three more sets of documents, three cells getting ready out there.

  ‘I have to hurry,’ she says, finally, standing up.

  *

  She walks lost in thought back towards the subway, through the darkness and under the yellow electric light, through the flurries of tiny snowflakes. There is so much at stake. She can’t really comprehend the immensity of it. She needs Gabriella, her calm and clear guidance.

  But there’s still an hour left. In the meantime, something is eating at her, something that nags at her when she thinks about Gabriella. She’s been so focused on the meeting with Hassan that she hasn’t picked up the signs. A few snowflakes land on the screen of her phone in her hand.

  The email from Gabriella.

  She doesn’t want to go back into the email again, afraid someone has it under surveillance. But she remembers what Gabriella wrote. And she knows there’s something that just won’t leave her alone. Gabi’s memory is much better than Klara’s, always has been. Gabi can still remember details about classes they took in Uppsala, when Klara barely remembers names or faces from that period.

  Now that she thinks about it, Gabriella would never have forgotten the field in Bergort was called Camp Nou. So why did she ask? Was she trying to send a warning? Or is it not even Gabriella she’s in contact with? And if it’s not Gab
riella, who is it? The Russians who are following them?

  She feels her pulse start to race again. Is this meeting a trap?

  She’s at the square in front of the subway station now, at a little tobacco shop, where she buys the cheapest burner phone they have, then sends a text message to George’s number, telling him that she’s met Hassan and they should meet her at the field in Bergort, but to have no contact until then.

  She sits down on a damp park bench with the phone in her hand. The feeling that Gabriella’s meeting is a trap won’t go away. But maybe Gabi was just stressed and not thinking clearly when she responded, and maybe that’s why she forgot what the kids called their soccer field.

  She swallows and dials her number on the phone. It’s a big risk. But she doesn’t know what other options she has. It doesn’t matter though, because it goes straight to voicemail.

  Klara hangs up. What should she do now?

  If Gabriella has been released from detention and can meet her that means that she’s no longer suspected of anything. Then she wouldn’t have to hide or be afraid of the police. On the other hand, if it’s the Russians Klara has been communicating with, she’ll be in grave danger in Bergort.

  A thought occurs to her. She goes through every option again, but ends up at the same conclusion. What does she have to lose?

  She turns on the phone and looks up Säpo’s number. It barely rings before an operator answers. ‘Security Service.’

  Klara clears her throat. ‘I’m looking for Anton Bronzelius,’ she says. ‘Can you connect me?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the operator says. ‘I can’t connect you with anyone. What’s this concerning?’

  Klara closes her eyes and leans back on the bench. ‘My name is Klara Walldéen. I’m wanted all over this country, my picture is on the front of every newspaper. Now, can you please connect me to Bronzelius?’

  ‘One moment,’ says the operator, and Klara hears classical music.

  It takes no more than a couple of seconds to be connected. ‘Hello, Klara,’ says Bronzelius’s familiar voice. ‘I thought you might call.’