The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  And in between those iconic buildings, on the road, just a few cars behind her taxi: a black Volvo. She can’t be sure, but somehow she knows it’s the same car that was parked outside Gabriella’s front door.

  When the taxi stops outside Bromma’s only terminal, the anxiety, loneliness and vulnerability are replaced by obstinacy. Who are these arseholes following her and Gabriella? Why can’t they just leave them alone?

  She jumps out of the taxi and grabs the little black backpack of clothes she’d originally packed to spend a couple of days at Gabriella’s. She peers past the airport buses, over towards short-term parking. Hesitates a moment. Then she turns her back to the terminal and heads towards the parking lot.

  She’s only gone a couple of steps when she sees the Volvo parked just behind the airport buses, its engine running. It’s cold, probably ten below, and she pulls her coat more tightly around her, finds a stocking cap in her pack which she pulls down over her ears. She can feel her heart pounding again, but this time it’s from anger, not a panic attack. What the hell do they want from her?

  A short, fit man wearing jeans and a black beanie is standing next to the black Volvo, as if he just jumped out of it. He has a short beard and a blue puffy jacket, brown leather gloves. When he catches sight of Klara, who has started to walk towards the car, he bends down, opens the door, and hops in the passenger seat. The Volvo’s engine revs and the tyres skid in the snow as the car pulls away from the kerb, does a hasty U-turn, and then speeds away from the airport.

  Klara runs after it, despite knowing it’s a lost cause. She has no idea what she’d do if she caught up to them.

  After a hundred metres she gives up, almost falling on the slippery asphalt. She leans forward, panting as the Volvo disappears. The adrenaline and anxiety rush through her, and she screams out loud in frustration. A man in a coat, pulling a bouncing suitcase behind him as he heads towards the terminal, turns and stares at her. But he makes no effort to approach, and Klara wants to scream at him too: What the hell are you staring at, you arsehole?

  But she stops herself and forces herself to regain control over her feelings.

  Her head pounds as she straightens up. JNK 314. At least she got the licence plate number.

  With her hands still trembling from excitement and physical exertion, she pulls out her phone and looks up the number. The car is registered to a car rental company.

  She closes her eyes and squats down. She thinks back to Gabi’s letter – she was right. The man pursuing her didn’t look Swedish, more like Eastern European. A rental car. It wasn’t the police. She’s sure of that now.

  14 November

  Beirut

  He can’t have slept more than a couple of hours when he feels Yassim stroking his hair. In the darkness of the bedroom he can only make out Yassim’s profile and that he’s holding a finger to his lips. Carefully he bends over Jacob and whispers in his ear: ‘Put on your clothes as quietly as you can and come with me.’

  Jacob’s eyes adjust to the darkness, and he can see Yassim is already dressed.

  He obeys without making a sound, rolls over on his side, puts his feet on the floor, grabs his underwear, shirt and trousers.

  Barefoot, they sneak across the concrete floor, open and close the door to the apartment soundlessly. Yassim pulls him away from the elevator and towards the stairs. His lips tight against Jacob’s ear. ‘Like ghosts,’ he whispers and smiles quickly.

  Then they’re down in the garage again and Jacob sees three yellow taxis waiting by the ramp that leads up to the street. ‘What’s this?’ he says.

  But Yassim doesn’t slow, just pulls him into one of the cars. The cabin smells like smoke and old plastic.

  ‘Lie down,’ Yassim says, gently pushing his head down onto the seat and sinking down beside him.

  The cars start rolling up the ramp.

  ‘The people watching us can’t follow all three,’ Yassim says. ‘And they don’t know which one we’re in. I’ve arranged for the two other cars to take off in different directions.’

  Jacob says nothing, just feels the warm vinyl against his cheek. Slowly they roll along the still almost empty streets.

  ‘Now…’ Yassim says finally, patting him on his shoulder. ‘I think we’re ok.’

  Jacob sits up and looks at him, at his tired face, the tiny wrinkles around his eyes. Yassim has his large black backpack on his knee.

  ‘Are you leaving already?’ he whispers. Fatigue is pounding at his temples. What did he think? That they’d have a few more hours, a few days?

  Rays of morning sun stream in through the dirty taxi windows, shining on the worn vinyl between them. Yassim puts a fist on the seat between their thighs and turns to him.

  ‘I can’t take the risk,’ he says. ‘Not after yesterday. After Paris. Even if we avoid the worst of their attention and maybe even managed to make them think you’re playing along. It’s too dangerous.’

  He lifts his hand from the seat and opens it. Jacob sees that there’s a small, flat memory card in his palm, like from inside a camera.

  ‘Everything we have,’ he says. ‘All the information we collected.’ He puts the memory card into Jacob’s hand and closes his fingers around it. ‘Are you sure? You know you can still pull out.’

  Jacob nods. He has never been surer of anything in his life. ‘I’m sure.’

  Yassim strokes his cheek. ‘Then there are many people depending on you now, Jacob,’ he says. ‘You don’t know how much depends on you not losing this little card.’

  It feels like the memory card is burning in his hand and he wants to drop it onto the floor of the taxi and stamp it out before it burns a hole through his hand. He feels instantly anxious. Not because of the risk the card entails, but because he’s afraid he won’t be able to fulfil his task.

  ‘But what if they stop me?’ he says.

  Suddenly he is overcome with the magnitude of the situation.

  ‘What if I lose the card? What if I do something wrong?’

  But Yassim puts a gentle hand on his knee and it calms him. ‘You won’t lose it,’ he says. ‘We’ll take care of that now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Jacob looks out the window. It must not have taken long to get through Beirut’s morning streets because he doesn’t know where they are now. The buildings here are far from the expensive shops downtown and the newly built skyscrapers. Instead, there are winding alleys and bullet holes, dirty laundry and tarps for windows, electrical lines in a tangled spider web just above the roof of the taxi.

  Yassim bends over to the taxi driver: ‘Wait here.’

  Then he takes Jacob by the hand and pulls him out into the dusty street. ‘Come,’ he says. ‘Time to make sure you don’t lose your little chip.’

  They’re waiting. The door is opened up by a young, shy woman in a hijab and white hospital clothes before Yassim even rings the bell. She says something in Arabic that Jacob doesn’t catch, but she looks stressed and nervous that they’re here, and she hurries them inside and closes the door carefully.

  It’s not a hall they enter: the door leads directly to a staircase and they follow the woman as she goes up it.

  ‘Is she a nurse?’ Jacob asks. ‘Where are we?’

  Yassim just turns around and gives him a quick, strained smile. ‘I’ll explain. Soon.’

  The stairs lead up to a shabby waiting room. Old steel-tube furniture, a rickety table; the blinds are drawn on the window that looks out over the street. The woman leading them opens a door on the opposite end of the waiting room and gestures for them to enter. Yassim turns to Jacob and looks at him in a piercing, solemn way again. He doesn’t pull him close. They’re just friends here. Nothing more.

  ‘Where are we?’ Jacob says again. ‘At a doctor’s office?’

  But before Yassim can answer, a short man in green surgeon’s scrubs is standing in the door. He is wearing a protective cap and mask, and only his dark, tense eyes are visible.

  ‘Wha
t are you waiting for?’ he says. ‘I don’t want you here any longer than absolutely necessary. Come on!’

  *

  It happens fast. Suddenly Jacob is on an exam table, can feel the stiff, crisp paper scratching and scraping beneath his bare chest, paper sliding against the worn vinyl. Someone, probably the woman, smears cold gel between his shoulder blades. He senses Yassim somewhere behind him.

  ‘It was supposed to be me,’ he says. ‘This is how we transport information when it’s particularly sensitive.’

  Jacob swallows and nods. Adrenaline pumping. No turning back.

  ‘They’ll place the chip just beneath your skin,’ Yassim continues. ‘Between your shoulder blades. It takes two minutes, no more. Just a quick cut and three stitches.’

  He says something in Arabic that Jacob doesn’t catch, and she backs away, as he squats down by Jacob’s face.

  ‘Last chance, Jacob,’ he says. ‘Once we do this, there’s no going back.’

  Jacob takes a deep breath. He doesn’t hesitate for a second. ‘Just do it,’ he says.

  Yassim rises and nods to the doctor. Then Jacob feels the quick prick of a needle.

  *

  Fifteen minutes later they’re back in the taxi. Yassim holds his hand and turns to him. The sun is brighter now, flashing off the windows of the buildings that line the streets.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ he says.

  ‘Not yet,’ Jacob says. ‘Can’t feel it at all. The anaesthesia is definitely working.’

  Yassim nods. ‘You’re brave,’ he says.

  ‘I’m not so brave,’ Jacob says. ‘But I like you. A lot.’

  Yassim squeezes his hand and turns his face away, looks out into the morning sunlight.

  By the time the taxi stops outside Urbanista on Gemmayzeh Street, the anaesthesia has started to wear off, and Jacob can feel the small incision between his shoulder blades starting to sting and tighten. Three stitches. ‘You’ll hardly notice it,’ the stressed doctor said before shooing them back out to the taxi again. ‘Like a wasp sting.’

  ‘I wish I could have taken you all the way home,’ Yassim says now. ‘But I think it’s for the best if you go the rest of the way by yourself. It’s just a few hundred metres from here.’

  Jacob nods. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Now you live your life as usual, darling. You stick to the story we talked about when Myriam contacts you. In just two weeks you’ll be on a flight to Brussels. I’ll meet you there.’

  ‘It feels so surreal,’ Jacob says.

  Yassim stares deep into his eyes. ‘I know it’s too much,’ he whispers. ‘I know I have no right to ask this of you.’ Yassim kisses him gently on the mouth.

  Jacob almost pulls back, shocked by this sudden open display of intimacy. Then he pushes Yassim away and shakes his head. ‘I’m doing this because I want to,’ he says. ‘For you. And because it’s what’s right.’

  When he says it, he knows it’s true. This is what he longed for, and almost lost in his wish to do right, to move forward. This is who he really is. Yassim has given him the chance to be someone who can make a difference, who is not afraid, not exploited, not just grateful.

  ‘You know the international bookstore at Gefinor Center in Hamra?’ Yassim says.

  Jacob nods. ‘Why?’

  ‘This happened so fast,’ Yassim says. ‘You’ll need tickets and other things. Lie low today and go there tomorrow after lunch. The owner is an old Armenian who likes his cigars.’

  ‘I know,’ Jacob says. They suggested it to him at the embassy, and he spent several hours there going through the selection of English paperbacks.

  ‘Good. Ask him if he’s received any new deliveries in the last twenty-four hours. He’ll give you what you need. Use what’s in the envelope. Promise me that. Don’t improvise.’

  Jacob nods.

  Yassim reaches over him to open the taxi door. He kisses him quickly on the cheek before nudging him to jump out. Then Jacob is standing on the sidewalk, leaning over the car door.

  ‘I have to go,’ Yassim says. ‘There’s no turning back. See you in two weeks. I’ll miss you.’

  Yassim waves to him through the car window as the taxi turns around and heads back west. Jacob holds up a hand in reply. Then he’s alone on a narrow sidewalk in eastern Beirut with a small memory card embedded beneath his skin.

  What should he do now?

  What is he supposed to do when he’s landed in the middle of something so much bigger than he ever imagined? Live your life like usual, Yassim told him. He should go to the embassy and call Myriam. He should pretend everything is normal, that nothing has happened.

  Yassim and the chip and the mission, he feels the weight of it all now. Confusion and euphoria, fear and love and longing. He stumbles into Urbanista and orders a coffee. Drinks it with trembling hands. His mind is on Yassim’s hands, Yassim’s mouth. And how he’s going to manage this. If he will possibly be strong enough.

  As he stands up, the small wound tightens on his back, and he feels dizzy. He leans forward, supporting himself with the table, then finally is able to make his way out into the sun again. The phone buzzes in his pocket just as he’s about to cross the street, and he fishes it out of his pocket. Yassim!

  But it’s not Yassim. It’s Myriam.

  15:00 Sursock Museum Last chance.

  2

  23 November

  Brussels

  At the very moment the plane bounces onto the runway at Zaventem Airport just outside Brussels, she opens her eyes. She must have fallen asleep as soon as she sat down because she has no memory of the flight itself.

  Klara looks out through the cabin window and thinks of all the times she’s landed here in the rain. For more than three years, whenever she landed at Zaventem, followed all the people dressed in business attire pulling carry-ons up the passenger bridge and into the larger terminal, past juice bars, tax-free and chocolate shops, and then into the arrival hall, she felt like she was going home.

  Now as she rises from her seat and follows that stream of people, all she feels is a weight in her chest and a headache coming on. At one of the small Lavazza kiosks she buys a double espresso and burns her mouth as she knocks it back in two gulps. The sleep on the plane didn’t help: on the contrary, she’s not used to sleeping during the day, and her head feels groggy and heavy.

  Halfway through the terminal, she takes off her backpack, throws the cardboard cup into the trash and sits down on a bench near one of the gates. She pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket, scrolls down to George Lööw’s name and sits for a long time with her thumb hovering above the phone, struggling with contradictory impulses.

  With a sigh, she locks her phone and puts it back in her pocket. It’ll have to wait. Instead, she raises her eyes and looks out over the crowd of stressed travellers. And that’s when she sees him. On the other side of the hall, about fifty metres away, a cap pulled down over his eyes and a jacket draped over his knees, a man is looking in her direction. When she looks at him, he turns his eyes away. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t think more about it. But now, after Gabi and Bromma, it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She recognizes him from the plane ride here.

  Her legs tremble as she turns around and walks the last stretch through the terminal building into the arrivals hall. She stops at regular intervals to turn back, and every time she does the man with the cap is behind her. Did she really think she’d scared them away at Bromma?

  She starts to hurry and when she reaches Arrivals she turns again. There is only one exit. The man in the cap has to come this way.

  The sudden flash of energy she felt before, which made her want to confront them, has disappeared completely during the flight.

  Now she looks around at the people waiting here for travellers: taxi drivers in ties with handwritten signs. Parents waiting for teenagers, friends and spouses and a Muslim family with balloons and a long banner in Arabic. The stream of people is swift and minutes
pass by with no sight of her pursuer.

  She feels a blend of relief and disappointment. What was she going to do if he did come out here?

  Maybe she was wrong. Perhaps Bromma just made her hyper-vigilant about anyone with a vaguely Eastern European look and shifty eyes.

  *

  Full of doubt now, she turns and walks through the automatic doors towards the taxis. It’s four in the afternoon. She doesn’t even know where to go, just knows she needs a glass of wine as soon as possible.

  The taxi queue takes less than five minutes.

  ‘Place Sablon,’ she says to the driver. It surprises her that she’s requested that flashy and touristy square with its chocolate and antique shops, rather than the neighbourhood of Ixelles where she lived for three years. But the thought of her old neighbourhood just makes her anxiety worse. Better to stick to the tourist areas, better if she doesn’t let the city really sink in. Better to have a soft landing.

  She stares worriedly out the rear window as the taxi rolls past the parking lots and airport hotels. Suddenly it hits her that in one of those cars behind her slowly gliding through the afternoon rain there could be a person who’s following her. She shudders as she turns forward again.

  The Brussels Ring in, past NATO headquarters, the grey and gritty streets on the outskirts of the Schaerbeek district, and then past Square Ambiorix. She bends forward to get a view of the apartment building at this small park’s south-eastern corner, where she sublet a furnished one-bedroom for the first three months she lived in Brussels. The taxi swings away from the square and over towards the EU institutions. It feels like another life now, among the restaurants and bars of Rue Archimède. Everything looks familiar; she knows everything about this life, the lunches and the smiles, the suits, the dresses. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to imagine that she was ever a part of it, that the person who experienced all that is the same person sitting in this taxi.

  Then they’re at the very heart of the EU – the Schuman roundabout with the European Council headquarters and the Commission’s star-shaped building, the Berlaymont, on the right. She feels a little ache in her stomach when the traffic stops just in front of the roundabout, and she sees all the stressed-out people in suits on the sidewalks with their hands full of folders and binders, phones pressed to their ears.