The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  That could have been her. That was her. Until Mahmoud contacted her two years ago. Before Paris and London and last summer. That was her before the anxiety and the sleepless nights and the grief.

  Now a pit opens inside her again, and she can feel herself falling and fast. She bends forward between the seats towards the driver.

  ‘Drive to Place Luxembourg instead,’ she says.

  It’s closer. She needs a drink right now if she’s ever going to be able to handle all this. She knew it would be difficult to come back here, has been worried since yesterday. But this? It’s worse than she expected. She shouldn’t be alone. She needs someone to talk to.

  She takes out her phone and finds George Lööw’s number again. This wasn’t how she thought she’d contact him again, not under these circumstances. But what choice does she have?

  I’m in Brussels, she writes briefly. At Ralph’s in half an hour. Can we meet?

  14 November

  Beirut

  Jacob walks almost the whole way home with his phone in his hand. ‘Last chance,’ Myriam wrote. But he doesn’t need a last chance, he’s made his decision. He’s left everything behind now.

  He’s in front of the apartment, and he should go up and at least pick up some clothes. Why? Where should he go? They decided that he was going to live life like usual, not draw any unnecessary attention. Now he realizes he’ll have to meet Myriam too, play along. Go to the embassy every day so as not to draw attention. And then just disappear.

  He takes out the business card he’s kept in his pocket the whole time.

  Alexa Tayeb

  Director

  Palestinian Recreational Youth Centre, PRYC

  Shatila, Beirut

  ‘Shatila is a labyrinth,’ she told him. ‘You’ll disappear if you don’t know what you’re doing.’

  Disappearing is exactly what he’d like to do. He sighs and puts the business card back again, feels discomfort and fear at the thought of meeting Myriam. But he doesn’t have much of a choice.

  *

  It’s so cool out now that Jacob barely breaks a sweat in the autumn sun as he climbs up the colourful staircase from Mar Mikhael to Ashrafieh, even with his backpack of extra clothes. He doesn’t know if he’ll go back to the apartment. He doesn’t know anything right now.

  The time is ten to three. And he feels like he has no control over his own steps. But when he looks down at his phone, he’s put the Sursock Museum into his map app so as not to get lost among the run-down, bullet-ridden art-deco houses. He only has to deny everything, stick to his story, get her to leave him alone for a little while. Buy some time.

  It was here, under these twisting power lines, over this uneven asphalt, that he and Yassim walked on that first night just three months ago. That was another world, Beirut looked different, he’d been confused and fragile, a stranger. Who was he now?

  He feels like he recognizes balconies and flaking shutters. But he can’t find the garden, doesn’t see the palace or the bench where they sat. It’s as if that night was a dream.

  The Sursock Museum’s newly renovated; its white facade shines like mother of pearl, like a mirage in the midst of all that grey decay. He stops and takes a deep breath of clear autumn air. He should probably just leave. He’s already chosen Yassim. Love and truth.

  But he takes a deep breath and walks through the gate, turns to the left, heading towards the newly built cafe and the small boutique. Myriam is already sitting there with a small cup of coffee in front of her, nothing else. Beside Byblos, Jacob’s never seen her in daylight, and he’s struck by how attractive she is. Just a cool, local girl spending her afternoon off at the museum. That’s what he’d think if he’d never spoken to her, didn’t know how ruthless she is.

  He walks slowly towards her across the polished sandstone slabs, squinting against the pale autumn sun.

  She doesn’t even look up from her phone when he sits down across from her. ‘What is your friend going to do?’ she asks.

  Jacob feels that familiar powerlessness creep over him. He has to get back his strength, his power. ‘What do you mean?’

  Myriam puts the phone on the table in front of him and stares at him with empty eyes. ‘You still don’t understand how serious this is,’ she says slowly with suppressed rage. ‘You think it’s a fucking game, don’t you? A novel? Are you aware of what just happened in Europe? In Paris yesterday?’

  Jacob’s leg starts to tremble and hop, the wound on his back starts to pound.

  ‘Your boyfriend disappeared again,’ she continues. ‘This time he’s on his way to Europe. Answer the question: what is he going to do there?’

  ‘I did what you asked me to,’ Jacob whispers. ‘I installed the programme on his computer.’

  ‘What do you want? A medal?’

  ‘What do you want me to do then?’ he says. ‘I’ve done what you asked me and all you do is question me.’

  ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ She’s raised her voice now and is leaning over the table. ‘You disappeared from his apartment sometime in the early morning hours. Again: Do you think I’m a fucking idiot? Well?’

  Jacob shrugs; he wasn’t prepared for this after all. ‘I don’t know where he is. You seem to know more than me.’

  Myriam sits comfortably in her chair staring at him. Rage burning in her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she says.

  Jacob shakes his head and leans over the table, looking her in the eyes. ‘Come on with what? What the hell do you want me to say? That I know where he is when I don’t?’

  Myriam leans over the table, and with unexpected speed grabs his forearm, squeezing so hard it brings tears to his eyes. Their faces are no more than a foot apart now. ‘It’s time for you to stop fucking around,’ she hisses. ‘Do you plan to meet him in Brussels? When are you going to meet him? Don’t you realize this is a whole new game since yesterday, you fucking idiot?’

  Jacob pulls his hand away, and she reluctantly lets go in order to avoid a scene, even though the outdoor seating is almost empty.

  His arm is an angry red where she held on, and he rubs it with his other hand. ‘What the hell,’ he says. ‘Are you fucking crazy?’

  ‘Am I?’ Myriam asks. ‘Am I crazy? Or am I just frustrated that you don’t understand what the hell you’re mixed up in? You’re protecting a fucking terrorist, Jacob. You’re making it harder for us to stop more terrorist attacks.’

  He shakes his head again, his arm still hurting, and he continues rubbing it. ‘But I did what you asked me to do,’ he repeats. ‘I did everything.’

  She looks at him with the same irritated contempt as before, just more intensely now. ‘I think you know as well as me that his computer didn’t help us.’

  He just looks at her coldly. ‘How would I know that?’ He feels like a child repeating the same transparent apology over and over again.

  ‘When are you going to Brussels?’ she asks again.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Why would I go to Brussels?’

  They sit there, eyes locked, without saying anything else for a while, then she bends over the table again.

  ‘Listen to me right now,’ she says. ‘And really fucking think about it before you answer me, okay? Has Yassim given you something that he wants you to pass on to someone else, or that he wants you to take to him in Brussels? Take your time now, Jacob. Really think about it. Did you receive anything from Yassim that he wants you to take care of in any way?’

  His head pounds. The wound on his back. Last chance.

  ‘Do you have it here?’ she asks.

  Her voice sounds different now, not threatening, on the contrary, it sounds understanding and almost friendly.

  ‘I know it’s hard,’ she says. ‘He made you believe he’s in love with you, that you have something together. But you have to understand that he doesn’t care about you. He only cares about one thing: his mission. And that mission is terror, Jacob.’

  He looks around at the restauran
t, suddenly aware of their surroundings. It’s as if the world is more intensely coloured, clearer, than just a second ago. Two men sit at the table closest to the museum building itself. There’s something about their short hairstyles and wide shoulders and how they don’t speak to each other at all. Jacob’s heart pounds, and he glances over towards the souvenir shop. A man stands flipping through some art books with an earpiece in his ear. These aren’t visitors to the museum. None of them. It was a mistake to come here, he knew it. His chest tightens.

  ‘Think about it,’ Myriam says at last. ‘Why would I be interested in Yassim if he wasn’t a terrorist? Why would I care at all?’

  Because he’s collecting information about Western war crimes, Jacob wants to scream. Because you’re all working against Assange and Snowden, all of them. That’s why!

  He says nothing, only sits up straight in his chair. What would happen if he just stood up and left? Would they let him go? If not, where would they take him? What would they do to him? And how can they be so sure he’s received something from Yassim?

  What if she’s right about Yassim? What if Yassim is just using him?

  Myriam puts a phone on the table in front of him. On the screen is a picture of a man with a deep tan, very white and meticulously cut hair.

  ‘Have you seen this man?’ she asks.

  He has seen him. He saw him leaving Yassim’s apartment and hopping into a car with diplomatic plates a month ago. Jacob remembers his eyes and his authority, how even through the window he saw how Yassim listened to him.

  ‘Who is that?’ Jacob asks quietly.

  ‘Gregorij Korolov,’ Myriam says. ‘A Russian spy. Somewhat of a legend, actually. We think he met with your boyfriend. And we want to know what the hell that’s all about.’

  Jacob thinks about that night in the garden. About Yassim’s eyes, how he listened to him yesterday at the late-night cafe. About how he still doesn’t really know anything at all.

  ‘No,’ he says, looking straight into Myriam’s eyes. ‘I have never seen him.’

  He doesn’t know where he finds the strength or courage to do it, but he stands up before he even realizes it, as if his spine has reacted without the help of his brain.

  And suddenly he turns over the table with great force. It’s easier than he imagined, and he heaves it towards Myriam. Glasses and ashtrays shatter against the floor of the terrace. She tries to get away, but she’s too slow and the table falls onto her. From the corner of his eye he sees, as if in slow motion, the men at the table by the museum stand up. He can hear their distorted voices as he turns around. And he moves faster than he ever has before, is already down in the courtyard, has already covered half the distance to the gate out of the garden. He hears them screaming behind him as he turns right onto the cracked concrete and asphalt.

  They’re running fast now, no longer in slow motion, quite the opposite, and Jacob knows he isn’t in shape for this and his pursuers probably are. They’re not screaming now, but their footsteps are getting closer.

  He’s on something that feels like a sidewalk now, and he knows he has no margin for error, that they’ll catch up to him any second.

  A high iron fence. An overgrown garden. A gate.

  He bends down. The gap in the gate. Which Yassim bent up for him on that very first night. This is where he crawled through.

  He’s down on his knees now, and he hears them approaching, hears that they’re almost to the intersection behind him. He bends and pulls and pushes his shoulders sideways through the gate.

  Then he’s through, with bruises and scratches, and the palace towers in front of him in the cool afternoon sun. He runs into the garden, in among the green bushes and the uncut grass.

  Outside the gate he hears his pursuers heading further down the street, and he realizes he’s escaped.

  He hunches down in the grass, but his legs won’t hold him, so he collapses into a small, lonely heap and cries his heart out like a child.

  23 November

  Brussels

  It’s a mistake asking the taxi to drop her off at Ralph’s. Klara realizes it as soon as she pays and steps onto the cobblestones with her bag over her shoulder. She tries to keep her eyes on the door and her thoughts focused on the wine in order to avoid looking to the right, where the European Parliament stands with its blue glass and memories of her former life.

  Ralph’s is remarkably empty on a Monday morning. It was always bursting to the limit when she was here in the past, full of lobbyists with an extra button unbuttoned on their pink dress shirts and gold cards at the ready, and red-cheeked interns from EU institutions with their badges dangling around their necks.

  She orders herself a glass of white wine, sits down on one of the colourful plastic chairs at the far end of the long room and feels her anxiety grow. Maybe it’s the depressing, deserted bar with Adele’s soft voice streaming over the speakers above her, filling the bar with empty nostalgia, but her breath becomes more shallow and the pressure in her chest starts to spread to her left arm with acute and intense pain. For a moment, she’s afraid she might fall off her chair. She closes her eyes and grabs the table so hard her knuckles turn white.

  ‘Miss?’

  Klara can barely hear, her ears are ringing so loudly it sounds as if she’s standing in a waterfall.

  ‘Are you okay, miss?’

  She turns her head to the bar and sees, as if through a haze, a worried bartender leaning over the counter. She tries to nod and give him some kind of smile, but answering is beyond her capabilities. She manages to loosen her grip on the marble table and grab onto the stem of her wine glass. The noise just increases in her ears; she can barely hear Adele any more, and she can see the bartender’s lips move, but his mouth isn’t making any sound. He leaves the bar and starts to move towards her, but it’s as if he’s in another world, as if she’s in a bubble all by herself. The pit is wide open inside her now, and if she had the strength, any strength at all, she would scream or start to weep.

  She feels the bartender’s hand on her shoulder – he’s shaking her gently, but she can’t do anything other than keep her eyes shut and try to hold it together as best she can.

  ‘Miss? Miss? Are you on something? Are you on any medication?’

  The roar in her ears. The pain in her chest.

  And then suddenly something else. A voice she recognizes. A voice that cuts through it all.

  ‘Klara?’ the voice says. ‘What the hell? What’s going on?’

  She opens her eyes and the noise starts to diminish until it’s no longer deafening, more like the slight buzz of a bee or a wasp. The pain is just a strip across her chest, and she takes a breath, forcing herself to suck the oxygen as deep into her lungs as she can.

  ‘It’s fine,’ the man says to the bartender. ‘I’ll take care of it; she’s my friend.’

  She recognizes the man leaning over her, despite the round, tortoiseshell glasses, even though the blonde hair isn’t slicked back with gel any more, but is product-free, tousled, and longer. Even though he has on a denim shirt instead of a neatly pressed, tailored pink one, even though he’s not wearing a pinstriped suit jacket, but a navy-blue bomber jacket.

  ‘Everything’s okay, Klara,’ George Lööw says. ‘Just breathe. We’re gonna take care of this, okay?’

  She senses him sitting down on the chair next to her, putting his arm around her and pulling her close. Something releases inside her, and she lets it float away. She lets her head fall onto his shoulder.

  ‘George,’ she mumbles. ‘I meant to contact you, I was going to call, I was…’

  ‘Shh,’ he says, stroking her hair. ‘It’s fine, Klara. Just breathe now.’

  He lets go of her for a moment, fumbling in his pocket for something, and then he lifts her weak arm with one hand and pushes something small and dry into her palm with the other.

  ‘Take this,’ he says. ‘Beta blockers. Nothing dangerous, but it’ll help you slow your pulse, okay?’

&
nbsp; She looks at him. The buzzing in her ears has almost completely disappeared now. She’s almost out of the bubble. He looks so different. Not like the slick lobbyist she met a couple of years ago. This George is softer, his eyes not shifting and impatient, but warm and worried.

  ‘You got glasses,’ she whispers.

  He smiles and pats her cheek. ‘Always had ’em. Just stopped using contacts. Take the pill now.’ He holds up the wine glass to her.

  ‘You’re giving me wine to wash down the medicine?’ she asks. ‘Haven’t changed that much, I see.’

  He shrugs. ‘Just do what I say. Believe me, I know exactly how you feel right now.’

  *

  They walk slowly and quietly towards Matonge, the Congolese part of the Ixelles neighbourhood that borders on the EU district, and Klara remembers these contrasts were exactly what she loved about Brussels: privilege never more than a block away from poverty, the future never disconnected from the past.

  She feels better, almost functional, after downing her wine and George’s pill. She can feel George glancing over at her as they cross Rue du Trône, continue past small, dusty shops full of wigs and phone cards, dried fish in wooden crates on the sidewalk.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ she says. She runs a hand over his jacket. ‘What happened to the Wall Street look?’

  George was really the quintessential lobbyist when Klara first met him. Flashy job at a big American PR firm. The suits, a glass of champagne in his hand at Ralph’s, big talk, high stress and shady customers.

  ‘Laid off after last summer,’ he says. He takes her arm gently and pulls her close to keep her from being run over by a teenager on a Vespa tearing around the corner.

  Klara nods. Her pulse isn’t racing any more. She glances up at him. The panic attack has started to give way to something else, something warmer, something bigger. It feels so good to be walking side by side with George. Too good.