The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ Klara mutters. ‘That’s what the hell we should do.’

  They park and jump out. Klara turns around and looks at Jacob. He’s tall and skinny with blonde hair and soft, almost fragile features. He looks a bit angular, with his high cheekbones and straight nose. But he’s not ugly; on the contrary, there’s something appealing, almost beautiful about his face. He also looks exhausted. Heavy bags under his eyes, a cracked lip covered by an ugly, black scab. His eyes are bloodshot and tired.

  ‘You need to sleep,’ she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ll just have to make sure you do. But first we have to get a ride.’

  She turns to George. ‘Take Jacob to the restaurant and get him some food. But be quick. I’ll be back soon.’

  George’s eyes turn warm. ‘You’ve made a comeback from your panic attack. Shifted to a whole other gear.’

  He winks and turns to Jacob. ‘Come on. Let’s go get a burger or something.’

  Klara heads for the gas station, walks in between the candy and sodas and car accessories. George is right. She hasn’t even thought about it, but she feels like a different person today. She’s full of energy and ideas despite this awful chaos. It’s pointless to analyze it, better just to use it while it lasts.

  At the checkout counter, she finds what she’s looking for. ‘I want one of those prepaid phones,’ she says. ‘Does it include Internet?’

  The man nods tiredly and puts it in a bag. ‘One gigabyte anywhere in Europe,’ he says. ‘199 euros, please.’

  Klara pays. And when she steps out into the rain to go to the restaurant, she hears the helicopter blades clearly. ‘Fuck,’ she murmurs to herself as she starts to run across the parking lot. She’d hoped they’d have a few minutes. They’re so close now.

  George and Jacob are standing inside the door waiting, paper bags in their hands.

  ‘We’re in a big hurry,’ Klara tells them. ‘Get moving. The helicopter will be here soon.’

  ‘Where?’ Jacob asks in panic. ‘We don’t have anywhere to go.’

  Klara’s already opened the door. ‘I said I’d take care of it,’ she says. ‘Come on!’

  As George and Jacob rush behind her towards the trucks, they hear the sirens getting closer.

  ‘Klara!’ George shouts. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  But Klara is already stopped in front of a huge, modern semi with Polish plates.

  The rain is pouring down now, big heavy drops. The door of the truck opens from the inside, and she jumps into the cab as George and Jacob catch up to her. They hear her say in English, ‘Thank you so very much, you don’t know what it means to us. We’ll have to get the car towed tomorrow.’

  The driver, who is in his fifties, was the third one she spoke to. A colleague pointed him out in the store. He’s headed north to Sweden. It could hardly be better. But when she asked him about a ride, he told her in his limited English that his employers didn’t allow hitchhikers, and at the sound of the helicopter blades Klara felt her panic rising.

  ‘But it’s just me and my two friends,’ she said and looked him straight in the eyes in a way she hoped was full of promise. ‘We won’t be any trouble. Quite the opposite.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said in the end. ‘But you better be fast, I leave in five minutes.’

  *

  ‘I might have given him the impression that you were girls,’ Klara says now over her shoulder to George who’s heading up the steps into the cabin behind her. ‘Just so you know.’

  She turns to the driver again and smiles. The cabin is modern and comfortable with two leather chairs and shining instruments. A crucifix is attached to the top of the instrument panel. The driver looks over Klara’s shoulder, and must see George’s head appear; the disappointment in his eyes is obvious.

  ‘Is that your friend?’ he says.

  Klara nods. ‘George is his name. He’s very nice.’

  The driver sighs and draws back a curtain to a sleeping area behind the seats. A surprisingly comfortable-looking bed with a yellow bedspread is visible in the dim lights of the gas station.

  ‘Your friends ride back there,’ he says. ‘You ride with me.’

  Klara nods eagerly. This is going to work. He won’t throw us out, she thinks.

  She turns to Jacob and George again. ‘Hurry up, for fuck’s sake,’ she whispers urgently. ‘Before he changes his mind.’

  They’ve barely gotten into place behind the curtain when the blinking blue lights of the first police car appear on the highway. They drive past the gas station as more sirens start to blare.

  ‘Better get going,’ she says in English. ‘Don’t want the police to slow us down.’

  The driver turns to her with a questioning look. Is he starting to figure it out? Three people stuck at a gas station. A significant police presence. She feels George’s gun, hard and heavy in her right pocket.

  Please drive, she thinks. Just drive. I don’t want to have to use this.

  24 November

  Duisburg

  The sirens are everywhere. Jacob can hear Klara asking the truck driver to drive. George has crept over to the curtain of the sleeper cabin and is peeking out at the gas station. Jacob can see his foot bobbing nervously on the yellow bedspread. Cautiously, Jacob crawls over beside George and peeks through the drapes as well, just as the blue lights start to blink through the windshield of the truck.

  Time stands still. Klara doesn’t say a word, and when Jacob turns his head to see what she’s doing, she looks almost unconcerned, keeping her eyes on the driver. But she’s grinding her teeth; her legs are jittering, and she has a hand stuffed into her pocket.

  Finally, the driver makes his decision. Without saying a word, he turns the ignition key. And before Jacob can really take in what’s happening, the driver steers his truck between the blinking blue lights, past the parked cars, up onto the on-ramp that leads to the freeway. The rain streams down the windshield, and Jacob hears it clattering onto the roof. He pulls back into the sleeper cabin.

  ‘Damn, that was close,’ George says next to him.

  *

  But the relative peace doesn’t last for long. It is just a matter of minutes before they hear sirens again in the distance.

  ‘What the fuck should we do?’ he asks Klara through the drapes. ‘How did they find us?’

  ‘They must have found the car and talked to the other truck drivers,’ Klara says with an unexpected, unaccountable calm. ‘Put the pieces together, guessed our only option was this truck.’

  Jacob sits up now, crawls over to the drapes. He looks out and sees the blue lights bouncing through the darkness in the cab. They make Klara’s face seem ghostly. The driver turns to her with a question on his face, and Klara meets his eyes, unflustered.

  ‘I’m gonna climb back there with the others,’ she says. ‘And you tell the police I asked you for a lift, but I never showed up.’

  Jacob sees her pull something halfway out of her pocket. Something that flashes in the blue light and looks surreal in her hand. Black metal. A gun.

  The driver gives her a curious glance, and Klara keeps the gun out of his sight.

  Jacob can barely breathe. ‘Klara, maybe it’s best if we…’

  But he stops. What happens if the police arrest them? What will happen to Klara and George? To him?

  ‘We’re not criminals,’ Klara says calmly in English to the driver. ‘I promise. The opposite. We have something we need to get to Sweden. It will all work out in the end, but if the police catch us, people will die. I’m not kidding about this.’

  Jacob sees her put the gun on the seat next to her. The police car behind them signals with a few loud honks, and the driver starts to slow so he can stop on the side of the road. He turns to Klara again with an expressionless face. Jacob sees her cocking the gun.

  ‘Hide,’ the driver says. ‘I’ll talk to the police.’

  They stare at each other silently. The truck has almost stopped movin
g now. Klara puts the gun in her pocket again, shoos him and George out of the way so she can crawl behind the seats.

  ‘Move, you two.’ She turns to the driver again. ‘I trust you,’ she says.

  Then she walks behind the drapes and squeezes in between George and Jacob.

  24 November

  Duisburg

  It turns strangely quiet as the driver pulls the truck over onto the shoulder of the highway and turns off the engine. There’s just drumming of the rain on the roof, and the traffic swishing by.

  It gets louder when the driver opens the door and hops out to meet the police.

  ‘We’re so fucked,’ George whispers.

  Klara doesn’t answer him. She’s trying to listen, but all she can hear is the rain and the road.

  ‘But they don’t have anything on us,’ George continues.

  ‘Just the shooting at the Palais de Justice,’ Klara mutters.

  A few minutes go by before they hear the door of the cabin open again. All three of them hold their breath. Klara’s hands are so sweaty she almost loses her grip on the gun. What is she planning to do with it anyway? Threaten the police? Shoot them? That would be insane, and not helpful at all.

  She carefully raises the mattress and puts the gun beneath it. Better not to have it on her when the policemen arrest them. She should tell Jacob to hide the memory card as well.

  Then she hears someone climbing the steps to the cabin. The door slams, the engine starts. The truck slowly starts rolling forward, then accelerating, and eventually joining the traffic on the highway.

  Klara looks at George and raises her eyebrows.

  He shrugs slightly, as if he can’t believe it’s true. They wait a couple of moments, as if to make sure.

  Klara bends forward and looks through the gap in the drapes. The driver turns around and smiles at her. ‘Coast is clear,’ he says. ‘Is that how you say?’

  Klara furrows her brow and climbs up to the passenger seat. She turns to him. ‘Why did you protect us?’ she says softly. ‘You really don’t know anything about me or the boys back there.’

  He adjusts in his seat and puts his hand lower on the wheel. Klara can see tattoos peeking out from under his sleeve and on the back of his hand. Letters and symbols on his fingers and knuckles. He turns and smiles at her. ‘You remind me of my daughter,’ he says, pointing to her. ‘Tough.’

  Klara smiles back carefully. ‘How old is she?’ she asks.

  Without answering, he lets go of the wheel with one hand and removes a wallet from his trouser pocket. He fishes out a faded picture of a woman in her twenties.

  ‘Old picture,’ he says. ‘I haven’t seen her in ten years.’

  ‘Ten years? Why so long?’

  He puts the picture on the seat and knocks on his own head. ‘I’m stupid,’ he says. ‘Prison. No good for her.’

  He looks sad, then he turns and smiles at her again. ‘But I hate the police. So, good for you. I said you talked to me. But you wanted to go to Berlin.’

  ‘Not so stupid, I’d say,’ Klara says and leans back in the chair. ‘Pretty smart, in fact. You surely bought us some time.’

  *

  Klara’s been sitting with the burner phone since they left the police, trying to gather her strength. Now she finally turns it on and it blinks to life. Takes a deep breath, opens the browser, and goes into her secret email account.

  There’s only one new message, sent yesterday, and from a Hotmail address that consists only of numbers. Yesterday? Did they release her yesterday?

  Klara clicks on the message. Three sentences. ‘We have to meet as soon as you come back from Brussels. Email me here to tell me you’re okay, nowhere else. Don’t contact the police before we meet.’

  The last sentence has been bolded. Klara looks up from the phone and stares into the darkness and the gushing rain. ‘What is this, Gabi?’ she whispers. ‘What the hell is this?’

  Then she turns to the truck driver. ‘Where in Sweden are you headed?’ she asks.

  ‘Gävle,’ he says, without looking away from the road.

  ‘Can we go with you to Stockholm?’ He turns and looks at her with an amused expression.

  ‘You think I throw you out now? After I lied to the police for you?’

  Klara smiles and shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I don’t.’

  25 November

  Malmö

  Somebody is shaking him gently, and Jacob rolls into a ball to protect himself. He’s back in that damp basement; they’re waking him up to assault him. Reluctantly he opens his eyes and around him is only blackness. The air is so stuffy he has to take a deep breath to get any oxygen at all into his lungs. But then he hears the sound of the engine, gets the unmistakable feeling of movement.

  ‘Wake up, kid,’ George says, shaking him, more impatiently now. ‘You slept through Germany, sleepyhead.’

  Slowly Jacob sits up. A faint streak of blue light from the driver’s cabin penetrates through the gap in the drapes. George whispers something to Klara. Then he turns back to Jacob again.

  ‘Come and look,’ he says, pulling back the drapes. ‘Home.’

  Jacob crawls towards the opening and sees only night and asphalt. But part of the night is compact and bottomless and he realizes that must be the sea, and beyond the sea are the lights of a city. And in front of them stands a high, sleek bridge, lit up like silver in the dark.

  ‘Malmö,’ George says, pointing to the glittering lights. ‘Feel good to be home?’

  Jacob can’t believe it’s true. For a moment he feels something almost like relief. Then he sees Yassim’s face in front of him. His lifeless arm in the car. The blood spreading from his shoulder. The light in his eyes slowly going out.

  He bends forward and looks at Klara under the cold lights of the lamps outside. She seems wide awake. Did she sleep at all? Her dark hair is a little messy. There’s something sexy about her, Jacob thinks. That determined nose, those high cheekbones. There’s something about her that makes him curious. She looks like somebody who’s been through a lot and come out on the other side stronger for it.

  ‘Did you eat some gape-soup?’ she asks in a surprisingly broad, exaggerated Östergötland accent.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he says self-consciously. ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘Ah,’ she says, turning to him with a smile. ‘Just something we used to say in the archipelago where I grew up if someone stared at you.’

  *

  As they drive across the bridge, the semi starts to slow and the driver turns to Klara with a troubled expression. ‘We have a problem,’ he says, pointing to the tollbooth.

  Ahead of them a row of trucks is slowly inching forward. A few cars are doing the same thing in another line, but it’s too early for commuters.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Klara says.

  ‘Border control,’ he says. ‘They’re looking for something. Maybe refugees.’ He narrows his eyes at her. ‘Or maybe for you?’

  ‘They weren’t supposed to start checking passports until after Christmas,’ George said.

  The driver shrugs. ‘I guess they’re looking for you, then?’

  Klara meets his eyes calmly. ‘We got this far,’ she says. ‘Can you help us again?’

  He sighs and rolls in slowly behind the last truck in the queue.

  ‘You remember what I said?’ he asks.

  ‘That you hate cops?’ Klara replies.

  ‘That I’m stupid. Jump back with the others.’

  Slowly they roll forward and stop at what looks like a temporary blockage, right after the tollbooth. Jacob hears the driver open the door. ‘What’s this?’ he asks.

  ‘Routine check,’ answers a female voice in English.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ the driver asks.

  ‘Like I said, routine check. May I please see your passport and will you climb out of the vehicle.’

  ‘No,’ the driver says to Jacob’s surprise. ‘If this is a routine check, I re
fuse to show my passport. Schengen Agreement. Routine checks at borders are prohibited. My shipping agent can sue you.’

  ‘What in…’ says the woman. ‘Now you do what I say. Get out of the vehicle. And put down the phone.’

  ‘No,’ says the driver. ‘No, I won’t. You said this is a routine check. That’s illegal. So I’m recording this.’

  They can hear him pressing all of his weight into his seat. Then the woman’s radio crackles and she says something they don’t quite catch.

  ‘I’m climbing in,’ she says. ‘And you don’t move.’

  They hear the driver grunt something and then the cop climbing up. Through the little gap they can see her flashlight bobbing around.

  ‘Move,’ the cop says.

  ‘Tell me what the reason is for this inspection,’ the driver says. ‘Or I refuse.’

  ‘Put that down,’ says the officer harshly.

  ‘My phone?’ he asks. ‘I’m not going to do that. What you’re doing is illegal.’

  The police officer sighs and hops down to the ground again. ‘Drive to the side of the road over there. We’re not done here yet.’

  Jacob hears the driver pulling the door closed and slowly rolling down along the road. ‘Yes,’ he quietly mutters in English. ‘We sure are.’

  Then he accelerates, not towards the edge of the road, but up onto the highway as fast as his truck will go.

  Klara has crept out of the sleeper cabin and back towards the seats again and Jacob hears sirens behind them.

  ‘I’m gonna stop at a parking lot,’ the driver says to Klara. ‘Someplace where you can disappear. Now, as soon as I can.’

  The truck careens off the highway. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘There’s a McDonald’s up there. You jump off there.’

  The sirens almost disappeared when they got on the highway, but now they’re louder again.

  ‘Okay,’ Klara nods. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

  ‘You only have a few seconds,’ he says. ‘They’re right behind us.’

  Jacob feels George pushing him forward into the cab of the truck. ‘Get ready,’ he says. ‘Now’s not the time to fall into a coma.’