She hesitates, but her feet move as if by themselves toward the small group of people gathered at the edge. A woman has jumped down on the track, another leans over the edge of the platform. They talk loudly, yelling at each other, but their voices are strangely subdued, Klara can barely hear them. The driver is in front of the group now. He’s angry.
“What a fucking idiot!” he roars. “In front of my train!”
His voice isn’t muted, it’s shrill and horrible, and he beats his fists on the train so hard that the plastic or metal, or whatever it’s made of, thunders. Then he turns and collapses, empty and wrinkled like an empty balloon, with his back to the train. It seems like he’s crying, like he’s shaking with sobs, and someone squats down next to him and gets him to sit down on the platform with his legs straight out like a child.
And her legs move her closer and closer to the edge of the platform, apparently unaware that she wants to stay where she is, that she wants to turn around and disappear. But suddenly she’s right in front of the track, and even though she wants to close her eyes and turn away, neither her eyes nor neck seem to obey her, and she bends over the tracks.
And then she sees him. And doesn’t even notice that she’s screaming until someone puts an arm around her and leads her away from the edge, toward the middle of the platform and sits her down on a green, scratched wooden bench.
*
When the shaky film ends and her vision goes back to normal, the platform is full of firefighters and paramedics, stretchers, bags that look like they contain important lifesaving instruments. But it’s far too late to save any lives.
Next to her someone is talking to a police officer, not a bobby in one of those helmets, but a regular police officer in a hat and a belt full of pockets, but no gun.
“Then he just stepped right out in front of the train,” the voice says. “It was as if he stumbled, as if he lost his balance and kind of jumped by mistake.”
“You saw the whole thing?” the officer asks.
“I think so,” the voice continues. “From the corner of my eye.”
The voice is so pleased with itself, so pleased to be such a splendid fucking witness. Klara turns toward it and sees that it belongs to a man in his fifties, wearing a suit, short sideburns. Affluent, accustomed to being listened to. But he didn’t see this. What he’s saying isn’t true.
“Someone pushed him,” she says, quietly at first.
Sideburns loses his train of thought and turns toward her. The officer turns too, his eyebrows rise above his friendly, brown eyes.
“Excuse me?” the officer says.
“Someone pushed him,” Klara says, notices how difficult it is to speak, the words almost have to be squeezed out of her mouth. “Two guys. Two guys in leather jackets. Crew cuts.”
Sideburns looks confused at first. Then he smiles uncertainly, catches the policeman’s eyes. But the officer turns toward Klara.
“Did you see this?” he says.
There’s interest in his voice now. Klara wraps her arms around herself, she’s freezing suddenly. It was so hot before, how could it be so cold now? She shakes her head.
“I came down just as it happened,” she says.
“So you didn’t see the man fall in front of the train?” the officer says.
“Like I said, he didn’t fall. He was pushed by fucking gangsters.”
“But you didn’t see it?”
She stands up. What is it he doesn’t understand?
“No,” she says. “I didn’t see it happen, but I know how it happened. I know he was being followed.”
There’s a different light in the officer’s eyes now. Another kind of smile on Sideburns’ face. He puts his hand on her, protective, condescending, coddling.
“I understand,” the officer says. “We’ll talk later, OK?”
“Did you hear what I said?” Klara says. “They pushed him!”
She bends forward toward the officer, so close that she almost touches the brim of his silly hat. He pulls back slightly, pushes her away gently with his hands still resting on her shoulders. She knocks them away.
“Miss,” the officer says. “Have you been drinking tonight?”
“Drinking?” Klara says. “What does that have to do with anything?”
The officer glances at Sideburns. They exchange a knowing glance, and the officer shakes his head. Klara takes a step toward him again, into his sphere, catches a whiff of soap and sweat. Inside her something red and dangerous is growing.
“No one else has reported anything similar to what you’re saying now,” the officer says. “I’ll listen to you as well, but you need to calm down, OK?”
“Listen to me now, goddammit,” Klara says. “I saw two gangsters follow him down to the platform. Men in their forties with crew cuts. Eastern Europeans.”
She doesn’t mean to raise her voice, but their condescending expressions provoke her.
“You can think I’m hysterical all you want,” she says. “But I saw what I fucking saw. I know the guy lying there on the tracks. His name is Patrick.”
She’s shouting now, and she notices a strange silence has settled over the platform, the concrete seems to be sucking up every other sound except her voice. The officer turns to her again. His warm gaze has hardened now.
“Miss! Please, Miss. There’s no reason to scream. I’ll take your statement, I promise. As soon as I’m done with this gentleman.”
He gestures toward Sideburns, who gives Klara a look that’s so fucking condescending it drives her crazy. And that little smile.
“Just sit down here and someone will help you soon,” the policeman says and takes her gently by the elbow, leads her back to the bench. “Wait here for a bit.”
Then he turns to Sideburns again.
“We’ll continue over here,” he says, pointing toward the protection of a thick concrete column.
She tastes the wine and adrenaline in her mouth. They’re going to ignore her. No one else saw those two men. She is hysterical, the woman who’s seeing things. They’ve already made up their minds.
She puts her head in her hands and stares down into the concrete, sitting like that for a few minutes. No one comes to check on her. Suddenly she feels it again. Her rage is growing. They pamper and coddle. Fix and talk. But when it really matters, you’re alone. Always completely alone. She looks down toward the pillar where the officer and Sideburns are still standing. She can see Sideburns gesturing and pointing as he gives his incomplete, inaccurate statement. It doesn’t matter, his type are always believed.
She casts a last glance toward the pillar, then rises quietly, and walks away toward unmoving escalators. She’s alone in this. No one but she knows what happened.
*
Halfway up the stairs her legs start to tremble, she can barely stay upright, and when she holds her hand in front of her she sees it shaking uncontrollably.
Patrick was pushed in front of the train. They pushed him in front of the train.
She feels sick. He took her computer, then he was murdered.
35
Syria—June 2015
“Who were you talking to, dog?”
Tariq’s voice is calm and cool. Almost the same as always. I spin around, and it feels like all the oxygen leaves my head, as if no matter how hard I try I can’t get any air into my lungs. I just stare at him with the phone in my hand. Just stare at the muzzle of the Kalashnikov, large and round and black and aimed at me. He stands ready with the gun against his shoulder, safety off, looking at my chest through the sight. It’s completely silent. No hacking from the front, no voices from our brothers. It’s just me and Tariq here.
Everything rushes through me now. Brother al-Amin’s voice. How did he know we had a fire? And the muzzle perfectly round and dark in front of me now.
Then the phone rings again. I feel it vibrate and see it light up in my hand, like a flashlight in the dark. Tariq waves the barrel impatiently.
“Who is it?” h
e says. “Who the hell are you talking to, dog?”
“No one,” I say. “My imam at home.”
“Answer,” he says. “Speakerphone, or I swear to God I will shoot you here and now.”
I hesitate. Whatever I do, I’m going to die. Is this a martyr’s death? Shot in the chest because of a misunderstanding in a dusty yard behind an abandoned house?
Phone vibrates in my hand. I don’t want to die. Martyr or not. I just don’t want to die. Not now. Not for this.
“Take it easy,” I say. “Take it easy.”
I hold the phone in front of me, theatrically. Press “answer,” press “speaker,” hear brother al-Amin’s voice, breathless and excited now.
“Are you back inside by the fire, Fadi?” he says without greeting me. “You have to go back to your leader now, you understand? Otherwise, we won’t be able to expose the traitor.”
I look at the phone and turn my eyes to Tariq. He lowered the gun slightly now, listening with a confused expression on his face.
“I…” I begin. “I’ll go to him now.”
“Hurry up!” brother al-Amin commands. “We have only a brief window to reveal who this is! Go now!”
“Just one thing,” I say, and swallow. “How did you know we had a fire?”
There’s silence for a moment, just al-Amin’s breath. Then: “You said so, brother Fadi. You said you were going to grill. Don’t you remember?”
“No,” I say. “I didn’t say that.”
“Forget this, brother,” al-Amin says. “Just go to the leader now so we can get this over with.”
I look at Tariq who nods meaningfully. He’s lowered his gun now and appears to think for a second. Then he stretches out lightning fast and grabs the phone. Screams straight into the receiver: “Who are you? Who the hell are you working for?”
I hear several voices in the background, hear a click as brother al-Amin hangs up. Tariq seems temporarily paralyzed. He just stands there with the phone in his hand.
“He said we had a traitor among us,” I whisper. “That we had to expose him.”
Tariq looks up at me with sudden insight in his eyes.
“He’s right,” he says. “The traitor is you, Fadi.”
*
Then everything happens too fast. Tariq throws his gun on his back. He takes a few steps out of the house and studies the dark sky, which shimmers in the moonlight, seems to be listening. And then we hear it, both of us at the same time, and we look at each other, and I know that my life has changed now. That everything is falling apart around me. That nothing is what it appears to be. No one is who they appear to be.
It’s as if we’re paralyzed at first. Only that almost imperceptible sound. A gentle humming from high above getting closer and closer. A big insect on its way down. There is only one thing it can be. What we hide from and fear every day.
A drone.
And everything crashes over me as we stand there without moving. Brother al-Amin is the traitor.
All of them are traitors. Brother Dakhil and brother Taimur and brother Tasheem. They are all traitors. The realization hits me like a bomb, that’s what this was about the whole time. That was why they took care of me, why they helped me and supported me. Why they let me go to Syria. They had this in mind the whole time. That one day I would give them the opportunity to complete their treachery.
The thought is dizzying. All the prayers and meetings in Bergort. For a whole year. They tricked me. Used me. For what?
Who are they? Whose side are they on?
Hatred and resignation wash over me like an ocean, a tsunami, obliterating everything in its path, all my piety and my desire to do right. Everything.
I sink to my knees. Above us the noise of the drone becomes even more urgent. What should we do? The gravel is cool against my palms where I kneel on all fours. What should we do?
But Tariq pulls me up by the shoulders.
“Come!” he roars. “We have to get out of here! Don’t you get it? They’re gonna wipe us out!”
The first explosion makes my eardrums shake, makes my head ring and howl. I feel the gravel under my chest and my stomach, my legs, and I open my eyes as the second missile hits the place behind the building where the other brothers sit and eat. The whole world is white and deafening. Phosphor and annihilation.
I lie on my stomach. I lie on my back. I sit up. I feel someone pulling me up, and I turn my head to the left and see Tariq. His face is dirty and bloody. I see his lips move, and I get to my feet, I follow him as he runs across the yard, through the door of one of the houses. We stumble and fall over each other down the stairs into the basement. Behind us the world explodes as a missile hits the place where we just were. Mortar and flakes of paint fall on us as we lie on our bellies on the cool concrete floor.
Then silence. Complete and absolute silence.
36
Stockholm—Thursday, August 20, 2015
The subway back to the city. Yasmine hardly registers it. She climbs the stairs out of the central station and exits into the balmy evening. She can’t stop thinking about the only thing that matters.
Slowly she walks along the water toward the Lydmar. It’s almost automatic, she doesn’t decide to go back to the hotel, it just happens.
Parisa knows something about Fadi.
She pushes aside thoughts of her friend’s betrayal and the baby and Parisa’s anxious gaze. It’s impossible to understand all of Bergort’s connections and motives. Not if you’ve been away as long as she has.
Yasmine feels the lingering effects of jet lag in her body. She needs to sleep a few hours before heading out to Bergort again to follow up on what Ignacio told her, whatever’s happening in the artificial grass at Camp Nou.
Her thoughts start to spin. Parisa was the only one besides Ignacio who knew where she lived. Parisa must have mentioned it to someone with connections to the riots, or whatever this is. Maybe she did it on purpose? Maybe not. But who’s trying so hard to keep her away from Bergort? Why is it so sensitive when she asks questions about Fadi and those symbols?
And now Parisa knows something about Fadi. Something she didn’t want to say through the crack in the door.
Yasmine stops at Strömbron and looks up at the beige, dirty walls of the Royal Palace, then father out across the silvery water, she sees the boats near the dock, the green of Skeppsholmen behind that. It’s beautiful, she thinks. There is a version of Stockholm that is breathtakingly beautiful.
But something makes her feel uneasy, and she turns away from the palace and the water and back toward the Opera House and the Royal Garden. Traffic stands still at the traffic lights, but between two cars she can see across to the other side. A man in a shiny blue tracksuit and a hoodie is standing there. White sneakers, shaved head, and a flat boxer’s nose, green tribal tattoos wind their way up his neck from his shirt. He stares straight at her, and when he sees that she’s looking at him, smiles calmly and arrogantly without moving.
The traffic light turns green, and the cars slowly start moving again. She stands as frozen as the asphalt, while her view is obscured by a gray van slowly rolling past. She feels the gun chafe against her back.
When the van finally rolls by, the man has disappeared. As if he’d never been there. As if he’d never seen her. She shudders in the heat. Oh my God, is she becoming paranoid?
She speeds up her steps toward the Lydmar. Every ten steps she throws a glance over her shoulder, but sees only the usual mix of tourists enjoying a late-summer stroll by the water and affluent locals pushing their strollers as neat as insects toward the Svenskt Tenn store. On her way through the reception she nods to the doorman and goes straight for the elevators.
But in the corridor outside her room she stops. Something is hanging from a thin string on the handle. Slowly she moves toward the door. At least it’s not a strangled cat, she thinks. Instead, it’s a small envelope.
She loosens the cord from the handle, opens the door, and goes into her room.
With a pounding heart, she sits down on the unmade bed with the envelope in her hands. She closes her eyes and opens it, takes hold of its contents—a simple, folded letter-size page—and removes it.
She slowly unfolds the paper. It’s a picture again, a printed photograph. This time it’s a masked man pointing a large, black gun straight at the camera, at her. He’s broad-shouldered and between the collar of the T-shirt and his mask you can see a green tribal tattoo. She turns the paper over. Four words: Go to the window.
She places the piece of paper on the bed and feels her head constricting. Without really wanting to, without being able to stop herself, she gets up quietly and walks the few steps to the window.
She gently pulls away the thick, opaque curtains, and the palace and the water towers emerge in front of her. She allows her eyes to sweep over the view before dropping them down to the street between the hotel and the water.
And there he is. No more than a hundred feet away, on the street, with his back to the water and his gaze on her. Shiny tracksuit and hoodie, white shoes and a green unmistakable tattoo scaling his neck.
When he sees her in the window, he raises his arm. The smile is now replaced by an indifferent, seemingly blank stare. He continues to slowly raise his arm until it is pointing straight at her. He shapes his hand into a gun and makes a motion, as if he’s pulling the trigger. Then he lowers his arm and stands still for a second, before calmly turning around and disappearing along the quay.
37
Syria—June 2015
I don’t know how long we stay on the floor without moving or speaking. Dead still.
It’s quiet outside. All we hear is the monotonous buzzing of one or two drones, which seem to be lingering to assess and evaluate the extent of what they’ve just wiped out. But eventually they disappear and all is completely silent.
“Tariq?” I say.
The Brother Page 19