Sunday was empty and endless, so it’s a relief when his workweek starts again. A release to step into the safe buzzing of the air conditioner, to pour himself a cup of coffee in the small, windowless kitchenette.
‘You’ve been following the news, right?’ Agneta asks.
She spreads cottage cheese on crispbread and looks at him in her friendly way. He thought diplomats would be different, more exotic, and cosmopolitan. Or at least they’d eat Lebanese snacks. He does his best to hide his disappointment that they’re more like grey bureaucrats, that they usually do their best to recreate a Swedish work environment, complete with caviar, cottage cheese and crispbread. He nods, almost tells her he was there, at the protests on Saturday, about Yassim, and everything. But he stops himself. He was told not to go anywhere near the government district, and Yassim isn’t his boyfriend – he’s a ghost.
What if he really is? What if Jacob just made him up?
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s crazy. What are the others saying? And where are they?’
It’s usually only Agneta who gets to the office before him, but it’s almost half past ten, and he hasn’t seen Frida or Vargander.
‘Meetings with the other EU ambassadors all day,’ Agneta sighs. ‘They’re at full capacity after the riots this weekend. They’re talking about an Arab Spring here too, you know. It’s typical that you’d end up in the middle of all this, Johan. As if it weren’t messy enough after the move from Damascus and all that.’
He feels his heart sink in his chest again. ‘Jacob,’ he says quietly.
‘Excuse me?’
‘My name isn’t Johan. It’s Jacob.’
Agneta looks at him with embarrassment and puts a hand on his arm. ‘Oh dear. Did I say Johan? I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to. I know what your name is. It’s just a lot right now, you know.’
‘It’s no problem,’ Jacob says, smiling slightly. ‘And I think it’s exciting that so much is happening right now. Please tell me if I could help you with writing background material or anything at all.’
He’s not really sure what ‘background material’ means or what it’s supposed to contain, but he heard Frida use the words the other day and it sounds like a reasonable task for an intern. Something he could do so at least they’d remember that his name is Jacob.
‘Of course,’ Agneta nods. ‘Are you done with the receipts Frida gave you?’
‘Almost,’ he says. ‘They’ll be ready this afternoon. I’d better get to it.’ He lifts his coffee cup like a small salute and goes back to the corridor and to his own little office.
‘I’m really sorry about that thing with your name,’ he can hear Agneta saying behind him before he turns the corner.
*
With a sigh he takes down the box of receipts from a bookshelf and starts again. ‘Almost done’ was an exaggeration. He’s done about a third. But today, in his current state, he feels a kind of reluctant appreciation that he’s only sorting and stapling papers. The work is monotonous, almost automatic, and he can do it while his head and body are still in Yassim’s apartment. He feels his pulse start to race whenever his thoughts touch on what happened. Yassim’s mouth and hands. How he surrendered to Yassim, how he was willing to do anything for him. He stifles a gasp, so physical is the memory. He’s never felt anything like it.
At five o’clock he puts the final receipt on a shiny white piece of paper and is filled with pride when he looks down at three thick packets of chronologically arranged receipts.
But he’s also restless. He doesn’t feel like staying here at the embassy and doing nothing. It’s not as if anyone would miss him, he thinks as he stands up and heads towards Agneta’s room. He knocks softly and Agneta turns from her screen.
‘I’m done with the receipts,’ he says. ‘Is there something else you need me to do?’
He looks at her, hoping for something else, something more. There are riots and a revolution brewing no more than a few blocks away. There must be something bigger for him to do. Something more meaningful and noble than sorting through receipts.
Agneta smiles at him. She looks stressed and like she hasn’t slept properly.
‘Good work, Jacob,’ she says. ‘You see? Got the name right?’
He smiles back. ‘Bravo!’
‘Go home, you,’ she says. ‘You’ve done your duty for today.’
*
It’s dark by the time he reaches Mar Mikhael, and the lights of the traffic and restaurants dance around him. He stops outside his front door and gazes up the street, towards the sidewalk outside the bars where people are gathered for drinks, buzzing with laughter. Here the riots downtown seem to be just gossip and fodder for conversation, hardly even real. But this is how Beirut is, they say. Even during the wars people gathered in bars in calmer neighbourhoods. Life goes on, even under difficult circumstances. For a moment he considers crossing the street to get a cocktail at Internazionale. But he’s hungry and tired. With a sigh he turns around and walks up the stairs to his apartment.
It takes a while to find his key and even longer to realize he can’t turn it because the door is already unlocked.
He freezes. Did he really forget to lock it this morning? That’s unlike him.
Cautiously, he pushes the door open to the dark apartment. The curtains on the windows and the balcony door are pulled open; the light from the neon signs and an unusually bright moon falls across the mosaic floor. Everything is as he left it and he lets out a small sigh of relief. He just forgot to lock up.
He walks into the kitchen and takes a bottle of water from the fridge, unscrews the top, and he’s just lifting a glass out of the dish rack when he hears a woman’s voice behind him.
‘You’re late, Matti,’ she says. ‘I almost started to despair.’
He drops the glass and it feels as if ten seconds pass before it reaches the floor and explodes into a thousand shards, before his life explodes into just as many shards, which will never, ever be put back together again.
*
The woman is standing in the darkness next to the door to the living room, just a few metres away. A sharp, thin stripe of light from the street illuminates the left side of her face, making her look ghostly, almost as if she glows. She’s in her mid-thirties, looks Middle Eastern. Thin, with short, dark hair. Slowly she takes a step closer to him, and he sees she’s wearing tight jeans, a black tank top and a red-striped, button-down shirt.
‘Who are you?’ he whispers.
‘Come on, Matti,’ she says, cocking her head to the side. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’
She holds out a hand to him and gestures towards the living room. He stands frozen in place and just shakes his head. ‘I want you to leave,’ he says clumsily.
She smiles at him again, as one smiles at a child whose demands one has no intention of giving in to. ‘That’s not going to happen, Matti. Like I said, we have a lot to talk about, you and me.’
Jacob swallows hard. ‘Don’t call me that,’ he says. ‘That’s not my name any more.’
‘Your name’s not Matti Johansson any more,’ she says. ‘Well, that is indeed true. You’re Jacob Seger now. It’s a much grander name, you might say. Fits the person you want to be.’
‘Please,’ he says. ‘Leave me alone. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
But the woman isn’t listening to him, doesn’t hear him. ‘It wasn’t good enough for you to grow up with a lonely, alcoholic mother in Eskilstuna,’ she begins. ‘That’s understandable. Welfare and evictions. You have big dreams, Matti. Your background must feel like a handicap. You’re made for embassies and elegant dinner parties. Castles, perhaps? Surely you didn’t grow up in such miserable conditions?’
He shakes his head. It can’t be true. Everything he put behind him, everything he worked so hard to escape. Why now? Now when he’s so close?
His mouth is dry, his head is spinning.
‘I need water,’ he whispers.
But the woman’s already passed by him, found a glass and is filling it from the tap. She hands it to him.
‘There you go,’ she says. ‘Now let’s sit down in the living room.’
*
‘I don’t know who you are,’ Jacob says when they finally sit down at the table in front of the closed balcony door. ‘But there’s nothing illegal or suspicious about changing one’s name.’
Jacob has to raise his voice to be heard over the traffic and baseline thumping from the bars.
‘Illegal?’ the woman says. ‘No, definitely not. Suspicious? Well…’ She holds up her hands like scales.
‘How do you know about this?’ he says. ‘Why did you investigate me? Why are you here?’
The woman leans back in her chair and stares calmly at him. ‘When are you planning to meet Yassim Al-Abbas again?’ she says.
‘I…’ he says. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He takes a gulp of water. Al-Abbas. Is that Yassim’s last name?
Slowly the woman leans over the table, her dark, expressionless eyes boring into his own. ‘My name is Myriam Awad,’ she says. ‘Officially, I work with cultural affairs at the Swedish Institute in Alexandria.’
‘And unofficially?’ Jacob whispers, his lungs tightening in his chest, the whole room shrinking around him.
‘Unofficially I work for something called the Office for Special Acquisition,’ she says calmly. ‘It’s part of MUST, the Swedish military’s intelligence service.’
Now the whole room is spinning around him. Is this woman in his apartment some kind of spy?
‘You’re in over your fucking head, Matti,’ she says. ‘What did your new fella tell you about his job?’
‘Don’t call me Matti,’ Jacob says.
Myriam smiles slightly and Jacob can almost see what she’s like outside of this sick, terrifying situation. She’s almost beautiful, with her soft, clear features and smooth, olive skin. Her symmetrical mouth and determined nose. They don’t fit her ruthless manner. Then her smile disappears, and she’s coldly menacing again.
‘Okay, Jacob,’ she says, with air quotes. ‘Let me guess, he told you he’s a photographer?’
Jacob nods, reluctantly. She seems pleased.
‘Ask to see some of his photographs,’ she says. ‘Ask him where they’re published. If you doubt the truth of what I’m about to tell you this evening.’
‘What do you think he’s done?’ he says.
‘Your boyfriend is a terrorist,’ she says. ‘Or worse than that. He doesn’t do the deed himself. He’s what they call a “lighter”. That means he doesn’t carry out or even plan terror attacks. But he’s the one who transports the plan. Do you understand?’
Jacob shakes his head. ‘Excuse me?’ he says, convinced he misheard or that she’s joking.
She just looks at him with a blend of impatience and contempt. ‘Your boyfriend is a terrorist,’ she says again. ‘Is that so hard to take in, Matti? Maybe you didn’t run into them very often in the housing projects of Eskilstuna?’
‘It’s impossible,’ Jacob whispers. Terrorist. The word echoes in his mind. ‘How do you know that?’
‘We know because we keep an eye on these things, Matti. We put together puzzles with our colleagues in the other Western intelligence services. Trade information. I’m sure this is overwhelming for you, but you’ve landed in the middle of something much bigger than you can imagine.’
He looks up at her. ‘What do you mean?’ he whispers.
She doesn’t answer, just stands up and walks with her hands behind her back over to the balcony door and looks out.
‘Often a terrorist attack is planned in the Middle East by ISIS. But the perpetrators of the attack are already in place in Europe; it’s too risky to fly people in. There’s no shortage of willing brothers who want to kill the infidels already in place. But someone has to bring the plan to them, because often several different cells are involved and most of them don’t even know about the others. Nowadays, terrorists don’t use email for the most sensitive information – only human couriers will do. We’ve gotten too good at picking up any chatter online, and they know that.’
Jacob rubs his hands over his face. Lighter. Chatter online.
‘Something’s up right now,’ she continues. ‘Something big is being planned in Europe, I can’t say more than that. And your new boyfriend is mixed up in it.’
Jacob thinks of Yassim’s eyes, his voice and hands, of his wrists. ‘You’re wrong,’ he says. ‘Yassim is gay. ISIS hates gay people.’
Myriam shrugs and turns to him. ‘They’re very pragmatic, just like everyone else,’ she says. ‘He’s westernized and can easily pass back and forth over borders. The fact that he’s gay is probably even good cover. Or has been until now, when we got him in our sights.’
‘Why don’t you just take him in then, if you’re so sure?’
His shock is starting to pass and in its place he’s started to feel pissed off. Why the hell should he get pulled into this?
‘Because he’s just a little cog,’ Myriam says. ‘Because we want to know more about his network. Where his orders are coming from and where he’s taking them. We want to know what the plan is and how it’s being carried out. One person is just one person – we want to know it all.’
She falls silent and then says slowly: ‘And you’re going to help us with that.’
She turns and looks at Jacob.
‘The information about Al-Abbas was shared with us by another country. They’ve known about him for a long time and were waiting for the right moment. When you showed up a few weeks ago they found out who you were and contacted us.’ She smiles and throws her arms wide as if she were presenting a magic trick. ‘And voila, here we are.’
Jacob meets her eyes. His shock is now a crushing headache, and he feels unfathomably tired. ‘I’m not interested,’ he says.
Myriam nods and settles down at the table again. ‘I know everything about you. I know exactly how hard it must have been for you to rise out of the environment you grew up in, to get to where you’re headed now. A career. A foreign post. After studying you, I know it wasn’t easy to go from Matti Johansson to Jacob Seger. But this is where we are now. And you now have a unique opportunity to make a real contribution.’
Jacob massages his temples with his fingertips. He doesn’t want to make a real contribution. He just wants to live his life, become what he always wanted to be. And be left in peace.
Myriam takes a computer out of the bag she brought with her and puts it on the table in front of him. She also fishes a thumb drive out and puts it on the table. ‘The next time you meet Yassim, put this in his USB jack. It’s pre-programmed with mobile broadband. It’ll take care of the installation on its own, and it’s lightning fast. Through that programme we’ll get access to whatever’s on his computer. Piece of cake.’
Jacob doesn’t move, he just stares straight ahead. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m not interested.’ Slowly he lifts his head and looks at Myriam. ‘Go ahead and tell them I’m from a fucking working-class background if you want. It’ll be embarrassing for me. And tough. But I’ve been through worse.’
His rage is growing. Why did he change his name anyway? Because the whole time he was growing up he wanted to escape the stigma of being poor. Escape his mother. Escape where he came from.
Becoming Jacob Seger was a big part of his metamorphosis, and he’s been terrified for a long time that someone would find out who he used to be. But now, in this apartment in Beirut, he feels like it doesn’t matter any more. He has finally become whom he wanted to be. And he won’t let anyone force him to do anything any more.
Myriam doesn’t say a word, just opens the computer and runs a hand over the track pad until a video window opens. When she presses play, Jacob knows there’s nothing he can do. Escape is impossible.
He can only watch a few seconds of the video – it’s too naked and raw and disgusting. His hands tremble when he slams the screen shut. He falls forward and buries his head in his hands. ‘What have you done?’ he sobs. ‘Why?’
‘What have we done?’ Myriam’s voice is ice cold. ‘Isn’t that you in this video? Aren’t you the one raping that kid? Hassan is his name, by the way. And he’s fifteen years old.’
His world is collapsing. That’s Jacob on the video. Jacob and the guy from the bathhouse. Before he closed the screen, he saw himself hit the boy across the cheek and pull his hair. Call him a whore.
‘It’s not what it looks like,’ he whispers. ‘He asked for it. He wanted me to do it.’
‘Really?’ Myriam says. ‘Is that your defence? That he wanted to be raped?’
‘If you play it again you’ll hear that he wants it.’ His panic has awoken again in a kind of delayed reaction and sent a fever through him as he realizes the consequences of that video. Homosexual rape in Lebanon, where homosexuality itself is illegal. And even if he managed to explain it in a convincing way… His career is over. Long before it even started. Everything he struggled for. Everything he dreamed about. Over.
‘I’ve watched it more times than anyone should ever have to watch such a thing,’ Myriam says. ‘And all I see is a Swedish brat brutally raping a poor, underage boy.’
‘That’s not what happened!’ he screams. ‘He came onto me, and I didn’t even want to go to the bathhouse, it was Vargander who arranged a car and…’
He falls silent when the pieces finally fall into place. Myriam says nothing. She just sits on the other side of the table, staring at him with those dark, icy eyes.
‘It was a trap,’ he whispers. ‘The car, the bathhouse, the guy who hit on me. Vargander arranged everything.’
Myriam shakes her head in frustration. ‘Vargander is just a useful idiot,’ she says. ‘He loaned the car out to you because we asked him to. He doesn’t know anything about this, and you shouldn’t tell him either.’
‘This can’t be happening,’ Jacob mumbles. It’s not happening, it’s not happening, it’s not happening…
He doesn’t stop his mantra until Myriam takes him by the chin and forces him to look deep into her eyes, her face no more than a few centimetres from his. ‘It’s happening, Jacob,’ she says. ‘The sooner you accept it, the better things will be for you. None of this will matter if you just do what I ask you to do. It’s fucking ridiculous that I would have to go to these lengths to get you to do what’s right. You’re dating a terrorist, for fuck’s sake. Wake up!’
Her eyes are so intense that Jacob has to look away.
She stands up and slams a piece of paper onto the table. ‘My number. You call me when your boyfriend’s back in town. Or we’ll let the law take care of this matter.’
When Jacob finally looks up again, Myriam is gone. It could have been a dream. If it weren’t for the thumb drive and the phone number on the table in front of him.