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.
‘What 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.