Jacob sees the men through the window. One of them has stopped halfway to the bookstore; the other three move towards the door with their hands at their waistbands, which are partially covered by their short jackets. Who are they? Americans? Does it matter?
They’re here for him. They’ll find the chip beneath his skin. And then?
All he can imagine is orange overalls and small cells. That was what awaited Chelsea Manning after she gave information to WikiLeaks. At that very moment, the bookstore owner touches his elbow and startles him. He turns, and the small man is stretching out his hand, taking him by the elbow again, this time more brusquely. A cigar smoulders under his moustache, his eyes narrow, and he nods towards the depths of the store.
‘Come,’ he says in English. ‘You don’t have much time.’
He pulls Jacob between the tables and the shelves that sag under the weight of books, and further through a jingling curtain of glass beads, into a small room with drawers stacked up to the ceiling, a vacuum cleaner in the corner.
‘Wait,’ he says, placing the cigar on a plate on the floor. Then he bends down and starts to fiddle through one of the stacks. ‘Help me,’ he says roughly. ‘We have to move this.’ He has grabbed one of the boxes at the bottom and draws it outwards, bringing the whole stack along.
Jacob sees a doorframe behind it. He squats down next to the bookstore owner to help him pull.
Behind them, the door chime rings in the store. He can hear several people rushing inside. Hear them making their way through the aisles towards the small room.
The boxes are heavy and the piles are unsteady, and for a second he thinks they might overturn, but the bookseller steadies the boxes.
They’ve shifted the stack enough that the bookseller can reach the knob and turn the lock. The door springs open into a dark and silent alley.
‘Hurry now,’ he hisses, pushing Jacob out of the doorway.
Jacob steps out into the shaded, dirty alley and turns back towards the door, looking at the bookseller’s face, sees him holding something through the gap. A thick, white envelope.
‘Take this,’ he says, shaking the envelope urgently towards him.
Before Jacob can say more, the owner has closed the door, and he’s alone in the tiny alley.
He thinks he hears the boxes being pushed back in place on the other side of the door, then he runs off towards the alley’s entrance. He hears traffic again, and that feels like his only salvation. A taxi. Somewhere to disappear.
He exits on to the street, turns back, and sees the alleyway door bursting open and one of the men in black storming out, followed closely by another.
They scream something and he sees their hands at their waistbands, sees them stop and pull out black steel and hold their arms up in front of them. Aiming for him.
‘Stop! Get down!’ they scream in what sounds like American English.
They’re twenty feet away from him now, and he holds up his hands to show he’s unarmed, still with the thick, white envelope in one hand. He should lie down on the ground, should admit to himself he’s not made for this. He should give up. But something inside him hardens. He feels a core now that wasn’t there before.
And then it’s as if time is standing still again. Like in the garden, as if the entire universe freezes. He turns his head, and sees an empty taxi right behind him.
‘Wait!’ he shouts at the men further down the street and takes a short step towards them.
They seem surprised that he says anything at all, that he’s making the first move and they answer something that he can’t hear. He turns around and tears open the door of the taxi that has just pulled up behind him and throws himself into the back seat.
‘Just drive,’ he screams in English. ‘As fast as you can.’
The driver turns around and looks at him, sees it’s serious and nods as if he understands. There’s a gap in traffic ahead of them, and he steps on the gas and the twenty-year-old Mercedes roars in protest, but finds some kind of power and speeds eastward as if it were brand new.
Jacob turns around and sees the men are out on the street now. One of them stops and waves for a taxi, the other stands wide-legged, with his gun in front of him. The rear window of the taxi explodes into a thousand crystals. Jacob throws himself down on the worn vinyl of the back seat, feels glass falling all over him. He hears the driver screaming and turning onto a side street, away from the guns and bullets and violence, and then the car stops. The driver turns around with wild eyes.
‘Leave!’ he screams. ‘Out of my taxi!’
He’s in shock, and Jacob already has the door open, jumping out. The shards of glass clatter around him, cutting him, but he takes out his wallet and throws three twenty-dollar bills into the back seat and runs as fast as he can over the uneven asphalt and gravel.
After twenty metres, he turns around, sees the taxi still there, the driver with a phone to his ear. But he doesn’t see his pursuers.
Another taxi stops beside him. He pulls open the door and jumps in for a moment of protection, security, and the taxi starts to roll forward anonymously, just one among a thousand others.
He feels dozens of tiny pieces of glass making their way under his collar, his hair still covered with dust. When he turns around, he sees nothing but the normal chaos of traffic here. No guns or the men who wield them hunting him down.
‘Just drive,’ he says. ‘Anywhere at all.’
*
Beirut is a city to disappear in. People who are from here have their groups, their ethnicity, their religion; they can fall into Beirut as if it’s a black hole and they will never be found again. But Jacob isn’t from here. He’s blonde and terrified and foreign; he’s exposed, a black swan, impossible not to notice.
Jacob sits on the honeycombed vinyl of the back seat of an ancient Mercedes, and the driver asks where he wants to go. As the taxi rolls eastwards, he turns around and looks out the dirty rear window. Just row after row of cars flowing slowly, slowly through the city. No grey van. Not yet. He has to hide, has to catch his breath, get on his feet.
Suddenly he’s back on the roof that very first night in Beirut. Alexa’s warm eyes. ‘Shatila is a labyrinth.’ He fumbles in his pocket and takes out her business card again. It’s only a small chance, barely even that. But it’s all he has.
‘I want to go to Shatila,’ he says. ‘To a youth centre there.’
He sees the driver shake his head. ‘I don’t drive to the refugee camps,’ he says in heavily accented English. ‘I can drive to the border, but you have to go the rest of the way yourself.’
He turns and looks at Jacob.
‘But that’s no place for you.’
Jacob just nods. ‘Well, it will have to be. Drive me as close as you can.’
The driver shrugs and mutters something inaudible, but at least he speeds up.
The envelope is on Jacob’s knee, and he fumbles to get a finger in one corner, under the tab. With a quick flick he opens it, grabs hold of the contents, and pulls them into the light.