Two hours left until Karl arrives for his meeting at the elevator outside the enormous courthouse, the Palais de Justice. Klara’s sitting with George at the Häagen-Dazs cafe at Place Louise, just a few hundred metres from the meeting place.
She stares through the big windows at the chaotic roundabout, where the traffic seems to be standing still. Men out shopping in dark cashmere overcoats and women with Chanel bags mingle with tourists and Romanian beggars at the metro stop just outside the window. If she raises her eyes, she can see the more or less constant construction site around the dome of the courthouse, a renovation that never seems to be completed.
She glances at George. Not even a day has passed since she came to Brussels. Since she had a panic attack, was followed, had sex with George and drugged a man. Now she’s waiting to meet a mysterious person Gabriella was supposed to meet.
‘What are you thinking about?’ George asks, catching her eyes.
She shrugs. ‘It’s been an eventful twenty-four hours.’
She points to George’s phone sitting in front of him on the table next to their coffee cups. ‘No news?’
It’s been half an hour since he sent the licence-plate number of the Russian’s car to Jean-Luc, a man George calls a fixer, who seems to be some kind of combination of private detective and administrative genius. The PR firm George is leaving apparently uses him to investigate various things within the jungles of Belgian bureaucracy.
‘I’m still technically employed there,’ George told her. ‘I’ll just have him bill it to the Philip Morris account. No one ever checks the details on that one anyway.’
Now George shakes his head. ‘Not yet.’
He glances at Klara, but she averts her gaze, looking back only when he’s no longer looking at her. She shouldn’t have room for such strong feelings. But something flutters inside her, knots up, when she allows her eyes to follow the clean lines of George’s small, straight nose, clean-cut jaw and high cheekbones. Or the hair that’s curly and messy now. She remembers how he touched her, in the night, and at Café Belga yesterday, and she can hardly sit still. Is this all in her head? Or does he feel the same?
She doesn’t have time to explore her feelings any further before George’s phone starts to buzz on the table in front of them. With a quick movement, he unlocks it. ‘Now we’ll see,’ he murmurs.
Klara tries to wait a moment to let him read the message, but she can’t stand it. ‘What does it say?’ she asks.
George clears his throat. ‘Rental car.’
Klara sighs. ‘Should have known. So we don’t know anything.’
George looks at her with amusement. ‘I don’t think you really understand Jean-Luc,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t call him a genius if that were as far as he got.’
‘Okay…’ Klara says. ‘This Jean-Luc can access the records of the car rental agency?’
George just smiles. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Apparently, the car was rented by some guy named Phillippe Brouchard. That doesn’t tell us much.’
‘The guy you drugged definitely was not named Phillippe Brouchard,’ Klara says dejectedly. ‘Of that I can be sure.’
George nods. ‘Well, the interesting thing about Brouchard is that apparently he’s a Belgian citizen employed by… wait for it…’
‘For what?’
‘The Russian embassy.’
‘You’re kidding me,’ Klara shouts. She realizes she’s raised her voice so she leans over towards George and whispers instead. ‘That’s fucked up,’ she continues. ‘What in the hell are we mixed up in?’
George shakes his head dejectedly, but can’t hide a small, tired smile at the corner of his mouth. ‘Same shit you always end up in, Klara.’
‘What do you mean?’ she continues. ‘They’re spies? I thought this Karl guy was some sort of Snowden. What does that have to do with Russia? And Syria? And how did Gabi get pulled into this?’
George puts his hand on hers and looks into her eyes. ‘I think the only way to know is if we meet Karl,’ he says. ‘Right?’
Klara drinks the last of her cold coffee. She grimaces and turns to George. ‘He probably won’t come alone,’ she says.
George furrows his brow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If they’re keeping an eye on me, the risk is large that they’ve got one on him too.’ She falls silent and closes her eyes while massaging her temples. ‘Karl contacted Gabriella, who was probably arrested by Swedish cops. Before that, she was being followed by the Russians, most likely.’
‘Was it the day before yesterday they arrested Gabriella?’ George asks.
Klara nods. ‘Tomorrow they’ll have to charge her if they want to keep her any longer. A court has to decide, and the decision will be public. Then we’ll find out why they’re holding her, if she has a lawyer, and so on.’
‘If it’s not classified,’ George says.
‘We surely have to find out something,’ she says, frustrated.
He turns towards her, waits for a moment before gently putting his hand on hers again. Klara feels calm spreading from his hand into hers. A calm that spreads out over her grandpa’s death, and Gabriella’s imprisonment, over all the grief and weirdness and terror. Cautiously, she squeezes it. It feels so unexpected to have him at her side. She leans her head onto his shoulder and turns her nose to his neck, gently taking in his scent.
‘What the hell should we do then?’ she whispers. ‘What if he’s also being followed? What happens then?’
George gently strokes her hair. ‘We’ll come up with something, Klara,’ he whispers. ‘We always do.’
We, Klara thinks.
What an unbelievably rare thing.