They’re out on a bigger street now, the inner city to their left, a park to their right, a casino, an intersection. They’re driving at a normal speed, and Jacob was looking up, but now he pushes his head back against the seat again.
How is it possible? he wants to scream.
George, who is lying on top of him in the back seat, moves and sits up.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he screams in English to the driver.
Jacob also sits up and meets Yassim’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. His face is as pale as a sheet, heavy bags beneath his eyes.
But it’s him. It’s Yassim.
‘How…’ Jacob begins. ‘How… could you be here?’
‘The phone,’ he says. ‘Why do you think I gave it to you? So I could find you, of course.’ Yassim presses out a smile and turns to the left, back towards the city again.
‘I thought you were dead,’ Jacob says. ‘When I left you I thought…’
‘I couldn’t very well leave you yet,’ Yassim says. He gives him an exhausted and stoic look. ‘We just met.’
They’re back in the city centre again, between shops and department stores and parked cars. Yassim drives with what seems like practised calm through the streets. Jacob can see that he’s following a route on the car’s GPS. He’s planned this.
Suddenly he stops and turns up towards a parking garage. He takes a ticket and a garage door opens to let them in. They drive in a spiral up and up until he turns off the ramp onto the third floor. It’s so quiet in here, so unbelievably quiet.
‘Come on,’ Yassim says.
He parks near an exit to an enclosed pedestrian bridge, which leads into a department store called Hansacompagniet. Yassim goes first; he makes his way bent and jerkily, his left hand inside his black bomber jacket.
They cross the bridge, pass by families having coffee, as if everything is normal. But the children press their faces against the large windows as sirens cut through regular traffic noise and drown out the quiet music streaming over the cafe’s speakers. Blue lights flash down on the street, police cars drive by at high speed down below.
‘Dad, look! So cool!’ Jacob hears a little girl say in a Skåne accent.
Jacob turns around to look at her, a girl with long, dark hair, in jeans, a cap on her head, maybe six years old. She pulls her dad by the hand towards the window. Nothing unusual about the day in here. Just a family shopping together after school.
‘Hats on and hoods up,’ Yassim says.
He leads them into the department store and down the escalators, past the shops and the people, out onto the street. The sirens shriek just a few blocks away, maybe not even that.
‘They’ll soon find the car,’ he says. ‘Follow me.’
He turns left onto a side street by the department store and walks over to a dark-blue Japanese SUV. It’s a bit beaten up and seems to have at least ten years under its belt. The door is unlocked.
‘One of you has to drive,’ he says. ‘I’ve been driving for ten hours with one arm.’
George hesitates for a moment, then he crawls into the driver’s seat. Yassim walks around the car and sits down in the passenger seat, and Jacob hesitantly gets into the back. Yassim bends down, fiddling with something under the steering wheel.
‘Hold down the clutch,’ he says to George.
Then the engine starts running, and George calmly steers the car out onto the street. Behind them, the sirens are becoming ever more distant.
‘Lucky I had time to prep an extra car,’ Yassim says.
‘You stole this?’ Jacob asks.
Yassim shrugs. ‘We can’t exactly use a car with Belgian licence plates. That would be a little too obvious.’
Yassim turns to George now. ‘But who are you?’ he says.
‘I could ask you the same thing,’ George says. ‘But I think I already know.’
They pass police cars as they make their way out of Malmö and up onto the highway to Helsingborg, but all the cars are headed in the opposite direction – no one is following them. They drive in silence at first, overcome by the moment, by the fact that they have actually escaped and that Yassim is here.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ Jacob says at last. ‘I don’t understand anything.’
He looks out through the window to the water stretched out under the grey afternoon sky. In front of them sit the port and cranes in what must be Landskrona.
‘First of all, I don’t even understand how you could be alive.’
But Yassim doesn’t answer, and Jacob bends forward between the seats.
‘I think he fell asleep,’ George says, glancing back quickly at Jacob. ‘Sorry, buddy.’
Jacob exhales. It’s no hurry, they have time. He hopes they have time.
‘That’s Yassim,’ he says.
‘No shit,’ George says. ‘He’s alive.’
‘I knew when I got the password,’ he says. ‘Who else would have sent it? Or I was hoping. But I never imagined he’d come after me. That he would search for me. Find me.’
Jacob closes his eyes. It’s dark outside now, but when he opens his eyes, he sees Yassim staring at him from between the front seats. His eyes are so tired, his face so dirty and grimy, and a cut runs from his temple and down under his eye.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘We’re alive. Both of us.’ And then he smiles that smile that makes the whole galaxy stop, that makes the nights cease and time change direction, and Jacob leans forward between the seats and takes Yassim’s face between his hands, and pulls it closer and kisses him gently, trying not to cause him any pain.
‘What’s going on?’ he asks when he finally pulls back.
‘Good question and surely not a moment too soon to find out,’ George mutters from behind the wheel. ‘I, for one, am all ears.’
‘Where should I even start?’ Yassim asks.
‘How about from the beginning,’ George says. ‘I’m wanted by the police because of you.’ He glances at Yassim. ‘Nice of you to save us in Malmö, but honestly, it’s pretty much your fault we landed in that situation to begin with.’
‘You told me I was carrying information about war crimes,’ Jacob says, leaning between the seats, ‘that I was smuggling it for you. But you lied.’
Yassim nods calmly to Jacob. Outside, dark trees whiz by in the darkness – it almost feels like they’re driving through a tunnel.
‘Yes, that’s true,’ Yassim sighs. ‘But you surely knew that?’
‘I guess,’ Jacob says. ‘Still, I trusted you.’
They sit in silence for a while. Just the sound of the engine and the wind against the car.
‘Do you know what Emni is?’ Yassim asks finally.
Jacob shakes his head.
‘It’s the ISIS intelligence service, I guess you could say. They’re behind many terrorist attacks in Europe.’
Jacob says nothing.
‘They were behind what happened in Paris. Or they developed the plan, coordinated it, local cells carried it out. The cells didn’t know anything until a week before. Then someone took a flight with a little chip.’
Jacob just looks at him.
‘You,’ he says. ‘You were the one who came with the plan.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I didn’t carry the plan for Paris. That was someone else. If that had been my job, it never would have happened. I can promise you that. Just like the plan on the chip you carried is never going to happen.’
‘I’ve infiltrated Emni,’ Yassim says evenly. ‘I’ve been working with Russian intelligence for several years on it. Trying to make my way into the inner circles of ISIS, of Emni.’
‘Excuse me?’ George says, glancing sceptically at Yassim. ‘Are you saying you’re a Russian spy?’
Yassim turns and looks at him calmly. ‘I’m from Syria,’ he says. ‘It’s a bit more complicated there, who’s a spy, who’s not. Everyone has their own agenda.’
‘And what is yours?’ George asks, turning to stare straight into Yassim’s eyes. ‘What is your agenda, Yassim?’