They’ve been driving for about half an hour when the car finally slows. Yassim is lying on Jacob’s lap and his feverish, damp forehead shines whenever the occasional headlight flashes through the high, latticed window. Yassim wavers on the edge of consciousness and Jacob’s panic feels ever tighter in his chest. George somehow succeeds in getting up onto his feet, and he starts kicking and pounding on the wall to the cab. But the wall is solid, and it’s clear that nobody will hear them.
‘He’ll soon lose consciousness completely,’ Jacob whispers. ‘What the hell should we do then? They can’t just let him die.’
Jacob can see Yassim’s lips moving, and he leans over him. Yassim’s voice is so weak, Jacob can barely make out what he’s saying. But at the very moment the van stops and the door slides open again, he hears: ‘Tell them nothing.’
When the door opens, Jacob sees a pair of dark and familiar eyes.
‘Looky here,’ Myriam Awad says. ‘Have you missed me?’
*
There are probably five or six other people. They’re all burly and bearded, wearing flak jackets and black guns in the holsters over their jeans.
‘Up and out,’ says one of them. ‘Get outta the van.’
‘This man is injured,’ George says. ‘He’s lost consciousness and needs help immediately.’
The bearded men look at him with disinterest. ‘He’s a terrorist,’ says one of them. ‘That’s the price he pays.’
Two of them step into the bus and lift Yassim roughly, carry him out together. Jacob stands up, but his hands are bound behind him, and he can’t do a thing.
‘Help him!’ Jacob screams at the top of his lungs. ‘He needs help!’
Myriam stands in front of him and slaps him across the face.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ she says.
Then someone pulls a hood over his head, and everything goes black.
*
Jacob blinks under intense fluorescent lights when the hood is pulled off. He’s sitting in a cell or interrogation room. Perhaps it’s just a storage closet. Concrete floors and brick walls. Hands cuffed to a stainless steel table. There is no window, only a steel door, and Myriam is standing in front of it, staring at him impassively. There’s something close to pity in her eyes.
‘I’ll take it from here,’ she says to the man in a Kevlar vest who’s just jerked Jacob’s hood off.
The man exits and Jacob can hear the door being locked behind him. The room is so cold he shivers, and it looks like smoke coming out of his mouth whenever he takes a quick, terrified breath.
‘Yassim,’ he says. ‘Where is he?’
‘You think Yassim is some kind of Snowden,’ she says. ‘He gathered information about some unnamed war crimes. And helping him makes you a hero.’
Jacob blinks, doing all he can not to give anything else away. Could it really be possible that’s all she knows?
‘But you’re swimming in some deep fucking water,’ she continues. ‘And there’s no going back for you now, Jacob.’
Somewhere outside his cell, he hears engines. Enormous engines revving up, and then becoming ever more distant. He recognizes that sound – it’s an airplane lifting off.
Why are they at an airport? Myriam also hears the sound of the plane, doesn’t speak until it’s gone. Then she sits down in front of him.
‘You have one chance,’ she says. ‘One chance to save yourself and your beloved Yassim now. Tell me where that chip is.’
‘I want a lawyer,’ Jacob says.
Why did he say that? Because he’s seen it in movies. Because he can’t stand to be alone in this room with her.
Myriam just looks at him as if he’s speaking in some incomprehensible language. ‘Excuse me?’ she says. ‘Do you think you’ve been arrested?’
She leans forward, staring at him, her eyes completely cold now.
‘We aren’t the police, you little pussy,’ she says. ‘This is an intelligence operation. We’re in the shadows now. There are no courts or lawyers here. Nobody knows where you are, nobody knows where you’re heading.’
She squats down next to him. Hopelessness burns inside him.
‘You can’t do this,’ he whispers. ‘There are rules, there are processes…’
But Myriam just shakes her head. ‘Jacob,’ she begins. ‘I don’t think you understand how deeply mixed up in this you are now. Why didn’t you just listen to me in Beirut?’ She points over her shoulder, to the wall and whatever’s behind it. ‘In twenty minutes, I’m putting Yassim on a plane to Egypt,’ she says quietly. ‘He’ll be handed over to their intelligence service, and he’ll have to answer their questions. We know he has knowledge of a very large terrorist attack taking place in Europe in the very near future. It’s up to you if you and your friend George end up on that plane or not. The Egyptians are adept at making people talk. Unfortunately, they’re not as good at keeping people alive.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Jacob whispers.
‘Am I threatening you?’ she says. ‘Yes, Jacob. Yes I am.’