A new sound is audible just outside the cell Jacob is sitting in. The rumble of engines.
‘Your plane,’ says Myriam serenely. ‘That’s what you’re hearing out there. We’ve arrived at your last chance now.’
Jacob has laid his head on the table, too exhausted to even sit upright, but he straightens now and looks at Myriam. She’s moved over by the door, her eyes still on him.
‘You’re bluffing,’ he says. ‘You can’t send a Swedish citizen to Egypt.’
‘Is your experience with me thus far that I bluff?’
His head is spinning now. ‘I don’t have the chip,’ he says. ‘But I know where the terror attacks are going to take place. And I know when.’
He can’t sacrifice Yassim or risk himself.
‘I’ll tell you if you promise to hand us over to the police instead of sending us away,’ he whispers.
Myriam walks slowly over to the table, sits down opposite him. ‘It’s a start,’ she says. ‘You can stay if you tell me.’
He tells her everything he knows about the attacks against the Opera House in Stockholm, Gare du Midi in Brussels, the airport in Rome and Harrods in London. It’s not much. Just the places and time, 19:00 on 26 November, tomorrow. That’s all Klara wrote in her text when they were on their way to Stockholm.
Myriam writes it down in her notebook and looks at him when he falls silent.
‘Is that it?’ she asks. ‘Is that really all you have? No names or details? Nothing more?’
‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘I swear that’s all I have now. I can get you the rest, I promise. But surely that has to be enough for you to prevent it, put in extra guards, keep people away from those places, whatever you have to do?’
She looks at him indifferently. Then she stands up, walks around the table, unlocks his handcuffs before pulling him onto his feet and fastening his hands behind his back.
‘Time to go,’ she says, pulling him through the steel door to a big hangar where a small, white aircraft is waiting with its engines running.
One of the bearded men comes towards her. ‘Not a sound,’ he says, shouting over the noise of the engines. ‘He’s a clam. Also, barely conscious. That George Lööw won’t say anything either, just keeps demanding a lawyer and shit like that. I don’t think he really understands the situation.’
‘Get them on board,’ Myriam says. ‘I have what we need right now, the rest we can figure out.’
The man nods hesitantly. ‘You sure?’ he says.
She narrows her eyes at him. ‘Do I look unsure?’
He shakes his head, takes a small radio off his belt. ‘Get them on board,’ he says calmly.
‘What the fuck?’ Jacob screams, trying to tear himself out of her grip. ‘You swore you wouldn’t send us away! That was the only reason—’
Myriam punches him hard in the solar plexus, and he collapses onto his haunches, silenced, still with his hands behind his back. She leans over him.
‘You smuggled terrorist plans,’ she says. ‘Together with your terrorist boyfriend. These are the consequences for that. Why didn’t you listen to me in Beirut if you didn’t want to play this game?’
Jacob lifts his eyes and sees two of Myriam’s men leading Yassim out of a room and further into the hangar. He has handcuffs on and a black hood over his head; it takes two men to support him.
‘Yassim!’ he screams. ‘Yassim!’
From the corner of his eye, he sees a man heading in through the open hangar doors, a small automatic weapon bouncing at his hip. Jacob turns instinctively towards him.
‘We have a problem,’ the man shouts. ‘A big fucking problem.’
In the next second, Jacob can hear sirens blaring somewhere, and they’re getting closer and closer. Suddenly, the hangar is full of blinking blue lights and police officers with weapons drawn and ambulances.
He falls down onto the concrete floor, completely still, completely exhausted.