Jacob shakes his head again. The rain sneaks in through a gap in the tarp and a small drop runs down from his head to his cheek. He shivers. ‘Someone is following me,’ he says. ‘A Swedish woman. She calls herself Myriam Awad and works for the Swedish Institute in Alexandria. But she’s a spy.’

‘You’ve spoken with her?’

Jacob stares out into the rain. ‘She showed up a few weeks after our first meeting. She has a video. Of me and a guy I… in one of the bathhouses in Burj Hammoud. It was right after I met you, before I knew whether or not you were coming back. It was a trap, something my boss apparently planned at her request. A guy picked me up and wanted to hook up with me. It was… violent. On the video, it looks like I’m raping him. I’ve never done anything like that before. I mean, I’ve never had sex with strangers…’ He sighs and forces back tears. ‘But I was lonely and confused…’

A cold wind ripples the tarp around them. Jacob looks up and sees deep irritation in Yassim’s eyes.

‘You should have told me,’ he says. ‘This changes things.’

Jacob looks at him, then turns his eyes towards the parking lot. ‘Maybe you should have told me what you’re doing.’

Yassim looks at him and then he just nods silently. ‘It’s not easy, all this.’

‘Myriam has information on you. She says you’re a “lighter”. That you’re planning to carry instructions for a terrorist attack to Europe where some jihadist cells are going to carry it out.’

Yassim looks at him without a hint of surprise. ‘What does she want you to do?’

‘She wants me to tell her when you’re back in Beirut. And she wants me to install some fucking programme on your computer.’

‘So you’ve been watching for my password… that’s how you got into the computer.’

Jacob nods without looking at him, still staring out at the wet cars in the darkness. ‘She pops up sometimes to remind me if I don’t contact her. When we were in Byblos and someone called you, she was there, at Pepe’s. And sometimes she’s been waiting for me in my apartment.’

Jacob feels a lump in his throat, it’s hard to swallow and he buries his face in his hands.

‘But I haven’t done anything,’ he says. ‘I haven’t told her anything. And I didn’t do anything to your computer tonight before you woke up. I don’t even know if I would have. But I had to know who you were.’ He sobs, everything is welling up inside him. Stress, frustration. Love. ‘I’m sorry. I should have said something. I should have told you.’