And suddenly he turns over the table with great force. It’s easier than he imagined, and he heaves it towards Myriam. Glasses and ashtrays shatter against the floor of the terrace. She tries to get away, but she’s too slow and the table falls onto her. From the corner of his eye he sees, as if in slow motion, the men at the table by the museum stand up. He can hear their distorted voices as he turns around. And he moves faster than he ever has before, is already down in the courtyard, has already covered half the distance to the gate out of the garden. He hears them screaming behind him as he turns right onto the cracked concrete and asphalt.

They’re running fast now, no longer in slow motion, quite the opposite, and Jacob knows he isn’t in shape for this and his pursuers probably are. They’re not screaming now, but their footsteps are getting closer.

He’s on something that feels like a sidewalk now, and he knows he has no margin for error, that they’ll catch up to him any second.

A high iron fence. An overgrown garden. A gate.

He bends down. The gap in the gate. Which Yassim bent up for him on that very first night. This is where he crawled through.

He’s down on his knees now, and he hears them approaching, hears that they’re almost to the intersection behind him. He bends and pulls and pushes his shoulders sideways through the gate.

Then he’s through, with bruises and scratches, and the palace towers in front of him in the cool afternoon sun. He runs into the garden, in among the green bushes and the uncut grass.

Outside the gate he hears his pursuers heading further down the street, and he realizes he’s escaped.

He hunches down in the grass, but his legs won’t hold him, so he collapses into a small, lonely heap and cries his heart out like a child.

23 November

Brussels

It’s a mistake asking the taxi to drop her off at Ralph’s. Klara realizes it as soon as she pays and steps onto the cobblestones with her bag over her shoulder. She tries to keep her eyes on the door and her thoughts focused on the wine in order to avoid looking to the right, where the European Parliament stands with its blue glass and memories of her former life.

Ralph’s is remarkably empty on a Monday morning. It was always bursting to the limit when she was here in the past, full of lobbyists with an extra button unbuttoned on their pink dress shirts and gold cards at the ready, and red-cheeked interns from EU institutions with their badges dangling around their necks.