His friend is pale, his eyes glassy, as he takes the curve with one hand and soon they’re out on a slightly bigger road.

‘You’ve been shot,’ Jacob begins. ‘Yassim, you got hit in the shoulder.’

Yassim doesn’t look away from the road, but he moves his right hand quickly back and forth between the wheel and gear stick.

‘Is anyone following us?’ he says.

He slows again but only enough to be able to take the next curve without flipping the car. Jacob turns around. He sees nothing at first but as they swing left, a black car appears at the corner they just rounded. They’re driving almost as fast and recklessly as them.

‘A BMW,’ Jacob says. ‘They seem to be after us.’

Yassim has already swung off the road, taking a ramp to an underground garage. He crosses between cars and finds an empty parking spot at the bottom of the stairwell.

‘Out!’ he says to Jacob.

He’s already halfway out of the car. The garage is damp and smells like urine, and they take the stairs two steps at a time. They’re on a landing and now it’s just two more floors, then they’ll be out on the streets of the city again.

Jacob can see the streetlights above. Somewhere in the distance he hears a siren. He takes the first two steps, but then stops when he hears Yassim panting behind him.

‘Wait!’ his friend wheezes. ‘Wait a second.’

Jacob turns around and sees Yassim leaning against the wall. His breathing is heavy and strained.

‘What?’ Jacob says. ‘They must be in the garage by now too.’

But there’s something in how Yassim leans, something in how he’s breathing, that makes Jacob understand it’s impossible.

‘Come here,’ Yassim says instead. ‘I have something in my pocket, but’ – he indicates his hanging arm – ‘but I can’t get to it.’

Jacob is at his side now, very close. Yassim’s familiar scent in the midst of the stench of the stairwell.

‘What’s happening?’ Jacob whispers.

But his friend doesn’t answer. Jacob thinks he can make out a motor in the garage, but he can’t be sure.

‘I’m sorry,’ Yassim says, turning to him. ‘We have so little time.’

He sinks against the wall, down onto the floor. Jacob leans over him and opens his jacket hesitantly to access the wound, but Yassim stops him. At the same time, in the garage, a car door is closing again, and there are footsteps on a concrete floor.

‘Fuck it,’ he says. ‘Nothing you can do about that.’

His voice is so weak now. He coughs and Jacob thinks he’s going to spit blood, but he doesn’t and that’s a relief, in the midst of all this unspeakable terror.

‘You have the chip, right?’ he asks. ‘Somewhere? It’s not still in Beirut?’