Jacob looks at him. How could he know that? Below them he hears the door of the stairwell opening. Several pairs of feet heading up the stairs.

‘Who are you?’ Jacob whispers as his panic grows. ‘First you helped them capture me then you helped me escape? I don’t understand anything. You’re hurt and I… I… I…’ He can’t talk any more. There’s too much he doesn’t know, too much he doesn’t understand.

‘You have to make sure that chip ends up with someone you can trust, someone independent, someone who’s not in intelligence or the police. Do you know anyone?’

Jacob nods. ‘I believe so.’

Yassim stretches out a trembling hand and caresses his cheek.

‘I knew I could count on you. In my pocket there’s a phone and a few hundred euros. Take them, you’ll need them. Now you have to go.’

‘What about you?’ Jacob says. ‘I can’t leave you.’

But he stretches down his hand and grabs the money and phone, puts them in his pocket. He already knows that he has no other alternative. ‘I can handle it,’ Yassim says. ‘I have nine lives.’

But he looks down the stairs, blinking. As if he can’t quite gather the energy for this one last lie. Jacob rises, he feels a lump in his throat that he can’t do anything about. ‘You have to make it,’ he says. ‘You can’t disappear now, we just met.’

Yassim smiles. ‘You remember the roof terrace?’

Jacob nods, feeling tears welling up in his eyes. ‘How could I ever forget?’

Yassim reaches behind him, to his lower back, and suddenly he’s holding a big, heavy gun in his hand. He grimaces and Jacob sees again how his left arm hangs uselessly at his side.

‘You have to go now,’ he whispers. ‘You have to trust me.’

Jacob swallows his tears and bends down and kisses him on the cheek. Then he turns around and heads up the stairs two steps at a time.

By the time the first shot rings out, he’s already on the street.

24 November

Brussels

Two hours left until Karl arrives for his meeting at the elevator outside the enormous courthouse, the Palais de Justice. Klara’s sitting with George at the Häagen-Dazs cafe at Place Louise, just a few hundred metres from the meeting place.

She stares through the big windows at the chaotic roundabout, where the traffic seems to be standing still. Men out shopping in dark cashmere overcoats and women with Chanel bags mingle with tourists and Romanian beggars at the metro stop just outside the window. If she raises her eyes, she can see the more or less constant construction site around the dome of the courthouse, a renovation that never seems to be completed.