Just as he reaches the platform where you climb on the elevator. Eight minutes. He quickly puts his phone back in his pocket and runs his fingers over the memory card, just to make sure it’s there.

Behind Jacob, the elevator dings, and he turns slowly. The elevator is empty save for a man standing with his back to him, staring out through the elevator’s glass wall. He’s blonde, his hair a bit tousled, and when he turns around Jacob can see he has tortoise-shell glasses and is about ten years his senior. Handsome, dressed simply in jeans and a dark-blue coat. On his wrist sits the most gigantic watch Jacob has ever seen.

The man quietly exits the elevator and stops when he catches sight of Jacob. For a moment, they look at each other. ‘Are you Karl?’ he asks in Swedish, breaking eye contact.

Jacob feels his hopes start to rise. He wants to throw himself around the neck of this man, whoever he is. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m Karl.’

The man seems to have barely heard him, but just walks by quickly. As he does, he whispers something in Swedish, so quietly that Jacob almost doesn’t catch it. ‘Follow me, twenty metres behind. Gabriella says hello.’

Jacob turns around only after the man has made his way across the square. Carefully, tentatively, he takes a few steps in the man’s direction.

It seems like the man’s phone is ringing, and he takes it out of his pocket and stops. Something in his posture changes, Jacob can see that as he turns around. For a second, their eyes meet. The man seems to collect himself and then continues to cross the square, still with the phone to his ear.

Jacob looks around one last time and takes a deep breath. Then he starts to follow the man away from the elevator.

24 November

Brussels

Klara is grateful it’s just a quarter to four, so rush-hour traffic hasn’t started clogging the streets yet. She pulls George’s Audi out of its parking spot and manoeuvres it onto the Boulevard de Waterloo, then down the slope towards Rue Haute, where she and George have agreed to meet.

Just fifteen minutes to go, and she has to struggle to keep her breathing normal. She wishes she hadn’t let George go in her stead. She should be the one meeting Karl, like they’d planned from the beginning, since Karl was probably expecting a woman. But George insisted: if the Russians were in place, there was less risk he’d be recognized.

Slowly she turns up onto the narrow, one-way Rue Haute, past bakeries and dive bars, towards the antique district, which she often strolled through on weekends when she lived here. That really was another life.

Six minutes to go now.