The driver, who is in his fifties, was the third one she spoke to. A colleague pointed him out in the store. He’s headed north to Sweden. It could hardly be better. But when she asked him about a ride, he told her in his limited English that his employers didn’t allow hitchhikers, and at the sound of the helicopter blades Klara felt her panic rising.

‘But it’s just me and my two friends,’ she said and looked him straight in the eyes in a way she hoped was full of promise. ‘We won’t be any trouble. Quite the opposite.’

‘Okay,’ he said in the end. ‘But you better be fast, I leave in five minutes.’

*

‘I might have given him the impression that you were girls,’ Klara says now over her shoulder to George who’s heading up the steps into the cabin behind her. ‘Just so you know.’

She turns to the driver again and smiles. The cabin is modern and comfortable with two leather chairs and shining instruments. A crucifix is attached to the top of the instrument panel. The driver looks over Klara’s shoulder, and must see George’s head appear; the disappointment in his eyes is obvious.

‘Is that your friend?’ he says.

Klara nods. ‘George is his name. He’s very nice.’

The driver sighs and draws back a curtain to a sleeping area behind the seats. A surprisingly comfortable-looking bed with a yellow bedspread is visible in the dim lights of the gas station.

‘Your friends ride back there,’ he says. ‘You ride with me.’

Klara nods eagerly. This is going to work. He won’t throw us out, she thinks.

She turns to Jacob and George again. ‘Hurry up, for fuck’s sake,’ she whispers urgently. ‘Before he changes his mind.’

They’ve barely gotten into place behind the curtain when the blinking blue lights of the first police car appear on the highway. They drive past the gas station as more sirens start to blare.

‘Better get going,’ she says in English. ‘Don’t want the police to slow us down.’

The driver turns to her with a questioning look. Is he starting to figure it out? Three people stuck at a gas station. A significant police presence. She feels George’s gun, hard and heavy in her right pocket.

Please drive, she thinks. Just drive. I don’t want to have to use this.

24 November

Duisburg

The sirens are everywhere. Jacob can hear Klara asking the truck driver to drive. George has crept over to the curtain of the sleeper cabin and is peeking out at the gas station. Jacob can see his foot bobbing nervously on the yellow bedspread. Cautiously, Jacob crawls over beside George and peeks through the drapes as well, just as the blue lights start to blink through the windshield of the truck.