His spirits lift again when the police officer or soldier or whoever he is hands him back his passport, his anticipation increasing as he passes by border control and follows the green signs towards the exit.

The arrival hall is full of a stifling Mediterranean humidity, automobile exhaust, cigarette smoke, and taxi drivers holding handwritten signs in Arabic, which Jacob should be able to read after his half-year course in Arabic, but dejectedly realizes he can’t make out. His pulse starts to race again. Will they test him on his Arabic at the embassy? He got this internship by claiming Upper Intermediate proficiency in Arabic. Was that a lie? He decides to consider it a question of definition. Travellers push and jostle their way out towards the parking lots and taxi queues, while Jacob stops and looks around.

Someone was supposed to meet him here. Someone from the embassy. He was expecting to see a sign for ‘Seger’ there among the taxi drivers, and he scans them again with the same distressing result. He’d hoped a black Mercedes or a Volvo would be waiting for him, the embassy’s second in command sitting in the back seat with a briefing on Jacob’s first mission. Some negotiation or a meeting with the Lebanese government, or maybe he’d be sent out directly on a fact-finding mission to a refugee camp or straight to a cocktail party at the French embassy. Childish, of course: he knew it wouldn’t be like that right away, not on the first day, but he’d expected something, some indication. A task. The opportunity to show them he was a man with a future ahead of him. Someone to remember. Somebody to bet on.

But no one is here. Nobody has his name on a sign. No stressed-out European is scanning the arrival hall. Jacob takes out his phone. He made sure his cell phone would work here, just one small detail in his preparation. It’s expensive to call, he knows that, and if there’s one thing he doesn’t have, it’s money. But he fishes his phone out of his pocket and looks up the number he received a few weeks ago for an Agneta Adelheim.

It’s important to show you’re quick-witted, resourceful. Never end up the victim of circumstances; you have to take control of the situation and handle it. It makes him happy to see the Adelheim name again. Not just some boring old Andersson. He even looked it up, and it is indeed aristocratic. That feels good. That’s where he’s headed, a world of diplomats with aristocratic last names. A small rush of satisfaction tingles up his spine as he pushes on her name in his contacts list, and the phone starts to ring.