But Agneta doesn’t answer, and his call isn’t forwarded to an answering machine. After fifteen rings, he stops trying, closes his eyes, and leans back on the bench. The concrete is cool against the short blonde hair of his neck. He’s sitting in the airport in Beirut. His first time in the Middle East. His first time outside of Europe. For a moment it feels like he’s drowning; he gasps for breath, opens his eyes wide.

‘No, no, no,’ he says out loud to himself.

He calms himself down. Time to be resourceful.

He calls Agneta Adelheim again. When she answers on the second ring, relief washes over him.

‘Oh, no,’ she says when Jacob introduces himself. ‘I’m so sorry. I was sure it was next week you were coming. I’ll be there in half an hour.’

Jacob hangs up and stands, shaking off his disappointment. They forgot about him. It’s a setback, but things like that happen. They have a lot on their plate. Of course things fall through the cracks. You can’t keep track of every little detail. It doesn’t mean he won’t be able to amaze them.

He pulls a copy of Dagens Nyheter out of his newly purchased brown leather briefcase. He’s been carrying the newspaper since boarding the flight in Stockholm, but only now does he open it. Might as well get up to speed on the latest news, he thinks, skimming the front page. He’s mainly looking for anything related to Beirut. He read online about the demonstrations taking place at the government headquarters. About garbage not being picked up, filling the streets with stench and disease because the government is so corrupt and dysfunctional. But none of that is in this newspaper. Instead, there is some Säpo scandal breaking in Sweden. He remembers hearing about it on the news yesterday, but he was too preoccupied to make much sense of it.

Now he has time. A half hour at least, and as he unfolds the newspaper, he sees a photo of a red-haired woman in her thirties, dressed professionally, taking up half the first page. Green eyes and a resolute expression, she’s standing at some kind of press conference.

The headline reads: ‘Russia Behind Riots in the Suburbs.’