It’s just ten metres to a tiny alley that leads further into Gamla Stan, and she turns so abruptly that she almost loses her balance on the cobblestones, but somehow she manages to stay upright.

Just a few metres behind her, she can hear them shouting for her, knows they’ve started hunting her.

The narrow alleys of the old part of town are like a maze, and they twist and turn until Klara barely knows what direction she’s running in. All she can think is that she has to keep moving forward and not to end up at a dead end.

She runs faster than she ever has before and rounds a corner where a couple of bikes lean against the building. She runs by them, throws them behind her to slow her pursuers, like she’s seen people do in the movies. The bikes clatter behind her and someone shouts, ‘Stop!’

But she doesn’t stop. She just keeps running and turning into tiny, deserted streets. Gaffelgränd, Pelikangränd. Suddenly she’s out on the somewhat wider Österlånggatan. Shops, cafes, tourists. She runs a few metres before bounding under a low archway and arriving in an inner courtyard.

A dead end.

Panic seizes her. She twists her head, looking for somewhere to hide, anywhere. A cargo bike is parked just to the left inside the archway, with a fabric cover over the cargo box.

She pulls the cover, frees a corner, throws herself into the box and zips it up quickly.

Someone is already in the courtyard – she can hear footsteps. They move further away from her hiding place, then stop and head back in her direction across the snow-covered cobblestones, closer and closer. Until they’re just on the other side of the fabric, not more than a foot away, just thin plastic between her and her pursuers. She can hear the male police officer on his radio. She closes her eyes, holds her breath.

16 October

Beirut

One hour, Yassim said, but it takes only twenty minutes for Jacob to make his way through the traffic on the streets that lead to Cornichen and the sea. His mouth is dry from exhaustion and nervousness, and he stops at a small kiosk to buy himself a Coke Zero. Forty minutes until Yassim said they should meet, but Jacob’s already there, can see the glass walls of his building between construction sites and building cranes.

He meanders down the street, stopping at a bank across the street from his destination. He opens his drink, takes a couple of deep gulps, and leans back, letting his eyes wander up the side of the building. The apartments are dark and empty, no more than items of expenditure on a spreadsheet in an open office somewhere in Dubai, bought by investors with oil money, never intended for habitation.