After America (50 page)

Neukolln was an Enclosure in all but name, with one crucial distinction: The residents had chosen to shut themselves off from the outside rather than being internally exiled as was the case back in London. That helped explain why the township hummed with an energy that was singularly missing from any of the Enclosures. The locals were exercising their power rather than finding themselves subject to someone else’s. But there was more to it. Driving around, marveling at the vigor and intensity of the street life—even if it did seem to her as medieval and bigoted—Caitlin had to conclude that the engine of the local economy was fired by a primitive but effective form of reverse colonialism. They were living off riches looted from another country, in this case, the United States and maybe Canada. Vancouver had been no more successful at securing and resettling its eastern provinces than Seattle had.

Mirsaad drove her around for half an hour to get a feel for the place, transiting the center of the village three times. There she found markets that put to shame the small stallholders they had first encountered. A Kaiser’s Supermarket had become a prayer room around which hundreds of people gathered, chatting in the midmorning warmth. Restaurants still wearing the livery of their previous incarnations now served as “Red Sea” grocers, halal butcheries, and in one case a pet store. New proprietors had painted over the signage of a former F.W. Woolworth building on Harmannstrasse, whitewashing the old logo and replacing it with a hand-lettered announcement that it was now operating as the Dahabshiil funds transfer bureau for Berlin. From the brief drive-by it also seemed to be trading as a furniture depot and carpet warehouse. Everywhere they went she saw trestle tables piled high with clothes, electronics, and homewares, all of them surrounded by eager customers dickering furiously with the stall owners. The longer she observed, the more convinced she became that she would have to report back to Echelon in much greater detail than that required for a simple file note. There was real wealth here—stolen to be sure, but it was merely the tip of things. All this bustle and activity—so alien to Europe now—spoke to deeper currents of power. Just organizing the logistics train to deliver all this pillage across the Atlantic and through the German border controls—and who knew, maybe even the French or half a dozen other countries, too—all that implied a vast undertaking. Not necessarily by a single monolithic organization but certainly by an unknown number of networks operating in concert sometimes, perhaps in competition or even conflict at others.

It was not Caitlin’s area of expertise and certainly not within her mission brief. There would doubtless be other agencies monitoring all this. But her interest was piqued simply because al Banna’s trail did lead here, and she found it hard to believe that Baumer would remain disconnected and aloof from all this activity. If nothing else, the movement of goods and people and the wealth it generated could all be exploited for his own ends, whatever they might be. As they drove past a busy Afro-Net Cafe on Werbellinstrasse, she decided it was time to find out.

“Okay, Sadie, let’s head on over to Rollberg. We can get something to eat, and I want to keep an eye on the little council office over there.”

“Can you tell me why?” he asked.

“Better if I don’t. I’m looking for somebody. Someone connected to the man I need to find.”

“The one who sent the criminals to your farm?”

“Not to the farm. They tried to grab Bret and Monique a few miles away, but yeah, that guy.”

The Jordanian shrugged. “It is almost time to eat, and I can write up my notes from our tour this morning. This is a fascinating place, do you agree? So full of life and yet darkness, too.”

He swung the Lada left into the cross street that would take them through to Rollbergstrasse. A group of youths were lounging on the corner, one of them was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Kurdish flag. A brave choice, she thought, given the large Turkish majority living here. It was also one of the few gatherings of young men she had seen anywhere that morning. Neukolln was a town of women, children, and older men, some wizened like the Turk from whom Mirsaad had bought his shirt, and many others middle-aged and well fed, all deporting themselves with that peculiarly arrogant gait of males who think themselves in charge of their world.

There were comparatively few young men, though.

You tended to miss that, your gaze drawn by the packs of black crows, as Caitlin thought of the women in burkas.

It was as if the young men of Neukolln had all gone off to war.

She allowed Mirsaad to order her lunch, a falafel roll and a glass of black, unsweetened tea. Not that she would have been allowed to order on her own, anyway. She distinctly heard the gray-haired, one-eyed old coot behind the counter ask Mirsaad whether she was unclean. A younger, less experienced operator than Caitlin might have bristled, but that would have betrayed her language skills and she preferred to move about in seeming ignorance of the conversations around her. Also, there was no point investing emotionally in someone’s stupidity and backwardness. It was simply data to her, something to be filed away, possibly for future reference, possibly not.

She sat demurely at the small round table under the shade of an awning, watching the small office building across the street. A large sticker, the emblem of the Berlin city council, stood out on the boarded-up front windows. She assumed they had been smashed so often that the glass had been replaced with plywood. A heavy metal grille protected the front door, which opened every few minutes to let visitors in or out.

Mirsaad returned with the rolls before doubling back to fetch their tea.

“This is good?” he asked.

She nodded as the piped in music increased in volume.

Mirsaad leaned forward and spoke in a soft voice, in English. “We can speak freely here if we are careful. I know the owner. He is married to my cousin.”

“That old guy?”

She nodded toward the one-eyed troll behind the counter before taking a bite of the roll. It dripped with chili and yogurt sauce, and she enjoyed the pleasing crunch of the falafels and their warm soft filling. The tabouleh, as always, reminded her of shredded weeds.

Mirsaad’s mouth sketched a quick grin. “No. He is just filling in. He speaks no English.”

She decided to take that information with a pinch of salt. After all, nobody but Mirsaad knew that she spoke Arabic.

Keeping one eye on the small council office across the street, she took a sip of tea and adjusted her posture to stop one of the machine guns from digging uncomfortably into her breast.

“What sort of story are you going to file?” she asked.

The reporter finished chewing a mouthful of food before answering. “Not one that will make me popular with the good burghers of Neukolln,” he said quietly. “The shariatown vote is very big news here. Very divisive. It is being used by the right to whip up anti-immigrant feeling. It is being used in the Muslim neighborhoods to further entrench separatism. Meanwhile, guilt-ridden liberal Germans torture themselves over how much respect they must show other cultures because of ‘past mistakes.’”

“The best lack all conviction while the worst are full passionate intensity, eh?”

“Something like that, yes,” he answered once he understood what she meant.

“And your story?”

“Well, I must be balanced, of course.” His cheeky expression implied that he would be nothing of the sort. He leaned forward and spoke carefully. “But I see nothing good coming of this, Caitlin. Back in 2001, well before the Disappearance, the Islamic Federation of Berlin, after twenty years of trying, finally succeeded in getting the city to allow purely Islamic schools to take in Muslim children. The city no longer controls those lessons, which are more often in Arabic than German and usually are held behind closed doors, especially for girls. Not long after that, the
hijab
became much more common. Girls began leaving school as early as possible. Groups of male students formed associations that now lobby for their schools to become fully fledged madrassas. It is a disaster for these children, and for Germany …”

He paused and glanced around the small cafe.

“I see this vote on localized sharia law for civil cases as being the same but worse, infinitely worse. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” She nodded while keeping one eye on the building across the street.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said, warming to his theme so much that he forgot his lunch. “When I first arrived in Germany in 1992, I came as a trainee for Deutsche Welle Radio. I was hired partly because of my background, partly because of my language skills. I speak five languages; did you know that?”

“Bret did say something about it once,” she said, nodding. Two black crows and their male shadow disappeared behind the iron grilled door.

“The flight I caught from Amman stopped in Turkey, and many migrants got on. Families of guest workers. One of them sat next to me. He looked like a goat farmer, because he
was
a goat farmer from somewhere outside Nevsehir. He had never flown before. Probably never been in powered transport at all. I had to do his seat belt for him. Show him how the tray table worked. Show him to the toilet. I don’t know what he did in there, but I heard the crew complaining bitterly about it later. He sat next to me in his old sandals and skullcap, working his prayer beads. He was inches away but unreachable. He lived in another time. Another world, Caitlin. If he is alive, he lives there still, despite having been in Germany for over fifteen years. His body might dwell here, but his mind and soul remain firmly in the past. A past he considers superior in every way to the reality of modern life.”

She sipped at her tea and regarded him anew. The lines in his body were all tense, and his jawline bulged as he ground his teeth. She tracked the old shop clerk with her peripheral vision as well as two tables of men who had just sat down on the other side of the cafe. But the reporter had kept his voice down, and the music was loud enough to have covered his little monologue.

“You ever thought of moving to the States?” she asked. “They’re looking for settlers. Five languages would give you a head start on your hundred points to qualify. Your choice of career could have been better, though. That old goat farmer would probably be thought of as more useful than a reporter.”

“That old goat farmer would be the death of America,” he replied earnestly before suddenly loosening up.

“But yes, I have thought about it. Laryssa and I have even discussed it. She is a qualified nurse. She would easily find a placement there. But the fighting in New York. And this fascist Blackstone. I fear we would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”

“Could be,” she conceded.

The door across the street opened again, and a woman stepped out. She was instantly notable for two reasons. She was dark-skinned but wore modern clothes, and she was alone. No man escorted her.

She stepped out into the street enveloped by a fierce aura, as though challenging anyone to confront her.

Caitlin doubted that anybody would.

Only a fool would cross Fabia Shah.

The mother of al Banna.

Kansas City, Missouri

If opening the Hawthorne Power Plant was the highlight of Kipper’s day trip, visiting the restored North Kansas City Hospital was undoubtedly the lowest point. An unforeseen late-afternoon shower lashed the windows as Kipper made his way down hallways mopped and polished to a high sheen in his honor. The staff, many of them recent migrants and refugees, dipped their heads, watching him in awe as he proceeded to the intensive care unit with Culver in tow, a clutch of colonels and generals flanking him, and white-coated medical staff hurrying to stay in touch.

A doctor waited outside the ward he was to visit. The thirty-something man in green surgical scrubs looked careworn and tired.

“Welcome to North Kansas City Hospital, Mister President,” the doctor said, extending his hand. “I’m Alex Leong, director of the facility. Sorry about my appearance. I’ve just come out of surgery a few minutes ago.”

“I hope it went well,” said Kipper.

“We’ll see,” Leong answered as they shook hands. Kip marveled at the man’s thin, long fingers, which returned his grip with a truly surprising amount of strength.

“How are the troops?” he asked somberly.

“We’ve received two hundred and nineteen wounded from New York over the last forty-eight hours,” Leong said. “We’re finding that their body armor protects them from most fatal wounds to the center mass. Unfortunately, we have seen a spike in traumatic amputations, in some cases multiple amputations.”

Kipper could feel his face twisting with distaste and consciously forced himself to frown, trying to mask his distress at Leong’s report. He’d learned it freaked people out if he looked like he was getting upset. “Do you have everything you need?” he asked, knowing that Jed Culver would be grinding his teeth at any more ad hoc resource commitments.

The doctor shook his head. “The army is giving us everything they can spare, but some of the supplies are past their expiration date. Bandages and basic needs are holding out well enough, but we are having trouble with pharmaceuticals and other perishable items.”

“Jed?”

“Yes,” Culver sighed. “Top of my to-do list, sir. I’ll contact Senator Clavell and see what can be done.”

“There is one other problem,” Leong said, gesturing for the presidential party to follow him onto the ward.

“Tell me, Doctor.”

“We’re desperately short of blood,” Leong said.

“What type?” Kipper asked.

“All types.”

Kipper turned to his army liaison. “Colonel Ralls, can you get me a hundred people up to the hospital ASAP? I saw a settler train come in this morning. They’d all have their health checks in order. I’m asking for volunteers, so you tell them why we need them. Tell them
I
need them. Can you handle that?”

Ralls nodded. “I’m on it, Mister President,” and retreated down the hallway.