Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (25 page)

In Zürich, the train station is spotless, the passengers well-groomed and polite.  Everyone moves purposefully, without rushing.  Talking on cellphones or into headsets.  He hails a cab, and gives the driver the address in German.  The driver answers in Turkish.  When Kazan pretends not to understand, the driver gives him a crooked smile and says, “Once a Turk, always a Turk.”  Kazan is
embarrassed
and feels ridiculous not revealing himself, yet stubbornly refuses to say something in Turkish. 

The cab stops in front of Restaurant Parkhuus, an ultra modern building with floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides, each window framed in chrome.  Kazan pays the driver and walks inside.  “Enjoy yourself,” says the cabbie, chuckling. 

Kazan wonders if he looks like a rube to everyone, or just to Turks.

Inside the restaurant is all chrome and light and percussive noises—chairs, pans, German, Italian, and French clanking against each other.  By one bank of windows, he spots his father, dressed in an expensive suit—English tailoring, Italian wool.  A bottle of champagne sits in a bucket next to the table.  His father gets up, hugs and kisses him on both cheeks—“Sit down, sit down.  How wonderful you look.  How you've grown.  Two inches at least”—and pours him a glass of champagne.

His father explains the move to Amsterdam.  “Turkey is becoming more and more conservative.  I'm not sure how long it will be a good place for business.  The fundamentalists are gaining ground every day.  I don't know . . . .”  His eyes drift to two men entering in white thawbs.

“We're Muslim.  Why is that a problem?” 

Ahmed watches Kazan sip from his fluted champagne glass.  “You like it?”

“Yes, very much.”

Ahmed smiles and gives a half-hearted chuckle.  “We were hoping Turkey would become part of the EU.  But the more fundamentalist it becomes, the less likely that will ever happen.  It screws up my business plan.  It's simply easier to have our base in Amsterdam.”

“School ends in late May,” says Kazan tentatively. 

“I suppose you are wondering where to go.”

Kazan would like to join Laszlo in Israel, but knows how absurd it would be even to mention it.  “Can I visit Faruk in America?”

“We'll see.  Maybe at the end of the summer.  I would like you to stay with your Great Uncle Osman here in Zürich.  He runs an antique store.”

It suddenly dawns on him that he is part of his father's
business plan
.  “Is that the family business?” asks Kazan. 

“We are in the import/export business, which includes antiques,” Ahmed explains.  Which explains nothing at all.  “We will go visit your Uncle Osman this afternoon.  How do you like your fish?”

#

They cross the river to Alstadt, the oldest part of the city.  After parking, they amble through the crooked cobblestone streets of 18
th
century row houses, all jumbled on top of one another like box cars in a train wreck.  Kazan finds the narrow lanes charming, the tipsy little boutiques and shops.

Ahmed stops in front of a pink row house, with a rectangular bay window protruding from the second floor over the street.  Gold letters on a swinging sign spell out Ozymandias.

Through dusty windows, Kazan peeks into a cave of hidden treasures.  An old Anatolian brass bell, tied to the doorknob, clanks when they enter. 

Turkish and Persian rugs hang on the walls, red and blue, orange and tan.  A wilderness of bronze, softy glowing in the lamp light.  Tall elegant bronze water pitchers called
dallah
, brass platters and candle sticks with arabic tracery, scimitars, Kilij swords, and curved knives, cypress wood tables inlaid with ivory in chess-board patterns, 18th century Ottoman faience, sets of solid silver Zarf coffee cups, enormous ceramic urns on black pedestals.  Dusty peacock feathers stick out of bronze vases.  Several low upholstered chairs, tucked and shirred, backs puckered with buttons, in leather or brocade with tassels.  Turkish chairs, he later learns. 

“
Guten Tag
,” booms a voice from the back.

Uncle Osman unfolds his large body from behind a counter and shambles to the front of the store.  He is tall and lumbering, yet with a certain grace about his movements.  He wears a European business suit, red fez, and red velvet slippers, and maneuvers through the crowded store without any collisions.  Tree trunk arms crush Kazan in a bear hug. 

Uncle Osman is actually Kazan's great uncle, Ahmed's father's brother. 

“Welcome!  What a handsome young man you are,” Osman says, grinning, slapping Kazan's shoulders.  His sixty-five years clearly show—drooping earlobes, shaggy white hair—yet his face has a boyish quality, clear amber eyes, perfect white teeth.  “I'll have to put you in the front store.  All of Europe resents Islam, but they can't get enough of our antiques.  Especially the young ones—rebelling against all that Ikea white Formica and blond wood, I suppose.  They yearn for clutter.”  He laughs, gesturing at the store.  “They come in asking for Turkish coffee grinders.  Quite the fad.  Can't keep them in stock.”  He points at a small b
attalion of brass cylinders in the front.

“Your Uncle knows diamonds better than anyone in the world,” says Ahmed, changing the subject.  He casts a disdainful look at the antiques, as if afraid of contagion.

“Diamonds?”

“Well, yes.  In back.  Let me show you.  So how do you like Switzerland, Kazan?”

“It's so clean.”  Kazan cringes hearing himself—
How lame can you get?
  But no one has asked him that question before, and he hasn't had to put into words all he feels.

Osman pulls aside a brocade curtain on brass rings, revealing a locked metal door with a glass panel.  He taps a combination on a keypad.

They step a thousand years into the future.  Science lab white.  Kazan sucks cool air-conditioned oxygen into his lungs; it tastes of ice.

On one side are glistening glass tables, locked steel cabinets, and white leather stools.  Behind a glass wall on the other side is a workshop, with one area for cleaving rough diamonds, another with a laser sawing machine for cutting, a girdling machine, and a polishing machine, which looks a bit like an old record player.  Two older men are working, heads down, with loupes strapped to their heads.  The workshop must be soundproof.  Kazan hears only the slightest machine noise under the piped-in classical music.

“I mostly do diamond appraisals at this point.  Sometimes I consult on high-level faceting projects.  We still have the knowledge, the know-how, the patience, to work on difficult and very expensive stones,” he says.

“What will I do?”

“Whatever I need you to do,” he says jovially.  “A little travel here and there.  You'll get to know Antwerp rather well.  Eighty-four percent of diamonds still pass through Antwerp.  Indian traders are taking over from the Jews, and most of the cutting and polishing goes to Mumbai, Dubai, and Botswana, where labor is cheap.  But at one point or another, they still come through Antwerp.  Old traditions die hard.”

Kazan's father makes a disapproving grunt.

“That's all there is to show.  Have you eaten?  Would you like some coffee?  Tea?”

Ahmed shakes his head.  “We just had lunch.  Kazan needs to get back to school.”

Kazan nearly says that isn't true, that he doesn't need to be back until tomorrow, but catches himself in time. 

“Of course,” says Osman graciously, smiling at Kazan.  “We will have lots of time to get acquainted.  I look forward to it.”

Kazan thinks his father is acting rude and weirdly tense, but it isn't his place to say.  He likes his great uncle.  He likes his easy, joking manner, and how he talks to him as an adult.  His father's behavior makes him feel ashamed.

“I'll see you in a month,” Osman says cheerfully. 

As Kazan takes the train back to school, he realizes he forgot to ask where he'll be living.  Upstairs, he imagines.  Or maybe Uncle Osman has a house somewhere else in town.  The diamond business is interesting enough, but he looks forward to working in the shabby antique store.  And listening to his uncle's stories. 

He imagines he has lots of them.

Thirteen, May 2020

Assassination

I choose a team of five.  First a woman named Draak from a cell in Rotterdam, whom I've used before.   A petite spider of a woman in her mid thirties, Draak was a tattoo artist in a former life; an intricate green-ink jungle of jaguars, snakes, and monkeys, vines down from her shoulder, over her buttocks, right thigh, and calf.  Draak means dragon.  Since tattooing is forbidden in Islam, she never had a choice but to fight in the underground.  She is an expert marksman.  Draak will arrange to pick up five .22-caliber semi-automatic Beretta handguns with two full clips for each of us.  She hand-packs the cartridges, reducing the load—for this job, the range and penetrating power of the firearms is less important than quietness and concealability.  Her guns will make only a quiet
pfft
when fired.

Draak and I will pull the triggers.  Women are better at close work.  Burkas provide a perfect disguise and cover for hidden weapons.  Also, if we're caught, the Landweer
go much easier on women.  Or they have in the past.  That, of course, could change. 

I could've chosen to use a sniper rifle, and used the team for surveillance.  But Gerda thinks it leaves a stronger message to do close work—not when a target is exposed, but when he feels safe, at home or surrounded by friends, when he least expects it.  A sniper rifle is harder to conceal, the get-away more problematic.  Close up, there is no mistaken identity.  A sniper is a specialist; there are few of them.  But anyone can shoot and kill at six feet.  A small group of people working in concert is more frightening.  They could be anyone.  Anywhere.

The others on the team will be from
Watergeuzen. 
I don't want Pim involved.  “The team will have to disappear—separately—for several weeks,” I say to him.  “That's protocol.  I can't bear the thought of not having you around.”

He gives me a tight smile.  “You're getting married.  What do you care?”

I try not to wince.  “I will still see you.”

“Really?  Do you really think your new husband will let you run around Amsterdam by yourself?  Nasira will be your only contact.  Gerda will insist on it.”

I feel a horrible squeeze in my chest.  He's right, of course.  We have to assume my movements will be restricted.  I will be someone's property, without free will.

“It may be our last mission together,” Pim says.  “Let me go with you.”

“Every mission might be our last mission,” I say.

“All the more reason we should do it together.”

I take his hand, comforted by its weight.  His palm is wide, his fingers blunt, the backs fuzzy with blond hairs.  “I don't want to marry him, Pim.  You know that, don't you?”

“I hear he is very handsome.”  His smirk nearly breaks my heart.  Part of me wishes he'd put up more of a fight.

“Pim, he's the enemy.  Do you really think I could find him handsome?”

“As long as you don't think he's as handsome as me.”

Pim has never fixed his chipped front tooth.  It doesn't mar his smile; it makes it his—impish, insouciant, a little devious.  Sensing I am forgiven, I smile back. 

It is decided.  Pim will arrange for two cars, our get away.  He will drive one of the exit cars.  Kaart will drive the other.  Garret has agreed to be our “sweeper”—the person who prepares the escape for others, and collects any damaging evidence before fading away.  He will arrange for an extra set of documents and cash for each of us at five different locations in Maastricht in case we have to separate and make a run for it.  He'll arrange for a safe house in case the mission has to be postponed, or we encounter some kind of hitch.  If all goes well, we will not see him during our mission.

Two women, three men.  If any of them have a problem taking orders from a twenty-year-old woman, none of them show it.  We are all young, except for Garret, who is thirty-seven.  Despite his elfin stature, he adds gravity and competence to the mission.  I use him whenever I can.

I call a meeting at the
Fredrika Maria
to go over logistics and share information from our contacts in the local Resistance in Maastricht.  I give everyone on the team two days to pick up new documents and to settle personal affairs.  They will travel to Maastricht on their own time.  All but Draak accepted the mission without knowing who their target is.  Until now.

“Mahmoud al-Kubaisi.” 

There is an audible gasp, and the room gets that empty cave feeling you get when everyone is focusing.  Everyone here knows Kubaisi, and why he must be killed, but I review his history.  In case anyone has doubts. 

“Mahmoud al-Kubaisi is forty-four years old, born in Iraq.  He is a Sunni, and was serving his military service in 2002 when the Americans invaded Iraq.  He, along with Shirzad Sahar, was retrained as a member of the military police by the Americans, and trained in interrogation techniques.  We have the CIA to thank for that.  After 2012, when Shirzad was promoted to Supreme Chief of the Landweer
in Holland, he hired Mahmoud al-Kubaisi as his chief interrogator.”

A few quiet gasps from those hearing of the connection for the first time.  A cannonball of coolness at the other end of the table.  

“Garret has personal experience with him,” I say, acknowledging him.  “He was captured in 2016 and spent two years in Bijlmerbajes
prison.  He has partaken of Kubaisi's favorite forms of torture.”

Garret nods, but adds nothing.

“Kubaisi has personally tortured scores of Resistants, and has organized dozens of sweeps.  He turns even brave Resistants into informers by threatening to send their wives to labor camps, their children into Islamic orphanages.  He sends his men to special classes in Syria to study the theory and practice of torture.  He manacles his prisoners in the underground rooms at Rijksmuseum, and has them tortured in sadistic and imaginative ways.”

I sense each member of the team contract into themselves.  Bats folding their wings.  Nothing frightens us like torture.

“Kubaisi is also responsible for orchestrating several acts of terror, included the Jenever Theater Murders—”

“Which got us into this nightmare,” interjects Kaart.

I nod.  “This is not merely a hit.  Our object is not simply to eliminate the man, who can easily be replaced, but to send a message.  Our goal is to frighten those who terrorize us.  Our message is that we can get to anyone.”  Everyone nods their heads.  I turn to Draak.  “You have had your people tracking him for a week.  What have they found?”

Draak rubs her knees with her palms, and speaks in a clipped monotone, eyes cast to a porthole. 
“Kubaisi has his office in Maastricht, on call wherever Shirzad needs him—Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam.  His wife and children still live in Amsterdam.  During the week, he lives with his mistress in Maastricht in a modest two-bedroom apartment.  His habits are extremely predictable.  Every evening, he leaves his office at precisely the same time every day.  He stops for tea at one of a number of cafés on Vrijthof.  At the call of the muezzin
,
he heads to the mosque for prayer.  Around seven, he leaves and goes to a cigar shop.  Sometimes he stops at a bakery.  By seven-thirty, he returns to his apartment.  His mistress works at a gym, and returns to the apartment an hour or so later.”

“He lives like a low level bureaucrat,” Kaart remarks indignantly.

“Torture and roundups—all in a day's work,” Garret adds.  “No reason to be late for dinner.” 

“Don't forget the biscuits.  With poppy seeds.  You forgot last time.”  Kaart's nagging female imitation is perfect.  Everyone laughs, tension dissipating like steam.  It is easier if we belittle our enemy.

“Any bodyguards?” asks Pim.

“No,” Draak answers.  “He only carries a weapon when he goes on a raid.”

“Any more questions?” I ask.  Nothing.  “We're set then.  I'm sure you all agree, he deserves an agonizing death.  But we will shoot him, close range.  I want to look him in the eyes.”

Maastricht

I sit at an outdoor café off of Vrijthof, the large pedestrian square in the center of the city.  Islamic restrictions are more relaxed here than in Amsterdam.  Their Islamic Council still allows outside cafés.  Perhaps it is too large a part of their culture to abolish.  Without its cafés, Maastricht would be unrecognizable.  I sit with a woman in a burka, whom I do not know.  A member of the local Resistance.  She does not know what we are about to do.
I wear a black
abaya
and niqab.

First Pim walks by.  This is the signal that Kubaisi has left his office.  Draak, wearing a burka
,
sits three tables away with another female member of the local Resistance, and orders coffee.  A few minutes pass.  Kaart parks an Opel across the plaza, buys a newspaper, then gets back into his car.

We hear the
adham,
the call to prayer.  An eerie hush falls over the city, as everyone stops what they're doing and hurries to mosque, or to find their prayer rugs.  As women, we are not expected to go to mosque.  The café has a small room inside, lined with prayer rugs, where customers can pray, then go back to their tables.  I go inside with Draak and the women who are sitting with us.  We kneel, say our prayers, and return to our tables.

At seven o'clock, I get up, pay the bill, and walk out of the café with my companion.  Draak and her companion follow twenty feet behind.  We head down Capucijnenstrasse, a street running north from the plaza.  Midway down the block, I stop to look into a shop window, joined by Draak.  The two women from the Resistance link arms and continue down the sidewalk.

Across the street, Pim sits in a silver Peugeot with a young man, who sits in the driver's seat.  Like the women who sat with us at the café
,
he doesn't know our mission and serves only as a cover. 

              The young man with Pim gets out of the Peugeot, crosses the street, then crosses back.  This means Kubaisi has left the café to go buy his cigar.  If the mission was to abort, he would drive off with Pim, and Draak and I would continue down the street where Kaart is parked with the Opel.

In a few minutes, a couple from the local Resistance walks down the street in front of Kubaisi's apartment.  Pim gets out of the Peugeot, bids farewell, and the young man drives off.  This means Kubaisi is on his way to his house. 

It is still very busy on the streets of Maastricht, people headed home from work, couples on their way out to eat, groups of men coming from mosque, finishing conversations before heading their separate ways.  Bicycles zip by in their special lanes, bells ringing at pedestrians.  Aluminum shutters rattle down over stores, closing for the day.  No one pays us any attention.

As Pim passes us to take position at the second get-away vehicle several blocks away, Draak and I cross the street and step into the foyer of Kubaisi's apartment building.  It smells damp and dusty.  I find the light switch behind the mailboxes and turn off the lights. 

We press our backs to the far wall, in the shadows.  Through the glass doors, we watch Kubaisi go into a bakery across the street, next door to where we had been standing moments ago.  Three minutes pass.  He exits the bakery and crosses the street toward us.  He walks toward the front door, carrying a plastic bag, a baguette poking out the top.  The bag swings pendulously, too heavy for just bread, but no cause for alarm. 

For a moment, he seems like any man picking up fresh bread for dinner.  I have to remind myself of the horrors he has ordered.

A car horn chirps down the street.  It must be Kaart alerting us that Kubaisi is about to enter the lobby.  Yeah, no kidding.

I glance at Draak, her eyes completely relaxed, radiating concentration.

Just as Kubaisi opens the door, two women in abayas come up behind him from the sidewalk, following on his heels.  One of the women stops, fishing for something in her purse.  She struggles a bit with the billowing black cloth whipping around her legs in the wind.  I consider aborting, but the taller woman behind her suddenly looks up and sees me in the shadows.  Her eyes widen.  She takes the arm of her friend, and they continue down the sidewalk.

Kubaisi notices nothing.  He enters the foyer and stops at the bank of mailboxes.  I recognize him, and feel my stomach muscles tighten.  There is no doubt.  I even see the mole on the outer edge of his left eye, noted in his profile.  I wait until he fumbles with his key at the mailbox.  I switch on the light.  Kubaisi looks a little surprised, but not particularly alarmed.  Draak asks, “Are you Mahmoud al-Kubaisi?” 

Kubaisi begins to nod, then his eyes spring wide.  “No,” he utters in a raspy whisper, backing up against the wall.

In synchronized motion, Draak and I crouch, right foot back, knees bent.  My right hand sweeps back my abaya, my fingers curved for the pistol grip, my left palm sweeps over the right coming up with the Beretta, cocking the hammer and pin, raising the first round from the clip into the breech.  Draak is with me.  We both shoot twice, twice more, then twice again.  He falls back, twelve bullets in his body.

Even with the silencers, the sound is deafening in the confined space.

Something clanks as he hits the ground.  I reach down into his bread bag.  A bottle of wine.  Apparently the baker moonlights as a bootlegger.  I take the souvenir, hiding it under my cloak.