Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (46 page)

“Why didn't you tell me before?”

Pim looks into a dark corner of the attic.  I glance over.  Nothing is there.  He looks back at me.  “I guess I first wanted to see if you would still choose him.”

His pained face makes me shiver.  “He is my husband, Pim.  I have to go.  Change my travel papers . . . please.”

“There is nothing you can do in Turkey, Lina.  The local Resistance there is working to get him out.  You'll only endanger yourself and us.  You can do much more in Copenhagen.”

“I'm not waiting around to hear my husband has been beheaded in Turkey,” I say angrily.  “I have to go and try to get him out.  I can at least make sure he has clean clothes in prison.”

“They are executing Resistants without trial.  They won't hold him long.  They know the invasion is soon.  You might get down there only to find he's dead.  Or find yourself in the middle of an invasion.  You know he wouldn't want you to go.  There's nothing you can do, Lina.  Stay here.”

“Here by your side?” I say furiously.  It is a cruel thing to say, and I'm immediately sorry.  I collapse in a chair.

“That's not what I meant.”  Pim looks at me boldly, without blinking.  “Whatever happens—” he runs his hands through his hair, tugging at the roots “—your baby will always have a father.”

I can't help it, but the tears start pouring down my face.  He means, that if Kazan dies, if he is already dead, he'll take care of us.  Fury and fear and humiliation race over my body.  My head feels huge.  I can hardly breathe.  He means to reassure me, to comfort me, but I want to rip off his head.  I dig my nails into my palms, trying to control myself—I know he means well.

Pim is taken aback by this effusive fluvial spectacle, not because he's never seen me cry, but because my heaving sobs and siren noises can only be those of a woman deeply in love. 

He sits down hard, staring blankly.  He then shakes himself, like a goldfinch shaking off a summer bath.  Jutting out his lower jaw, he says, “I'll get you to Turkey, Lina.  We'll get Kazan out.”

#

The shark shadow follows me from Pim's.  I glance back quickly and cross the street.  My nerves are working overtime, my heart pounding.  Perspiration makes my clothes stick to my chest under my burka.  I see shadows where they should be no shadows.  Flocks of pigeons take to the air for no reason.  I see no one, but I am not alone. 

I duck into a mosque, and enter the women's prayer hall without performing
wudu. 
I quickly kneel beside another woman, hoping to blend into the crowd.

A few minutes later, a figure darkens the door, a woman in a burka.  I can tell by the quickness of her movements, she is the one who has been following me.  Her head turns, scanning the women.  We all look the same. 

Don't look, I tell myself.  After several long moments, I don't hear her moving.  I turn my head and sneak a peek. 
Shit! 
She is staring right at me.  I'm about to bolt, when I see her slowly shake her head.  She pulls a pendant out from underneath her burka.  A silver sailboat.  She points to a corner of the prayer room, near the shelf of Qurans and a stack of pillows.

She kneels and prostrates.  I follow and kneel beside her; she lowers her veil.

“Joury!” I whisper hotly.  “It's you.”  Her face lean, eyes enormous, hair cut close to her skull.  “My God!  Why are you here?”

We embrace, an awkward hug on our knees.  She presses her cheek to mine, then frames my face with her hands, looking at me squarely.  “Just as beautiful.”

Blushing, hiding a laugh, I touch her shoulders and her arms.  It's really her.  “Why didn't you let me know?”

“I couldn't.  I work for the Danish Resistance,” she whispers.  “Ever since you got me out to Copenhagen.  Many of us have come over to help with the transition.”

“You've been following me?”

“I have been following your followers.  A good thing, too.”

I gasp, understanding.  “You shot that soldier outside of Freyja's?”

“Yes.  You have no idea the amount of danger you are in.  I've been ordered to get you out.”

“Gerda?”

“We can't talk here.  I have to go.  Meet me on the
Fredrika Maria
in two hours.”

#

I find Joury on the barge
, plotting out evacuation routes with Gerda, Hansen, and Janz.  Gerda gives me an annoyed look, like what in hell am I doing here, then shrugs and looks away.

I've had two hours to think about it.  I hand Joury the key and documents to the apartment in Copenhagen, travel papers and IDs, and ten thousand dollars.  “I want you to give these to Jana.  Make sure she and Uncle Sander get to Copenhagen.”

“I've made all the arrangements for
you
to go.  You're the one the Landweer is looking for.”

I shake my head.  “I need to go to Turkey.  Kazan . . . Reynard has been arrested.”

She gives me a smirk.  “I heard you'd married him.”

“Nobody is supposed to know.”

“Don't worry.  I only know because I was in the room when he was sent to Turkey.  Besides, everyone loves an underground romance.  Even dikes.” 

I am caught off guard.  Of course, the haircut, the men's clothes under her burka.  It's not merely a disguise.

“Are you sure you want to go to all this bother for some dude.”  Joury gives me a sly look, mock lasciviousness.

I wonder if it's what her father did to her that makes her loathe men.  Or Islam.  Or if she's always been that way—even when she was a wild teenage flirt.

Joury takes my hand.  I expect it to be as calloused as mine, but it is soft.  I see rough red skin on her left elbow, and feel her fingers again—a callous on her trigger finger.  I don't have to ask if she was involved in the assassinations at The Hague.

“You can travel under the guise of making
hajj
,” she says.  The pilgrimage to Mecca during Dhu al-Hijjah, which falls this year in July.  “There's a special train leaving tomorrow from Amsterdam just for pilgrims.  There will be hundreds on the train.  You can blend in easily.”

“Why are you taking such a risk for me?”

“You took me out of the tomb and gave me life.  I owe you everything.”

“You would've done the same for me.”

“Maybe.  I don't know if I would've had the courage to try to trick my father.  I have always loved you, Katrien.  Hell, one of the reasons I was so wild is I wanted to be noticed by you.”

“You were noticed.”  I smile, then hug her for all I'm worth.  “Promise me to get Jana to Copenhagen.  When they can't find me, they'll arrest her.  You know that's how it works.”

“You can count on me.”

“Now find me a nice Turkish man to be my husband.  I can't go on
hajj
by myself.”

“I can think of more pleasant tasks.”

Twenty-Three, July 2021

Hajj

A young kid points an AK-47 at me at a checkpoint.  “Your papers.”  I give him my birth certificate, passport, travel documents, and religion certificate.  He glances at them, before handing them back.  He clearly can't read.

Just following orders.

A dozen other border guards stand impassively, wearing gray IRH uniforms and red turbans, AK-47s across their chests, expressions surly and bored. 

It is the middle of the night in a wretched thunderstorm.  Rain-laden winds whip the train.  We halt at a former outpost of the iron curtain.  High wire fences surround the station, lights glowing dimly across the railway, a green crescent flag, and a black-and-white UNI flag droop from forbidding, communist-era buildings, bristling with antennas.

It is like this at every station.

Several hours later, the train gets going again. 

#

Erol Burakgazi sits opposite me, a huge sullen man.  Together his names mean
brave warrior for the faithful
.  A false name, of course, but lovely regardless. 
Someone in the documents department is getting downright poetic.  He certainly acts the part, glaring at any male that glances my way.
  Who knows where Draak found him.  You do not see many Turks with a
zabiba—
a raisin-shaped callus on the forehead that develops after a lifetime of touching one's forehead to the ground during prayer.  I wonder if he lost his faith.  Obviously, if he works for the Resistance his views have changed.  With his
zabiba,
no one questions our stated mission—to circle the
Kaaba
in Mecca. 

After boarding the pilgrim train in Amsterdam, we will switch in Bonn, travel through Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and eventually arrive in Istanbul.  There are no sleeper cars, just six-berth foldout shelves, unassigned.  The women's berths are separate from the men's car. 

Every Muslim must make the pilgrimage once in his life, if they are able to do so.  Before the war, two million people made
hajj
each year.  Despite the risk, the train bulges with pilgrims.  After all, anyone who dies during
hajj
is a martyr, and will go immediately to paradise.  To many it is a vacation from war.

We arrive in Ljubljana, Slovenia around dinner time, and the schedule allows us to wander the town for a few hours.  It is delightful, unmarred by war, a cross between the charm of Italian villages, and the cleanliness of Swiss towns, with terrific food all it's own.  We find a place to eat
c
eva
pcic
i
, a grilled, spiced beef sausage, ubiquitous to the Balkans, served with oily charred onions, crispy hot peppers, and soft pita.  It's the best thing I've eaten in years.

Erol, who has barely said a word to me, compliments me on my appetite.  I think he is being sarcastic.

After dinner, I head to the women's car, find a shelf, and fall asleep.

When I wake in the morning, I dress and look for Erol in the passenger car.  He tells me we are leaving Serbia.  The train crosses a broad, brown river on an iron bridge into an industrial morass of docks, cranes, and chimney stacks rising gloomily into low clouds.  The charm of Ljubljana quickly turns bleak and forbidding.  In Belgrade the architecture becomes monotonous—Soviet-era gray apartments in utilitarian blocks, with an occasional Ottoman remnant.  Thick forests and steep mountains turn into scrubby flatlands, with low treeless hills in the distance.

Across from me, I watch a baby chew on a plastic gun on his mother's lap.

At various checkpoints, IRH soldiers go through the train asking for documents.  They carry out this routine rapidly, barely looking at our faces. 

Five times a day, the train stops so the men can pour out onto the train platform, line up facing Mecca, and perform
salat
.  The women fold their hands in their seats and pray.

A friendly Turkish guard brews tea and coffee on a camping stove in his compartment, and refuses payment from any of the passengers, wishing us safe passage.  “It is an honor to serve pilgrims on
hajj,”
he says.
  I drink a cup of his tea hoping it will bring me luck.

In the late afternoon, someone begins singing Islamic prayers.  Others join in—like a camp song.  That is generally the feeling on the train, festive and relaxed.  It is amazing to me how all of these pilgrims seem completely oblivious to the war and what's going on around them—completely wrapped up in a spiritual delirium.  Some travel with families, so the children ground the women, but the men are off in a world of their own.

Erol plays his part, and spends most of his time with the other men discussing theology, and the minutiae of Islamic law: Is Viagra halal? (Yes.)  Can a Muslim talk while peeing? (Only if asking for water to clean himself.)  Is a sex change allowed? (No.)  Can women watch football?  (No.  They should not stare at men's thighs.)  Can married couples see each other naked?  (Yes.  But they should cover themselves with a sheet while having sex.)  Is it permissible to read fiction? (No.  Fiction is full of lies.)  May men have sex with their dead wives.  (Yes.  No holy book prohibits it.)  I surmise that at one time Erol was some kind of Islamic scholar.  The other men bow and give him a great deal of respect.  They even bow to me, his wife.  Crazy.

The train stops at the Turkish border town of Kapikule for two hours.  Everyone climbs off and gets their passport stamped at a dreary two story building.  While Erol prays, I make my way through the food vendors, and begin to understand why Kazan raves about Turkish food.  I don't know if it is the pregnancy, or the food is really that good, but when my lips wrap around a
börek
, a buttery pastry filled with feta, wash it down with a thick yogurt drink call Jogurt, then crunch on a crisp salad of cucumber and tomato, I think I've died and gone to heaven.  Erol gives me a disapproving scowl that says I am making a spectacle of myself, but I can't keep from moaning.  It's that delicious.

We clamber back onto the train for a short ride to Çerkezköy, where everyone has to get off and onto a bus, headed for Istanbul.

#

Just after daybreak, we step out of the Sirkeci station in Istanbul to a mob of commuters and shoppers, and fishmongers crowding the Eminönü piers.  The air reeks of the oily smell of frying fish and cigarettes.  Homicidal Vespa riders tear up and down the sidewalks, cadaverous black smoke belching from their tailpipes, gleefully scattering everyone.  Slim men, dressed in white, stagger with trays piled with
simits
balanced on their heads. 

I shuffle behind Erol like a good Muslim wife, trying to keep up, grateful for his wide girth plowing ahead like an icebreaker.  I'm completely distracted by the screeching jumble of colors, sounds, and smells, tripping on the rough cobblestones, trying to see as much as I can out of the slit in my niqab.  It feels magical after the oppressive rain, the drab Soviet-era train stations, and the drone of mumbling pilgrims. 

So lively, percolating like a coffee pot. 

As we walk across Galata Bridge, graceful minarets prick the sky, and the dome of Yeni Mosque glints in the sunlight.  The crumbly old wooden houses with square bays tipping over the street, the moss-covered fountains, the Camondo Stairs, twisting down Galata Hill, the Byzantine mosaics near the old city walls, the plane trees shading Aya Pasa—if I could paint, I would spend my life here.

Erol deposits me at an inexpensive hotel to go check out which prison Kazan is in.  “Do not leave under any circumstance.  Do not open the door for anyone but me.”

I do not particularly like being told what to do, and everything in me resists.  “I want to go with you.”  My pride makes me unwilling to tell him that I am nervous being away from him.

“It'll be easier by myself.  I have to meet with the local Resistance, then probably have to bribe a few officials and one or two prison guards.  You'll only slow me down.”

He may be a Resistant, but he still glares at me with the impervious superiority of the Turkish male, humorless, intractable.  I sputter with resentment, but I see his point.  “What do I do if you don't come back?”  

“I'll be back.  Lock up behind me.”

At least he leaves me his gun on the dresser.

The room is decrepit in a charming sort of way.  The walls show various paint jobs, with floral wallpaper peeking beneath where paint has chipped off.  Faded mismatched curtains and bedding.  A Turkish toilet and a shower, no tub.  Dim hallways with old-fashioned timer switches.  But it is relatively clean, and a hot plate sits in a corner, with a tea kettle, tea pot, and a can of loose tea.

I make myself some tea, mentally fuming, but gradually growing calmer.  I open the shutters, sip my tea, and gaze out the window into the busy street.

The view is fascinating—spires and glistening gold-leaf domes, a jumbled of red-tile rooftops, and crooked streets.  The sun blazes out of a bleached muslin sky, and beyond, the gray Bosporus and the Asian side of Istanbul.  Barges on the river blare deep frog-like horns.  In a courtyard across the way, two women hang clothes outside their balconies; in another courtyard, old men in vests huddle around small tables playing chess; a band of Turkish gypsies push a colorful cart down the street, ringing small bells, selling flowers and scraps of junk. 

I suddenly miss Rafik and Jana so much. 

I tear myself away from the window.  Instead of feeling useless and resentful, I should come up with a plan. 

If Kazan is in jail, he will need clean clothes, clean underwear, a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, food that doesn't need refrigeration, and things he can trade for favors: soap, cigarettes, bug spray, bandages, aspirin.  There must be more.  Maybe one of those motorized hand-held fans. 

I need to be prepared to go to Kazan as soon as Erol returns. 

Which means I need to go shopping.  I am dying to explore the city.  I could go now and be back before him.  How dangerous could it be?  Turkish women go out shopping every day.  I'll be in a burka.  No one can recognize me.  What's the worst that could happen?

I decide to wait a few hours. 

Before I left Amsterdam, I sent word to Jean-Luc to meet us in Canakkale, Turkey, where the Dardanelles meets the Adriatic.  It's about 3,600 nautical miles from Rotterdam.  Going an average of 7 knots per hour, he should make it in 21 days.  Unless he decides to go down the Rhine to the Danube to the Black Sea, which would be much shorter, but he'd have to deal with all the locks and barges and inspection points.  He can handle
Allegro
by himself, but I sent along a good chunk of cash from Kazan's safe, enough for bribes, and to hire extra hands.

I have a little less than three weeks to get Kazan out of jail.

The Resistance here is working with a number of lawyers, but lawyers take forever.  As far as I know, all they have on him is a false documents charge, which isn't particularly serious.  He is Turkish—that's in his favor—and they don't know his real name.  And he is Muslim.  For a misdemeanor, bribes should be enough.  He might be able to convince them he is a smuggler rather than a Resistant, or come up with some other plausible reason for carrying a fake ID.  He'll have to come up with another ID to prove his real identity, which will have to be a very good fake, and witnesses to vouch for him.  If they suspect he is a Resistant, we might be able to work some kind of prisoner exchange.  Maybe.  If they discover he is Kazan Basturk, a high level operative for the Islamic State, he might be able to convince them that he is carrying out orders at the highest level.  Or they might hand him over to the Turkish Special Operations Police.  That wouldn't be good. 

The question is, once free will Kazan leave the Resistance?  Can I convince him to sail away?  To find a little happiness for ourselves?

Part of it will depend on how he is treated in jail, if he is tortured or starved or gets one of a dozen diseases that spawn in jails.  He may be too weak, too dispirited to continue fighting.

How can I wish illness on my own husband?

I am ashamed that I've become so selfish since I've become pregnant, but I can't help it.  I want a home for our baby, in a world without war.  I want to sail to the ends of the earth.

Suddenly I am so tired I can barely stand, my head swimming.  I shuffle over to the bed, lie down, and instantly fall asleep.

#

Smells of dill and roasting chicken rise up from below, waking me.  I am crazy hungry. 

I look at the clock.  Erol has been gone for eight hours.  Does he mean to leave me to starve to death?  I can't wait any more.  I'll dip out for twenty minutes, just to get something to eat and pick up a few things for Kazan.  I'll be back before Erol, I am sure of it. 

I slip on my burka and open the door.  In a sudden impulse, I take the gun.

#

The heat of the day has passed and everyone is out in the streets, headed home from work, shopping, stopping for tea at little tables under arcades.  Women with huge bags of groceries, gangs of boys strutting through the streets in lines of five or six, young women tittering in clusters.