Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (6 page)

“You don't have to wear it inside, except at school.  And if men outside the family visit your home.”

“So many rules.”

“It's not so bad.  You'll get used to it.”

Katrien isn't sure.  She doesn't like the cloth over her ears.  It makes her scalp itch, her neck sweat.  She pulls it off and throws it on the bed. 

“What about her?” asks Joury, pointing to a poster of Laura Dekker over Katrien's bed. 

“What do you mean?”

“If the
mutaween
come in here, they'd rip her down.”  Joury looks almost titillated by the prospect, which annoys Katrien.

Laura Dekker, who set off to circumnavigate the world by herself when she was fifteen in a 38-foot Jeanneau Gin Fizz ketch named
Guppy,
is
Katrien's idol.  Half of the sailing community in The Netherlands saw her off, including Katrien and her father, standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the docks of Den Osse in Zeeland.  All after a court battle with the Child Welfare Office, which had tried to prevent her from leaving.  Katrien followed every leg of Laura's trip, reading her weekly blog in the
Algemeen Dagblad
—from her official start in Gibraltar to the Canary Islands to Cape Verde to Sint Maarten through the Panama Canal to the Marquesas Islands to Australia and around the Cape of Good Hope.  After seventeen months, Laura arrived in Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten on 21 January 2012.  When the war broke out, she was sailing from Tahiti to New Zealand. 

Her blog has stopped.  The Internet is down.  Yet every night Katrien dreams about her, hoping she is sailing, wind blowing in her hair.  Hoping she hasn't been stopped in some country overtaken by Islamists. 

“I'll make her a headscarf.”  Katrien finds a piece of black construction paper in her desk drawer, and uses scissors to cut a form, eying Laura's head as she cuts.  She sticks tape on the back of the cutout, and presses it firmly around Laura's head.

“That's pretty good,” says Joury giggling.  “It really looks like she's wearing a headscarf.”

“I hope it blows off in the wind,” says Katrien.

The two girls look at the poster.  Laura's expression, which had seemed defiant and scornful—
Landlubbers are assholes!—
now
looks downright militant. 

“Where do you think she is now?”

Katrien shrugs. 
Stay on the sea, Laura,
she silently pleads
.

She looks around the room.  What a mess.  She begins picking up the scarves and tossing them back in the box, then leaves it. 
“I'm hungry.  Let's get something to eat.”

#

When Joury's mother comes to pick her up, she is wearing a full burka with a veil.

Before the Occupation, Joury's parents were moderate Muslims, who spoke out against Islamic extremism.  Her mother was loads of fun.  She ran her own toy manufacturing company, and invited children into her factory to test toys.  She even had a special room which she rented out cheaply for birthday parties.  Everyone adored her.  Every month she gets more conservative.  Since women can no longer vote or hold jobs, except teaching girls and nursing in women's wards, Joury's mother stays home.  She wears her burka even in the mosque, like the old women from Yemen, and will only take off the veil when she is in her own house. 

It makes Joury rebellious and a little crazy.  Which worries Katrien.

From the time Joury was four, her mother talked about her going to university to become a doctor.  She bought her a microscope when she was eight, and had a special savings account for medical school.  Now she wants Joury to marry at sixteen.  “A woman's place is in the home.”

The two girls watch as Joury's mother scans the room, making sure they haven't been trying on lipstick or something equally disgusting.  “Time to go, Joury.  Get your things.  Ahmed is waiting for us.”  Ahmed is her driver.  She won't drive any more.  Won't leave the house unless escorted by a male relative.  She peppers every sentence with, “
Alhamdullilah.” 
Like Tourettes.  It makes Joury giggle.  Which makes Katrien giggle.  Which makes Joury's mother scowl.

She forces Joury to wear a
burka
even though she's too young.  As her mother drags her out of the house, Joury lifts her veil and sticks her tongue out at Katrien.

The Purge 

Katrien has never been to a Carnival celebration, but this is how she imagines it.  Lots of noise.  People in the streets.  Spontaneous bonfires.  Gunfire.

She climbs onto her bike, and spins madly through the streets, her teeth jarring as her wheels bounce on the bricks, hurtling up Prinsengracht, standing on her peddles up over the bridge, swerving around other bikes, cars parked on both sides of the street, shoved up on sidewalks, obstructing the shuffle of nervous pedestrians.  She tears down Leliegracht, hunched over her red-ribboned handlebars, three more bridges to Singel, past the statue of the writer Multatuli, toppled on his side, past Villa Zeezicht, which used to have the best apple pie in the city, up past Westindisch Huis, where the West India Company privateers hid Spanish silver, then over to Spuistrasse, and up to Prins Hendrikkade.

She bikes through alleys of broken lamps, brick buildings covered with bullet holes, spilled blood turned into brown stains. 
She passes crumbled bricks of century old churches, past broken windows of Jewish businesses, shuttered coffee houses still smelling of hash. 
She darts around gangs of thugs, heads wrapped in black, shouting
Allahu Akbar,
smashing glass windows, smashing Delft pottery, blue and white, so delicate, so fun to smash, slashing paintings and antique vases.

Everywhere she passes slogans laminated on windows of closed stores, quotations from the Quran.  Warnings.  AS TO THE THIEF, MALE OR FEMALE, CUT OFF HIS HANDS (Quran 5:38).  THE ONLY TRUE FAITH IN GOD'S SIGHT IS ISLAM (Quran 3:19).  Or a poster of a woman in a burka. MY SISTER, GUARD YOUR VEIL  MY BROTHER, GUARD YOUR EYES.

Horns honk in her frenzied wake, her calf muscles burning, her cold ears tingling.  She bikes over the Open Havenfront.  The closer she gets to Centraal Station, the more people she sees, thousands and thousands, women in burkas, like crows, men waving green crescent flags, youths pounding their fists in the air, shaking empty machine guns. 

She locks her bike at the train station, then runs as fast as she can, swimming downstream, through billowing burkas, pushing yards of black cloth out of her face. 

She sees ghostly shadows—Pieter and Rafik's angry faces, arguing hotly last night.  “At least make sure Jana and Katrien are out of the city.” “Jana won't leave.” “Nothing will stop them.  You're not going to win.  You have no weapons, no army.  You can't hide a million books.”  “Somebody has to stand up to them.  They cannot destroy all of our books.  Not the library.” 

The Islamic Council decided the central library will be made to a mosque under a new program of mosque construction. 
All of the books, other than Islamic texts, and a handful of other noncontroversial books, must go.  The library is to be gutted. 
Imam Fawaz Jneid
pledges to build new mosques wherever a church or synagogue stands, plus hundreds of others.  “Our goal is to have one mosque for every thousand people by the end of the year.”  That means 800 mosques for Amsterdam, up from the 44 current ones.

Katrien doesn't know what any of this will mean.  To her family.  To her life.  Only that her father is standing up for what he believes in.  She wants to be with him, by his side.  

Somewhere someone shouts slogans in Arabic through a bullhorn.  A baby cries.  People shout.  A soldier with panic in his voice demands the crowd move away.

The bridge between the two islands, Stationplein and Oosterdokskade, is solid bodies.  Katrien grabs handfuls of black cloth and pulls herself through.  She nearly loses her headscarf, tugging it frantically, ducking, hand on her head, determinedly pushing forward. 

She stumbles onto the boardwalk and sees smoke billowing into the sky.  The crowd shuffles toward the enormous fire like moths to a flame.  Centrale Bibliotheek looms above, obscured by the mix of smoke and gray drizzle.  She runs, swerving, ducking, darting—it seems so far—until she breaks through the wall of people.

The bonfire burns hot, and the crowd gives it a wide margin, their faces glowing, luminous, red from the heat.  They chant, “
Allahu Akbar, La ilaha illa-Llah.
”
 
God is great, there is no god but God
.  Dancing orange flames reflect in their eyes, feeding their passion. 

A hundred thousand books burn in the flames, pages curling, wafting into the air with bright red edges.  The stack is as high as a city bus.

“Allahu Akbar!”

She leans down and picks up a book at her feet. 
A Brief History of Time. 
The only thing she can think of is,
Why brief? 

She clutches the book to her chest, and looks for her father.  There he is, on the steps, arm-in-arm with students and professors, chanting something she cannot make out.  She waves and cries out to him, but he doesn't hear her.

IRH soldiers push the students aside to allow boxes of books to be carried down the steps and dumped into the bonfire.  The students lock arms, trying to keep them from passing, but the soldiers muscle through.

So many books, it will take a week to burn them all.  As each box of books is dumped into the fire, the crowd cheers, many reciting passages from the Quran.

A soldier passes around a box of books for people to take one and throw it into the fire.  Faces radiant with revenge.  It is so much fun to burn things.

Grand Mufti Fawaz Jneid has called for a peaceful transition, but the soldiers lose patience.  One soldier jabs a student in the ribs.  The student grabs the rifle barrel, and pushes the soldier down the steps.  Everyone starts pushing and shoving, and Katrien can see her father shouting for them to stay calm, but cannot hear what he is saying.  The soldiers get more aggressive, knocking heads with billy clubs.  Students, knocked unconscious, tumble down the steps.

Hysteria catches flame, igniting the crowd.

A soldier panics.  A machine gun rattles, and a half dozen students grab their bellies, blood dripping down their bodies.  The crowd screams, and stampede away from the fire, but the throngs hold them in, and they push and fight.

Katrien steps toward the fire, the only place where she won't get trampled.  She sees her father, shouting, gesturing for the students to back away.  Another machine gun rattles.  His body jerks, his eyes widen, his body falling, stepped on by soldiers and fleeing students.

She cries out and runs toward him, and suddenly feels herself lifted high into the air, as if the screams and heat of the fire were lifting her like a hot ember, high into the air and across the gray water into the darkness.

Five, 18 March 2020

The Package

Waalseilandsgracht at night. 

Pim and I sit parked by the quay.  A few boats bang against the docks, their owners in a tea shop on the other side of the road.  The Islamic Council still enforces a curfew.  But after eight long years, many are willing to take a chance, especially along the riverside, slipping in and out of the shadows, exchanging contraband, seeking out a prostitute or a place to have an illegal beer.  A place to joke, to commiserate, to share your grief.  But in tonight's deluge, no one is out.  Except us.

Rain pummels down, battering the van roof.  The windows are fogging.  I wipe a peek hole, and can barely make out the boatyards of the Noord across the Het IJ.  Along the canal, boats are jumping like panicked horses, waves churning and smashing against the sea walls.  Dark shapes of barges appear through the scrim of water, their bow lights tiny flecks passing, swallowed up again by the dark.  I worry we will miss them.  I worry the fisherman will prefer to sit in his warm cottage in Spakenburg rather than risk his life for a few euros. 

The newspaper delivery van we sit in is black, with
De Waarheid
written in white script on the sides.  A little conspicuous if anyone bothers thinking about it.  There are no newsstands by the docks.  At least it's black.

“The money's all arranged?” Pim asks.

“On delivery,” I say.  “I have it right here.”  I pat the pocket inside my tunic.

“Niemands?”

“Yes.”  We call our financier Niemands, Nobody, a common Dutch name. 
Who finances your raids?  Nobody. 
In case we break under interrogation.  He still works for a bank, manipulating stocks, writing fake bonds, “borrowing” from safe deposit boxes, funneling money to all of the Resistance groups.  None of us knows what bank he works for, or his real name.  He is nobody.

“Hear that?” says Pim.  I crack open a window.  A boat grinding into a lower gear putters toward us, a shadow puppet against the gray fog, slipping toward the dock without lights.

I get out of the van, sneak across the road, and squat by the water's edge.  I wear a black
shalwar kameez
and black hood. 

I draw a quick circle with a tiny flashlight.

The fisherman at the helm of the boat raises his hand.  He pulls up to the dock, tossing me a bow rope, which I figure-eight around the dock cleat.  The boat motor sputters on idle.  He doesn't intend to linger. 

A second man stands, and hoists two canvas bags onto the dock.  He lifts up the smaller girl beneath her arms, and I grab her around the waist.  He helps up his wife and the older girl, then climbs out.  They are all soaking wet, miserable as drowned rats, huddling.  “The van is over there,” I say pointing.  The man picks up the bags, but doesn't move, waiting for me.

“I'm grateful you came,” I say to the fisherman, as I hand him an envelope.  His grin shows crooked teeth with gaps.  Not a particularly friendly grin.  The people you end up trusting in this business.  He pockets the money inside his rain slicker.  The boat starts moving slowly, puttering away in the dark, invisible.

I lift the smallest girl on my hip.  It's no more than fifty feet to the van. 

Suddenly a black Volkswagen Touran turns onto the boardwalk.  It slides down by the docks, its headlights landing on the delivery truck. 

“Get down!” I shout, herding the family behind a pile of crab traps. 

The car stops and two men get out, arms drawn.  They walk up to the driver's side, ordering Pim out.  Pim stays seated and rolls down the window.  He hands them a newspaper and starts his normal banter, but it doesn't seem to be working.  Shit.  He's on his way to getting arrested. 

I quickly realize Pim is putting on a show to give us time to get away.  I don't want to break us up.  But a group is vulnerable.  Ducks in a shooting gallery.

“Take the girl,” I whisper to the man, handing him the five-year old, who is mewing in fear.  I touch my finger to her lips, and she stops.  I motion to a dumpster.  “Go.”

The man runs, carrying the girl over his shoulder.

A car door slams.  The sound of gunshots.  Not at us.  I don't know what's happened.  Pim isn't in the van, the passenger side is open.  He must've made a dive out the passenger door.

The backseat door of the Touran opens.  A man uses the door as a shield, gun on the window.  He shoots, and I think I see Pim scrambling around a warehouse into an alley, leading the first two Landweer away from us.

I expect people to run out of the buildings, but nobody appears.  The shots muffled by the sound of rain.  Behind the dumpster, my refugee waves that he's okay.  The third Landweer stands up from behind the open car door and walks to the van, cautiously opening the back. 

“Walk quickly,” I whisper to the woman.  The three of us dash behind the dumpster to join the other two. 

The officer finds nothing in the van.  I hope he'll follow the other two men who disappeared after Pim, but he walks back to the Touran.

I don't have a gun.  I don't dare grab the van.  I point down the boardwalk in the opposite direction.  “Follow me.  Stay close,” I order.  We walk as fast as we can without running, hugging the edge of the buildings, around a corner, down a block.

After a few blocks I think we're out of immediate danger.  I pull the family into a recessed doorway. 

“Where are we going?” the man asks.

There's no way to get to Enkhuizen tonight.  We'll miss our connection to Creil.  “I'm sorry.  Things went sideways back there.  I'm taking you to a safe house for the night.  Tomorrow morning, we'll go by train.”  The man nods.  “It's just a few blocks.  We're under curfew.  Stay close.”

We walk a few more blocks through what was once Amsterdam's Red Light District.  The windows,
tableaux vivants
of sexual fantasy, are either boarded up or display religious texts.  One abandoned whorehouse is a rug shop, another sells burkas
,
another is an Islamic “community center.”  Rumor is that despite outward appearances, some of the old activities still take place in back rooms.  Apparently many influential Islamists in government can be found there in the evenings.  The prostitutes are slaves brought in from Africa, or arrested here on various religious crimes and given a choice of death or becoming sex slaves.  Our group has helped several women escape, but it is highly dangerous and risks our other operations.  Generally we only help women who manage to escape on their own and seek us out.  We get them out of the country up the
Varken Weg
to Denmark.

We slip into an alley behind what was once a theater.  After it was shuttered, it was made over into a warehouse.  But the old dressing rooms have been left intact,  providing short term hiding for refugees.  I pound on the door.  Three slow knocks, a pause, five quick raps.  An older bald man opens the door.  I know him as Spook, as in
Het Spook van de Oper, Phantom of the Opera.
  He was the theater manager before the ban on plays and musicals. 

Behind Spook stands Pim, eyes wide with relief.

My body trembles with gratitude, but there's no time.  I hustle the family in before me and shut the door.

“I hoped you'd make it,” says Pim emotionally.  This was our meeting place if something went wrong.  “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I'm fine.  We need to get them out of their wet clothes.”

“I'm sure we can find something,” Spook says, coming up behind after bolting the door. 

Backstage smells strongly of mothballs.  There are probably trunks of old costumes hidden away.  No wonder Spook is smiling.  I can imagine what costumes he has in mind.  I recall
Dream Girls
was the last show before the Islamists shut them down.  Sequins for refugees?

As Spook takes the family into the dressing room, I notice blood on Pim's sleeve.  He sees my horror and smiles.  “The other guy's.  One of them took a shot at me from behind, and got his partner in the shoulder.”

“Jesus!”  I turn him around for a second look.  The rain has made the blood seep down his entire back. 

“I have to go back,” says Pim.  “The van is too valuable.  I took the keys, so they'll have to tow it.  They'll go into one of the tea houses to wait for a tow truck.  When they're inside, I'll jump in the van.”

“They have the plate number.  They'll track it down.”

“It's a fake plate. 
De Waarheid
has sixty vans and four distribution sites.  By the time they get to checking with the managers, the van will be back in the lot.” 

“It's too dangerous.”

“If the van goes missing, our guys will get into trouble.  I have to warn them.  Their work area may get searched.  They need time to set things right.  And if I can't get the van, they'll have to come up with a story about it getting stolen.”  He opens the door to leave.  “I'm sorry, Lina.  You have a backup plan?”

“Always,” I say more confidently than I feel.

“Good luck, then.”  With that, he disappears down the alley.

I walk back into the dressing room.  Six cots line the wall opposite the makeup mirrors.  The children, naked and wrapped in towels, dry their hair by the potbelly stove at the far end.  The mother has already changed into black slacks and a black turtleneck.  Not a costume.  Probably worn by stagehands for darting on and off the proscenium.  Her heavy abaya
steams by the stove and smells like a wet horse blanket.

“I have some beans and turnip bread,” Spook says.  He is spry, with rounded shoulders and a rim of white tufts below a bald pate.  I imagine him playing Richard III.  “You're lucky I didn't have other guests tonight.  You hungry?”  He sets bowls around the table using old theater programs for place mats.  A revival of
Godspell.
  I'm guessing the play
wasn't a sellout. 

I am starved, but I need to leave.   

I thank him and tell him I'll send someone around with extra food coupons and money, which makes him happy.  I tug the father to one side.  “Who knew about the pickup?  Someone tipped off the Landweer.  Your host in Spakenburg?”

“No.  Nobody.  Only the milkman who told us when to meet the fisherman.  Maybe someone on your end?”

I know the “milkman,” a friend who goes by the name of Salie, which means sage.  One of our best operatives.  Not him.  I run through the list of people who knew about the pick up.  Me, Pim, Rosalie, Gerda.  Rikhart made the ID documents, but didn't know the time or place.  Someone might have followed our van from the
De Waarheid,
but Pim is a good driver.  He would never allow us to be followed.  I shake my head.  “I don't think so.”

“There's always the fisherman.  The Landweer pay for tips.”

I certainly hadn't liked the looks of the man in the boat, but it doesn't make sense.  “He has a good gig with us.  I don't think he'd risk it.  The people of Spakenburg support the Resistance.  He would lose business if anyone found out.”

“You never know.”

Precisely.  You never know. 

I step out of the room for a moment to check a camera monitor of the back alley.  Stage managers once used it to help stars avoid paparazzi.  The alley is empty.  Nobody has followed.  I go back to the dressing room, and hand the father four sets of passports and internal identity papers.  “
La familia
Caputi.  You are Italian immigrants from Calabria.  You live in Leiden.  You are Dutch citizens.  Burn your other IDs in the stove.  I'll pick you up tomorrow morning at seven.”

Signor Caputi grabs my forearm, his eyes wretched, his hand trembling.  “What if you don't show up?  What then?”

“I'll be here.  Don't worry.”

“What if you aren't?  What do we do?  Are you going to leave us here to rot?”

I understand his truculence.  He is frightened.  No man likes to appear powerless in front of his family.  I write down an address on a slip of paper and hand it to him.  “If I don't show up in two days, go to this address.”  He looks at the paper, grimacing as if in pain.  I suddenly worry that he caught a stray bullet.  Even a twisted ankle could prove fatal now, bringing attention to the family as they pass.  Then I realize he's trying not to cry.  “You must be strong,” I say.  He nods and drops his chin.  I put my palms on either side of his face and force him to look at me.  “Eat some food.  Get some sleep.  Tomorrow I will get you and your family out of here.  On the road to safety.”  His face relaxes.  It was only momentary panic. 

It is the least we can do—breathe courage over dying embers.  It doesn't take much to make the fire roar again.  His eyes darken with resolve. 

Before I leave, I pick up a towel and walk over to the girls by the potbelly stove.  “Come here,” I say to the eight-year old, “and I'll dry your hair.”  I pat my lap.  She hesitates, then climbs on my knees.  She has her father's mouth and eyes.  Too much guilt for a child's face.  She must know her family is running for her.  I gently rub her hair with the towel.  “Nobody knows you are here,” I say.  “You are safe.  Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because this is a very old theater.  It has seen hundreds of plays about kings and knights and wizards.  When an actor hangs up his costume for the last time, the spirit of the character refuses to disappear and stays here in the theater.”