Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (26 page)

Immediately we walk out of the entrance into the street.  Less than two minutes have passed since Kubaisi walked into the building. 

We cross the street and down a few storefronts to Kaart's Opel, quickening our pace as we near.  The Opel is pointed away from us, and we can see Kaart watching our approach in the rear view mirror.  I swing open the back door, and Draak dives into the back seat.

“Are we aborting?” Kaart asks.

“No, he's dead.  Let's go,” commands Draak.

The car leaps into traffic, down the street, and around a corner.  Kaart pulls up behind a van, with Pim and a local Resistant driving
.
  Draak and I get out and climb in the van, while Kaart parks his car, which will be picked up later by another local Resistant.  

After Kaart gets in the van, we drive twenty minutes north, following the Maas River.  The van drops off the four of us just outside of the small town named Den Bosch, then takes off.  Two cars sit opposite, parked on the side of the road, waiting.  Pim and I get into one car, Draak and Kaart go in the other.  The cars drive in different directions, and will deposit us at different train stations. 

We report to no one.  Whoever ordered the hit will see it written up in
De Telegraf. 
The four of us will never speak of it to anyone.

All of us will make our way home on our own time.  Kaart will spend a week with his parents in Zwolle.  Draak will return to her underground work in Rotterdam.  Pim will stay in Den Bosch for a day, then hitch a ride with a friend to Amsterdam.  Garret will retrieve the money and document caches, sweep the safe house, debrief the local Resistants who helped us, then off to another mission in Belgium.

I will catch the 7:40 PM train to Amsterdam.

It begins to rain.

#

Pim and I hold hands in a car at the train station in the small town of Valkenburg, just east of Maastricht.  Built in 1853, it looks like a little Versailles.  I wonder who they were trying to impress, and if Valkenburg had some strategic importance at the time.  What false promises were made to get funding?  I imagine a small-time mayor with a gigantic ego, fretting over stone and lumber shipments and incompetent contractors, making his wife miserable with his late hours.  He doesn't even notice that his daughter has a suitor and is smiling for a change, or that his son has grown three inches in the last year, smells of cigarettes, and is reading Karl Marx.

I think about anything other than what I am feeling.

Water drizzles down the windshield, and I notice it seeping in along the top of the door.  No one is around.  I feel so heavy.  I can't move.  I have no desire to get out of the car.  I am turning into stone.

Smells of wool and sweat radiate from Pim's damp pea coat.  I sense his weight beside me.  I hear his breathing.  I don't dare look at him. 

And then I do.

He is staring at me.  He puts a hand behind my head, pulls me to him, and kisses me deeply.  He pulls away to breathe with a sound somewhere between a groan and a sob. 

We pounce on each other, kissing, savagely yanking at each other's clothes, driven by a compulsion I don't understand, but can't resist.  Clawing through thick turbulent waves, I pour all my disappointments and fears into him.  All my rage.  I want to claw out of my skin, out of my body, like some alien monster, and swallow him whole.

We break, gasping for air.  I beat his chest with my fists, not hard, and he shackles my wrists with his hands, containing my fury.  I resist, every muscle and tendon twitching and fighting him.  Then all the energy goes out of me.

We sit in silence, steaming up the windows.  Moist and uncomfortable.

“We have the safe house for a few more days,” suggests Pim.  “We could go there.”

I think of the early years, when Pim and I would rent safe houses together, posing as a young couple—it had felt so natural, almost real.  I look out the car window and see a woman in a burka scampering down the station steps, trying to get to where she's going before someone notices she's alone.

“I don't want to give the bastards my virginity.  It means so goddamn much to them,”

“Shall we go?”

“I have a bottle of wine,” I say, smiling.  Pim turns the ignition.

Pim drives back to Maastricht like a madman, and miraculously finds parking.  We hardly breathe.  Every part of my body is tingling with a rush of blood.  We dash up the stairs, scramble into the safe house, and stumble into the living room, barely aware of our surroundings, glancing out the corners of our eyes for a soft landing.  We kiss and tear off each other's clothes, struggling and yanking at zippers and buttons, squirming with need, tumbling onto a couch.

The front door creaks open.  We freeze, so far gone we don't even lurch for a weapon or roll into a fighting stance.  Deer in the headlights.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” Garret says, before turning into the living room, my burka in his hands.  “Oh,” he says, courteously averting his eyes while I grab for something to cover up.  “I . . . I was just making sure we didn't leave anything behind.  I'll come back later.”  

“You do that,” grumbles Pim. 

After Garret hastily retreats—“The door was open . . . I'll just lock it on my way out . . . I'll leave your burka here . . . sorry . . . I didn't know . . . I'll go now”—we start laughing.  I roll off the couch in hysterics, completely unhinged, whooping and giggling, finally stuffing an accent pillow in my mouth to muffle the racket.  Pim lies on his back, face red, his chest thumping on the floor in spasms of hearty laughter.

Finally we calm down.  I look at his white skin and notice he has a scar on his chest over his right nipple.  I've never even seen that much of him before. 

I sit up, look into his blue eyes, and see he is thinking the same thing I am.  This was an insanely stupid idea.  Sex now would feel compulsory, compensatory.  Flimsy and stale.  Closing the gate after the horses have stampeded out. 

I reach for my clothes.  “I can still catch the 7:40,” I say. 

Pim nods and begins to dress.

I pull the bottle of wine out of my bag. 
Clos des Papes Chateauneuf du Pape 2008.
  I imagine Kubaisi spent close to 100 euros, and wonder what he was celebrating.  An anniversary with his mistress?  Perhaps his wife agreed to a second wife?  The graduation of a son?  Something personal that merits breaking the law.

For a moment it humanizes him.  My stomach lurches, queasy.  I don't want to think of the monster I just killed as a husband or father or lover.  

I can't get over how that woman who came up behind Kubaisi looked at me.  Eyes of revulsion.  As if she knew what we were about to do.  As if she blamed people like me for the war.  Us terrorists.

I tell myself that terrorists are people who shoot innocent bystanders.  We do not target innocent lives.  We do not tolerate large numbers of innocents to be killed.  We do not want to impose our religion on other people.  We are fighters, engaged in a war against the enemy.  When we strike, we inspire hundreds of thousands to resist fascism.

I wonder if the difference is enough to justify the bloodshed. 

“Pim, I want you to know, if I could choose, I'd choose you.”

He looks at me hard, then nods.  “Let's go,” he says, buttoning up his shirt.

I leave the wine for Garret.

Fourteen, March 2011

Chia

Kazan and Laszlo are eating lunch with a pretty girl named Diane, when Michael Chalhoub and Khalid Chahine from the Muslim Club sit down beside him.  They ignore Diane, pretending she isn't there, something a highly-privileged debutante from Greenwich, Connecticut is not used to. 

Michael starts in talking about how Muslims will make up a majority in Europe by 2050.  “It's simply a matter of demographics.  For a culture to sustain itself, the fertility rate must be 2.11.  Look at Europe.  France has a fertility rate of 1.8, England 1.6, Greece, 1.3, Germany 1.3 Italy 1.2, Spain 1.1.  With a fertility rate lower than 1.3, it is impossible to reverse a population decline.  But the average fertility rate among Muslims is 8.1.  In the Netherlands and Belgium, fifty percent of the babies born are Muslim.  The fifty-two million Muslims now in Euope will fuck their way to a Muslim continent.  I'm not saying this to be provocative.  It's just the truth.  In a few decades, Europe will be Muslim.”

His diatribe just sits there for a few moments, until Diane says, “Did you know that 22 percent of all Nobel Laureates are Jews, but represent only 0.2 percent of the world population?  Muslims, on the other hand, won only 0.01 percent of the Nobel prizes, yet represent 23 percent of the world population.”

“You are a racist,” says Michael.

“I merely stated a fact,” she says, standing, tilting her chin upward.  “Besides, Islam is not a race.”  She flips her very pretty blond hair, picks up her tray, and saunters to a table of girls.

Kazan feels Laszlo's body tense as the boys turn their attention to him, the only Jew around right now. 

Laszlo eats slowly, deliberately, changing the grip on his fork.  “She has a point,” he says.  “Maybe if they spent less time defending their invisible friend, their minds would have room for creative and scientific exploration. 

Absolutely the wrong thing to say to these two.  But it does make them get up and switch tables.

Around midnight, Kazan notices Laszlo hasn't come to bed.  He climbs out of bed and wanders the corridors of the dormitory, hoping to find him in one of the lounges.  He walks past the resident, who is watching television in his room, and down the stairs into the quad.   

Flood lights on the main villa makes it look like a wedding cake among the dark hills.  The cold air stings his lungs.  His thick socks freeze instantly on the cold ground.

Laszlo sits in a snowbank, face bloodied, staring up at the stars.  He doesn't respond when Kazan calls his name.

Kazan kneels beside him, and sees he is conscious.  He is shivering, his lips gray.  “You making snow angels?  I thought you didn't believe in them.”

Laszlo doesn't even blink.

“Com'on.  You've got to get up.  You can't stay here all night.”  Kazan takes his hands, pulls him up, and hauls him upstairs to bed.

“You know those assholes write poetry?” Laszlo whispers, as Kazan rolls him onto his bed.  “They're all into it.  They have competitions.  They quote it to each other, tears in their eyes.  All about 'the blaze of truth,' and 'the land of glory has shed its humiliation, and put on the rainment of splendor.'  They love that word
rainment
.  Poetry and fucking videos of beheadings.  Osama bin Laden wrote like a thousand poems.”

“I didn't know that.”  Kazan takes off his shoes and tucks him in.  He doesn't think Laszlo really means to equate Michael and Khalid with bin Laden.  He's just blowing off steam.

Laszlo doesn't inform on Michael and Khalid, and refuses to let Kazan say anything.  But somehow everyone knows.  They look at his black eye and know.  He becomes introverted, and more
truculent
, his comments so biting Kazan feels them pierce his skin.  Kazan cracks jokes and tries to be funny.  To jolt him out of his foul mood.  Nothing gets through to him.

Part of him says that he doesn't have time to worry about Laszlo's mental health—he is studying hard for his International Baccalaureate diploma, and is worried his French isn't good enough—but he makes sure to spend at least an hour a day with him, hiking or studying together.  He doesn't know what more he can do.

Finally he goes to Professor Heimlich and asks him to have a talk with Laszlo.  Could he maybe ask the guidance counselor to call him in?  “We know all about it,” Professor Heimlich says, patting Kazan on the shoulder.  “Laszlo is getting the help he needs.”

“What help?  What does that mean?  Drugs?”

“I cannot discuss his situation with you, Kazan.  You know that.”

“But he isn't getting any better.  Please.  He's my best friend.  He's brilliant.”

“I'm quite aware how brilliant he is.  He is dealing with some issues, some decisions he has to make.  He has to make his own choices.”

“What choices?  Why won't he talk to me about it?”

What Laszlo chooses to do is spend a good deal of his time at Volkshaus Pub, drinking beer and getting drunk.  It doesn't take much for him.  After one sip, his personality seems to change. 

It worries Kazan.  He thinks nothing in the world is worse than seeing a friend sink into despair and not be able to do something about it.  He gets stomach cramps and tosses in bed, unable to sleep.  He doesn't know what to do.  He needs to study.  His concentration is off.  Exams are coming up.

The next afternoon during biology lab, Kazan takes an Ehrlenmeyer flask from the refrigerator, sprinkles several dozen cooled and dopey fruit flies onto a glass slide, eyes them under a microscope, and patiently separates the red-eyed fruit flies from the green, blue, and yellow.  He counts, makes notation, then taps them into four separate flasks with bottoms smeared with fresh agar.  He glances at Michael Chalhoub on the other side of the room, leans over to Laszlo, and whispers into his ear.  Laszlo's lips twitch into a smirk. 

Kazan lifts an Ehrlenmeyer flask by its narrow neck and taps the side.  Red eyes, warming up, zip from one side to the other.  The flask quietly disappears into his book bag.

Michael and Khalid spend their evenings in the Muslim Prayer Room talking with their friends.  It is easy to sneak into their bedroom.

“Jesus, how long have you had these,” asks Laszlo, “they're like mush.”

“I got them from the kitchen composter.”

“The riper the better.”

“Get it on the wall all around the headboard, all down the side.  That's good.”

“Let's do the bathroom, too.”

Laszlo laughs, and smears banana around the base of the toilet and around the mirror.  The textured off-white walls barely show the mushy fruit.

Kazan then takes the Ehrlenmeyer flask from his bag, uncorks it, and shakes it over Michael's bed, and in the bathroom.  They dash out of their room and close the door.

Michael's scream wakes them the next morning.  Kazan bolts up and looks over at Laszlo who holds up a finger, signaling to wait.  They don't want to be the first ones at the scene of the crime.  More screams and curses.  Laszlo grins, and the two of them get out of bed, bumping shoulders with other boys as they stumble into the hall, tugging on their pajamas. 

Several dozen boys crowd outside Michael and Khalid's room—“Fucking fruitflies everywhere!  Get them off me!  Fuck!  They're everywhere.  Jesus Christ!”

“What happened?” asks Kazan.

“Chubby's B.O. is so bad he's got fruitflies.”

“Smells like garbage in here.”

“Smells like Chubby's farts.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” screams Michael, and the louder he curses, the more the boys laugh.

Kazan looks at Laszlo, who lifts his chin, then ambles back to their room to get dressed for breakfast. 

It's the only thing anyone talks about.  Bananas are a particularly popular breakfast item that morning. 

“Have you heard of a Chia Pet?”  Kazan tears off the top of a banana and takes a bite, watching across the refectory as Michael gets pelted with banana peels.  “They were big in America in the 1990s.  You put these tiny chia seeds in holes in a clay sculpture, spritz it with water, and the seeds spout and grow over night.  You get like a furry green animal.”

Laszlo's eyes light up for the first time in a month.  “Where do you get chia seeds?”

“Any healthfood store.  They're supposed to be really good for you.”

“He'll have spies watching his room.”

Kazan thinks for a moment.  “He takes his laptop to the library to do his homework, right?”

“Sure.  He sits by the spiral staircase so he can oggle the girls walking up the stairs.”

“What a perv.  We only need a second.  I'll get one of the girls to ask him to help her with her homework.”

Kazan buys an eighth of a kilo of chia seeds at the healthfood store.  While Heidi distracts Michael, Laszlo sprinkles chia seeds between the keys on Michael's laptop,  lightly sprays the keyboard with water, and wipes off the keys.

The next day, Michael comes back from morning class to check his computer.  “What the fuck?  Who the fuck did this crap?  Jesus!”

Again, the boys on the floor hear the commotion and, with tight smiles of anticipation, converge on Michael's room.  They take one look at his computer and howl with laughter.  His keyboard is covered with a pretty green lawn growing up between the keys.

“You learning to play golf on your keyboard, Chubby?”

“Haven't you heard of virtual golf?”

“The crud must grow from his filthy hands.”

“He never washes, you know.  That's why he uses his left hand to wipe himself.”

Michael pushes them away as they take cellphone pictures and post them on Twitter.  One picture is posted with a pithy haiku.

#

Michael Chalhoub and Khalid Chahine never discover who is pulling all these pranks.  They become known to everyone as Chubby and Chin-Chin, which means
penis
in Japanese. 

Their computers are favorite targets.  Life-size photos of foreheads are pasted to the top of their laptops, so it looks as if someone is using their computers, throwing them into rages.  They find faux milk spills made from dried glue on their keyboards.  And faux poop.  Khalid can't get any icons on his computer to work.  Nobody can figure it out until he takes it to the dorm's computer geek.   “You've been punked,” he says, smiling with admiration.  “Someone took a screen shot of your windows home screen without any programs up, reset your background screen, and hid the task bar, rendering your home page inactive.”  He fixes it in a minute.

Someone lays bubble-wrap on the floor of the dorm kitchen, so when Khalid sneaks in the dark for his 2 AM snack, he steps on it.  Gunfire.  His hollering wakes the whole floor, and they find him cringing under a table, waiting out the attack.  Bubble-wrap shots become the latest fad, scaring students around every corner, until Headmaster Bollinger bans it.

One cold morning, Michael goes out to his car.  Someone has covered it with wet cotton balls, which froze to the car overnight.  He has to wait until afternoon when the temperature gets above freezing to take them off.  Another time he goes to start his car, and it won't go anywhere, the back tires spinning.  Someone had jacked up the back and slipped a cinderblock under the rear axle.

Laszlo's mood improves dramatically.

Kool-Aid

When Kazan arrives in Amsterdam for the first time to attend Faruk's engagement party, the first thing he notices isn't the charming tottering houses and canals, but all the women walking about in headscarves and burkas.  It doesn't make sense to him.  Why do they wear burkas in the freest country in the world?

He hasn't seen his family in five years.  He enters a house crowded with relatives.  Where did they all come from?  Most he's never met—never knew existed—uncles and aunts and cousins, all who converge on the house, all who seem to know him, peppering him with compliments.  He meets his two youngest sisters, Seda and Yasmin, four and two, for the first time. 

The house is luxurious, a modern rectangle of glass and steal, a million miles from the dirt floor house he grew up in.  Rabia and all of the other women seem perfectly at ease with the new luxury, wearing silk and gold bangles.  Even Nil, his great aunt, an old woman who never wears anything but black, seems perfectly comfortable ordering about the servants, putting her feet up on damask ottomans, sipping tea.

They speak Turkish in the house, with some English tossed in.  He hears no Dutch.

He is relieved to see his Uncle Hamza, a stocky, gregarious man whom Kazan hasn't seen since he was a boy.  Uncle Hamza has always been much easier to talk to than his father.  He has lived in Amsterdam for thirty-five years, the first in the family to embrace Western culture.  His two daughters live in California.  His wife died of breast cancer several years ago, and he has not remarried, but has a Swedish girlfriend.  The girlfriend does not attend family gatherings.  

Kazan takes a walk with Uncle Hamza around the Artis Zoo in Plantage.  He asks him why the women in the family are so religious all of a sudden.  “They never prayed five times a day or veiled
.”
  His uncle laughs and gives Kazan a long passionate hug.  “The women were very uncomfortable when they first moved here.  They didn't know Dutch, their English was poor.  Everything was strange and new to them.  They felt isolated.  Several Turkish women invited them to the local mosque, and they started going regularly.  The Muslim women are very supportive of one another.”