Natasha wakes me when the spectacle is over. The Imam declares the Muslim Terminator the winner. The loser is wrapped in a bloody sheet and carried from the arena. The crowd’s had its fun. We leave the box before everyone else gets up. Natasha points out his one weak spot to me to prepare me for my meeting with the Imam. It’s Khalid, his firstborn, 46, unmarried, no children. Enjoying life to the hilt in his penthouse above Alexanderplatz. Much to his old man’s chagrin, he jets around the world and parties with fancy hookers. He’s the steady thorn in the Imam’s flesh. I know Khalid well. He’s my best customer. I sell him every unit I can spare. Khalid pays well. Even a Pusher doesn’t mind a little revenue on the side, you know.
When we make our way down the steps of the arena, Natasha’s treating me like a schoolboy, lecturing me on how to proceed. I just hate it when she’s acting superior like this. After all I’m the one who lives in the Ghetto, while she shacks up with some rich dude in X’berg. What does she have to teach me about life? With a pat on the shoulder she sends me on my way down the corridor to the locker rooms, where I’m frisked by the mayor’s security guy. Then, it’s the turn of the Imam’s Salafist guard to pat me down. Glock and briefcase have to stay behind.
The home-team’s locker room is a sorry sight to behold. The Imam is seated on a simple chair right next to the Jacuzzi. Von Schlotow’s on a little stool beside the man of the cloth.
Bansuri is lecturing the mayor about the plight of his brethren in faith here in Berlin. The crime in the Ghetto, the access controls, the fortifications. So many of his people were languishing in the city’s jails. The new madrassa in Zehlendorf will remedy the situation, Schlotow promises. Bansuri nods happily and seems to be placated. Still, he steers the conversation to the murders in the Ghetto. The crucifix was carried into Jerusalem once, he says. It brought death and destruction over the Muslims, he points out. Then, he takes a deep breath and drops the bombshell: Even though already two dead relatives of his have been garnished with aces of clubs, the Imam has not seen it fit to inform the LKA of these crimes. You don’t usually discuss internal affairs like this with infidels, he adds, full of his own importance.
Schlotow seems to be helpless in the face of the Imam’s arrogance. Before he leaves, he kisses the Quran proffered by Bansuri and walks out of the locker room. When the mayor is gone, the Imam motions me closer. “The messenger of Satan, the scum of the earth,” is his flattering way to greet me. “What does he have for me?” He addresses me in the third person, his voice a hypnotic monotone. When I approach, he issues a staccato of clicking noises. Like a bat getting its bearings with the help of ultrasonic waves, he seems to use echo as a means of orientation. This way, he can probably guesstimate my position. A bodyguard hands him the plastic bag containing the coke. Bansuri sticks his hand inside and fondles the little pouches with a satisfied nod. “Five minutes,” he says.
The shades stop me from seeing Bansuri’s eyes. My first instinct is to check, whether the man is really blind. But the older one of the two bodyguards is watching me like a hawk. I’d rather not find out what he’d do if he reads one of my movements as an insult. “I need to compliment you,” I lie through my teeth. “They say you’ve beheaded six Chechens with your own hand. What an act of courage.”
The Imam eagerly nods.
“However, I ask myself,” I continue, “how the blade has met its mark.”
Bansuri laughs. “The first cut doesn’t need to be the last one,” he hints at the way the execution took place. “It’s enough if the fourth of fifth strike kills. I wanted them to know how much I’ve enjoyed their screams. And I wanted to smell their sweat of fear, when my blow smashed their shoulders and the scimitar dug into their hips. Allah in his wisdom has honed my remaining senses. A blind man perceives the things that count. He can hear the melody of the world, unadulterated by treacherous eyes.” A beatific smile on his lips, the Imam starts softly chanting verses from the Quran.
“There were two more murders before the one of the great Yussuf Bansuri?” I ask.
“Tarek and Abdul, my dear brothers, have died in an ambush carried out by the crusader,” the Imam complains. “May Allah punish him,” he adds with a hiss.
“When did it start?” I want to know.
The Imam takes his time. My straight question seems to annoy him. It obviously makes him feel uncomfortable to discuss a family matter with an infidel like me. He looks in my direction as if to discern what to make of me. “A little over two weeks ago we found Tarek in his tea house with his skull shattered,” he lets me know. “The shisha was still in his hand. I swear, when I get my hands on this crusader I’ll have him tortured. For weeks. Months. Inshallah!”
“Yesterday Ramsan Alchanov was murdered,” I inform him. “An ace of clubs was found with his body.”
The Imam flinches as if struck by lightning. “The crusader kills like a coward,” he tries to mask his deep confusion with a platitude. “Crusaders or Jews, it’s all the same to me. They poison the minds of our young men, seduce our women, and rob us of our culture. If this Christian isn’t apprehended soon, I’ll take the fight out of the Ghetto, inshallah,” he grimly declares.
Bansuri didn’t know anything about the murder of the Chechen, this much is clear. He seems to be shocked, even. Now, I’m really confused. Why should he mind so much, that a Chechen’s been killed? Might he see a connection to the series of murders, which are news for Natasha and me?
With a flick of his hand Bansuri motions to one of his bodyguards to see me out. The audience is over.
8
The Copt’s getting more and more paranoid. Lucas and Quasim continue to encourage each in their hatred of the Lemons. Now, they even badger me to get them some fertilizer to build a bomb. It had to lead to problems eventually that they do nothing but hang out in an underground ticket booth on a subway platform brooding, without ever seeing the sun. Lucas is right of course when he says that the Lemons have been persecuting the Copts for centuries, suppressing them and destroying their culture. But you can’t dwell on the past forever. Life has to go on. Again and again I try to talk sense to him and to cheer him up. Quasim is no real help in this. Most of the time he just sits on the sofa, doesn’t say a word, and numbly stares into space. These bad vibrations are simply more than I can take. I’d love to just walk away and leave the two of them to their own devices. Maybe I’d better look for another place to stay in the Ghetto. There might not be any apartments available, but the tunnels under the city offer many hideaways up for grabs.
I’m not sure what to do. For some reason Lucas has grown to me. Maybe it’s because he’s an honest and decent guy, qualities I’d like to claim for myself. Therefore, it hurts twice as much that he’s blaming me and my drug-dealing for the moral decay all around. He accuses me of infesting the Ghetto with dope. The fact that it’s my only option if I want to make a living, doesn’t count. Even though he also benefits from my business, as I often grumble. The money for meat in the refrigerator had to come from somewhere, right? However, I’d never say so to his face. Not, as long as he’s down like this. I don’t want to find him with his wrists cut when I come home. When I casually mention that the Imam plans to build yet another madrassa, this time in Zehlendorf, Lucas sits up. I just let him vent his anger against the Lemons. Quasim will join the chorus, meaning that the two of them will leave me alone.
Anja’s getting more and more demanding when I take her out. Her blatant materialism exhausts me. All these endless shopping orgies in the fancy fashion stores along Kurfürstendamm. Fortunately, these places now have lounges for stressed-out guys that even serve free drinks. One day Anja points out a diamond necklace to me and tells me, how much she likes it. Hint, hint. She smiles at me. Sex is very involved that night. She pleases me with her mouth for the first time ever. She must really want these baubles. Which reminds me to severely cut down on the free dope samples and to raise the price for Khalid. Priorities. I don’t run a charity organization and I’m not a good
Samaritan either. Once I’ve paid the admission fee to her innermost sanctuary, the demands will hopefully stop for the next few months.
Natasha calls me a couple of times a day, demanding regular reports on my progress. I can’t do anything but ask her for patience. She’s told me that the DNA on the poker cards they’ve found is useless. The worn-out cards have gone through too many hands. Fortunately, there hasn’t been another attack since the assault on the school. But we’re living on borrowed time. The storm will break loose eventually. We both know it.
I fill some vials with neurotoxin, arm my briefcase, and pocket four spare magazines for my Uzi. The Glock’s set back on escalation, step one. Tonight I’ll lay in wait. If this roof-runner shows his face, I’ll catch him red-handed.
9
The muezzin’s just calling folks to five o’clock tea, when I make my way up to the roof of one of the Stalin buildings on Frankfurter Allee. I watch life unfold on the street, lined with car wrecks and garbage heaps, until dusk starts to settle. Wannabees, performing wheelies on their pimped-up motorbikes. Men, beating their wives with belts without worrying about witnesses. Boys, getting a whipping from their fathers. Nothing out of the ordinary. Patiently, I wait until the sun is low on the horizon. Veiled women, six children in tow, scurry home through the twilight to seek shelter inside their apartments until the next morning. It’s not just criminals who live here. But after sunset only gangbangers populate the buildings’ doorways. As electricity gets shut off in the Ghetto, the streets are quickly growing dark. The coughing bouts of sick children fill the night. Does life on other planets look like this, too? Do people who live many light years away also congregate in their places of worship to march in circles around the fragment of a meteorite, lost in trance?
The next morning I’m yawning so much that I almost unhinge my yaw. Besides a few junkies and some teens who stole out of their rooms in the middle of the night nobody has shown up on the roof. I walk down the stairs and leave the Stalin building. Today, I’m not in the mood to return to the subway tunnel.
“Hey, Hauke, yalla,” a homeless guy addresses me. He’s sitting on the stoop of a porticoed doorway. It’s Umit, one of the worst boozers I’ve ever met. He’s close to fifty, his face bloated after thousands of alcoholic binges. Coarse skin, the bags under his eyes could be mistaken for balconies. He’s virtually evaporating booze. His ripe odor keeps the Sharia police away, I guess. Stink to fend off the Islamist guardians of virtue. Life can be really strange sometimes. Umit always carefully combs back his curls. He gels them almost lovingly. He must be very proud of them.
“You’ve fucked with Jihad, yalla,” he slurs.
Jihad. I’ve totally forgotten about this little punk. We’ve left off at escalation step one, if I remember right. “How do you know?” I ask.
“Yalla, Jihad’s sounding off, he’s gonna ice de Pusher, yalla,” Umit replies.
“So?”
“Jihad’s a big guy on de Warsaw, yalla. He’s mighty pissed off, you know.”
“So what? What do I care?” I hand Umit two units of coke. “Guys like him are always pissed off about something.”
“You’d better watch your back, kuffar,” his drinking buddy chimes in.
Umit gives a hoarse laugh. Then he crosses his hands behind his neck and turns his face into the rising sun. It looks like he’s planning to enjoy the warm rays of the celestial body with the help of a bottle of vodka. A perfect day for a homeless dude. His pants are encrusted with last weeks’ urine. Once you’ve reached a certain alcohol level you lose control over your bladder. Before I leave, I give the two of them a casual two-finger salute.
It would be an option to turn around and take a detour to Petersburger Strasse to spend a more or less relaxing day at the Volkspark. But somehow the challenge awaiting me on the Warsaw beckons me. I switch over to the median, where I can hide between the trunks of the plane trees in case of emergency. This early in the morning the street is deserted. The inhabitants of the wooden shacks, set up between the burned-out wrecks of cars, haven’t risen yet. Just a few devout believers are hurrying to morning prayer. I unlock my Glock, open the buckle, and put my finger on the trigger button of the needle in my case. A child excitedly takes off into the building at the kebab store where I had my run-in with Jihad. The kid must have recognized me. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, when adrenaline floods my body. Nervousness dampens my hands. I feel a pulse beating in my neck and my knees start to tremble. Ultimate bliss. Still in his undershirt and a Mac 10 in hand, Jihad comes running out into the street. He seems to mean business. A bare twenty yards in front of me he stops, waving his submachine gun, and starts heaping abuse on many generations of my ancestors. The idea behind it must be to retrace my entire family tree all the way back to Adam and Eve. “Fucker! Fucker! Fucker!” he screams. The impact of my rubber round has left a perfectly round angry spot right on his forehead. I vault behind a plane tree just in time, before he begins manically emptying the magazine of his submachine gun. Hatred cast in lead drills its way into the bark of the tree. But there’s no magazine in this world that will hold enough rounds to satisfy a retarded out-of-control Ghetto teen. When I hear an empty click, I leave my shelter and point my Glock at him while he’s still busy reloading. My first shot zooms past his left ear by inches.
“You missed, kuffar,” he gloats, brandishing his newly loaded gun.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I reply. My next shot hits his shoulder. Escalation step two. Jihad drops his gun at once and starts screaming like a man possessed. His friends rush to his aid, firearms in the ready. Enough time for me to once again take refuge behind my wooden barrier. A plane tree can withstand a lot of bullets. The attackers don’t dare come closer. Armed to the teeth and still quaking in their boots. Respect is something you have to work hard to get.
The persistent honking of a car horn distracts everyone. The shooting stops. I peer out from behind my cover. A low-slung Beemer has arrived. I watch the irate teens begin a heated debate with the driver. The car’s windows are darkened, but I can make out the license plate: “Babo 2”. It’s Cem, the right hand of Selim, the Turkish Godfather. After a while the kids reluctantly turn away from the car, even though they don’t stop cursing me. Jihad, who’s meanwhile convulsing on the ground with pain, is hauled from the street into the kebab store. Two of the guys remain standing in the doorway. They give me the stink eye and aim globs of saliva at the pavement. Cem rolls down his side window and motions me over to the car. “What do you think you’re doing, Pusher?” he asks me, shaking his head.
“Just a little early-morning exercise,” I inform him.
“This block Imam’s block, yalla!” I hear Jihad’s shrill voice from inside the kebab store. He seems to be in a lot of pain. “Babo’s not big boss here, yalla.”
“Get in, brother,” Cem orders. He won’t take no for an answer.
I slide onto the Beemer’s passenger seat. Cem steps on the gas. The teens storm out into the street, threatening me with their guns—but they don’t open fire.
Cem shakes his head. “Aren’t you a little too old to play these games, brother?”
“Why?” I deposit ten units of coke on the dashboard. “There’s nothing but a good tussle to make a guy feel young again.” I grin.
“You’re one weird bastard.”
I study Cem from the passenger seat. “Why am I sitting here?”
“Selim wants to talk to you.”
“So? Really? How come the Babo’s suddenly interested in me?”
“He’ll tell you himself.”
Cem switches gears and makes a turn into Revaler Strasse. He’s about my age and I like him. He looks at things with the eyes of a businessman, just as I do. Without emotions, purely rational. A rare quality among the hot-blooded Lemons. They say he even went to university for a few years as a young man. Physics. But eventually he must have found out that there are easier and faster ways to make money. Cem was already working
for Halim, the current Babo’s father. He was recruited for his brains and also because he’s extremely loyal. “Are you still fooling around with your three steps of escalation?” he wants to know.
I smile instead of an answer.
“This is fucking baby stuff,” he chides me. “There are more important things in life.”
“What could be more important than having fun?”
Cem pulls down the corners of his mouth. “There will be a war,” he sagely predicts.
“So?” I ask, pretending to be bored. “That’s the way things are in the Ghetto, right?”
“Just wait and see,” he warns me. “I’m starting to get very worried here. If the Templar keeps on killing people, we’ll have a real problem.”
“The Templar?” I repeat, feigning ignorance. “You’re buying this bullshit, too?” I emit a groan. “Jesus. A stupid ace of clubs and everyone’s going crazy.”
“Allah have mercy on us.” After kissing his hand, Cem reverently touches a bobblehead figurine shaped like a whirling dervish.
“Why do you Lemons always think that everyone’s out to conspire against you?” I rib Cem. “Templars have died out a long time ago.”
“I know the system behind it, brother. I know what the Templar’s up to. The murders... he’s trying to sic us Muslims on each other.” Cem turns to face me and gives me a reproachful look as if the whole thing was my fault.
“Do you think that I...?”
Berlin 2039: The Reign Of Anarchy Page 5
