Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2)

by Ruth Francisco

  “The guy who was in the back seat and took a shot at you?”

  Pim nods. “The two other guys went into the dockside restaurant to wait for the tow truck, just like I figured. I waited ten minutes, then slid into the van and took off. When I got back to De Waarheit, I parked the van and told our guys to be prepared for a raid.”

  “You don't think it was a coincidence, do you, the Landweer showing up? They don't go on patrol. They only show up if someone gives them a tip.”

  “True, but the Landweer didn't charge the van. And they didn't have backup. It's possible they were just cruising the area.”

  I don't believe in coincidences. “What did they say to you when they first walked up to you?”

  “They demanded my ID. Then asked why I was delivering papers so early.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I was getting my load out early so I could meet my girl. They asked me to open the back, and I told them I had to get the key out of the glove compartment. Then I dove for the passenger door.”

  “That was risky.”

  Pim licks his finger and dabs up the last of the chocolate sprinkles left on the plate and sucks them into his mouth. “I couldn't let them get the van and trace it back to our guys at De Waarheid.”

  “Why were they there in the first place? They travel in twos. Why was there a third guy in the back seat? Who was he?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Who else knew about the pick up? Only Rosalie, you, me, the fisherman. And Salie?”

  “No, not Salie. He knew when, but not where. I called him, and told him to keep an eye on the fisherman. If he starts splurge spending, it means he's taken a bribe. Salie doesn't think it's him.”

  I stir my coffee slowly, the sugar long dissolved. “Somebody may have seen the van leave De Waarheid, called it in, and told them to be on the lookout for a newspaper van.”

  “I suppose it could be someone at the newspaper. But we weren't followed. Someone knew there was a pick up at that exact spot. Have you talked to Rosalie? Maybe she was arrested. Who was your contact?”

  “Nasira. I'm meeting her at the mosque this morning.”

  “Gerda needs to know there's a leak.”

  “I'll tell her.” I wipe my mouth and lean closer. “You mentioned something was going down at the Grand Hotel Amrath Amsterdam? A delegation from the United Nations of Islam Supreme Council. You said something about planting bugs.”

  Pim squirms. “I did say I'd tell you about it, didn't I?”

  I smile. “Yes, you did.”

  “You never heard this, okay?” He leans forward. “They are coming on Friday. There's been a lot of leaks about it. Leaders of ISIS and al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri from Pakistan, and Omar bin Laden, head of UNI forces. The Grand Mufti of Holland, Fawad Jneid, and the Supreme Chief of the Landweer, Shirzad Sahar.”

  The last name makes me give an involuntary gasp. Shirzad and I have a history. “Do we know what the meeting is about?”

  “We have an idea. The war has been at an impasse for the last few years—the UNI wants to make a major advance.”

  I write a name on a scrap of paper and slide it over. “Will he be there?”

  Pim looks at me, surprised. “Gerda gave this to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “A homework assignment?”

  I nod. “Can you get me inside? With my homework?”

  He looks at me skeptically, flicks on his lighter, and burns the paper. “I assume you're asking me not just how to get inside, but for help with the homework assignment.”

  I smile meekly.

  “Taking homework into the hotel might not be the way to go. Too many witnesses. Better to find out where he's living. Or target him afterward, when there's less security. You're going to need a team.”

  “So you'll help me?”

  Pim takes his time brushing crumbs off the table, collecting his breakfast dishes, and putting them in the sink. His face expressionless. An anxious hot flash sets me on edge—I know he heard me. We always help each other. Has he accepted another mission?

  He slowly turns. “Okay, I'll help you. On one condition.”

  “What's that?”

  “Marry me.”

  I jump in my seat and gasp.

  “Just a joke.” Pim looks away, hurt, blushing. “Of course, I'll help you.”

  “Pim, don't . . . I'm sorry.” I worry my face looks as panicked as I feel. “It's the word, not you,” I say reassuringly.

  He nods, then sits back at the table and takes my hand. “Either one of us could get picked up at any time. Agreed?”

  I shrug. Wanting to pull away. Wishing I'd never come.

  “We make a good team,” he says. “We risk our lives every day. Can't we even have small comforts? Skin against skin. You are almost twenty. You've got to choose soon. At least think about it, Lina. Don't we deserve some happiness?”

  I haven't told Pim the choice has already been made. I can't bear to. He'll be so hurt when I finally tell him. He may never forgive me. I may never forgive myself.

  “Okay,” I say. “I'll think about it.”

  Mosque

  There are three places women are free to go—malls, markets, and mosques. Malls and markets are always crawling with armed guards, yet much of our networking goes on right under their noses. In the mosques, women gather in the women's section, exchanging news, scheming, passing on false identification papers. It is, perhaps, the safest place in Amsterdam for such business.

  Even here, one needs to be careful.

  It is close to noon. Several dozen women linger in the womens' prayer hall. Some quietly praying. Elderly women, still in their burkas, sit on benches and chat along the wall. Young mothers with babies, who look grateful to be out of the house. Preteens in headscarves, huddled in corners, showing off their forbidden nailpolish. And a lone girl with an open Quran on her lap, reciting Surat Ar-rahman, rocking, repeating the verse over and over. Her face has the glow of a true believer.

  Or the brainwashed. Depending how you look at it.

  I pray two rakas' greetings to the mosque. When I don't see Nasira, I find a corner and kneel, I stretch my arms on the floor over my head. If God can find me here, he can find me anywhere.

  I pray for the Syrian family. I pray for their safety and happiness. I pray for all the Resistants who are helping them along the Varken Weg. After every mission, I come to the mosque and pray like this. It calms and centers me.

  The loudspeaker crackles on, and the imam begins his lesson for the day. He cites Quran 4:34. "Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient. Admonish those you fear may be rebellious; banish them to their couches, and beat them."

  He preaches our favorite passages.

  Nasira shuffles in and kneels beside me. As I sit up, she pulls off her veil. She looks ashen, her beautiful black skin rough and dull, her eyes, round and wet.

  “What's wrong?” I ask.

  “They took Rosalie.”

  I gasp. I don't trust my expression, and bend down face to the floor. Nasira copies my position, her face turned to me. “How?” I whisper.

  She points and we move to find a corner far away from the loudspeaker and the other women.

  “The Landweer has been watching our group for weeks,” she whispers. Nasira and Rosalie belong to the Onderduikers Redding, the group responsible for refugees, which is particularly vulnerable because of its constant interaction with strangers. “We are all being watched. Shirzad Sahar has been preparing dossiers on all of us. We thought we were being careful. They laid a trap at a safe house behind a dry cleaners. A Landweer agent saw Rosalie go there to warn them. He checked his dossier and she matched another agents' description. They took her to the police station.”

  “Which one.”

  “The Hoffdbureau van Politie.”

  I nod. That
is where Rafik works.

  “The Landweer hung out at the same address all day, arresting anyone who came to visit. They demanded names and addresses. One of the Resistants had a false ID in his shoe with a list of contacts.” A sob catches in Nasira's throat. “Rosalie was my partner. For five years.”

  “I'm so sorry.” I had no idea Nasira was gay. I think this is the worst part about living under Islamic fascism—all the secrets we keep, they weigh on us like tombstones.

  Nasira squeezes my hand, then asks, “Did anyone see you with her at the fish market?”

  “I don't think so. I am pretty sure I wasn't followed. But you can never be completely sure.”

  Nasira takes a small package out of her bag, and passes it to me beneath her billowy sleeve. I take it the same way, hiding it under my sleeve, then slip it into my bag. “Give these to Rikhart. He'll know what to do with them.”

  I don't ask, but can guess. Nasira gets legitimate passports and IDs from people who have died at the hospital where she works. Rikhart makes them over into fake papers. It is easier than starting from scratch.

  “Be extra careful, Lina. Don't go to any place you normally go. My inside contact tells me Shirzad is doubling the size of the Landweer. He has issued a manual in Dutch about what forms of torture to use and for how long. Please don't take chances. They say he personally authored it.”

  I can't help groan. “Nasira, I have to ask you. Do you think Rosalie told where I was picking up the package?”

  She bows her head. “Everyone talks. Eventually. You need to get a new set of papers.”

  #

  We leave the mosque and walk down Prinsengracht, pausing in front of 263, where the Anne Frank House used to be. We go out of our way to pass this way. To pay our respects.

  As school children, we made numerous fieldtrips to the Anne Frank House. We all wanted to be like her—brave as her. She stood for everything we Dutch believe in. Resourcefulness, freedom, self determination, hope, loyalty, bravery in the face of tyranny. We memorized parts of her diary. The Anne Frank House was a church of a sort for the Dutch, a secular church, to honor the ideals of Western democracy.

  When the Islamic Council took power, they did a house-to-house search for copies of The Diary of Anne Frank. There were over a million copies in The Netherlands. They didn't find them all. Thousands of copies are hidden all over Amsterdam—under floorboards, behind loose bricks—secreted away, to be used during protests, waved in the faces of IRH soldiers.

  You can be arrested for owning a copy. If found guilty, you'll get eighty lashes.

  “When does it open?” Nasira asks, looking at the half-finished mosque in front of us.

  “I heard they plan to open it for the tenth anniversary of the Islamic Republic of Holland.”

  “Twenty twenty-two? They have a lot of work to do.” I can't see her face, but the lilt in Nasira's voice says she's smiling.

  The Islamic Council wants to build a mega-mosque and community center, an extension to Westerkerk, which stands next door. It is what Islamic armies have done for centuries. As soon as they conquer a new land, they tear down the churches and synagogues, and build gigantic mosques. The Umayyad in Damascus, the Ibn Tulun in Cairo, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the mosques of Cordoba, all are built on the ruins of Christian churches.

  They even tried to build a triumphal sixteen-story mega-mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan. That building never happened.

  Despite twenty-four hour security, mosque construction is slow, enduring continuous vandalism and sabotage. Building materials are stolen. Graffiti appears overnight—a gigantic ANNE or AF. Saboteurs let construction proceed for a few months, then toss a grenade. Eight years later the mosque still isn't complete, the inside unfinished, the windows boarded up.

  It sits there, reminding people of the sacrifices people will make for their freedom.

  Two IRH soldiers are coming our way on the other side of the street. We leave in the opposite direction.

  Chop-Chop Square

  We approach Dam Square from the west through Spui Square, an open air market where many go to barter their possessions for fresh food. Down the center, a row of green crescent flags snap in the brisk wind. We quickly walk past.

  “The stoning begins at eleven o'clock,” I say. “I heard it is a woman today. She was found guilty of adultery.”

  “Which probably means she was raped,” adds Nasira.

  I nod. The mutaween argue that no man would ever rape a woman unless she drove him to it with her lascivious behavior. She is evil and must die. The man, of course, is the victim.

  Rape is almost never reported, for obvious reasons.

  As we enter Dam Square, several dozen women shuffle by in burkas. Men huddle in groups, mingling after the midday prayer. Mutaween and armed IRH soldiers scurry in and out of the old Royal Palace, now called the Osama bin Laden Mosque and Islamic Center.

  The old Royal Palace was built in 1665 as Amsterdam's town hall, a symbol of mercantile excellence and republican pride. Now a muezzin calls from the cupola five times a day, his eerie amplified voice echoing through Medieval Amsterdam. Citizens' Hall has been converted into a prayer room; other rooms are now administrative offices for the Islamic Council and sharia courts.

  East of the mosque, is Dam Square, site of the first stock exchange. I remember it being full of tourists and pigeons. Now, after Friday noon prayers, “enemies of the state” lose their heads or hands. After the prisoners are executed, they are lifted up on sharp poles, staked through the base of their skulls, and left to rot outside the Royal Palace.

  To demonstrate to us Allah's merciful love.

  Purple-faced corpses swing like metronomes in the wind.

  A large crowd has already gathered to see the spectacle, and we push to the front to get a good view. It is important I see it.

  We stop by every Friday, not out of morbid curiosity, but to harden our resolve. It is easy to get used to oppression. The human spirit yearns for normality, and will create it even in the most vile of circumstances. I have read how even in Nazi concentration camps, people filled their days with “normal” activities. Making the best of a bad situation. It is hard to be angry all the time. To keep up the fight.

  A black Mercedes pulls into the middle of the square. A young woman about twenty-five is roughly pulled out of the back seat. She is beautiful, with long blond hair. She stands stoically, hands bound, without a veil, because she is disgraced. They want us to see the suffering in her face.

  A mutawa unrolls a piece of paper, and, like a town crier, reads the woman's crimes. The crowd murmurs, shocked that any woman could behave so lewdly. It's all lies, of course. A soldier stuffs a rag into her mouth to gag her, strips her naked to the waist, and ties her to a post. The mutawa then recites Quran 24:2: “The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of them with a hundred stripes.” As if that is not enough, he reads from a Hadith: “If an adulteress is married, there is one hundred lashes, then stoning to death.”

  The first thwack brings no blood, but her body jerks, and a pink diagonal slash rises on her back. By twenty, her back is red with blue bruises. She twists and turns, trying to save herself, her anguished groans unbearable. By fifty, you can hear flesh tearing, and by seventy-five, her back is a bloody hash tag of red bleeding gashes, her moans now whimpers. By ninety, her knees give out and she hangs unconscious by her wrists. The flogging goes on.

  Nasira and I clutch each other, our hands white knuckles.

  A truck appears and empties a pile of fist-sized rocks in a pile. The mutawa orders a soldier to splash her with water to wake her, then turns to the crowd and tells them to begin the execution. Men and women rush forward to the pile of rocks, grab them, and begin throwing them at the woman. Rocks thud against her body, which jerks in all directions as she is hit. The crowd hollers taunts as they pitch stones, yelping in victory when they hit her head. Blood pours in rivulets down her face. Finally she topples over.

>   I can't take any more. I grab Nasira's arm and we leave.

  Later I learn the stoning went on for two hours. A doctor finally pronounced the woman dead, her body hoisted up on a spear in front of the Royal Palace. A warning to all women not to let themselves get raped.

  Arrests

  With Rosalie captured, Nasira will have to go underground or be secreted out to Denmark. Out of action for a month or two. Whenever I leave one of our group, I always wonder if I will ever see them again. People disappear out of each other's lives all the time, in an instant. Every time I say goodbye, it could be forever. Often it is.

  After we part, I stop on the corner and buy a newspaper. The vendor today is an Egyptian Christian who fled after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. He calls himself Muhammad. The vendor changes often. All of them use the name Muhammad. I think they are all members of the Resistance, but I can't be sure, unless he has a message for me.

  Muhammad eats a falafel while he waits for customers. A glob of tahini sticks to his beard. “Try the crossword puzzle today. It's a bit of a challenge,” he says.

  I buy a copy of De Telegraf, place change in a shallow dish so he doesn't have to touch me, and thank him.

  All the major papers in Holland have been bought out by EyeUniverse, the Islamic television mega-media conglomerate. They fired all of the reporters, and replaced them with Islamist propaganda writers. I scan the paper, which tells me how brilliantly jihad is progressing. It doesn't mention the victories of Coalition Forces under German direction in Romania and Bulgaria. We have our own methods of finding out information. The only reason to buy the newspaper is to learn the weather. And to read the crossword puzzle.

  Today the crossword puzzle tells me that the Fredrika Maria has moved to the Southern Canal Belt.