Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2)

by Ruth Francisco

  Thank goodness they take the Mercedes rather than the Cinquecento: Ana, Alberto, Gabriella and her boyfriend, Laszlo, and Kazan. Plus a gigantic picnic basket and blankets. Ana does the driving. And the talking.

  They drive southeast into the gray-green wall of the Pratomagno Mountains for about twenty miles. Rolling hills of vineyards and olive groves, guarded by rows of cypress trees, standing like sentries along the hill crests. Even in winter, Kazan can feel how rich the earth is. As if it was almost human, breathing, warm, fragrant, nurturing.

  His eyes drink in the beauty and he feels a little homesick. But he's not homesick for Turkey. It feels like this is his homecoming, as if Tuscany is his home and he's finally returning. It makes him emotional. He thinks if he died right now, he'd be happy.

  Ana drives up a steep curving road to a rustic medieval town, and parks by a tiny chapel that is boarded up and covered with scaffold. They get out. The moist air carries odors of roasting coffee beans, rich earth, and wet stones.

  “We are looking for the two missing panels from Masaccio's 1426 Pisa altar piece,” says Ana, stretching her back. “He painted thirteen panels for the Carmelite church in Pisa, which was dismantled in the early seventeenth century during a renovation. Bernard Berenson discovered the center altarpiece with the Madonna and Child. Ten other panels resurfaced. But the two panels flanking the Madonna are still missing. The only description we have is from the historian Vasari, who described them in 1568 as depicting four saints—Saint Peter, John the Baptist, Saint Julian, and Saint Nicholas. Today we might find them. Isn't it exciting? I got a call from Father Failli, who said he'd discovered two panels in the cellar of this little chapel. Are you ready, Signor Holmes, Signor Watson?”

  Laszlo rolls his eyes at Kazan.

  Ana knocks on the door of a house a half block away, and Father Failli greets her with a ring of skeleton keys. The two of them chatter in Italian as they walk to the crumbly chapel.

  Only Ana and Kazan follow the priest inside. The rest of the family wanders off in search of espresso and a bakery.

  The panels turn out not to be Masaccio, but perhaps, in Ana's opinion, the work of one of his assistants. In any case, they are far too small for the altarpiece, “crude and labored with overworked finishes,” she opines, clicking her tongue in opprobrium. “You can see the foreshortening is all wrong with that little angel. Even if it was painted to be seen from below, it is all wrong. No, definitely not Masaccio.”

  She doesn't seem disappointed in the least, and sets out to find the perfect picnic spot overlooking a valley of trussed up vineyards. Kazan traipses behind.

  “Che bella! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful. It almost makes you believe in God. I live in a household of agnostics, but you, Kazan, I know you understand.”

  She takes his hand, and the two of them gaze out over the rolling vineyards, the yellow winter light, the orange-tiled farmhouses. Below the serpentine road, a narrow stone bridge crosses a roaring brook, part of the old Roman road. Tiny buds of green on the naked pear trees peek through the porridge gray. Winter spelunkers. The sun breaks through the clouds. Dew dappled grape vines glisten like diamond necklaces.

  “Incredible,” she gasps. “Come un quadro.” They look in silence, as they did in the chapel. “I once read that the Quran lists ninety-nine names for God,” she whispers. “All the creative possibilities present in God. What a beautiful thought.”

  “We use a rosary, a subha, to remember them all,” says Kazan.

  “That's all you need to know, isn't it,” she says dreamily.

  It seems strange to Kazan to be talking with Laszlo's mother about God and art. It also seems perfectly natural.

  “We'd better get back to the others before they eat all the olive ripiene. Laszlo will gobble them all if he can.”

  The picnic reminds Kazan of family picnics in Turkey, except for the sandwich meat—coppa, prosciutto, salametto. “Jews aren't supposed to eat pork, either,” says Ana, “but when it tastes like this, how can you resist?” No one does.

  For Kazan, the three weeks in Italy pass like a dream. Every day a revelation. The museums of Florence, the beaches of Viareggio, three days skiing in France. No one in the family talks about politics. Their interests are art, nature, and really really good food.

  “How did you like my family,” Laszlo asks on the train back to Berchtold. He hands Kazan a pancetta his mother had made for the trip.

  “I think they are the most wonderful family in the world.”

  Laszlo laughs. “A bunch of loonies. Tutti pazzi.” He picks out the prosciutto and dangles it above his lips, guiding it into his mouth.

  Kazan decides to ask his father to send Ana Luzzatti a Turkish rug next time he calls. One with the muted colors of Tuscany in winter. He wants her to know he'll always remember.

  After he and Laszlo return to Berchtold and throw themselves into classwork, he thinks about Italy and the Masaccio and the rolling hills of Tuscany. He wonders what it would be like to have parents who act like enthusiastic tutors.

  When he falls asleep, he is afraid he'll wake up and find himself back in a cinder block hut in Turkey.

  But this never happens.

  Ozymandias

  Spring is riotous in the mountains. Kazan lies awake at night listening to the creeks rushing with snow melt. He jumps out of bed when the birds start chirping, the perfume of alpine flowers greeting him, the cold metallic smell of melting ice. He can hardly believe the school year is almost over.

  “Are you going home for the summer, Laszlo?”

  “Nah. I'm going to Israel to work on a kibbutz.”

  Kazan likes the sound of that. He would like nothing more than working on a farm over the summer. Laszlo couldn't care less. “Ana wants me to go. She thinks it's important to experience our Jewish roots. There's nothing to do there. Except milk goats. I guess I'll read a lot. What about you?”

  Kazan shrugs. He feels a gray dread blooming inside his chest. He feels lost. Many of the other students talk about trips they'll take with their parents—Africa or Vietnam or Tibet—some glamorous adventure. Some will intern at embassies. Others will go to expensive camps—tennis, dressage, computers, mountain climbing. Their lives are constant activity.

  Kazan yearns for the peace of his village. And yet, he has a scary feeling that he will never go back.

  The next day he gets a letter from his father.

  Ahmed has decided to move the family to Amsterdam. Since he already has a business incorporated in The Netherlands, moving there will not be difficult, although there is much bureaucratic paperwork. He doesn't say anything about their home in Turkey. Is he selling it? Is the land so worthless and he so rich that he can just leave it? What about the other people in the village? They depend on his father's handouts to pull them through rough patches. Is he going to abandon them? What about the village school, which his father financed?

  On the one hand, Kazan is excited about moving to Europe. He can hardly wait to explore the cathedrals and bridges and canals. On the other hand, leaving his village in Turkey is like ripping his heart out. It seems like a huge betrayal. “Amsterdam is full of opportunities,” his father writes, but the word opportunity simply makes Kazan think of the word opportunist.

  A week later, Ahmed calls and tells him to take the train to Zürich that weekend, and gives him the name of a restaurant in which to meet him. It's the first time Kazan has traveled alone, and he is very excited. He takes a bus down from the mountains to Lugano. From there, he takes a train.

  The train ride thrills him. Impossibly high bridges entering impossibly long tunnels. White clouds billowing down steep mountains. Chiseled white faces of snow. Streams gushing out of the sides of rock like broken pipes. Fields of yellow flowers. He feels the brutal beauty of the mountains, chilling and cutting his insides like ice crystals.

  In Zürich, the train station is spotless, the passengers well-groomed and polite. Everyone moves purposefully, without rushing. Tal
king on cellphones or into headsets. He hails a cab, and gives the driver the address in German. The driver answers in Turkish. When Kazan pretends not to understand, the driver gives him a crooked smile and says, “Once a Turk, always a Turk.” Kazan is embarrassed and feels ridiculous not revealing himself, yet stubbornly refuses to say something in Turkish.

  The cab stops in front of Restaurant Parkhuus, an ultra modern building with floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides, each window framed in chrome. Kazan pays the driver and walks inside. “Enjoy yourself,” says the cabbie, chuckling.

  Kazan wonders if he looks like a rube to everyone, or just to Turks.

  Inside the restaurant is all chrome and light and percussive noises—chairs, pans, German, Italian, and French clanking against each other. By one bank of windows, he spots his father, dressed in an expensive suit—English tailoring, Italian wool. A bottle of champagne sits in a bucket next to the table. His father gets up, hugs and kisses him on both cheeks—“Sit down, sit down. How wonderful you look. How you've grown. Two inches at least”—and pours him a glass of champagne.

  His father explains the move to Amsterdam. “Turkey is becoming more and more conservative. I'm not sure how long it will be a good place for business. The fundamentalists are gaining ground every day. I don't know . . . .” His eyes drift to two men entering in white thawbs.

  “We're Muslim. Why is that a problem?”

  Ahmed watches Kazan sip from his fluted champagne glass. “You like it?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  Ahmed smiles and gives a half-hearted chuckle. “We were hoping Turkey would become part of the EU. But the more fundamentalist it becomes, the less likely that will ever happen. It screws up my business plan. It's simply easier to have our base in Amsterdam.”

  “School ends in late May,” says Kazan tentatively.

  “I suppose you are wondering where to go.”

  Kazan would like to join Laszlo in Israel, but knows how absurd it would be even to mention it. “Can I visit Faruk in America?”

  “We'll see. Maybe at the end of the summer. I would like you to stay with your Great Uncle Osman here in Zürich. He runs an antique store.”

  It suddenly dawns on him that he is part of his father's business plan. “Is that the family business?” asks Kazan.

  “We are in the import/export business, which includes antiques,” Ahmed explains. Which explains nothing at all. “We will go visit your Uncle Osman this afternoon. How do you like your fish?”

  #

  They cross the river to Alstadt, the oldest part of the city. After parking, they amble through the crooked cobblestone streets of 18th century row houses, all jumbled on top of one another like box cars in a train wreck. Kazan finds the narrow lanes charming, the tipsy little boutiques and shops.

  Ahmed stops in front of a pink row house, with a rectangular bay window protruding from the second floor over the street. Gold letters on a swinging sign spell out Ozymandias.

  Through dusty windows, Kazan peeks into a cave of hidden treasures. An old Anatolian brass bell, tied to the doorknob, clanks when they enter.

  Turkish and Persian rugs hang on the walls, red and blue, orange and tan. A wilderness of bronze, softy glowing in the lamp light. Tall elegant bronze water pitchers called dallah, brass platters and candle sticks with arabic tracery, scimitars, Kilij swords, and curved knives, cypress wood tables inlaid with ivory in chess-board patterns, 18th century Ottoman faience, sets of solid silver Zarf coffee cups, enormous ceramic urns on black pedestals. Dusty peacock feathers stick out of bronze vases. Several low upholstered chairs, tucked and shirred, backs puckered with buttons, in leather or brocade with tassels. Turkish chairs, he later learns.

  “Guten Tag,” booms a voice from the back.

  Uncle Osman unfolds his large body from behind a counter and shambles to the front of the store. He is tall and lumbering, yet with a certain grace about his movements. He wears a European business suit, red fez, and red velvet slippers, and maneuvers through the crowded store without any collisions. Tree trunk arms crush Kazan in a bear hug.

  Uncle Osman is actually Kazan's great uncle, Ahmed's father's brother.

  “Welcome! What a handsome young man you are,” Osman says, grinning, slapping Kazan's shoulders. His sixty-five years clearly show—drooping earlobes, shaggy white hair—yet his face has a boyish quality, clear amber eyes, perfect white teeth. “I'll have to put you in the front store. All of Europe resents Islam, but they can't get enough of our antiques. Especially the young ones—rebelling against all that Ikea white Formica and blond wood, I suppose. They yearn for clutter.” He laughs, gesturing at the store. “They come in asking for Turkish coffee grinders. Quite the fad. Can't keep them in stock.” He points at a small battalion of brass cylinders in the front.

  “Your Uncle knows diamonds better than anyone in the world,” says Ahmed, changing the subject. He casts a disdainful look at the antiques, as if afraid of contagion.

  “Diamonds?”

  “Well, yes. In back. Let me show you. So how do you like Switzerland, Kazan?”

  “It's so clean.” Kazan cringes hearing himself—How lame can you get? But no one has asked him that question before, and he hasn't had to put into words all he feels.

  Osman pulls aside a brocade curtain on brass rings, revealing a locked metal door with a glass panel. He taps a combination on a keypad.

  They step a thousand years into the future. Science lab white. Kazan sucks cool air-conditioned oxygen into his lungs; it tastes of ice.

  On one side are glistening glass tables, locked steel cabinets, and white leather stools. Behind a glass wall on the other side is a workshop, with one area for cleaving rough diamonds, another with a laser sawing machine for cutting, a girdling machine, and a polishing machine, which looks a bit like an old record player. Two older men are working, heads down, with loupes strapped to their heads. The workshop must be soundproof. Kazan hears only the slightest machine noise under the piped-in classical music.

  “I mostly do diamond appraisals at this point. Sometimes I consult on high-level faceting projects. We still have the knowledge, the know-how, the patience, to work on difficult and very expensive stones,” he says.

  “What will I do?”

  “Whatever I need you to do,” he says jovially. “A little travel here and there. You'll get to know Antwerp rather well. Eighty-four percent of diamonds still pass through Antwerp. Indian traders are taking over from the Jews, and most of the cutting and polishing goes to Mumbai, Dubai, and Botswana, where labor is cheap. But at one point or another, they still come through Antwerp. Old traditions die hard.”

  Kazan's father makes a disapproving grunt.

  “That's all there is to show. Have you eaten? Would you like some coffee? Tea?”

  Ahmed shakes his head. “We just had lunch. Kazan needs to get back to school.”

  Kazan nearly says that isn't true, that he doesn't need to be back until tomorrow, but catches himself in time.

  “Of course,” says Osman graciously, smiling at Kazan. “We will have lots of time to get acquainted. I look forward to it.”

  Kazan thinks his father is acting rude and weirdly tense, but it isn't his place to say. He likes his great uncle. He likes his easy, joking manner, and how he talks to him as an adult. His father's behavior makes him feel ashamed.

  “I'll see you in a month,” Osman says cheerfully.

  As Kazan takes the train back to school, he realizes he forgot to ask where he'll be living. Upstairs, he imagines. Or maybe Uncle Osman has a house somewhere else in town. The diamond business is interesting enough, but he looks forward to working in the shabby antique store. And listening to his uncle's stories.

  He imagines he has lots of them.

  Thirteen, May 2020

  Assassination

  I choose a team of five. First a woman named Draak from a cell in Rotterdam, whom I've used before. A petite spider of a woman in her mid thirties, Draak was a tattoo art
ist in a former life; an intricate green-ink jungle of jaguars, snakes, and monkeys, vines down from her shoulder, over her buttocks, right thigh, and calf. Draak means dragon. Since tattooing is forbidden in Islam, she never had a choice but to fight in the underground. She is an expert marksman. Draak will arrange to pick up five .22-caliber semi-automatic Beretta handguns with two full clips for each of us. She hand-packs the cartridges, reducing the load—for this job, the range and penetrating power of the firearms is less important than quietness and concealability. Her guns will make only a quiet pfft when fired.

  Draak and I will pull the triggers. Women are better at close work. Burkas provide a perfect disguise and cover for hidden weapons. Also, if we're caught, the Landweer go much easier on women. Or they have in the past. That, of course, could change.

  I could've chosen to use a sniper rifle, and used the team for surveillance. But Gerda thinks it leaves a stronger message to do close work—not when a target is exposed, but when he feels safe, at home or surrounded by friends, when he least expects it. A sniper rifle is harder to conceal, the get-away more problematic. Close up, there is no mistaken identity. A sniper is a specialist; there are few of them. But anyone can shoot and kill at six feet. A small group of people working in concert is more frightening. They could be anyone. Anywhere.

  The others on the team will be from Watergeuzen. I don't want Pim involved. “The team will have to disappear—separately—for several weeks,” I say to him. “That's protocol. I can't bear the thought of not having you around.”

  He gives me a tight smile. “You're getting married. What do you care?”

  I try not to wince. “I will still see you.”

  “Really? Do you really think your new husband will let you run around Amsterdam by yourself? Nasira will be your only contact. Gerda will insist on it.”

  I feel a horrible squeeze in my chest. He's right, of course. We have to assume my movements will be restricted. I will be someone's property, without free will.