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

I knock twice, pause, three times quickly, then two bangs.  Someone I don't recognize opens the door.  For a moment I am terrified.

“As-salam alaykum,”
I say, head bowed.

“Salam
yourself,” he says gruffly.  “Pim is upstairs.”

I breathe a sigh of relief, my face hot under my veil. 

Just last month I went to deliver new IDs and food coupons to two Internet hackers who lived in a house in Oud Zuid, south of Vondelpark.  When I knocked, two Landweer answered the door.  The Landweer
are a paramilitary force set up by the Islamic Council to fight the Resistance.  Like Hitler's Gestapo.  They wear dark blue uniforms and caps, with light blue shirts.  Everyone is frightened of them. 
Without missing a beat, I handed them a jihad recruiting flier, and started an amiable conversation, telling them how I had tried to get the owner of the house to
come to Friday prayer, but had not been successful.  The Landweer
were predictably annoyed.  They have astonishingly little interest in the faith they so happily kill and torture for.  They told me no one was at home, and to go on my way.  The two hackers were executed
at Chop-Chop Square the following Friday. 

I try hard not to think of our losses.  There are too many.  

I climb the stairs and find Pim working with tweezers on a listening device, his blond hair hanging over his eyes, his nimble fingers quickly knitting his magic.  He is wearing corduroy pants and a shirt patched at the elbows with red thread.

“Lina!  Come in. 
Hoe gaat het
?”

“How did you know it was me?”  I pull off my hijab and shake out my curly dark hair.

“You really aren't invisible, you know.  You take the stairs two at a time.  I don't know how you can do it in that black sack
.
”

I laugh.

Pim and I are good friends. My heart's brother,  I would do anything for him.  He’s cute and funny, and I know he'd like to be more than friends.  Perhaps I would like that, too.  But none of us can risk romance. 

Amiable and soft-hearted, he has an irrepressible talent for looking on the bright side of things.  Once, before the ban on cafés, Pim and some friends were sitting on a terrace drinking beer, when a bomb went off in the canal, sending a geyser over the tables.  When he retells the story, he recalls the sudden shower as, “astonishingly refreshing,” and says the evening of mortar shells and tracers, “added a festive air to our little party.”  He cannot be flustered.

He always makes me feel things aren't as bad as I know them to be.

Before the Occupation, Pim was an exterminator of household pests—rats, mice, roaches—of which any city built on water has plenty.  He knows intimately all the nooks and crannies of Amsterdam—abandoned warehouses, back storerooms, little houses tucked away in hidden cull-due-sacs—which come in handy in his new line of work.  Everyone comes to him for favors.  A garage to hide a car, a tank of airplane fuel or gasoline, he'll find it.  He can get you a Genoa salami or bottle of whiskey you might need to bribe an official. 

He has never gotten caught.  Not yet, anyway.  His freckled Frisian farm boy good looks make him appear above deception, and like me, he has a good nose for danger. 

“Who's your new butler?” I ask.

“Oh, him?  That's Alfons, a bomb maker from Sweden.  He was dropped in last week.  I'm helping him.  What's up?”

I'm dying to know more, but I am in a hurry.  I tell Pim I need a van for tonight.  “Only for three hours.  I have a package to pick up.”

“I can get you a newspaper van—” he turns off the high intensity work light and pushes back from the table “—if you can get it back to
De Waarheid
by midnight, so they can load up for delivery.”

“I just pull into the lot?”

“Yup.  We have two guys on the loading dock.  They sometimes add fliers to the papers,” he adds, grinning.  

“I always wondered how those got in there.”  The Islamic Council goes crazy whenever they discover retractions have been delivered with their propaganda rags.  Printed on pink newsprint, the fliers tell readers what's really going on.  So far, the Islamic Council hasn't caught anyone.

“Just be sure to leave a full tank,” says Pim.

“No problem.”  It's my turn to smirk.  I have my own contacts for gasoline.  “One other thing.”

“What?”  Pim arches an eyebrow and his mouth pouts.  “Oh—” he slumps when he guesses, in mock despair “—you need a driver.”

“Yes,” I say smiling.  Pim may hem and haw, and make any number of excuses, but I know eventually he'll agree to go with me.  I need him because women aren't allowed to drive. 

“I can never say no to you,” Pim says.  “Where to?”

“Enkhuizen.”

He tilts his head for a moment, then nods.  “That might work.  I can stop at Hoorn on the way back and pick up a case of
Akvavit. 
My contact just got a new shipment.”

“A case?  What for?”

“We can always use
Akvavit,
” he says, grinning.  “A delegation from the United Nations of Islam Council of Guardians is arriving on Friday.  They'll be staying at the Grand Hotel Amrath Amsterdam.  We'll need a few bottles to bribe our way in.”

“To plant bugs?”  I always wonder how he knows these things.

“That and more.  I'll fill you in tonight.”

Pim has a way of making everything sound easy.  No more dangerous than a housewife picking up the laundry, retrieving her kids from soccer practice, then stopping to buy something for dinner. 

For a moment, I imagine the life I might have had, the little Dutch girl I once was.  It seems like someone else's life.  Would she have grown up to be kind and compassionate?  Comfortable in her pleasant Dutch life, a husband and career, hobbies and children?  An avid sailor like her childhood idol, Laura Dekker?  Taking weekend jaunts to Greece or the Canary Islands?  With Facebook friends all over the world?  But then I would never have met Pim.

“Are you okay?” Pim asks.

He knows me too well.  Throwing out a line to pull me back. 

“Sure.” 

I kiss him on the cheek, tuck my hair under my hijab
,
and head down the stairs. 

Two, May 2010

Centrale Bibliotheek Amsterdam

Katrien Brinkerhoff skips beside her father, over the bridge from the train station.  Eight years old, a tepee of long curly dark brown hair bouncing down her back.  She drops his hand, dashing ahead to peer over the side of the boardwalk into the gray-green water.  A white swan makes a speedy retreat; a triangle of six goslings, sputtering and spinning and bobbing to change direction, flutter their feet, trying to keep up.  Delighted, the girl claps her hands, makes a little hop, then runs back to her father.  She wraps all her fingers around his thumb, and pulls him toward the library. 

The library has its own island, a castle of red brick, granite, and glass.  The biggest public library in Europe, 28,000 square meters, 600 public access computers, 1.7 million books. 

Katrien loves the library. 

Together they walk around the enormous square granite tower imprinted with meter high letters—BIBLIOTHEEK—so tall it looks like it supports the sky and all the lofty thoughts of liberal thinking men and women throughout time.  They walk up the steps, around the clusters of young people of every nationality of the world, who laugh and chatter, waiting for friends, texting on cellphones, eating from the food carts, swaying to music on their earphones.

Inside is a cathedral of cool lightness.  She loves riding up and down the escalators, watching people at the long glistening bank of computers, like operators controlling a spaceship, and she almost feels the building lift as they tap away at their keyboards.  Up and up she rises, past stacks of books and CDs, the shelves illuminated with soft white lights.  She rides to the top—fifth floor, sixth floor, seventh floor—and runs to the huge windows that look out across the IJ and over her city.  She stretches her arms, palms on the cool glass, and embraces Amsterdam.

The library makes her feel powerful and wise, a queen looking out over her kingdom.  She stands at the portal of the universe.  She feels the future and the past, and somehow feels deeply connected to it.  All she needs to know to be a wise responsible ruler lies within these walls.  All is possible.  Everything can be learned.  All can be understood.

Her father steps up beside her and turns to watch her, a stoic twitch at the corner of his mouth. 

Like many parents, he stands in awe of his daughter's fierce passions.  He senses her longing, her fear, her determination.  He looks around the library at the other parents, all who wear the same amazed look.  Who are these insistent indomitable little spirits?  Where do they come from?  Will they save us?

“Let's find you something to read, and then get Mom's book,” he suggests.

“Okay.”  She presses her forehead to the window, not moving.

He puts his hand on her shoulder, and says gently, “It'll still be here next time,
schatje.” 

“I know,” she says, but doesn't sound convinced. 

He doesn't rush her.

Slowly she exhales on the window, signs her initials, KLB, steps away, and takes her father's hand.  She rides the escalator back down to the children's floor and finds three books she can hardly wait to read.  Only then do her cheerful spirits return.

“Shall we buy a Liege waffle at the cart outside?” asks her father after they pick up Jana's reserve book at the front desk.

“Oh, yes, Papa.  Chocolate, please.  Can we feed the swans?”

The waffle man, who is not from Belgium, but from Morocco, smiles as he hands Katrien three stale waffles.  Excited, she runs to feed the birds.  Her father ends up eating most of her treat as he watches her toss the pieces of bread to the birds in the water. 

He makes a plan to go to the gym.

Enkhuisen

Amsterdam is a fun place to be a kid.  Years pass.  Katrien does well in school, her days filled with activities and friends.  She reads a lot of books.

Come spring, Katrien and her father take the train to Enkhuisen.  Ever since she turned nine, Katrien has helped her father in the boatyard.  Prepping for the sailing season. 

Pieter's sailing buddies, already at work on their own boats, yell out cheerful greetings when they see them.  Sunday is the first day of the sailing season and everyone is excited, joking that this year Pieter is sure to win with his new skipper.  Katrien won't really be the skipper, but it's fun to be teased. 

These are practice races for the Flevorace in August.  The
Allegro
won last year in the ORC-2 class.  They have three days to get her in the water.

The
Allegro
has been sitting in dry storage all winter, perched up on jack stands like a prisoner in stocks.  They loosen the tie-down ropes and pull off the white tarps.  Even dirty she is beautiful, a Salona 37, built in Split, Croatia.

“Why are sailors always so friendly and happy?” Katrien asks her father.  He tosses her a line, which she cinches around a cleat.  She knows what he needs her to do without asking.  

Pieter checks the lights on the mast, which lies on the ground beside the jack stands.  “You know how it is—there's a million things to pay attention to when you're sailing.  You don't have time to worry about missed car payments or fights with your girlfriend.  Wind, water, and sails take all of your attention.  And it's a lonely place on a sailboat in the middle of the sea.  You need all the friends you can get.  Every time you return to port, it's a little victory.  You want to celebrate—you're alive and safe and with friends.  That's all that matters.”

She thinks it is more than that, something she can't quite articulate.  As if all sailors share a secret, a secret she defiantly wants to know.  A secret only learned through sailing.

Over the next two days, Katrien helps her father hose down the boat, paint the hull below the waterline, wax above the waterline, reinstall batteries, and test the electronics.  She loves how her shoulders burn as she waxes the hull.  Her arms ache, but nothing like they will ache Sunday after the race.

On Saturday an enormous crane lifts
Allegro
with two wide straps, swings her slowly over the other boats and through the boatyard, then
gently sets her down in the water.  Katrien holds her breath as she watches, hands pressed to her cheeks.  Pieter hails a few sailors, who interrupt their own preparations to help him guide the mast as the crane picks it up and sets it in the mast partners.  Two men support the mast, while the others scramble around and hook up the shrouds to secure it.  Like a hungry predator, the crane pulls away and moves on to another boat.

Everyone helps each other.

While Pieter connects the electrical wires on the mast, Katrien flushes the water tanks, clearing out the non-toxic anti-freeze, then fills them with water.  They pump diesel into the inboard motor tanks, test the electronics, bend on the main sail, and check it for soundness.  Pieter fires up the engine.  They motor over to their dock and tie up for the night.

Early the next morning, Katrien and Pieter stop at the bakery for coffee and danishes before walking down to the shipyard.  There she is, the
Allegro,
sparkling white in the morning light. 

The rest of the crew is there.  Pieter's best friend, Rafik Sahin; two of Pieter's colleagues from the College of Science, who quite cheerily call themselves “ballast”; Stefan Groot, a handsome young man, whose father owns the boatyard; and Hans van Meerveld, who has sailed with Pieter for years.  A crew of seven, including Katrien.

After Stefan unties the lines, Pieter starts the inboard.  As they putter out into the IJsselmeer, Rafik and Katrien raise the main sail.  The air is light, and they make a few practice figure-eights before heading to the buoy for the start of the race.

Twenty sailboats jockey for position, counting the minutes before the race, hoping to be in full sail close to the starting line just as the horn blows.

Unlike her
mother, Jana, who almost never sails with them—“I don't like to be bossed around and barked at”—
Katrien
loves taking orders from her father and the other sailors.  It makes her feel important.  Part of the team.  “
Coming about!”  “Trim the jib!”  “Ease off the sheet!”  “Cast off the starboard jib sheet!”  “Tighten the halyard!”  “Watch the luff!”

The horn blows, and they are off.

Allegro
flies, in the middle of the pack. 

Rafik helps Katrien trim the jib, wrapping the line around the winch.  She isn't heavy enough to pull it tight, and when he leans into it, she feels his strength and confidence.  His weathered round Turkish face smiles widely, clapping her life-vest-padded shoulder. 
“Goed gedaan, zeeman!”

The wind kicks up to 20 knots, and the sailors scramble about to tighten the outhaul and the halyard.  “Get on the highside!  Sit on the rail!”
 
The sailors shoot their legs over the side, like birds on a wire.  Others stand and lean, clinging to the lifelines, the boat slicing through the water on edge. 

The wind, mean and capricious, slaps Katrien's face, but true sailors don't cower; she proudly turns to the abuse.  Surf splashes their feet, spray moistens their cheeks, bejewels their hair and beards. 

Allegro
bounces and lurches.  She wants to turn into the wind, and the rudder fights the forces of wind and water.  They wrestle with the lines, as if to rein in a stallion, unbroken, white and wild.  A force of nature.

They sail up starboard of a second sailboat, the
Nachtegaal,
edging up, stealing its wind.  The boat shudders, and Katrien knows at some point there will be too much drag on the rudder and her father will have to turn into the wind.  But first he wants to see a luff in the
Nachtegaal's
sail.  Then he'll ease off. 

All the sailors watch for the ripple, and when they see it, they let out a cheer.  “Ease the sheets,” her father calls, and the boat pulls ahead.

#

On sailing weekends, Katrien and her parents stay with Hans and Marta van Meerveld, a very Dutch couple, tall, big-boned, blond.  They run a B&B in a stately manor that has been in the family since the 17
th
century, when Enkhuizen sheltered the Dutch merchant fleet.  It sits on a cobblestone street in the heart of the old town, with grand details one seldom sees in Holland—large elegant rooms with tall ceilings, and a salon, book-lined and pilastered, with French doors that look out into a large walled-in courtyard.  The old carriage house makes four guest rooms.  A cottage tucked at the back of the property is where Katrien and her parents stay.

Hans works part time in the Tourist Information Office, the VVV, and spends the bulk of his time building guitars.  Marta paints porcelains and runs the B&B.  They enjoy the constant flow of people from different countries, and quiz them over breakfast about their travel plans, their homes, their aspirations, their impressions of The Netherlands.  Their guests adore them and return year after year.  Hans and Marta think of these people as family.  At Christmas they receive hundreds of cards from all over the world.

After Pieter and Rafik roll in from the bar they go to after the race, they play guitars for the crew and their girlfriends, two guests from Spain who are staying at the B&B, and a few other intimate friends.  A local poet reads from his scribblings.  Jana and Marta cook a huge pot of pasta, and everyone drinks wine and sings songs—pop songs from America, Portuguese folk songs, Turkish ballads.

It's all very friendly, very bohemian.

After dinner, while her father smokes a cigarette in the courtyard and talks politics with Hans and the other guests, Katrien helps Rafik and Jana in the kitchen. 

Katrien has always known Rafik, a solid man, softhearted and funny, who takes an interest in everyone, and never forgets anything you tell him.  He has played in Pieter's garage band since college.  Six guys who once a week drink beer, smoke weed, hang loose, and rage against bourgeois middle age.  The band rents space in a hip area of the Noord, where musicians and artists have restored abandoned warehouses into galleries and studios.  Rafik plays bass guitar, Pieter sings lead.

As Katrien wipes the dishes, she observes how Rafik smiles at her mother.  He insists on scrubbing the heavy pots for her.  The way he looks at her when she laughs, throwing back her head with a explosive bark, you can tell he cares for her.  Jana glows in a way she doesn't with her father.  

“Where is Evi?” Jana asks, addressing Rafik's reflection in the window over the sink.  Rafik's date, a younger woman, tall and blond, is in the other room.  “I like her so much.  I think she suits you.  But then I like all of your girlfriends.”  She flicks her wet hands in his face.  “Are you avoiding her?”

His body stiffens a little.  “No, not at all,” he says, smiling. 

“No, not at all,” she mocks, returning his grin.  “Why don't you teach her to sail?  I'm sure she'd love it.  She's athletic.”

“She's lived in Enkhusien her whole life and hasn't learned to sail.  I'm sure she would've learned by now if she had an interest.”

“You could have used her today.  Pieter said it was blowing like stink.  The problem with you is you compartmentalize your relationships.  You need to include them in your passions.  Sailing and music.  That's why you can't keep them.  You can't blame them for feeling excluded.”