by Natasha Molt
He cocks his head to one side, and stares at her blankly for a second. ‘You don’t believe he can?’
She gazes up at him, unsure what words to use. She wants to be honest. ‘I don’t know anymore, Kolya. But I wanted to tell you something. I’ve decided I’m going to find my birth parents.’ There, she had said it; she let out a huge breath.
He throws an arm over her shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t blab these thoughts to the others.’
She scowls and pushes his arm away. ‘Oh, please. As if. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid.’
His fingers jab her in the ribs again. He is always doing that. ‘I know you won’t.’ He picks up a pebble and throws it, skidding it across the pond’s surface. ‘So forget about your birth parents.’
She tells him then about the memories from when she was a toddler, memories from before she was a Member, the pictures of the snow that are in her head, that are so faint that they are more like feelings, or something that she has dreamed. She tells him about the Woman and the Boy.
‘Wow. I guess that’s why you’re so messed up.’ He smiles at her conspiratorially.
He doesn’t remember much from before the age of five, only a sense of fear, falling out of bed a lot and wanting Mum. He tells her to ignore the pictures in her mind, that he and the others are her real family, united by a stronger tie than blood – by Authenticity. ‘There is no greater bond,’ he says. ‘Not even James Bond.’
He is always full of terrible jokes. ‘Oh, that’s bad.’
‘It’s the jet lag.’ Kolya’s smile is explosively bright.
She looks down at her hands. The skin seems to be coming away more from the bones. Jokes aside, she has to find them, her birth family.
He reads her mind. ‘You said you weren’t going to do anything stupid. Finding them is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. If Father finds out, you’ll be deleted.’
She has known he’d be difficult about this. ‘I want to know where I come from. What’s so bad about that?’
‘Father wouldn’t like it, and you know it.’
She is lost in her own thoughts for a few moments. Then she speaks: ‘Do you like the killing?’
Kolya sighs heavily. ‘That’s not the point.’
‘But it is the point for me.’
‘They’re infected, for goodness sake!’
She crosses her arms in front of her chest. ‘I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t like it.’
‘I can’t believe you’re talking like this. Like a child.’
Neither can she. Over all the years she has never had the courage, but now it is all becoming too much for her. ‘I want to have children myself one day. To be in love,’ she says.
Kolya laughs disbelievingly. ‘You swore an oath. See out your calling first.’
She shakes her head, holding back more tears.
He looks at her for a moment. ‘You’re tired, that’s all. Stay with it, Mira, please. You’ll get over it.’
Amira’s fingers twitch at her sides. What she is feeling isn’t a phase; this is what she has always felt.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘happiness isn’t always found in the sunshine; it can also be found by dancing in the rain.’ He grins.
She can never stay mad at him for long. He is too silly for that. ‘What a cheap quote,’ she replies.
‘I made it up. Remember it.’
‘You did?’
‘When I was a kid. When I was working on my triceps.’ He punches her in the arm and runs back to the party, the dazzled faces.
5
COLOGNE, GERMANY
10 MAY
She catches a taxi from Cologne’s airport and stares out the window. Cars fill the streets. Sometimes the lips of the lone drivers move, even when their cars do not, banked up behind traffic lights. Pedestrians clutter the pavement, pausing along the Rhine, lifting their faces to the sun as though thawing after another lengthy winter. Tourists gather to look at the multicoloured love padlocks along the Hohenzollern train bridge.
The taxi drops her off at Brüsseler Platz in the Belgian Quarter, an area that parties into the early hours of the morning in the bars, clubs and pubs. Turning her back on the yellow mass of St Michaels, she drags her suitcase up Maastrichter Strasse where an odd combination of modern and old buildings lines the street. Young mothers push prams along the footpath, cars fight for the paid parking spots and drivers give bicycling students evil looks. She passes the headquarters of an alternative newspaper, a skateboarding shop, then a nightclub, until she stands in front of a convenience store where she turns and gazes briefly across the road at her apartment building: four small balconies enclosed with solid concrete walls, and four sets of square windows facing the street, a vertical clump. Carla’s flat is at ground level, and above hers is Amira’s, with the next level up being vacant, and at the very top, Ms Spifanso. The Asian takeaway next door is still open, although she can’t see any customers. It’s too early in the day. Everything is the same as when she had left five days ago, before she had gone to Australia.
She turns back to look into the store at the comics and the French, Russian, Greek and German newspapers displayed in the window. There are more concerns over Germany buying European Central Bank bonds. Apple, Google and Microsoft are engaging in an intellectual property dispute; there are protests in Greece. In short, the world is gradually hitting the meltdown point that Father had predicted, and it is all because of the spread.
The tiny shop is stocked with snacks and alcohol, the latter taking up half the space. Cigarettes are stacked at the back of the counter like brickwork. There is a shelf of mixed sweets that Amira helps herself to, placing them in a white paper bag with a pair of tongs. She looks at the frozen pizzas and chips in the small portable freezer but dismisses them almost immediately, turning instead to the register, where she picks up four chocolate bars. The Turkish owner is rocking his baby in a pram. His wife is back on the cigarettes now that the pregnancy is over. From her balcony window, she has often seen the woman puffing away in front of the shop when there are no customers.
The man glances over at her. ‘You’re back,’ he says in German. His eyes turn to her suitcase. ‘Been somewhere interesting?’
‘Family.’
He nods. ‘Where do you put all this sugar?’
She shrugs, then carries her delights past the deli and the hairdresser with a chihuahua in its window. At the hemp shop she crosses the street and lets herself into her apartment building. She has received only junk mail in her letterbox, and the stairwell reeks of Carla’s chronic smoking.
She dumps her treats on the kitchen bench and turns on the empty refrigerator. Next, she makes sure her internet systems are turned off, takes her wireless RF detector from the concealed cavity in her wardrobe and conducts a search, looking for surveillance equipment. She uses the vibration mode, the LED indicator lights and the earphone-only audible tone. She inspects each room of the apartment, the light switches, electrical outlets. Her holographic stickers haven’t been broken. She checks the mirrors, scans the walls, the furniture, the floors, the ceiling, inside cupboards, behind doors. The canvases and paints scattered in the dining room. The treadmill, exercise bike, weights, cream leather sofa, TV and coffee table in the living room. The bed and side tables. The combined bathroom and laundry. She feels like a stranger looking at someone else’s apartment.
In the bedroom she peeks though the drawn curtains at the office buildings and the parking garage behind her building. A lone banker from the Kölner Bank building is walking to his car. The five-kilometre speed limit sign hangs on the wall opposite, the air-conditioner fan on part of the bank’s rooftop is spinning, the mobile bank bus is in its resting place and in the distance, around a curve, the apartment building in green with overhanging baskets on the third level down, no flowers blooming. Nothing.
She places the detector back in the cavity, changes into shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers, and opens the glass door that leads out onto
the front balcony where she can hear the traffic rush and drone down Hohenzollernring. Next she finds a blank canvas behind a chair in the dining room and in hurried strokes begins to paint an outline of Britta’s jaw. It’s not quite right and no matter the angle or the thickness of the paintbrush she can’t match the picture in her brain. She grabs a chocolate bar from the kitchen bench, breaks off a piece, pops it into her mouth, rolling it round on her tongue, smooth and sweet, and then she swallows.
Disgusting, she tells herself. Stop it, right now. But she can’t; it is the pleasure of it that hushes the voices and creates an empty space in her mind. Within minutes she has gorged on three bars, and her hands tremble. The perfect Warrior for Authenticity. She goes into the bathroom and rinses her mouth out with water, rubbing her tongue and teeth with a finger, trying to wash out any remaining sugar before it corrodes her teeth. The noises are starting to clamour again. Better not be going crazy. She picks up her mobile phone, takes it into the living room, turns on the television, climbs onto the treadmill, puts the remote and phone into the recess meant for a drink bottle and starts running.
Two pizzas for the price of one at lunchtime.
The oligarchs still deliver.
Kaufhof has a sale on.
She switches channels. The news. Jonas Baumann’s funeral was earlier that day. Several hundred mourners paid their respects. There are no visuals of little Britta, the girl who now wades through Amira’s mind like a trapped ghost.
Amira’s viewing is broken by a bleep from the mobile. She swipes the screen to read the message. There is a text from the Messenger:
Forty-five minutes. Where life grows.
Her feet pound the pavement.
Modern Indian music with heavy percussion throbs through earphones all the way to her feet. A backpack containing a wallet, keys, a water bottle, a paperback, and a phone flaps against her back. A heavy breeze, more autumnal than springlike, sweeps through the air as she runs across the Hohenzollernbrücke, feeling the vibration underfoot from the passing of an Intercity-Express, over to the other side of the Rhine. She goes down steps, past the television stations and the old train tracks that used to serve the working harbour. Wild geese, black beaked and tailed, are nesting in the grass along the river. Seagulls fat from pecking pommes watch on as spectators and the cargo-heavy barges trail through the water. The yellow, green and red children’s train chugs through the Rheinpark and dogs frolic in the grass chasing tennis balls. She catches a cable car up to the Flora and the Botanical Garden, and beneath her she can see the water glistening in the sun, the train bridge, the six-lane traffic on the zoo bridge and the towering gothic cathedral from another time.
A family of tourists sit opposite her, their dialect Bavarian. The girl a little older than a toddler is frightened and the mother holds her close. The father points to the Altstadt downstream. Intent on distracting the child, they don’t pay Amira any attention. They make her think of the Boy …
Asmall boy shook. He was only two or three. The Woman was with them, although she couldn’t see her face. They were rising towards the clear blue sky. Their feet dangled loosely. The Boy cried. Down below, slopes of earth shrouded in white snow, people with skis. The Woman tried to soothe him. Shh. Shh.
She wants to hold on to the picture, to see the Woman’s face, but it swiftly dissolves, like aspirin in water, and it is time to disembark from the cable car.
Wilhelm, her Messenger, is waiting at the end of the gravel path by the lion’s head fountain, his arms folded across his chest. This is a favourite meeting spot of his. He says the lion emblem on pots and fountains reminds him they need to be strong and brave.
He is twenty-five, fresh out of law school and married. He and his wife, Marie, a high school sweetheart, have been Members for four years. He is tall and slender, has a straight, sloping nose, and one eye slightly wider, more piercing than the other. Amira strides along the gravel pathway to reach him, past a rectangle of lawn with a pattern of red, dark purple, orange and yellow flowers centring around a fountain, and a relic of the Cologne Cathedral that was blasted to the Botanical Garden in World War II by allied bombs.
Wilhelm is wearing a creaseless white shirt and speaks in German. ‘I was hoping you’d get a chance to rest on your holiday,’ he says in his overly refined, mellifluous, private-school voice.
She doesn’t answer.
‘They were pleased with Essen?’ he asks.
‘There are no problems. How’s your wife?’
Wilhelm shrugs stiffly. ‘She makes my bed and tidies up after me. I make a sandwich and she puts away the butter before I’ve even had a chance to grab the second piece of bread.’
Amira laughs. ‘Sounds tough.’
‘You have everything you need?’ His eyes examine her. ‘Enough money for food?’
Her weekly wage, supplied by Father, is more than ample. From the age of twelve, she has received money, although the amount has substantially increased over the years. Now that she lives in Germany, it is to be used for living and travel expenses, as well as incidentals to maintain her level of training, such as sports equipment. There has even been enough for her to save eight thousand dollars, which she keeps mostly in a secret bank account. Father is not frugal when it comes to supplying his Warriors with money; other Movement Members are less fortunate.
‘I want to talk to one of my brothers.’
‘You didn’t speak to him at the party?’
‘Not properly.’
He looks at her closely. ‘I’ll talk to my superiors.’
She shifts on her feet. ‘It can’t go through them. My father’s birthday is coming up; I want to surprise him with a present.’
She hates herself for the lie. Wilhelm has always been good to her, helping her organise Baumann and Clément. He has proven very useful, especially when it comes to arranging transportation and weapons.
His piercing eye shoots right through her. ‘You know it isn’t possible.’
She has anticipated his stubbornness. Wilhelm likes rules.
Their conversation is interrupted by the presence of a short, large-bellied man making his way up the garden steps. Wilhelm wanders closer to the flowers, pretending to look at them, deep in thought. He only speaks again once the stranger is well out of hearing range.
‘Next time, I’m thinking explosives,’ he says.
He knows her stance on bombs: her distaste for them as crude implements that send slaves to their deaths indiscriminantly. She takes a deep breath.
‘How’s Marie getting along with all this thinking you’ve been doing?’
Wilhelm faces her squarely. ‘Come on, Amira. Let’s give the people something to get excited about, something to motivate them towards action.’
She circles her toe over a small weed reaching up between stones. ‘I want to talk to one of my brothers. Then we can talk fireworks.’
He scowls. ‘I can’t get that information. No way.’
She has suspected as much. He will never be able to locate Kolya, not even if he wants to. ‘I have specific targets,’ she says. ‘I’m not interested in collateral accidents.’
‘Just consider it, will you?’
She turns to leave, and a tentative touch on her elbow stops her. When she faces him, he seems afraid.
‘Wait, there’s something else,’ he says.
She raises her eyebrows.
‘There’s a group you must meet.’
‘Approved?’
‘Of course. Your father.’
‘The Kommissar?’
‘Not on it.’
The fact that the group isn’t on the antiterrorist database relieves her. But Wilhelm’s intel could be wrong. ‘Where am I supposed to meet them?’
‘The north,’ Wilhelm says. ‘A small town. Eckernförde.’
‘Germany?’
Wilhelm nods.
‘Supplies?’ she asks.
‘Exactly. They’re Internationals.’
She pauses for a secon
d. She doesn’t feel like travelling anytime soon, but she doesn’t have a choice. Father wants another European source of arms and ammunition.
‘When?’
‘Three days.’
‘The deal?’
‘I don’t know. You’re going to find out.’
She gazes up at the cloudless sky, an expanse so great it is somehow horrifying. ‘This request, it’s going to have to come through Father.’ She can play the rules, too.
‘Fine,’ Wilhelm says stiffly. ‘I’ll let him know. Here are your train tickets.’
When she is alone she opens up the envelope. Alongside the tickets is a slip of paper:
Tomatoes growing well. Depends on the variety.
She walks the streets of Cologne and the sun shines down on the buildings and the throng of shoppers intent on food or other items they want to purchase before their lunch break is over. The herd.
Her legs carry her past Barbarossaplatz. She reaches for the back of her neck and squeezes. The tighter the better, she feels. She squints from the sun’s glare, not the pinch. Glancing at her watch, she strides purposefully back to her apartment.
From her wardrobe she takes a white karate uniform, a black belt. She has spent enough time in physical combat with her brothers, her lithe limbs performing sharp punches, blocks and kicks. Her body has absorbed the routine, the motion. Karate, like jogging, lives inside her now. Sometimes she even dreams in a sequence of katas, the moves playing out like a dance, beating in her veins.
She jogs to her dojo near the Volksgarten. During the day is the best time for karate classes. Only the professionals are there, those who compete in serious competitions. Noriaki, the usual instructor, is a Japanese immigrant, short, with rippling muscles even at the age of fifty. Noriaki bows his head when he sees her.