Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2)

by Ruth Francisco

  “It may be our last mission together,” Pim says. “Let me go with you.”

  “Every mission might be our last mission,” I say.

  “All the more reason we should do it together.”

  I take his hand, comforted by its weight. His palm is wide, his fingers blunt, the backs fuzzy with blond hairs. “I don't want to marry him, Pim. You know that, don't you?”

  “I hear he is very handsome.” His smirk nearly breaks my heart. Part of me wishes he'd put up more of a fight.

  “Pim, he's the enemy. Do you really think I could find him handsome?”

  “As long as you don't think he's as handsome as me.”

  Pim has never fixed his chipped front tooth. It doesn't mar his smile; it makes it his—impish, insouciant, a little devious. Sensing I am forgiven, I smile back.

  It is decided. Pim will arrange for two cars, our get away. He will drive one of the exit cars. Kaart will drive the other. Garret has agreed to be our “sweeper”—the person who prepares the escape for others, and collects any damaging evidence before fading away. He will arrange for an extra set of documents and cash for each of us at five different locations in Maastricht in case we have to separate and make a run for it. He'll arrange for a safe house in case the mission has to be postponed, or we encounter some kind of hitch. If all goes well, we will not see him during our mission.

  Two women, three men. If any of them have a problem taking orders from a twenty-year-old woman, none of them show it. We are all young, except for Garret, who is thirty-seven. Despite his elfin stature, he adds gravity and competence to the mission. I use him whenever I can.

  I call a meeting at the Fredrika Maria to go over logistics and share information from our contacts in the local Resistance in Maastricht. I give everyone on the team two days to pick up new documents and to settle personal affairs. They will travel to Maastricht on their own time. All but Draak accepted the mission without knowing who their target is. Until now.

  “Mahmoud al-Kubaisi.”

  There is an audible gasp, and the room gets that empty cave feeling you get when everyone is focusing. Everyone here knows Kubaisi, and why he must be killed, but I review his history. In case anyone has doubts.

  “Mahmoud al-Kubaisi is forty-four years old, born in Iraq. He is a Sunni, and was serving his military service in 2002 when the Americans invaded Iraq. He, along with Shirzad Sahar, was retrained as a member of the military police by the Americans, and trained in interrogation techniques. We have the CIA to thank for that. After 2012, when Shirzad was promoted to Supreme Chief of the Landweer in Holland, he hired Mahmoud al-Kubaisi as his chief interrogator.”

  A few quiet gasps from those hearing of the connection for the first time. A cannonball of coolness at the other end of the table.

  “Garret has personal experience with him,” I say, acknowledging him. “He was captured in 2016 and spent two years in Bijlmerbajes prison. He has partaken of Kubaisi's favorite forms of torture.”

  Garret nods, but adds nothing.

  “Kubaisi has personally tortured scores of Resistants, and has organized dozens of sweeps. He turns even brave Resistants into informers by threatening to send their wives to labor camps, their children into Islamic orphanages. He sends his men to special classes in Syria to study the theory and practice of torture. He manacles his prisoners in the underground rooms at Rijksmuseum, and has them tortured in sadistic and imaginative ways.”

  I sense each member of the team contract into themselves. Bats folding their wings. Nothing frightens us like torture.

  “Kubaisi is also responsible for orchestrating several acts of terror, included the Jenever Theater Murders—”

  “Which got us into this nightmare,” interjects Kaart.

  I nod. “This is not merely a hit. Our object is not simply to eliminate the man, who can easily be replaced, but to send a message. Our goal is to frighten those who terrorize us. Our message is that we can get to anyone.” Everyone nods their heads. I turn to Draak. “You have had your people tracking him for a week. What have they found?”

  Draak rubs her knees with her palms, and speaks in a clipped monotone, eyes cast to a porthole. “Kubaisi has his office in Maastricht, on call wherever Shirzad needs him—Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam. His wife and children still live in Amsterdam. During the week, he lives with his mistress in Maastricht in a modest two-bedroom apartment. His habits are extremely predictable. Every evening, he leaves his office at precisely the same time every day. He stops for tea at one of a number of cafés on Vrijthof. At the call of the muezzin, he heads to the mosque for prayer. Around seven, he leaves and goes to a cigar shop. Sometimes he stops at a bakery. By seven-thirty, he returns to his apartment. His mistress works at a gym, and returns to the apartment an hour or so later.”

  “He lives like a low level bureaucrat,” Kaart remarks indignantly.

  “Torture and roundups—all in a day's work,” Garret adds. “No reason to be late for dinner.”

  “Don't forget the biscuits. With poppy seeds. You forgot last time.” Kaart's nagging female imitation is perfect. Everyone laughs, tension dissipating like steam. It is easier if we belittle our enemy.

  “Any bodyguards?” asks Pim.

  “No,” Draak answers. “He only carries a weapon when he goes on a raid.”

  “Any more questions?” I ask. Nothing. “We're set then. I'm sure you all agree, he deserves an agonizing death. But we will shoot him, close range. I want to look him in the eyes.”

  Maastricht

  I sit at an outdoor café off of Vrijthof, the large pedestrian square in the center of the city. Islamic restrictions are more relaxed here than in Amsterdam. Their Islamic Council still allows outside cafés. Perhaps it is too large a part of their culture to abolish. Without its cafés, Maastricht would be unrecognizable. I sit with a woman in a burka, whom I do not know. A member of the local Resistance. She does not know what we are about to do. I wear a black abaya and niqab.

  First Pim walks by. This is the signal that Kubaisi has left his office. Draak, wearing a burka, sits three tables away with another female member of the local Resistance, and orders coffee. A few minutes pass. Kaart parks an Opel across the plaza, buys a newspaper, then gets back into his car.

  We hear the adham, the call to prayer. An eerie hush falls over the city, as everyone stops what they're doing and hurries to mosque, or to find their prayer rugs. As women, we are not expected to go to mosque. The café has a small room inside, lined with prayer rugs, where customers can pray, then go back to their tables. I go inside with Draak and the women who are sitting with us. We kneel, say our prayers, and return to our tables.

  At seven o'clock, I get up, pay the bill, and walk out of the café with my companion. Draak and her companion follow twenty feet behind. We head down Capucijnenstrasse, a street running north from the plaza. Midway down the block, I stop to look into a shop window, joined by Draak. The two women from the Resistance link arms and continue down the sidewalk.

  Across the street, Pim sits in a silver Peugeot with a young man, who sits in the driver's seat. Like the women who sat with us at the café, he doesn't know our mission and serves only as a cover.

  The young man with Pim gets out of the Peugeot, crosses the street, then crosses back. This means Kubaisi has left the café to go buy his cigar. If the mission was to abort, he would drive off with Pim, and Draak and I would continue down the street where Kaart is parked with the Opel.

  In a few minutes, a couple from the local Resistance walks down the street in front of Kubaisi's apartment. Pim gets out of the Peugeot, bids farewell, and the young man drives off. This means Kubaisi is on his way to his house.

  It is still very busy on the streets of Maastricht, people headed home from work, couples on their way out to eat, groups of men coming from mosque, finishing conversations before heading their separate ways. Bicycles zip by in their special lanes, bells ringing at pedestrians. Aluminum shutters rattle down over stores, clo
sing for the day. No one pays us any attention.

  As Pim passes us to take position at the second get-away vehicle several blocks away, Draak and I cross the street and step into the foyer of Kubaisi's apartment building. It smells damp and dusty. I find the light switch behind the mailboxes and turn off the lights.

  We press our backs to the far wall, in the shadows. Through the glass doors, we watch Kubaisi go into a bakery across the street, next door to where we had been standing moments ago. Three minutes pass. He exits the bakery and crosses the street toward us. He walks toward the front door, carrying a plastic bag, a baguette poking out the top. The bag swings pendulously, too heavy for just bread, but no cause for alarm.

  For a moment, he seems like any man picking up fresh bread for dinner. I have to remind myself of the horrors he has ordered.

  A car horn chirps down the street. It must be Kaart alerting us that Kubaisi is about to enter the lobby. Yeah, no kidding.

  I glance at Draak, her eyes completely relaxed, radiating concentration.

  Just as Kubaisi opens the door, two women in abayas come up behind him from the sidewalk, following on his heels. One of the women stops, fishing for something in her purse. She struggles a bit with the billowing black cloth whipping around her legs in the wind. I consider aborting, but the taller woman behind her suddenly looks up and sees me in the shadows. Her eyes widen. She takes the arm of her friend, and they continue down the sidewalk.

  Kubaisi notices nothing. He enters the foyer and stops at the bank of mailboxes. I recognize him, and feel my stomach muscles tighten. There is no doubt. I even see the mole on the outer edge of his left eye, noted in his profile. I wait until he fumbles with his key at the mailbox. I switch on the light. Kubaisi looks a little surprised, but not particularly alarmed. Draak asks, “Are you Mahmoud al-Kubaisi?”

  Kubaisi begins to nod, then his eyes spring wide. “No,” he utters in a raspy whisper, backing up against the wall.

  In synchronized motion, Draak and I crouch, right foot back, knees bent. My right hand sweeps back my abaya, my fingers curved for the pistol grip, my left palm sweeps over the right coming up with the Beretta, cocking the hammer and pin, raising the first round from the clip into the breech. Draak is with me. We both shoot twice, twice more, then twice again. He falls back, twelve bullets in his body.

  Even with the silencers, the sound is deafening in the confined space.

  Something clanks as he hits the ground. I reach down into his bread bag. A bottle of wine. Apparently the baker moonlights as a bootlegger. I take the souvenir, hiding it under my cloak.

  Immediately we walk out of the entrance into the street. Less than two minutes have passed since Kubaisi walked into the building.

  We cross the street and down a few storefronts to Kaart's Opel, quickening our pace as we near. The Opel is pointed away from us, and we can see Kaart watching our approach in the rear view mirror. I swing open the back door, and Draak dives into the back seat.

  “Are we aborting?” Kaart asks.

  “No, he's dead. Let's go,” commands Draak.

  The car leaps into traffic, down the street, and around a corner. Kaart pulls up behind a van, with Pim and a local Resistant driving. Draak and I get out and climb in the van, while Kaart parks his car, which will be picked up later by another local Resistant.

  After Kaart gets in the van, we drive twenty minutes north, following the Maas River. The van drops off the four of us just outside of the small town named Den Bosch, then takes off. Two cars sit opposite, parked on the side of the road, waiting. Pim and I get into one car, Draak and Kaart go in the other. The cars drive in different directions, and will deposit us at different train stations.

  We report to no one. Whoever ordered the hit will see it written up in De Telegraf. The four of us will never speak of it to anyone.

  All of us will make our way home on our own time. Kaart will spend a week with his parents in Zwolle. Draak will return to her underground work in Rotterdam. Pim will stay in Den Bosch for a day, then hitch a ride with a friend to Amsterdam. Garret will retrieve the money and document caches, sweep the safe house, debrief the local Resistants who helped us, then off to another mission in Belgium.

  I will catch the 7:40 PM train to Amsterdam.

  It begins to rain.

  #

  Pim and I hold hands in a car at the train station in the small town of Valkenburg, just east of Maastricht. Built in 1853, it looks like a little Versailles. I wonder who they were trying to impress, and if Valkenburg had some strategic importance at the time. What false promises were made to get funding? I imagine a small-time mayor with a gigantic ego, fretting over stone and lumber shipments and incompetent contractors, making his wife miserable with his late hours. He doesn't even notice that his daughter has a suitor and is smiling for a change, or that his son has grown three inches in the last year, smells of cigarettes, and is reading Karl Marx.

  I think about anything other than what I am feeling.

  Water drizzles down the windshield, and I notice it seeping in along the top of the door. No one is around. I feel so heavy. I can't move. I have no desire to get out of the car. I am turning into stone.

  Smells of wool and sweat radiate from Pim's damp pea coat. I sense his weight beside me. I hear his breathing. I don't dare look at him.

  And then I do.

  He is staring at me. He puts a hand behind my head, pulls me to him, and kisses me deeply. He pulls away to breathe with a sound somewhere between a groan and a sob.

  We pounce on each other, kissing, savagely yanking at each other's clothes, driven by a compulsion I don't understand, but can't resist. Clawing through thick turbulent waves, I pour all my disappointments and fears into him. All my rage. I want to claw out of my skin, out of my body, like some alien monster, and swallow him whole.

  We break, gasping for air. I beat his chest with my fists, not hard, and he shackles my wrists with his hands, containing my fury. I resist, every muscle and tendon twitching and fighting him. Then all the energy goes out of me.

  We sit in silence, steaming up the windows. Moist and uncomfortable.

  “We have the safe house for a few more days,” suggests Pim. “We could go there.”

  I think of the early years, when Pim and I would rent safe houses together, posing as a young couple—it had felt so natural, almost real. I look out the car window and see a woman in a burka scampering down the station steps, trying to get to where she's going before someone notices she's alone.

  “I don't want to give the bastards my virginity. It means so goddamn much to them,”

  “Shall we go?”

  “I have a bottle of wine,” I say, smiling. Pim turns the ignition.

  Pim drives back to Maastricht like a madman, and miraculously finds parking. We hardly breathe. Every part of my body is tingling with a rush of blood. We dash up the stairs, scramble into the safe house, and stumble into the living room, barely aware of our surroundings, glancing out the corners of our eyes for a soft landing. We kiss and tear off each other's clothes, struggling and yanking at zippers and buttons, squirming with need, tumbling onto a couch.

  The front door creaks open. We freeze, so far gone we don't even lurch for a weapon or roll into a fighting stance. Deer in the headlights.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” Garret says, before turning into the living room, my burka in his hands. “Oh,” he says, courteously averting his eyes while I grab for something to cover up. “I . . . I was just making sure we didn't leave anything behind. I'll come back later.”

  “You do that,” grumbles Pim.

  After Garret hastily retreats—“The door was open . . . I'll just lock it on my way out . . . I'll leave your burka here . . . sorry . . . I didn't know . . . I'll go now”—we start laughing. I roll off the couch in hysterics, completely unhinged, whooping and giggling, finally stuffing an accent pillow in my mouth to muffle the racket. Pim lies on his back, face red, his chest thumping on the floor in spas
ms of hearty laughter.

  Finally we calm down. I look at his white skin and notice he has a scar on his chest over his right nipple. I've never even seen that much of him before.

  I sit up, look into his blue eyes, and see he is thinking the same thing I am. This was an insanely stupid idea. Sex now would feel compulsory, compensatory. Flimsy and stale. Closing the gate after the horses have stampeded out.

  I reach for my clothes. “I can still catch the 7:40,” I say.

  Pim nods and begins to dress.

  I pull the bottle of wine out of my bag. Clos des Papes Chateauneuf du Pape 2008. I imagine Kubaisi spent close to 100 euros, and wonder what he was celebrating. An anniversary with his mistress? Perhaps his wife agreed to a second wife? The graduation of a son? Something personal that merits breaking the law.

  For a moment it humanizes him. My stomach lurches, queasy. I don't want to think of the monster I just killed as a husband or father or lover.

  I can't get over how that woman who came up behind Kubaisi looked at me. Eyes of revulsion. As if she knew what we were about to do. As if she blamed people like me for the war. Us terrorists.

  I tell myself that terrorists are people who shoot innocent bystanders. We do not target innocent lives. We do not tolerate large numbers of innocents to be killed. We do not want to impose our religion on other people. We are fighters, engaged in a war against the enemy. When we strike, we inspire hundreds of thousands to resist fascism.

  I wonder if the difference is enough to justify the bloodshed.

  “Pim, I want you to know, if I could choose, I'd choose you.”

  He looks at me hard, then nods. “Let's go,” he says, buttoning up his shirt.

  I leave the wine for Garret.

  Fourteen, March 2011

  Chia

  Kazan and Laszlo are eating lunch with a pretty girl named Diane, when Michael Chalhoub and Khalid Chahine from the Muslim Club sit down beside him. They ignore Diane, pretending she isn't there, something a highly-privileged debutante from Greenwich, Connecticut is not used to.