“I thought you might have been pining.”
“Not pining, sir.”
“Women are allowed to be warm and fuzzy.”
“You make me sound like a stuffed animal.”
“With very sharp teeth.”
He’s in a good mood. Maybe it’s the morphine. It doesn’t last long. I tell him about Zala and can see the tension rise to his shoulders and move to his neck. His eyes close. He takes a ragged breath as though the pain has suddenly returned.
“They’re going to smuggle Samira into Britain,” I say.
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“It happened to the others. The babies are delivered in the same country as the parents lived.”
“The Beaumonts are dead.”
“They’ll find other buyers.”
“Who are
“Yanus. Pearl. Others.”
“What does Spijker say?”
“He says I should go home.”
“A wise man.”
“Hokke says there is someone who might help us find Samira.”
“Who is he?”
“Eduardo de Souza. Yanus used to work for him.”
“This gets better and better.”
My mobile is ringing. Hokke is somewhere noisy. The red light district. He spends more time there now than when he was walking the beat.
“I will pick you up at seven from the hotel.”
“Where are we going?”
“Answers at seven.”
12
An enormous dishwater moon has risen in the east and seems to move across the sky, following our taxi. Even in darkness I recognize some of the roads. Schiphol Airport is not far from here.
This is a different area of Amsterdam. The chocolate-box facades and historic bridges have been replaced by the functional and harsh—cement-gray apartment blocks and shops protected by metal shutters. Only one store is open. A dozen black youths are standing outside.
De Souza doesn’t have a fixed address, Hokke explains. He moves from place to place, never staying more than a night in any one bed. He lives with the people he employs. They protect him.
“Be very careful what you say to him. And don’t interrupt when he speaks. Keep your eyes down and your hands by your sides.”
We have pulled up outside an apartment block. Hokke opens the door for me.
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“You must go alone. We will wait here.”
“No,” declares Ruiz. “I am going with her.”
Hokke responds with equal passion. “She goes alone or there will be nobody waiting to meet her.”
Ruiz continues to protest but I push him back into the car where he grimaces as he folds his arms across his bandaged chest.
“Remember what I told you,” says the Dutchman, pointing toward a building that is identical to the one next to it and the one next to that. A teenage boy leans against a wall. A second one watches us from an upstairs window. Lookouts. “You must go now. Phone me if there’s a problem.”
I walk away from the taxi. The boy leaning against the wall has gone. The second teenager is still at the window. I walk through a concrete archway into a quadrangle. Lights shine on water. Chinese lanterns are strung from the branches of a leafless tree growing amid the weeds.
Pushing through a fire door, I climb the stairs, counting off the floors. Turning left at the landing, I find the second door. A bell sounds when I push a small white button.
Another teenager appears at the door. His polished black eyes examine me but turn away when I meet his gaze. Shoes and sandals are lined up in the narrow hallway. The teenager points to my boots. I take them off.
The floor creaks idly as I follow him to a living area. A group of five men in their forties and fifties are seated on cushions arranged at the edges of a woven rug.
Eduardo de Souza is immediately recognizable because of his place at the center. Dressed in white pantaloons and a dark shirt, he looks Turkish or possibly Kurdish, with a high forehead and carved cheekbones. Unfurling his legs, he rises and touches my hand briefly.
“Welcome, Miss Barba, I am Eduardo de Souza.”
His neatly trimmed beard is black and gray—the gray like slivers of ice hanging on dark fur. Nobody speaks or moves, yet there is a perceptible energy in the air, a sharpening of focus. I keep my gaze down as eyes roam over me.
Through the doorway to the kitchen I spy a young Nigerian woman in a flowing dress of bright colors. Three children, two boys and a girl, jostle at the doorway, regarding me with fascination.
De Souza speaks again. “These are friends of mine. This is Sunday. He is our host this evening.”
Sunday smiles. He is Nigerian and his teeth are a brilliant white. Each of the men introduces himself in turn. The first is Iranian with a Swiss German accent. His name is Farhad and his eyes are set so deep in his skull that I can scarcely see them. Beside him is Oscar, who looks Moroccan and speaks with a French accent.
Finally, there is Dayel, a smooth-shaven Indian, with an oil burn on his neck.
“One of your countrymen, although not a Sikh,” says de Souza. Dayel smiles at the introduction.
There is a spare brocade cushion beside him. I am expected to sit. Sunday’s wife enters the room carrying a tray of mismatched glasses and begins pouring sweet tea. Her hair is braided into a curtain of long beaded plaits. She smiles shyly at me. Her teeth are perfect and her wide nose flares gently as she breathes.
Dishes arrive. A meal. Holding his hands together, de Souza studies me above his steepled fingers, weighing up whether or not to help me. His English is perfect, overlaid with an educated British accent that is especially noticeable on the long vowels.
“This area of Amsterdam is called Bijlmermeer,” he says, glancing at the window. “In October 1992 a cargo jet took off from Schiphol and lost two engines. It buried itself into an apartment block like this one, full of immigrant families who were sitting down to an evening meal. Fifty apartments were destroyed by the initial impact. Another hundred burned afterward as jet fuel ran through the streets like a river of fire. People threw themselves off balconies and rooftops to escape the flames.
“At first they said the death toll was 250. Later they dropped the estimate to 75 and officially only 43 people died. The truth is, nobody knows the true number. Illegal immigrants have no papers and they hide from the police. They are ghosts.”
De Souza hasn’t touched the food, but seems particularly satisfied to see the others eating.
“Forgive me, Miss Barba, I talk too much. My friends here are too polite to tell me to be quiet. It is customary for a guest to bring something to the feast or provide some form of entertainment. Do you sing or dance?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you are a storyteller.”
“I don’t really understand.”
“You will tell us a story. The best of them seem to me to be about life and death, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal.” He waves his hand as if stirring the air. His amber eyes are fixed on mine.
“I am not a very good storyteller.”
