As the two men rattled away in Arabic, Caitlin stuck close but took in as much detail as she could. The racks were heavy with U.S. designer labels. Jeans from DKNY, Calvin Klein, and American Apparel, sweats and shirts by Hilfiger and Kors. There were a few European brands in there, too, but not many, and they looked like cheap knockoffs judging by the stray threads and the way the fabric bunched up around the stitching. While Mirsaad and the shopkeeper chattered at each other, she took her time examining some of the items more closely. On a pair of 501s she found a security tag from Old Navy. And three brightly colored Nautica windbreakers still sported price stickers from a Macy's on Fulton Street in Brooklyn.
Looking bored but submissive, she let her eyes wander over the electrical goods piled up on makeshift display tables next door. She could see a lot of Japanese brand names for sale at insanely low prices but imagined she would find they'd all been sourced from the United States if she ventured over and checked them out, looted from somewhere on the East Coast. It meant nothing to her, but she logged the information away. Somebody back at Echelon would want to make a file note. The Brits were absolute maniacs for file notes.
Mirsaad reappeared, looking sheepish and holding up a plain white shirt.
'I had to buy it,' he said.
Caitlin said nothing but smiled at him with her eyes.
'Would you like to look around some more?' he asked.
'Maybe the electronics place,' she said quietly, staying in character. 'I would like to get a small radio… for my dorm.'
A few minutes browsing the stolen TVs and microwaves farther down the footpath confirmed her suspicion. The Neukolln markets were so healthy partly because the vendors were getting their stock for free or at least for the cost of looting and transporting it back to Europe, which until last week had been negligible. It would be interesting to come back here in a month and see whether Kipper's Manhattan offensive had made any difference or whether the sellers would be able to find new suppliers. The fighting in New York was intense, but there remained thousands of miles of unguarded Atlantic coastline and hundreds of towns and cities open to pillage.
When they got back into the car and had safely pulled away from the curb, Caitlin took out her wallet and passed fifty euros to Mirsaad.
'I'm sorry you had to buy his stolen rags,' she said. 'I can pay for them. You did good.'
He looked like he was about to object, but she insisted.
'No, Mirsaad. You have kids to feed, and there will be more expense involved before we're done today. Put it on my tab. I'm working, and I'll be reimbursed. You won't.'
'Okay, then,' he said, obviously grateful. 'I did beat him down on the shirt, though. Not as well as Laryssa would, could she bring herself to come in here, but still…'
'Take the fifty, anyway,' Caitlin said. 'Like I said. Expenses. Now let's have a look around the manor, as my paymasters would say.' Neukolln was an Enclosure in all but name, with one crucial distinction: The residents had chosen to shut themselves off from the outside rather than being internally exiled as was the case back in London. That helped explain why the township hummed with an energy that was singularly missing from any of the Enclosures. The locals were exercising their power rather than finding themselves subject to someone else's. But there was more to it. Driving around, marveling at the vigor and intensity of the street life-even if it did seem to her as medieval and bigoted-Caitlin had to conclude that the engine of the local economy was fired by a primitive but effective form of reverse colonialism. They were living off riches looted from another country, in this case, the United States and maybe Canada. Vancouver had been no more successful at securing and resettling its eastern provinces than Seattle had.
Mirsaad drove her around for half an hour to get a feel for the place, transiting the center of the village three times. There she found markets that put to shame the small stallholders they had first encountered. A Kaiser's Supermarket had become a prayer room around which hundreds of people gathered, chatting in the midmorning warmth. Restaurants still wearing the livery of their previous incarnations now served as 'Red Sea' grocers, halal butcheries, and in one case a pet store. New proprietors had painted over the signage of a former F.W. Woolworth building on Harmannstrasse, whitewashing the old logo and replacing it with a hand-lettered announcement that it was now operating as the Dahabshiil funds transfer bureau for Berlin. From the brief drive-by it also seemed to be trading as a furniture depot and carpet warehouse. Everywhere they went she saw trestle tables piled high with clothes, electronics, and homewares, all of them surrounded by eager customers dickering furiously with the stall owners. The longer she observed, the more convinced she became that she would have to report back to Echelon in much greater detail than that required for a simple file note. There was real wealth here-stolen to be sure, but it was merely the tip of things. All this bustle and activity-so alien to Europe now-spoke to deeper currents of power. Just organizing the logistics train to deliver all this pillage across the Atlantic and through the German border controls-and who knew, maybe even the French or half a dozen other countries, too-all that implied a vast undertaking. Not necessarily by a single monolithic organization but certainly by an unknown number of networks operating in concert sometimes, perhaps in competition or even conflict at others.
It was not Caitlin's area of expertise and certainly not within her mission brief. There would doubtless be other agencies monitoring all this. But her interest was piqued simply because al Banna's trail did lead here, and she found it hard to believe that Baumer would remain disconnected and aloof from all this activity. If nothing else, the movement of goods and people and the wealth it generated could all be exploited for his own ends, whatever they might be. As they drove past a busy Afro-Net Cafe on Werbellinstrasse, she decided it was time to find out.
'Okay, Sadie, let's head on over to Rollberg. We can get something to eat, and I want to keep an eye on the little council office over there.'
'Can you tell me why?' he asked.
'Better if I don't. I'm looking for somebody. Someone connected to the man I need to find.'
'The one who sent the criminals to your farm?'
'Not to the farm. They tried to grab Bret and Monique a few miles away, but yeah, that guy.'
The Jordanian shrugged. 'It is almost time to eat, and I can write up my notes from our tour this morning. This is a fascinating place, do you agree? So full of life and yet darkness, too.'
He swung the Lada left into the cross street that would take them through to Rollbergstrasse. A group of youths were lounging on the corner, one of them was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Kurdish flag. A brave choice, she thought, given the large Turkish majority living here. It was also one of the few gatherings of young men she had seen anywhere that morning. Neukolln was a town of women, children, and older men, some wizened like the Turk from whom Mirsaad had bought his shirt, and many others middle-aged and well fed, all deporting themselves with that peculiarly arrogant gait of males who think themselves in charge of their world.
There were comparatively few young men, though.
You tended to miss that, your gaze drawn by the packs of black crows, as Caitlin thought of the women in burkas.
It was as if the young men of Neukolln had all gone off to war. She allowed Mirsaad to order her lunch, a falafel roll and a glass of black, unsweetened tea. Not that she would have been allowed to order on her own, anyway. She distinctly heard the gray-haired, one-eyed old coot behind the counter ask Mirsaad whether she was unclean. A younger, less experienced operator than Caitlin might have bristled, but that would have betrayed her language skills and she preferred to move about in seeming ignorance of the conversations around her. Also, there was no point investing emotionally in someone's stupidity and backwardness. It was simply data to her, something to be filed away, possibly for future reference, possibly not.
She sat demurely at the small round table under the shade of an awning, watching the small office building across the street. A large sticker, the emblem of the Berlin city council, stood out on the boarded-up front windows. She assumed they had been smashed so often that the glass had been replaced with plywood. A heavy metal grille protected the front door, which opened every few minutes to let visitors in or out.
Mirsaad returned with the rolls before doubling back to fetch their tea.
'This is good?' he asked.
She nodded as the piped in music increased in volume.
Mirsaad leaned forward and spoke in a soft voice, in English. 'We can speak freely here if we are careful. I know the owner. He is married to my cousin.'
'That old guy?'
She nodded toward the one-eyed troll behind the counter before taking a bite of the roll. It dripped with chili and yogurt sauce, and she enjoyed the pleasing crunch of the falafels and their warm soft filling. The tabouleh, as
