Brothers In Arms (26 page)

Charley and Dale stood outside the Italian gelato shop. Charley licked at a melting chocolate cone he held delicately between two fingers. He spotted Isabelle, walking alone, her hands clasped behind her back, before Dale did.

“Here she comes,” Charley said. He took a quick bite out of the ice cream and discarded the unfinished cone into a trash bin, then watched Isabelle as she took her time walking up to the two men.

“I see you tried the gelato,” Isabelle said. “Didn’t you find it to your liking?”

“I enjoyed it,” Charley said. “Just was making a mess.”

“You Americans,” Isabelle said. “The best things are sometimes messy.”

“Yes,” Dale said.

“Have you thought over our discussion?” Isabelle said.

“Yes,” Dale said. He unslung the nylon bag he had over his shoulder and handed it to Isabelle. “The amount is what we discussed. Consider it reimbursement for your expenses and thanks for your consideration in this matter.”

Isabelle weighed the bag in one hand, then slung it over her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said. “Do we have any other business?”

“No,” Dale said. “We’re done.”

“Then enjoy your stay in Amsterdam,” Isabelle said. She favored them with a slight smile, then left and walked away, back to her houseboat, her lover, and her child.

While Ilse slept in her room, Isabelle spilled the banded bundles of American hundred-dollar bills across her bed where Marie curled like an idle cat. Marie picked up a bundle and riffled through it.

“This makes it easy to count,” she said.

Isabelle said nothing. She stood and looked down at the cash, her eyes calculating.

“What is it?” Marie said. “You’ve done well for us. What’s wrong?”

Isabelle sat down on the bed. “I have a bad feeling about this. The whole thing. There is more than meets the eye here.”

“Leave it alone, Isabelle,” Marie pleaded. “Look at what we have! We walked away from this a winner on all counts. We don’t need to concern ourselves with them anymore.”

“I know where the boy is staying,” Isabelle said.

“You said that he’s no operator, you said that he was out of place.”

“That’s why I have this feeling about him. I mean to watch him.”

“Isabelle . . .”

“There is something to him! I have an instinct about this.”

Marie sighed, and dropped the bundle of money she held. “I should know better than to try and argue with you. You’ll do as you see best. Let me get dressed, and we can take Ilse to my mother’s.”

“No,” Isabelle said. “Ilse needs one of us. I will do this alone.”

“Ah, Isabelle . . .”

“No, my love,” Isabelle said, less forcefully than before. “I will see to this. I’ll make sure that we are safe.”

Youssef bin Hassan and Ahmad bin Faisal stood side by side and looked out the window at the night-lights of Amsterdam.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” bin Faisal said.

“Yes,” the younger man said. “It is.”

“It’s time to discuss the next phase of your operation,” bin Faisal said.

“I’m ready.”

“I’ve seen that you are. Your operational developments have been extraordinary; some of the techniques you’ve come up with will be added to the training curriculum.”

“There will be others like me?”

“A few . . . this is a special tasking and requires special men, such as yourself. But there may be need for another special tasking . . .”

“Not if I do my job correctly. And I will.”

“Of course, Youssef. Of course.”

Bin Faisal took his suitcase out of the closet and spun the locks on the Delsey hard-sided plastic suitcase. He opened it up and took out a small Pelican waterproof case with a small lock on it. He selected a tiny key from his key chain and opened up the case. Inside,
nestled in cutout foam, were five small vials, each the length of a medium-sized-man’s little finger. He set the open container carefully down on the table, then took out two small plastic boxes and an atomizer the size of a small perfume spray.

“The devices you have will suffice for backup,” he said. “These are brand new and have been tested. Of course, you will want to test them for yourself and see.”

Youssef stood beside the table, and reached one hand, almost shyly, toward the Pelican case and the five vials in it.

“This is it?” he said softly.

“Yes,” bin Faisal said. “This is Sad Holiday.”

Later, Youssef walked alone in the dark. The Pelican case and the new devices barely made a bulge in his courier bag. It was a warm summer night, and the young people of Amsterdam were out in force. There were many couples walking hand in hand along the canalways and the narrow streets. Youssef eyed them with interest and more than a little envy. He thought of the two women he had slept with in his life. Not much to think about. He wondered if they ever thought of him, and decided it was unlikely.

He wondered whether he should feel sad about that or not. He didn’t know.

He fell into the crowds and let them carry them where they would. He felt as though he were in an invisible capsule, riding along yet not part of the crowd. It seemed as though no one really saw him, and yet he was able to look at them with the avidity of the voyeur. There was much to see: two girls locked in an embrace, lips pressed together; a boy and a girl, their arms lazily draped around each other, sharing a marijuana cigarette outside a coffee shop; a tall prostitute dressed in a short leather dress under a full-length leather coat, striding along as though she were in command of the boulevard.

Youssef felt as though he were somehow connected and disconnected at the same time, and the slight weight of the deadly virus he carried in his courier bag couldn’t dissuade him from the
sense that something was tugging at him, clamoring for his attention. He fought down his uncertainty with the thought of his training, calmed himself and let a prayer rise up in him.

“Allah, let me do the right thing.”

That was a peculiar thing to think about at this time.

“Hello, Youssef!” a woman said.

He jumped, startled out of his interior dialogue, and saw the blond woman from the homeless shelter looking at him.

“Remember me? Britta?” she said.

“Yes, hi,” he said, confused.

“You look lost,” she said. “Are you lost?”

He smiled uncertainly. “I don’t think so.”

“You were looking so sad . . . and you’re alone again, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m alone again.”

“Would you like to get a coffee?” she said.

“Yes,” Youssef said. “I’d like that very much.”

She was short and plump and blond, and her hair was cut short with bangs across a forehead lightly dotted with acne, but she looked beautiful to Youssef bin Hassan.

“Why are you staring at me?” Britta said. “Has it been that long since you’ve had coffee with a girl?”

“Yes,” Youssef said, thinking of his lunch with Isabelle. “Too long. I’m sorry, I don’t wish to be rude.”

“Are you Palestinian?”

“No, I’m from Saudi Arabia.”

“How long have you been in Amsterdam?”

“Not long, a few weeks . . .”

“And you’re still alone after all this time? You must enjoy it. Are you a writer? I see you carrying that laptop around with you. I think you must be. You are always looking around but you are never part of what you are watching . . . you just observe. I have a friend who is a writer and she is like that.” She sipped at her coffee, enjoying his befuddlement. “You haven’t told me yet.”

Youssef smiled to hide his confusion. He’d lost practice in simple conversation. “I used to write poetry. But that was a long time ago.”

“I think you were probably good at it.”

“You are very kind. How long have you worked at the homeless shelter?”

“A few years. I enjoy the work, it feels good to help people.”

“Yes,” he said. “It would. But don’t you get some hard people there? People who just want to take and aren’t willing to help out in return?”

“Sometimes,” Britta said. “But still I must help them. I can choose how I behave toward them, I can choose how to behave toward anyone. It’s always a matter of choice, don’t you think? Choice is what makes us human. We can choose to do something or not do something. We can choose to do good or we can choose to do evil. Don’t you think so?”

Youssef’s hand trembled as he took up his coffee cup and drank.

“Youssef? You look ill, is the coffee too strong?”

“No,” Youssef said. “It’s just that what you said is so interesting. About choice. Do you think that you could find yourself sometime wanting to do something that wasn’t good, but you felt you had to do it? Maybe turn away someone who was rude, punish them for their behavior?”

“No,” Britta said. “I don’t feel as though it’s my job to judge others. The world is full of judges. We don’t know enough about people most of the time to judge what they do. I just measure it by whether they are doing harm or not. Whether they are hurting others or themselves. That makes for a pretty simple measure, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps it is too simple a measure,” Youssef said. “What if someone was doing evil or harm to others? Is it evil to do something to stop them from harming others, even if you have to use force?”

Britta mulled for a moment, ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup.

“It’s not evil to stop people from doing evil . . . but I wouldn’t
use force. I’d try to convince them of the error of their ways, talk to them. Most problems can be solved if you just talk to people, but we have a hard time getting past our own barriers to do that.”

“What do you mean, our own barriers?”

Britta toyed with her coffee cup. “Preconceptions, prejudices, that sort of thing. The barriers in our mind we put up when we judge someone else without understanding them. We’ve all done it . . . haven’t you?”

Youssef was quiet for a long time.

“Youssef? Are you all right? Did I offend you?” Britta said.

“No,” Youssef said. “You didn’t offend me. You just made me think about things that I’ve done, with those barriers.”

“You see?” she said brightly. “That’s the first step. Seeing what we do and taking responsibility for it.”