Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

on.  Word gets around where they are, and they open again for business.
    The Islamic Council would like to ban the barges, but housing is in short supply and thousands of people live on houseboats.  Also, many on the Islamic Council live in an exclusive area in eastern Amsterdam, IJburg, a small city of luxurious houseboats, built by hip entrepreneurs who wanted more space than the cramped traditional houses of Amsterdam.  If the Islamic Council banned houseboats, half of them would have to move. 
    Inside the Fredrika Maria, the ceilings are low, the rooms twenty feet across.  The walls and ceilings are painted white, the original plank floor stained dark brown.  Portholes look out onto the lapping canal.  Skylights above let in the moonlight.
    Two dozen people sit at a long table that runs the length of the main room.  A potbelly stove sits in one corner, cozy and warm.  Coffee and sometimes illegal beer is available.  People bring in food they've managed to find, a bag of onions or potatoes.  Some fish.  Or a chicken.  Someone always makes up a stew or soup. 
    Smells of mushrooms, onions, and beef fills my nostrils.  Someone got lucky and brought some stew meat.  My mouth waters as I take off my burka and hang it on a hook.  Underneath I wear gray slacks and a pink cashmere turtleneck.  The others smile at my boldness.  It's a lot of pink.
    Before the Occupation, pink was the color for breast cancer.  People wore pink ribbons and pink T-shirts to show support for their mothers and sisters. 
    Now pink means something different.  It means pig.  The Varken Weg.   It means you support the underground rebels.  If you meet someone and want to know their inclination, you might accidentally lift the sleeve of your burka , and show the cuff of your pink shirt underneath.  Or you might draw a curly pig's tail on a napkin, or use your toe to draw in the loose dirt.  Like the early Christians who drew a fish in the sand to find other Christians.  
    It isn't particularly wise to wear so much pink, but little defiances help our morale.  Besides, I look good in pink. 
    Everyone knows everybody here, although theoretically that's not the best policy in the underground.  We all know how vulnerable it makes us if one of us is captured and tortured.  We should be more cautious, more rigorous.  Yet without our friendships, I don't think we could carry on every day risking our lives.  It helps keep our fear under control.
    We are an odd mix of people.  Gays, lesbians, women, atheists, Christians, Jews, and liberal Muslims.  We were engineers, teachers, travel agents, hotel clerks, students, entertainers, actors.  Some of us live our everyday lives with our actual identities, doing our other work at night or on the sly.  Others live solitary lives, far from our families, in hiding, living in the shadows.  We belong to one of many hundred small armed resistance cells in Holland.  The cells are organized into regions.  Each cell has its specialty—manufacture of false identity papers, social services, underground press, propaganda, information and intelligence, the secret army, and labor action. 
    Many cells adopt names: Zwart Masker, Black Mask, Rotmuffen, Barbarians, Horzels, Hornets, Kraaien, Crows.  We are the Watergeuzen, Sea Beggars, another term for pirates. 
    Our group does a little bit of everything, mostly information, intelligence, and safe passage.  Each of us has entered a world of duplicity and lies.  All quite naturally, as if we were born sociopaths.  I sometimes wonder how we will be able to return to being law-abiding citizens once the war is over. 
    How do I introduce them to you?  We all have many names.  Those of us who have converted to Islam have Muslim names, which are on our identity papers, our official names.  We have our underground names, which we use among ourselves, and the names we use on missions, forged on identity papers, which change depending on the mission.