Andy McNab - Zero hour

'Can you get us to that intersection?'

'We're almost there. Left in four or five blocks.'

'Does Pusher Street mean what I think it means?'

She nodded. 'Since 1990, the story of Christiania has been one of police raids on Pusher Street. The police, decked out in riot gear, have patrolled Christiania regularly, staging numerous organized raids leading to some ugly confrontations and arrests.'

She went back to the map page. 'This is the one. Left here.'

I found a space on a street full of bars and cafes just off Prinsessegade. I pushed enough coins into the machine to last us a few hours and stuck the ticket on the dashboard.

We walked a couple of hundred yards to an alleyway. A short way down it, a big wooden sign announced, 'You are entering Christiania.' On the reverse, for our benefit on the way back, it said, 'You are entering the EU.'

An information board told us that guided tours left from there at three in the afternoon. Another showed a camera with a red slash through it. The dealers had never gone away, Anna said. No dealer likes a camera in his face.

We walked between walls plastered with graffiti and murals. A familiar smell hung in the air. The slightly sickly, pungent scent of cannabis thickened the further we went. A woman cycled past us on a bike with a huge wooden box on the front containing a pair of muzzled Rottweilers.

A young guy with dreadlocks stood guard by a fence, radio comms in one hand, oversized spliff in the other. I guessed the system worked like the one the Amish had in the film Witness. One call and the community came running – or, in Christiania's case, the dealers. The guidebook had said that the narcotics police, backed by the Riot Squad, had raided Pusher Street several times, arresting any of the dealers who didn't pack up and run fast enough.

'Does it say why they don't just close the whole place down and be done with it?'

'There would be riots. The hash market turns over millions a year.'

Anna read some more from the guidebook as she walked. Perfect. It made us look like tourists in search of a 'sanctuary for anyone who is tired of the consumerism and routine of everyday life'.

It must have sounded idyllic to a girl raised in an environment of chaos and gangsterdom after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Slobo wouldn't have had to sell this one too hard.

'Turn on, tune in, drop out – whatever. Lovely until the money runs out and you realize you have to get a haircut and some work clothes and earn a living.' I grinned. I was starting to sound like Tresillian.

Graffiti covered every inch of wall.

Living to lower standards for a higher quality of life.

Loud music bounced out at us from somewhere out of sight.

A guy in a sweater full of holes ambled towards us.

'Pusher Street?' Anna showed him the map.

He pointed wearily. Christiania was Copenhagen's second biggest tourist attraction after the Tivoli Gardens and every one of them probably wanted to be able to tell their friends back home they'd dared visit Pusher Street.

'Have you seen this girl?'

Anna produced her picture but he'd already gone.

We came to a small market. Three or four stalls sold T-shirts, hats and scarves. Anna showed the stallholders Lilian's photograph but none of them recognized her. I wondered if they would have recognized their own mothers. Everybody looked slightly dazed.

Anna spotted a bar. 'As you said, she had to eat and drink…'

We went in. The big airy room was full of guys with wispy beards and woolly hats with earflaps. It was us who looked weird. We did what any concerned family member would do. We went up to the bar and held out Lilian's picture. The girl had pierced eyebrows and a nose-ring. Her hair was bleached.

'Have you seen this girl?'

'I'm sorry, no.'

'Do you mind if we ask your customers?'

'Be my guest. But please buy something.'

I ordered a couple of beers and handed over a fistful of kroner. We left the bottles on the bar and started to circulate. The first table responded to the photo with shakes of the head. So did the next. People did look, but I got the feeling they wouldn't have told us even if they had seen her. I put it down to rage against the machine. 'This is shit, Anna. Let's try that information centre.'

As we turned to leave, a ruddy-faced man in his sixties hauled himself to his feet, as if to follow us out. Then he seemed to think better of it and sat down again. Maybe he was just too stoned or pissed. He had long white hair that needed even more of a wash than we did and a beard that Gandalf would have been jealous of.

I caught Anna's eye and we headed back to his table. She sat opposite him, and I stood alongside. He concentrated very hard on his glass. Everything about him suggested he'd downed a good few whiskies before he'd got to this one.

He nodded at the pictures. His watery eyes seemed to loosen in their sockets. 'Your… child?'

'No, my sister. She's run away. She came here, maybe ten days ago. You've seen her?'

He pulled out a packet of Drum and some papers but seemed in no hurry to open them. Anna took the hint and pulled out her readymades. He feigned delighted surprise and helped himself to three.

'You know, many people say that this place saved them when they were at their lowest ebb and had nowhere else to turn.' His English was accented but faultless. 'I'm one of them. I left home when I was fifteen and drifted until I found Christiania.'

He paused to light the first of his recently acquired Camels and sucked in the real deal with the kind of pleasure that only smokers know. Me, I wished we were still in the EU where this shit was outlawed. Anna sparked up too, adding to the pollution.

Gandalf waved his free hand around the commune as if it were his kingdom. 'In the early days we built our own houses in the woods or renovated the old barracks. We had a right to build as we chose. This place is all I know.'

I wasn't sure if the smile that lurked behind the hair was fuelled by happiness or cannabis, but it showed off the three or four yellow tombstones that still clung to his gums in all their glory.

I stuck a finger on Lilian's chin. 'Her name is Lilian Nemova. You seen her?'

'Russian?'

'Moldovan.'

His eyes wobbled as they moved down her picture once more, but only for a fleeting second. 'You do not sound like a Moldovan, brother.'

Anna was getting as pissed off with him as I was. 'He's helping me find her.'

He took a swig from his glass.

I kept an eye on people coming in and leaving the bar. You never knew.

'We were hard-working people here. Artists, socialists, anarchists – people who drank and smoked too much, but we had rules. We have bad people preying on the weak and lonely.' He waved in the vague direction of the free town outside. 'It was the dawn of a new era. A new way of living. Then it all changed. We've even had a murder here – here, in Christiania!' He pointed a wrinkled finger at the sugar bowl in front of him like it was the root of all evil. 'It's wrong. It wasn't supposed to be this way.'

He necked the last of his drink.

'But have you seen her?'

He shook his head; he didn't want to look at the photo again. 'These are sad days. Turkish gangs, Palestinian and Balkan gangs, Russian gangs. They are all here.'

I crouched down, elbows on the table, trying for eye-to-eye. 'One of the gangs – the Russians maybe – would they have her?'

He stared into his empty glass and kept shaking his head. He started to cry. Saliva dribbled into his beard.

'Fuck him. Let's get out there. The more people we hit, the better the chance that whoever lifted her will front us.'

Anna wasn't too sure. 'You think that would be the best thing to do? We might get very dead, very soon.'