A Harvest of Thorns

by Corban Addison

  Jordan was an alien place, but Alya had precious little time to think about it. Sun Star was not paying her to ponder the strangeness of her fate. It was paying her to sew garments together piece by piece, order by order, creating shirts and shorts and pants and dresses to be wrapped in plastic, boxed up, and shipped on pallets to America. Alya knew less about the United States than she did about Jordan, except for the glimpses she had seen on the TV in her dormitory. But it didn’t matter where the clothes were going. All that mattered was her plain machine, and the products it made, and the orders they generated, and the wages she received at the end of each month, wages that finally, after a year of repaying her recruitment loan, were substantial enough to provide a meaningful remittance to her mother and siblings in Bangladesh.

  Work was the stitching that held Alya’s days together. Work that began at seven in the morning and didn’t end until seven in the evening—often later when the production schedule jammed up, or a buyer made a last-minute change. She didn’t waste time considering the past and the misfortune that had brought her here. Neither did she spend her energies considering the future. When she was a girl, she had dreamed. These days, she did not. She was eighteen years old and a master sewing machine operator. As long as Sun Star chose to renew her contract, she would send money home to her family.

  But there was a problem with her plan. She had put off thinking about it for as long as she could, reassuring herself that the suffering she had endured was curse enough and that God in his mercy would not burden her with more. But it had been two months and she had seen no blood. The timing was right and also terribly wrong. She recalled the wetness she had felt when Siraj forced himself on her the last time, the way it had hurt a bit less than the time before. As much as it frightened her to admit it, she could no longer deny what in her heart she knew to be true.

  She was pregnant.

  When the numbers on the clock turned from 5:59 to 6:00, the alarm bleated with sudden urgency, and Alya swung her legs out of bed. She waited in line to use the toilet, then dressed quickly in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans and wrapped her body in a green hijab and headscarf. Her nine sisters did the same, dancing around the room in a flurry of elbows and knees, yet without a curt word or a collision. Breakfast was a communal affair. The attached kitchen was cramped and the food bland to her taste, but it satisfied her hunger and for that she was grateful.

  At twenty minutes before seven, she heard a knock. Seconds later, the door swung open, and Mr. Abbadi, one of the maintenance men, greeted them with the same stern expression he always wore. “Come,” he said. He didn’t speak Bengali, and none of the young women spoke Arabic. So they communicated in Pidgin English supplemented by hand gestures.

  Alya and her sisters followed Mr. Abbadi out of the dormitory and down the path to the factory. Other workers joined them, and their group swelled into a crowd. The walk was no more than a hundred meters, but Alya cherished it. Apart from a supervised trip to the market on Fridays, the trip back and forth to the factory was the only time she got to spend outdoors. She looked toward the east and saw the sun rising above the rooftops of Cyber City. As its light suffused her eyes and its heat warmed her skin, she knew she could work another day, even with a child growing inside of her, even with a production manager who had raped her seventeen times, even with an owner who had deported two other women Siraj had impregnated. For Alya, it was all a matter of perspective. Her mother and siblings needed her. She would live for them.

  As he always did, Siraj met the workers at the factory door and watched them stroll past on their way to the sewing floor. He was a compact man, short and barrel-chested, with a square jaw dimpled at the center, a mess of curly hair, and a moustache and goatee that he kept perfectly trimmed. His ancestry was Indian, not Bangladeshi, but he was from Kolkata and spoke Bengali. When Alya reached the door, she turned away, afraid to meet his eyes. Every time she looked at him, his face became a mirror reminding her of all the wicked things she had done to please him.

  She walked quickly down the line and greeted her helper, Rohema, with a thin smile. Most of the workers at Sun Star were from Bangladesh, but a few were Indian, from West Bengal. The pieces were already at her station. The factory was in the middle of fulfilling a large order of men’s dress shirts for Porto Bari. She knew from conversations she had overheard between Siraj and his general manager that Porto Bari was owned by an American company called Presto. But the buyer meant nothing to her. Only the clothes mattered.

  Alya and Rohema started working as soon as Alya was situated. Her job was to fasten the sleeves to the body. She knew the pattern by heart. The motions came to her without thought, the fruit of endless practice. As she moved her hands and feet, controlling fabric and pedal, time passed like the current of a great river, carrying everyone in the factory downstream.

  Before she knew it, the lunch bell rang. The workers streamed to the cafeteria, scarfed down servings of South Asian rice, dal, and flatbread—a concession by the Egyptian owner to prevent grumbling during the workday—and returned to their stations. Alya picked up another shirt body, the sleeve pinned and ready to be stitched. She didn’t notice Siraj approaching until he spoke to her. She was so startled that she nearly dropped the shirt. It took all her mental fortitude to turn around calmly and look at him.

  “Your work is excellent,” he said in Bengali, examining one of her finished pieces.

  “Thank you,” she replied, her eyes shifting from his face to the floor and back again.

  “I would like your help with something,” he went on. “Rohema can manage in your absence. It will not take long.”

  Alya shuddered as chills raged along her spine. Her mouth went slack and her breathing grew shallow. She nodded obediently and stood up, making room for Rohema to take her place at the machine. The helper’s skills were rudimentary, but Siraj knew that Alya would correct any lapses in quality, even if it meant she had to skip her afternoon break to fulfill her quota. He was intent upon only one thing—the flesh beneath her clothes.

  Siraj strolled casually toward the product room with Alya on his heels. The room was located on the periphery of the floor. Unlike his office, it had no windows. Once the door was closed and locked, no one could see or hear what was happening, not unless Alya cried out. But she had trained herself to stay quiet, to do exactly what he asked without complaint, and to move toward the conclusion as swiftly as possible. The brevity of his pleasure was her only consolation. She would be back in her seat in ten minutes.

  When they reached the product room, he stepped aside and allowed her to enter ahead of him. Then he drew the door closed and twisted the lock. He turned to her, and his lips spread into a boyish grin. This was the part Alya found most confusing. He didn’t look at her like a predator. He looked at her like he was in love with her. He sauntered up to her and murmured poetry in her ear while he undressed her. It was as if somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind he truly believed she was his, and he was hers, and this bestial act was about romance and not rape.

  She gripped the edge of the table at the center of the room, digging her fingernails into the surface until she felt the wood give way. She let him do it. She gratified him. But she wasn’t there. She was back in her village on the banks of the Sela River, collecting the fish her brothers had caught. The last great wilderness in Bangladesh beckoned from across the river, tinting the horizon green and calling her heart to remember. When she was small, her father told her stories of the tigers that roamed the mangrove forests, animals more noble than any king. They were the heritage of her people, the pride of her land. Although history had not been kind to the Bengalis, the tigers were theirs. Nothing could take them away, not if she kept them alive in her soul.

  The forest was the place she went and stayed, as Siraj finished his business and adjusted his clothes. She covered herself again and wiped away her tears. She despised Siraj for what he had taken from her. But her hatred was pointless. It could not feed her family.
If this was the price she had to pay to meet their needs, she would do it, and she would do it again. That was the power she had over Siraj—the power to meet each sunrise with purpose. But that purpose now had a question mark beside it.

  What would happen to her when he found out about the baby?

  PART FIVE

  Cameron

  April–June 2014

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE GANGPLANK MARINA

  WASHINGTON, DC

  APRIL 7, 2014

  5:48 A.M.

  The road was dark beneath the starless Virginia sky. Cameron had the high beams on, cutting through the gloom, but the glow of tarmac and trees only seemed to accentuate the emptiness of the landscape. He didn’t want to be there, speeding through the night, the bags he had packed for a celebratory weekend stuffed hastily in the trunk, the warmth of the bed and Olivia’s embrace only a memory now. He saw her in the bathtub again, waiting for him. He remembered the feel of her wet skin on his, even as he struggled to keep his tired eyes from shutting. He felt anger growling in his gut, anger at the circumstances, anger at Ravenswood, anger at Vance.

  He had planned the birthday getaway for months, told everyone in the C-suite about it, even marked it on Vance’s calendar. But still he had been interrupted. There was blame to go around. That Ravenswood, an activist investment fund, had acquired a 4.9 percent stake in Presto just before the market closed on Friday signaled that the fund was making a move. They had yet to issue demands, but Cameron knew what they were after. The annual meeting of the shareholders was less than two months away. They were taking aim at the board, looking to open up a seat or two, which would give them leverage over the hiring and firing of Presto’s officers. They were gunning for Vance. They wanted to put a kid from Silicon Valley in the corner office to usher “the Presto dinosaur into the digital age,” as Ravenswood’s president had put it. Cameron understood why Vance was apoplectic. But there was little the critical incident team could do over the weekend that wouldn’t appear desperate. Hands had to be held, investors courted, defenses mounted, and the board appeased, but all of that could wait until Monday morning.

  He glanced at Olivia in the passenger seat. She was dozing, her head against the window, her chin supported by her hand. He wanted so much to stop the SUV and sleep until his alertness returned. The clouds of weariness were all around him now, swimming in his vision, fogging his brain, softening his grip on the wheel. He thought about cracking the window and cooling his face with cold air, but he didn’t want to disturb her. He had already ruined her birthday. He owed her so much, more than he could ever repay. Why was she still with him after all the sacrifices he had asked her to make? She said she understood. She was a lawyer too, a partner at his old firm. But did she really? Was there a part of her that wished she could walk away?

  Cameron yawned, then swatted at the air and yawned again. He gave serious thought to stopping, but he didn’t have time. They were just twenty minutes from the interstate, with its bright lights and wide lanes and the promise of home only miles away. A hot shower and a triple espresso were waiting for him there. He could make it . . . could make it . . . could . . . make . . . it . . .

  He didn’t know when it happened, or how. All he knew was that the world was suddenly black and spinning, and his body was spinning with it, pummeled relentlessly by surfaces he couldn’t see. The air was filled with the screams of metal assaulted by asphalt. If Olivia cried out, he didn’t hear it. Her voice was lost in the terror of the night.

  And then, in a shocking moment, it was over, and everything was silent, and he was upside down, and his knees were throbbing, and pain was shooting through his neck, and he was reaching out for her and mumbling her name, but she wasn’t responding. Her head was hanging listlessly, her hands splayed out on the crumpled ceiling. He was weeping and wailing her name, crying out as if by the sheer force of his passion he could summon her back from the dead.

  The next thing he knew he was hearing the sirens in the distance. But they didn’t sound right. The wail wasn’t shrill; it was soft, like the ringtone of his phone. In an instant, his eyes opened, and he realized it was all a dream—or, more precisely, a memory. He hadn’t recalled it so vividly since a year ago April, on the eve of the first anniversary. He sat up in the darkness, his veins shot through with ice. His phone was on the shelf above him, trilling mindlessly. He glanced at the clock and saw it wasn’t yet six. Who the hell was calling him now?

  He let the call go to voice mail and fought to bring his emotions under control. The guilt was like a python around his heart. He embraced and resisted it at the same time. It was useless. Olivia was gone, her grave on a hillside across the District. He should have died with her, or in her place. But that wasn’t the way of the universe. Life was a roulette wheel with rare glimpses of something more—what some called fate and others called Providence. But not everything was a matter of chance. This moment was his. It was all he would ever be able to claim.

  He took the phone off the shelf and saw Kent Salazar’s name. The consultant’s voice mail was curt and devoid of detail. Cameron left his bed and went into the galley of the sailboat, starting the espresso machine—one of the few items from the old apartment that he had kept. He looked out the wide portholes at the lights of the harbor. Dawn was half an hour away, but he couldn’t go back to sleep. When the coffee was ready, he took his mug to the wraparound booth and sat down, sipping it quietly and inhaling the steam.

  After a moment, he placed the call.

  “Cameron,” Salazar said, his words clipped by the long-distance transmission, “I know it’s early over there, but we have a situation that can’t wait.”

  Cameron took a breath and ordered his thoughts. After canvassing Presto’s suppliers in Malaysia for evidence of human trafficking and corruption, the Atlas team had moved on to the Middle East. They had been in Jordan for over a month, visiting factories, talking to workers, and developing better intelligence about the conditions on the ground. After sixteen years of doing business in Jordan, not one of Presto’s suppliers had been demoted to the Red List. It was highly suspicious, but so far the news from Salazar had been ambivalent—nothing glaring, but nothing particularly troubling either.

  “I’m awake now,” Cameron said. “What’s going on?”

  As Salazar passed along the details, Cameron’s heart sank into a different quicksand. The truth was far worse than he could have imagined. He drained his coffee and went to his closet, retrieving his suitcase. He put the call on speaker and packed as he listened.

  When Salazar wrapped up, he gave his orders tersely. “Keep them happy until I get there. I’ll do whatever they want, so long as they don’t go public. We can’t have another PR debacle.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say,” Salazar replied.

  Cameron terminated the call and rang the general aviation terminal at Reagan airport, making the necessary arrangements. Then he called Declan. His compliance chief answered with a grumble that sounded like “Hello.” In the background, Cameron heard a woman mutter, “God, it’s early. Who is it?” Cameron recognized the voice. It was Victoria Brost, the Atlas researcher, home on a furlough. He smiled despite himself. Declan hadn’t dated anyone in three years, not since his wife ran off with her fitness instructor.

  “Time to get up,” Cameron said. “We have a plane to catch.”

  After a pause, Declan’s mind caught up. “Jordan?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. Oh, and bring Victoria. She might be useful.”

  “Uh, right,” Declan said, sounding embarrassed. “We’re moving now.”

  After hanging up, Cameron ate a quick breakfast, dressed in his most intimidating suit and tie, and took his luggage topside, locking the companionway door behind him. He left a note for the harbormaster and sped out of the parking lot. Traffic was starting to pick up in advance of the workday. Still, he made it to the airport in ten minutes.

  Bridget, the flight attendant, greeted him
in the lounge with coffee, which he accepted gratefully. Declan and Victoria arrived a few minutes later, suited up and dragging rollaboards. Cameron grinned when he saw Victoria blushing beneath her makeup.

  “I’m happy for you,” he said, putting her at ease. “But we have work to do.”

  “This way, sir,” Bridget said and led them out to the flight line.

  The pilot greeted them beside the aircraft and ushered them aboard just as the morning sun peeked over the horizon and flooded the cabin with light. They took seats in the conference area at the rear of the plane and strapped themselves in, looking out the window as the plane began to taxi. Cameron waited to start his briefing until the wheels left the ground.

  “We’re this close to another media disaster,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger a hairsbreadth apart. “But we got lucky. Kent found out about it before the media did. There’s an activist group in Jordan called Al-Karama—‘dignity’ in Arabic. For about a year, they’ve been investigating garment factories in Cyber City near the Syrian border. One of those factories is Sun Star Enterprises—our biggest Jordanian supplier. Three weeks ago, they had a breakthrough. A worker opened up. The following week he disappeared. Al-Karama thinks the factory sent him back to Bangladesh. Here’s the punch line: the production manager at Sun Star, Siraj Ahmed, is a sexual predator. He’s been assaulting female workers for years. He picks the pretty ones, rapes them until he gets tired of them, and then moves on. If they get pregnant, the owner deports them. All of the workers know about it. But they’ve been afraid to speak. Until now.”

  “Sun Star is on our Gold List,” Declan said, his eyes bright with fury.

  Cameron nodded. “It gets worse. Al-Karama’s director, a woman named Ghada Azizi, reached out to our Dubai office last Monday. Ms. Azizi is smart. She knows the media can create a firestorm, but they have no power on the ground. She was hoping we would take action—”