by Ian Andrew
The open mic she was wearing was transmitting to the rest of her team in the rear kitchenette. “Head’s up! Where the fuck’s the other one? Tien, get Chaz on the phone and tell him to be on his toes. I knew there was something not right, there’s no car out front.” As she finished the sentence she heard a mobile ringing in the back room.
Then she heard Dan shouting, “It’s Chaz, we have company turning up. Red Toyota slowing as its approaching. Think it's going to swing in next to the Mondeo. Driver, white male, short hair, almost skinned. Mid to late twenties.”
Several things happened at once. Eugene and Dan hustled into the front room and Sammi followed. She helped Chris Sterling up and moved him out to the kitchenette. Tien moved to the door of the small rear office and kept an eye on Anatoly and the other guard whilst Kara moved back to the door between the kitchenette and the main room to cover Dan and Eugene.
Dan threw the still live phone onto the long table, so that Chaz could provide a commentary to events outside. They heard the engine of the car as it pulled onto the parking area. Eugene twitched the curtains for effect but didn’t look out. The engine turned off. After a short delay, the car door slammed shut.
“Just a single male, not looking like he’s expecting anything other than his mate to open the door, you’re good to go,” Chaz’s voice came from the phone speaker.
Dan withdrew the bolts top and bottom of the door. He made the sign for OK to his younger, but bigger, brother. When Eugene nodded his confirmation, Dan turned the main door lock and swung the door in.
All six foot three and sixteen and a half stone of Eugene erupted in fury through the opening. The newly arrived guard stood three feet away from the door’s threshold. It was just enough distance for him to half raise both his hands before Eugene’s right hook smashed into the side of his head. He was out before he hit the ground.
Dan helped his brother scoop up the new arrival. They were back inside with the door shut in a few seconds. After a few minutes the guard had started to come around but by then he’d been secured with duct tape and settled into the small room with Anatoly and his other colleague.
Kara swore softly under her breath. She knew they were tired but that was no excuse for missing the obvious.
“Right folks,” she said into the radio mic and the phone line still open to Chaz. “Lesson learnt. We nearly fucked that up. So let’s switch on. I need you to think if we’ve missed anything else. Tien and Eugene, talk to Anatoly. I want to know what he knows about this camp Chris is talking about. Where is it? What is it? Sammi, bring Chris back in here.”
When Sterling had settled back on the couch, his head bent down to the ground and his whole appearance once more one of defeat, she began again, “Chris, where’s Brenda?”
“She’s not here.”
Kara waited for him to add something but he didn’t. She stifled her frustration and kept her voice neutral, “Obviously Chris, I can see that. Where is she?”
“She’s still at the other place. He’s keeping her there,” his voice was heavy with emotion.
Kara heard the tiredness, stress and desperation in his tone but she needed to get as much information from him as possible so she pressed on.
“What other place Chris?”
“The camp, I told you the ca-”
“Chris! You were in the Forces, yes?” Kara asked in a stern tone that cut off his whined response.
“What?”
“Royal Navy. You were in the Service?”
“Yes.”
“For twenty plus years?”
“Yes.”
“You ended up in intelligence work?”
“Yes.” His answers, shocked by the change in direction of the questions, had become succinct.
“Okay. My friends and I were all in too. We’ve been sent by your kids because they were clever enough to recognise the message you left on your phone was bollocks. I know it was pure luck that the cover story chosen to hide your disappearance didn’t factor in Brenda’s fear of flying, but at least you had the presence of mind to stress the flying part. If we’re going to sort this out I need you to remember that presence of mind. So harden the fuck up and stop being a fucking victim. Do I make myself clear?” Her voice carried a distinct edge, a firmness that was beyond anything a parent might use with a disappointing child.
He didn’t answer.
“Or Chris, I can just go back out and wander away. Then you can stay here and probably get killed when whatever the fuck is going on has played itself out. Now do yourself a fucking favour and dig in. Clear?”
Another silence. Kara waited.
For the first time on his own volition Chris raised his head and met her eyes, his voice was steadier, calmer, stronger, “Clear.”
“Good. Now what’s going on? What do you do for Illy Sultanov?”
“I take photos.”
“Why?”
“For passports,” he said and coughed, wincing with the pain the simple action caused.
“Fake passports I presume?”
“Yes.”
“For who?”
“His girls mostly.” Sterling looked back down at the ground. His lips pursed together and he looked like he would cry again.
Kara felt a surge of anger. The intensity of it was like a migraine penetrating her temples. She concentrated on steering the conversation to the information she needed but her tone was brusque, “Chris, I don’t give a flying fuck what remorse you feel or what guilt you’re suffering. You stay strong and tell me what’s going on or I swear to God I’m off out the door.” His head came back up, he coughed again and once more the pain of it was etched into his face. “Good,” Kara said. “Use that pain and concentrate. Tell me what I need to know and we’ll repay the people that kicked the shit out of you.”
Sterling breathed as deeply as his battered ribs would allow and then continued, “Illy has photos sent over via the modelling agency. They’re large format, full-face shots. I re-photograph them, retouch them and turn them into passport standard.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. That’s all I do,” he paused and Kara was about to press him but he added, “Brenda does the rest.”
“What?” Kara’s voice had raised a little. “What do you mean Brenda does the rest?”
“It was Brenda that got us involved. Years ago.”
“Given our present circumstances Chris, I need the abridged version. Make it quick.”
“I met Illy years ago. He would come to dinner and we were friends. His little daughter and our-”
Kara interrupted him, “I know all this Chris. Zoe told me. Skip to making false passports for a Russian gangster.”
“We didn’t know he was that,” Sterling said defensively, almost pathetically. “He had a sister-in-law that he couldn’t get into the country. He needed her to look after Nat but she didn’t have the papers. He broke down in tears one night in our house, at dinner. Brenda worked for the passport office in Peterborough and said she could help. She stole a passport blank. I got Illy to get a picture of Yanina. I re-photographed it and we did the rest at home. It was easy.”
“What’s a passport blank?”
“It’s a passport before it’s had the personal details added. The purple book with all the pages save the last. It even has the holographic overlay that goes over the photo.”
“And Brenda supplied it?”
“Yes. It was easy for her. That’s what she worked with every day. She was even responsible for the inventory.”
“But what about the electronic chips. I thought they made forgery impossible?”
“They do. But this is back before they came in. The passports we did only had a piece of machine readable code and that was easy to forge if you knew the system and how it worked. Brenda knew it because that’s what she did for a job. She typed in all the details in the right formats, forged the readable code, added the photo and finished it off.” Sterling breathed deeply and winced again with the pain it caused.
Kara was slightly shocked at how seemingly unconcerned Sterling was in his recounting of the story. But she needed him to give up the rest. “Okay, so how do you go from getting Yanina in to the country to sitting in this place?”
“We did the one passport and Illy paid us a lot of money. A few months later he said he had young models wanting to come over but they couldn’t get out of Russia. The country was falling apart under the Russian Mafia, there were no jobs and no hope for the youth. We thought we were doing a good thing, helping them escape poverty and a fracturing country. We started supplying him passports. Only a few at first. But then more. The money he paid was a lot. I mean thousands for each,” he paused, his mouth downturned, his eyes sad.
“Yeah I know. We found it in your loft,” Kara said, trying to suppress a mounting anger.
The man’s one open eye focussed on her with a clarity of purpose that had been absent thus far. His victimhood instantly forgotten.
“You found it? How th-”
“Not really relevant at the minute Chris,” Kara interrupted. Her anger surged with an almost instantaneous contempt. But she knew she had to reign in her emotions and keep him talking.
“But yes, I found your money and I thought it was why you were being held so I moved it. It’s safe. We’ll come to some arrangement after all of this is done and dusted. Let’s get back to passports. When did you figure out what they were really for? Not models but human trafficking?” Kara asked with a harshness that she couldn’t hide despite her best efforts.
All the time she’d been trying to find Chris and Brenda Sterling she knew they had to be doing something illegal, the money was proof of that, but she hadn’t imagined they’d be implicitly involved in enabling Sultanov’s activities. She was furious and struggled to concentrate as Sterling began to speak again.
“A couple of years into it. We’d been doing two or three passports a week. Then the photos stopped being just Russians and started to include Asian girls, Africans, all sorts.”
“Yet you continued?”
“By then we had more money than we needed. We told him we wanted out. Illy took both Brenda and me out for a meal. Afterwards, instead of coming home, he took us to the camp. Made us watch what he did to one of his former associates who had disappointed him. He shot him in both knees. There was no way we were getting out,” Chris said with a hint of the dread he still felt remembering the screams and the blood.
“He took you to other examples?” Kara asked recalling Ty’s experience.
“Yes. But only me. In a way it was even worse on Brenda knowing that I had to go and see things she only imagined. He kept paying us the money but he said we needed the occasional reminder to keep us properly focussed.”
Kara’s anger was causing a physical pain in her chest. She spoke through gritted teeth, “And at no fucking time did you decide that just turning yourself in to the cops would be a way out?”
Sterling said nothing.
“No, obviously fucking not. You just kept taking the money and being persuaded?”
He looked up and spoke with a surly edge to his voice, “You think if we’d turned ourselves in and confessed that we would have made it to a courtroom to testify?”
She knew it was true but it didn’t make her feel any more sympathy for him. Forcing herself to focus she replayed in her mind what he had told her. Something was out of place. She remembered back to her conversation with Wendy Mead, the simpering security consultant with the likely crush on her brother. Wendy had said that the old passports were being phased out. “How can you still be making forgeries if you’re both retired and the new passports are being chipped?”
“Brenda knew that chip technology was going to be mandatory from March 2006. We told Illy there was no way we could forge them. They’d all be electronically recorded on verifiable databases. But he said that a passport issued before the chips became mandatory would still be valid for ten years. He ordered Brenda to steal as many blanks as she could. All she had to do was forge them as normal but date them before March 2006.”
“How many did she get?”
“We had to wait until January 2006 so Brenda could match the correct machine readable code formats. By then the stock of non-chipped blanks was being drawn down but she still managed to get a full box.”
“How many?” Kara asked sternly, her frustration evident.
“Fifteen hundred.”
“You’re fucking kidding?” She stood up and moved to the other side of the room. She needed to put a little distance between herself and this man she desperately wanted to punch.
“No,” Sterling said and looked forlorn again. “We’ve been supplying him since.”
“Okay. So why are you here now?”
“We had a hundred and twenty blanks left and they’re still good until March 2016. Brenda and I were making plans to get far away before either the blanks or the clock ran out. I guess Illy decided to act early. He wants us to make a last batch and then once we’re finished…,” he stopped.
Kara thought he was going to cry again and vowed that if he did she would slap him. But instead he just gave a little shrug and was racked by pain for the gesture. She came back and retook her seat, completing his sentence for him, “When you’re finished making them you’d both be finished?”
“I guess so. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want us hanging around. Not with what we know and being of no further use to him.”
“So he came and took you?” Kara asked.
“Three of his people arrived in the middle of Monday night, Tuesday morning. It’s been almost two weeks. They brought us here. Then Illy came and moved us up to the camp.”
“What’s this camp? Like an army camp?”
“No. It’s the place he keeps his girls and what he uses for his shows. That’s what he calls it when he punishes someone and makes us watch. His shows of persuasion he calls them. They brought all my camera gear and the old printer Brenda uses for the passports. I had to make one hundred and seven photos and then he set Brenda to work and brought me back here. Told her not to screw it up or he’d hurt me. Last week she messed up one of the holder pages and they started hitting me. Showed pictures of me to Brenda, to make her concentrate more. Illy knows it’s delicate work, careful work. Told her that she could talk to me on the phone everyday but if she fucked up again he’d fuck me up more. He also knows how many passports she can produce in a day so if she slacks off I get hurt again.”
“But surely she knows what happens when she finishes?”
“Yes, but…,” Chris muffled a sob.
“Chris?” Kara said through gritted teeth. She waited and heard him breathe deeply, battling against the pain of his ribs, recovering his voice.
“He said that if she worked properly I wouldn’t get hurt anymore and if she finished them all then he’d only kill us, and quickly.”
“As opposed to?” Kara asked half guessing the answer.
“As opposed to him torturing both of us. Killing us but not doing it until he makes us watch Zoe and Michael die in front of us,” Chris’ voice had become strangely devoid of emotion as he repeated the worst of Illy’s threats. The flatness told Kara that for the days he had sat in this makeshift prison the prospect of watching his kids die had been consuming him.
Kara’s temper subsided a little. She knew that regardless of what she thought about Chris or Brenda’s actions, she wasn’t going to expose Zoe or Michael to risk. “That’s not going to happen Chris. I can absolutely assure you. But he’s had you for nearly two weeks. How many passports can Brenda make
in a day?”
“If you’re asking how long we have left, not long. She can normally do about five a day. It’s fiddly, not like the automatic printers at her work. They used to do one passport every couple of seconds, but she needs to set each one up manually and figure out the old machine codes. Thing is, Illy’s had her working longer hours so she’s done seven or eight in a day. He’s kept his word and let us talk on the phone at night and Brenda tries to tell me how many if she can. When we spoke yesterday she had sixteen left. Maybe two days. At the most.”
Kara nodded as she thought about the options open to her. She knew the rest of the team, listening in on the open radio net to the conversation, would be doing the same. She forced herself to speak encouragingly to him, “That’s great Chris. It tells me we have time but I’m going to need some information on Illy’s security. How many have you seen? Describe them.”
“The three that took us originally. One woman, two men. One of them was that big bloke you brought in here. The woman was a blonde-”
“A blonde, medium height, athletic build, other guy was dark haired, face like a thug, broken nose?” Kara interrupted him with a succinct description of Emilia and Uzy.
“Uh, yeah, how di-”
“Never mind how, just tell me the rest.”
“There’s the two you have tied up out back and the other two on the night shift. They’re all young guys, mid-twenties. Neck tattoos. Hard looking. They’ve guarded me since I got here. They sound Russian I think. I’m not too sure, but Russian would be my guess. That’s it, that’s all I’ve seen.”
“What about before. How many security does Illy have in total?”
“He always has at least three with him on the show nights, but they’re different ones. I’ve not seen any of them here.”
“The big guy, did he ever show up at the camp?”
“I’d not seen him before he came to my house.”
Tien’s voice sounded in Kara’s ear, “Sounds right. Anatoly insists he’s never been near the place. Says Illy is tight on keeping his security to specific areas and operations.” Kara didn’t acknowledge the news.
“Chris, think. How many different faces have you seen?”