Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

‘Here, drink,’ he muttered in broken Russian, shoving the bottle into Adriana’s hands.

  The water looked repulsive, but such was her desperation that she swallowed a mouthful with neither question nor protest, and despite the bitter, earthy taste of the liquid, which seemed to have come from a ditch or worse, it at least partially slaked her tortuous thirst. She wished to gulp down the whole bottle, but instead restrained herself and passed it on to Roxana, who took a wary sip before handing it to the next woman. The Japanese woman passed the bottle on without drinking from it and stared coldly at the driver with a barely veiled look of haughty contempt. A shard of courage pierced through Adriana’s despair, inspired by this woman’s resilience in the face of overwhelming adversity. She still did not know what to make of the Japanese woman, but for this moment Adriana allowed herself to admire her defiance and resolution.

  Despite her state of dehydration, she felt a pressing urge to relieve herself, for it had been at least a full day and night now since she had last passed water.

  ‘Sir? Excuse me, sir,’ she ventured in a meek voice, speaking slowly so that the driver could understand.

  ‘What?’ he responded with gruff annoyance.

  ‘I was wondering if … if I could use the bathroom?’

  ‘What? I no understand.’

  ‘Bathroom. I need to use the bathroom, please.’

  Another woman murmured in agreement.

  ‘Oh, oh, bathroom,’ he replied, his mouth twisting into a strange smile. ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Thank you sir, thank you,’ Adriana murmured as she started to rise, her stiff joints burning with pain from the extended hours of being cramped into a position that essentially amounted to a contortionist’s pretzel.

  ‘No! No! You no get out!’ the driver shouted harshly, his smile metamorphosing into a menacing snarl. ‘You stay! No get out!’

  ‘But … the bathroom, you said—’ Adriana retorted weakly.

  ‘Here bathroom!’ the driver barked, snatching a grimy, oil-stained bucket from a corner of the truck. ‘This, this bathroom. Understand?’

  He shoved the bucket into her hands, and she sat in mute silence for a few moments as his black eyes bored with lecherous hunger into her own.

  ‘You no want bathroom? No? You no want?’ he probed, his face now right up in front of hers. His breath reeked of pungent halitosis, and the vileness of it overpowered even the stench of the unwashed bodies and the choking diesel fumes.

  Adriana, however, could no longer resist the pressing urge.

  ‘I do need to use the bathroom, yes,’ she conceded in a cracking, defeated tone. ‘I’ll use the bucket, thank you sir. But, um, could I please have some privacy?’

  ‘What that word mean? I no understand. You need bathroom? Yes? No?’

  ‘Yes I do, sir, I just wanted to have some—’

  ‘Then you do bathroom! Now! Do it!’

  Now Adriana understood, and once again the awful cocktail of helplessness, rage, fear, shame and revulsion frothed deep within her core. She grimaced, her lips drawn tight and her eyes stony, and then turned to the side, pulled down her jeans and underwear and squatted over the bucket to urinate. She looked away, but there was no way to escape driver’s leering eyes and violating gaze. This had been the pattern of every interaction she had had with men since the start of this journey, and in some tragic manner she had almost resigned herself to simply accept it now. After a while she finished and pulled up her underwear and jeans and turned to the others.

  ‘Does anyone else need to use the restroom?’

  They all nodded, and each took their turn, trembling with fear, shame and impotent anger before the salacious gaze of the truck driver. Even the stoic Japanese woman needed to go, and she had no option but to squat in front of the driver like the rest of them, her face reddening with bristling anger. After the last woman had relieved herself, the grinning buffoon grabbed the bucket from her hands and threw the urine out onto the road.

  ‘Now we go,’ he announced, his betel-nut stained teeth glinting in the first rays of the sun, the light red and weak through the dense haze of air pollution. ‘You keep quiet, all you!’

  At the end of the day they reached their destination. All around the truck the sound of heavy city traffic crashed and rolled in waves; a stormy ocean of honking horns punctuated by the hornet-swarm buzz of small motorcycle engines, drifting above which was the almost tangible fog of millions of chattering, laughing, yelling and clamouring human voices. The vehicle clattered through a narrow alley, its grumbling engine reverberating a brash rumble that ricocheted off the walls and doors of haphazardly constructed concrete buildings. Finally it came to a stop, and the darkness in the back of the truck was shattered by a painfully piercing blaze of light when the driver hauled open the doors. Two Thai men dressed in waiters’ garb climbed into the back and began unloading the crates, ignoring the women completely, as if their souls had already left the world of mortals and were now hovering like translucent spirits above the surface of the truck bed.

  ‘You! All you, get out!’ the driver commanded.

  Adriana took Roxana’s hand and helped her to stand up. Her joints ached and stabs of pain shot through her limbs as she struggled to get her blood flowing to her extremities after two days of being cramped in the tiny space. Daylight, dirty and harsh from the polluted sky, shoved searing light-blindness like white-hot steel rods through her dark-accustomed eyes. The truck driver showed neither sympathy nor kindness, however, as he grabbed Adriana’s arm and yanked her out of the back.

  ‘Hurry up! Get out!’

  He shoved her forward and then walked around to the front of the truck to make a call on his phone. Adriana stumbled and fell onto the concrete, and gasped from a jolt of sharp pain, skinning her knee. A tributary of blood trickled down her ivory skin as she tried to struggle to her feet, but, abruptly, a strong hand wrapped itself around her forearm and helped her to her feet.

  ‘Stand up, quickly, there isn’t much time,’ the Japanese woman hissed.

  Adriana looked up, still blinking and squinting her eyes against the intensity of the glare.

  ‘Listen to me very carefully,’ the woman said in flawless, machine-gun fast Russian. ‘You’re the only one in this group I can trust to help us. You need to understand that none of this is what it seems; there is an underground war being waged, and unfortunately you’ve been thrust into the middle of it. I know you’re no soldier, but right now you’re going to have to be. I’ve been observing you this whole journey, and from the conversation we had I know that you’re intelligent, savvy and that your heart is in the right place.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt me! There’s no time! This is all I can tell you: do whatever you’re told to do, and do not mention to anyone that I ever spoke to you. If anyone asks about me, and I mean anyone, for your own safety you must deny everything. Listen carefully for the names “William Gisborne” and “the Tiger”, and remember everything you hear about these names. A man will come to you in disguise; look for a red dragon in a stormy sky. He will tell you what to do next. Trust him alone and nobody else. I must emphasise that: trust nobody, not even these women with you. Goodbye Adriana.’

  Adriana turned around just in time to see the Japanese woman spin around and then sprint down a side alley. She vaulted with acrobatic flair over a stack of parked scooters, then scrambled up a fire escape and then, just like that, she was gone.

  ‘What the…’ Adriana murmured to herself.

  For a sudden, gut-wrenching moment she too had the impulse to flee, but she realised, with a sinking heart, as the truck driver walked around from the front of the vehicle to herd the women together, that that window of opportunity was now closed.

  ‘Are we at the restaurant now?’ a woman asked in a feeble, reed-thin voice.

  The truck driver guffawed with raucous laughter, which morphed quickly into a fit of coughing. When he had recovered from this, he spat a wad of thick yellow phleg
m onto the street.

  ‘Restaurant!?’ he chuckled, his broad face an ugly crumpling of incredulousness and sadistic glee. ‘That what they tell you?’ He roared with laughter again, and when his chuckles had subsided, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and glared at the women. ‘You go with he,’ he instructed, pointing at a well-dressed Thai man who had just emerged from a narrow alley to their right.

  This new arrival was a tall, slender individual in his late thirties, who stood with a ramrod-straight back and carried himself with an air of self-assured dignity. He strode up to the truck driver and handed him a sealed envelope, did a head count of the women, and, strangely enough, did not seem to notice that the Japanese woman was missing, and then spoke a few words in Thai. The driver nodded, shuffled back to his truck and then drove off in a cloud of diesel fumes and metallic rattles and groans.

  The thin man, attired in a grey business suit and reflective aviator sunglasses that dominated his narrow and intensely angular face, walked over to the girls and smiled warmly.

  ‘Welcome to your new place of employment,’ he said in flawless Russian, his almost effeminate voice soft and gentle. ‘I trust that you have had a comfortable journey?’

  Adriana wanted to speak up and complain about just how horrific the trip had actually been, but a sixth sense warned her to hold her tongue and whispered to her that this man was not nearly as harmless a person as he made himself out to be.

  ‘I’m sure you are all weary, hungry and in need of a good shower and a soft bed. Am I correct?’ he asked.

  The women nodded, and the man beamed a glowing smile at them yet again, baring a mouth filled with crooked, gold-capped teeth.

  ‘We like to take care of our employees here,’ he purred, his unflinching smile disarming. ‘If you will just follow me, I’ll show you to your quarters, where a hot meal and an even hotter shower awaits. Everything has been taken care of, as our agents in your home countries promised you.’

  ‘Excuse me sir,’ a woman said. ‘Do you have our passports? Are all our employment papers in order now?’

  A strange look flashed briefly across the man’s face; suppressed rage, perhaps, Adriana guessed as she studied what she could see of his expression behind his aviators. In an instant, however, the look was gone, replaced by the sinister mask of his reassuring smile, rubbery in its artificiality.

  ‘You don’t need to concern yourself with such things right now,’ he answered coolly. ‘We will discuss the administrative details later. Please, follow me.’

  They headed through the alley and down a flight of metal stairs that led to a basement entrance. The man rapped several times in a peculiar pattern on the reinforced steel door, flashing another comforting smile at the women when the door was opened from the inside. Two large, heavily built Thai men with earpieces and sunglasses stood guard just inside, and they stepped aside to allow the man and the women enter. Adriana noticed that they both wore pistols on their hips. After the last of the women entered, the guards locked the door behind them.

  A sense of ominous foreboding was growing within Adriana like an engorged alien parasite, ready to burst free of her body. Something was very wrong here. She glanced across at Roxana, whose eyes were wide with fear, and she held the girl’s hand reassuringly and tried as best she could to conceal her own mounting dread. Suddenly she missed the Japanese woman, who had maintained such fiery defiance in the face of crushing hopelessness. Who now could she now look to for hope? She thought again of what the woman had told her before fleeing: ‘William Gisborne’, ‘the Tiger’, ‘a red dragon against a stormy sky’ and a secret global war. Could she have been schizophrenic? Such things sounded like the ramblings of a madwoman more than anything else.

  The women followed the elegantly dressed Thai man down a narrow passage and descended another set of stairs, finally emerging into a small, plainly furnished room.

  ‘Ladies,’ began the man, ‘please place your bags over there in the corner. If you step through this door to the right, you will find a dressing room where you can disrobe and head on through to the showers. In the lockers you will find clean clothes and towels. After you have had a shower and clothed yourselves in your uniforms, please return to this room, where we will provide you with a hot meal and tea or coffee, depending on your preference.’

  ‘I’ll have tea, plea—,’ one of the girls began, but the man held up a finger to silence her.

  ‘Hold your horses my dear,’ he said, smiling sweetly. ‘We’ll sort that out later. Now, please proceed to the showers.’

  The women filed into the room, and for the first time in weeks Adriana noticed smiles on their faces as an atmosphere of optimism infused the air. Still, she could not allow herself to partake of it, for her sixth sense was screaming out that something here was terribly wrong.

  ‘What a lovely man,’ a woman remarked as they entered the locker room. ‘So much nicer and more polite than any of those other pigs we’ve encountered on this horrid voyage!’

  ‘He’s very smartly dressed,’ another woman added. ‘That must mean we’re going to be working in a fancy place. Just think of the tips these rich diners will give us! We’ll be sending plenty of money back to Moldavia.’

  ‘I’ll be able to send my little Raluca to school, finally! She’s a year behind because we couldn’t afford the school fees last year, but she’s wonderfully smart, she’ll catch up in no time. She’ll be so excited to be back in the classroom!’

  Adriana thought briefly about asking them what they thought about the man’s evasion of their questions about their passports, or why this supposed restaurant had armed thugs guarding the doors, but she decided against it, especially since Roxana finally had a smile on her face. She stripped off her clothes, noticing only now in this clean, odour-free environment how pungent they smelled. Judging from the wrinkled noses and grunts of disgust coming from the other women, they too were noticing the stench of the garments that they had been in, unchanged, for ten days.

  Nonetheless, their faces were all smiles again as they stepped into the large communal shower, attractively tiled with mosaics of dolphins, waves and mermaids. The hot jets of water hitting their grimy skin catalysed spontaneous outbursts of glee and relief, and jokes and laughter echoed through the steam-saturated space as they washed themselves.

  After they had finished, they emerged from the showers and perused the lockers in which the man had said their uniforms would be. However, as they sifted through the items of clothing their smiles soon began to droop and wither, morphing into frowns of consternation.

  As Adriana picked and sorted through the clothes, a sense of deep unease welled up within her.

  ‘Are there no other clothes but mini-skirts, tube tops and G-strings in these lockers?’ she mumbled.

  ‘These clothes will make us look like whores!’ another woman exclaimed.

  ‘There … there must have been a mistake,’ Roxana muttered.

  A tornado of dread began spinning black fear through the room, and it whirled about them with menacing abandon. The blood drained from Adriana’s face as the realisation of the fate that had befallen them started to dawn on her. Before she could vocalise any of her panicked thoughts, however, there was a knock on the door.

  ‘Ladies,’ came the voice of the well-dressed man, ‘your new employer is outside waiting to meet you. Please don’t keep him waiting; he is an extremely busy man, and patience is unfortunately not one of his myriad virtues.’

  ‘Jesus!’ one of the women gasped, her face contorted with worry and fear. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

  ‘We’d better just do what the man says,’ another grunted.

  The young women all began putting on the items of provocative clothing, and when they were all dressed and ready, they filed grimy out of the room in compliant but anxious silence. Outside they saw the Thai man standing next to a table that was decked out with all sorts of snacks as well as two urns of tea and coffee. To the right of the table
were two European men, who looked to be in their mid-thirties, dressed in expensive business suits. Both were built like warriors of legend; all height, broad shoulders and heavy muscles. One sported a mane of long, thick platinum hair that hung loose about his shoulders, and adding to his ursine appearance was a great blonde beard that was braided in places and decorated with beads. His eyes, ice-blue and almost translucent in their paleness, were set beneath a jutting brow and thick, pale eyebrows. A deep gash of a scar ran across his nose, all the way across one cheek and down onto his bull-neck. Another scar ran vertically down the right side of his face, tracing a bone-white passage from his hairline down over his eye, paring the eyebrow neatly in half and reaching the terminus of its journey at the corner of his mouth, which the wound had twisted downwards into what looked like a permanent snarl.

  His companion was of a similar height to the bearded man – around seven feet – but he had close-cropped chestnut hair, piercing green eyes and a square granite jaw that was cleanly shaven. Full-colour, intricately detailed tattoos extended from inside his suit all the way up his throat and the sides of his thick neck to his ears and spilled out of his suit sleeves onto his bear-paw hands.

  The bearded man, smiling benignly, began to speak in fluent Russian, his voice a thunderous baritone rumble, like some massive motorcycle idling menacingly.

  ‘Greetings ladies. My name is Sigurd Haraldsson. Some, though, call me the Ice Bear.’

  Something about this nickname immediately resonated in Adriana’s thoughts, bringing to mind what the Japanese woman had mentioned – here this man was, calling himself the ‘Ice Bear’, and she had been told to look out for someone called ‘the Tiger’. It wasn’t exactly what she was supposed to listen for, but it certainly was close enough. She pricked her ears and tried to pay close attention to detail.

  ‘In time, you may find out how I achieved this moniker,’ Sigurd continued, ‘but that is of little importance at the present moment. What is of the utmost importance now is that you understand the terms of your employment under me. First, I wish to—’