A woman came down the stairs. Sita recognized her from the restaurant. Dmitri spoke to her in a harsh sounding language that Sita didn’t understand. The woman glanced at Sita unsmilingly and motioned for her to follow. They climbed the stairs and crossed the landing to a paneled library. The woman handed her a dust rag.
“I am Tatiana,” she said. “Clean bookshelves.”
Sita obeyed. The library was large with many shelves. All the books were coated in dust and looked as if they had not been touched in years. She removed each volume from its shelf and gently dusted its edges and spine. The library reminded her of her father. He had kept a study in the bungalow by the sea, and he had curated his book collection with care. Most evenings after dinner, he had retreated to his desk and pored over some monograph or another in the lamplight. Sita had often asked him what he was reading, just to see his eyes light up. His answers had been long-winded, but almost always she had learned something.
The chore of dusting took many hours. Tatiana brought her a sandwich for lunch. She appraised the shelves Sita had cleaned and smiled thinly.
“Job is good,” she said. “Keep doing.”
Sita finished the last book just before Tatiana reappeared. “Done?” she asked, and Sita nodded. “Good. Dmitri take you home now.”
She followed Tatiana down the stairs to the foyer. Dmitri and Vasily were talking in the sitting room. A blond girl dressed in a halter top and black pants sat beside Dmitri, staring at the floor. Tatiana called to her son, and the blond girl glanced at Sita across the distance. Her eyes widened perceptibly, and the look struck Sita like a blow.
The girl was scared.
Sita averted her gaze and followed Dmitri out the door. Whatever had happened to the girl was none of her business. Working with Tatiana was far preferable to suffering the abuse of Aunti-ji. As far as she was concerned, the reassignment was a boon.
At long last, Lakshmi had smiled on her again.
Sita returned to the flat the next day and the day thereafter, escorted by Dmitri. Each morning, Tatiana met her in the foyer and gave her a task. She dusted the furniture in the sitting room and polished the dining room table and chairs. She cleaned the bathrooms and brought order to the linen closet upstairs. She worked for eight hours with a fifteenminute break for lunch. Tatiana was a perfectionist, but Sita was exacting and met her expectations.
On her fourth day at the flat, Sita’s morning routine changed without explanation. After parking the Mercedes, Dmitri led her back across the courtyard toward the street. He stopped beneath the covered archway and punched in a code on a keypad beside a glass door Sita hadn’t noticed before. She heard a lock disengage. She followed him into a musty vestibule at the base of a spiral stairwell.
Dmitri delivered her a stern look. “You do not speak of what you see,” he said in surprisingly fluent English. “You do what I ask and you keep the rest to yourself. If not, there will be consequences. Understand?”
Sita’s breath caught in her throat. She recalled the blond girl on the couch that first day and wondered whether she was about to discover the source of the girl’s fear.
She nodded and followed Dmitri up a flight of steps to a wooden landing. Two doors bracketed the landing. Dmitri opened the door to the right, and Sita trailed him into a corridor lit by a single bare bulb. Taking a set of keys out of his jacket, Dmitri walked down the hall and unlocked six doors. He barked a few words in his strange language and retrieved a basket from a closet at the end of the corridor.
One by one, six young women emerged from the rooms. They were dressed in T-shirts and gym shorts. The last was the girl Sita had seen on the couch. Sita thought of the sex rooms in Suchir’s brothel. She had no idea what Dmitri did with the girls, but the locks made it clear that they were not free to leave.
Dmitri handed her the basket and spoke in English. “Take the sheets and pillowcases off the beds and gather the dirty clothes.”
Sita entered the first bedroom. The room was small and dimly lit, with space only for a single bed and a chest of drawers. The window on the far wall was covered with a shade, its edges fastened to the trim with staples. Sita stripped the bed of its linens and scooped up a pile of lacy underwear in the corner. She repeated the same motions in the remaining rooms. All had the same dreary austerity, the same sealed windows, the same invisible menace.
The girls used the bathroom and returned to the hallway while Sita busied herself with her task. When she had finished stripping the last bed, she took the basket back to Dmitri. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the girls. The loneliness of their captivity reminded her of Ahalya. Dmitri spoke a few more unintelligible words and the girls returned to their rooms. In fifteen minutes, none of them had made a sound.
Dmitri locked the doors and escorted Sita to Vasily’s flat. Tatiana met her in the foyer and led her to the basement laundry room. She showed her how to operate the washing machine and left her alone. Sorting the sheets and clothing into piles, Sita tried not to think about what she had seen. She didn’t want to hate these people, but she couldn’t abide the thought that six girls were barricaded in a makeshift prison not more than fifty feet away. Could Dmitri be a pimp like Suchir?
A few minutes before three o’clock, Sita heard the sound of heavy footsteps on the basement stairs. The door to the laundry room wasn’t quite closed, and she could see a sliver of hallway through the door frame. Sita glanced toward the crack just as Dmitri came into view. A second later she saw a flash of blond hair and the profile of a young woman’s face. She was almost certain it was the girl she had seen on the couch.
Dmitri dragged the girl down the hall and opened the door at the end, slamming it shut behind him. After a brief pause, Sita heard the sound of a woman speaking. The words were garbled and distorted by a peculiar echo. At first she thought the sound was coming through the wall, but then she realized its source was an air vent near the ceiling.
Sita heard a slap of flesh and a shriek of pain. She listened to the sounds of a scuffle and the gruff voice of a man making demands. A few seconds later, the young woman cried out and the man began to moan. Sita clutched the pillowcase she was folding and held her breath. She knew what she was hearing, and the thought of it enraged and terrified her.
Dmitri finished his business and returned upstairs. Sita heard the girl whimpering through the air vent, and her heart went out to her. She wrestled with her conscience. She was at Dmitri’s mercy, and he was clearly ruthless. Yet her father had taught her that failing to act in the face of suffering is inhuman. She thought of Ahalya after the incident with Shankar, and the memory galvanized her.
She opened the door to the laundry room. Glancing at the clock on the wall, she saw that she had less than twenty minutes before Tatiana would return for her. She moved down the hall to the door at the end. She turned the knob soundlessly and entered the room.
The young woman was curled up on a bed, her body wrapped in sheets. At the foot of the bed was a pile of clothing and underwear like the garments Sita had washed. She saw three video cameras on tripods and an array of lights. She stood in confusion, wondering at the bizarre scene. Then she understood.
The cameras almost certainly had recorded the girl’s rape.
She walked to the bedside and knelt down, her stomach churning. She touched the girl’s shoulder, and the girl moaned and rolled over. She walked around the bed and knelt again. Reaching out, she cupped the girl’s fingers in her hand. The girl grew still and her eyes focused on Sita’s face. She lifted herself into a sitting position.
“Do you speak English?” Sita asked, fearing that she didn’t understand.
“A little,” the girl replied in a thick accent. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sita,” she said, speaking slowly. “I do house chores.”
The girl began to cry silently. “I am Natalia. Where you from?”
“India.”
“I am from Ukraine.”
“What are you doing here?” Sita as
ked.
“I come for work. I apply at agency. Men take passport and bring here.”
Sita thought of how different their paths had been, yet how frighteningly similar. She heard a creak on the floor above and grew scared.
“I must go,” she whispered urgently. “I will pray for you.”
Natalia gave Sita a half smile. “Spasibo bolshoi,” she said and then repeated herself in English. “Thank you.”
Chapter 17
Hope may vanish, but can die not.
—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Mumbai, India
Weeks passed and the police found no trace of Sita or Navin. Porter responded to Thomas’s e-mail and promised to submit Sita’s photograph to Interpol. He explained, however, that ICAID was useful only if a missing girl showed up on the Internet or happened to come into the custody of law enforcement in an Interpol member state. If she stayed below the radar, it was unlikely they would find her.
At the end of his message, Porter offered a piece of good news:
By the way, the Fayetteville cops have made some progress on Abby Davis’s case. We know she’s still in the city, and we’re doing our best to pin down her location. Unfortunately, it looks like your father may have been right about the trafficking connection. I’ll keep you posted.
Sitting on Dinesh’s balcony, beer in hand, Thomas thought of Abby’s mother and wondered how she was handling the excruciating wait. Her travail continued to stir him. Looking back, he wondered how much of his present situation had been influenced by their chance encounter. If not for Abby, would he have been interested in CASE? Would he have talked to Porter and learned about the opening in Bombay? Would he have come to India and sought reconciliation with Priya?
The weeks were eventful at the office. CASE conducted two more raids and rescued a total of fourteen minor girls. The second raid, which targeted a beer bar in a northeastern suburb, was nearly blown by a tip-off that almost certainly came from the police. A field agent on the street saw the girls being moved an hour before the operation, and Greer obtained a lastminute modification of the search warrant that included the new location.
Thomas was impressed with the novelty of the sting. The CASE field agents had contacted the pimps to arrange a private sex party for three men. Enticed by the offer of a premium if the girls were underage, the pimps turned out their stable. The police arrested the perpetrators in a chawl beside the bar and placed ten minor girls in protective custody. The rescue was the most dramatic in the history of CASE’s Bombay office and made waves at headquarters in D.C.
Thomas spent his days working on closing arguments in cases set for decision in the spring. On the side, he continued to polish the Jogeshwari brief. The judge had continued the case at the request of the defense, which both outraged and gratified him. It meant the judge was sympathetic to the pimp, but it also gave him more time to weave his logical noose. When he finally turned in the brief, Samantha was effusive with praise.
“It’s the best I’ve seen in five years here,” she said. “You made it sing.”
“I know it’s bad form to get invested in a case,” he said, “but I’d really like to wipe the floor with this bastard.”
Samantha’s eyes sparkled. “You never know. You just might get your wish.”
Thomas didn’t return to the Sisters of Mercy home. His excuse was that he was too busy, but in truth he didn’t know what to say to Ahalya. Anita told him that the girl always made a point to ask about him when she came to visit.
“She’s taken a liking to you,” Anita told him one afternoon.
“She doesn’t know me,” he replied.
“She knows enough. Besides, there aren’t too many other people around who have friends at the Justice Department.”
He sighed. “I take it you told her I passed along Sita’s photograph?”
Anita nodded. “I did.”
“What more does she expect?”
“I don’t know. You were the one who promised to try.”
He spent two evenings a week with Priya. Often she would meet him for dinner with the CASE staff at Sheesha, a rooftop Irani place on Linking Road, or at Out of the Blue, an upscale restaurant in Pali Hill. Thomas wasn’t surprised when she took a liking to the expats. Their good-natured restiveness and fascination with the world were a refreshing contrast to the cynicism and ennui that plagued so many of his friends back home.
As February wore on, the weather grew warmer by the day. Despite himself, Thomas thought often of Ahalya and the rakhi bracelet. He got permission from Greer to contact the CBI office, but the news he received was always disheartening. At one point, the officer assigned to the case put Thomas through to the superintendent, who assured him that there was nothing more they could do.
Thomas hung up and looked at the band on his wrist. There were many moments when he wished he could return it. It was a burden he wasn’t qualified to bear. Yet he had made Ahalya a promise. And he had made Priya a deal.
He had to try.
The break came when no one expected it. In the third week of February, Thomas was eating lunch at the CASE office with Nigel McPhee and a few of the expats when Nigel’s mobile phone rang. He fished the phone out of his pocket, and looked at the screen.
“Talk to me,” he said, putting the phone to his ear. He listened for a few seconds, and his eyes widened. “Tonight? I’ll let Greer know.”
“What’s going on?” Thomas asked when Nigel hung up the phone. The field operations director ignored him and walked immediately to Greer’s office. Thomas set aside his lunch and followed on his heels, wondering whether it had something to do with Sita.
Greer looked up from a report he was reading.
“Navin is back in Bombay,” Nigel said. “Rohit called in the tip.”
“Has he confirmed it?” Greer asked, his expression turning serious.
Nigel shook his head. “But the pimp is a trusted source. He got the information directly from Sumeera.”
“Navin is a common name. How does he know it’s our man?”
“This Navin has a thing for minor girls.”
“That isn’t good enough,” Greer objected. “If we’re going to move on this, we have to be absolutely sure.”
Nigel smiled. “Navin doesn’t come for sex. He takes the girls away.”
Greer’s skepticism seemed to abate. “Did he say where?”
“The pimp said Europe.”
Greer picked up the phone. “Send the rest of the guys down there. I’ll call the CBI.”
Nigel nodded and left the office, but Thomas stayed put. “I want in on this,” he said.
Greer seemed nonplussed. “We don’t know what kind of character Navin is. I can’t guarantee your safety.”
Thomas touched the rakhi bracelet. The band had begun to itch in the heat, and the rash it left reminded him constantly of his promise.
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “I want to be there when you take him down.”
Greer thought about this for a long moment. “Okay, you’re in. But do me a favor and stay the hell out of the way.”
Thomas kept close to Greer while CASE prepared for the raid. On Greer’s order, Nigel sent the entire division of field agents into Kamathipura to squeeze the locals for information. In the meantime, the field office director contacted the CBI about leading the operation. The CBI chief agreed but only after Greer assured him that Nigel’s team would verify the tip.
Two hours later, however, the field agents had uncovered no new information. They had approached the usual suspects—the beshyas, madams, and pimps who were their unofficial informants—but no one had heard of Navin. Nigel paced the floor and made increasingly terse calls on his mobile phone. Greer looked at the clock and clenched his fists as the minutes ticked away. Thomas had never seen him so unnerved.
Late in the afternoon, Greer called the CBI superintendent with the news that the tip still had not been confirmed. The conversation was tense, and Thomas could see the
strain on Greer’s face. He placated, cajoled, flattered, and ultimately begged the CBI chief not to give up on the operation. At last, the man acquiesced, but he cut his squad by a third and swore that they were wasting their time.
The CASE field agents were in position by six o’clock. Thomas rode with Greer to the Nagpada police station, where they met the CBI team and Inspector Khan. Greer explained that though the CBI had national jurisdiction, Kamathipura was the inspector’s turf. The CBI chief had involved Khan to prevent interdepartmental squabbling later on.
The CBI agents drove to M. R. Road in three unmarked vans as darkness was falling. Khan followed in a separate vehicle with Greer and Thomas. To avoid being noticed by the pimps working the street, Khan was dressed in plainclothes, and the Americans both wore baseball caps and had darkened the stubble on their cheeks.
“Assuming this works,” Thomas asked in the dim cabin of the car, “who gets jurisdiction over Navin?”
“We do,” the inspector replied.
“Not the CBI?”
Khan shook his head. “The CBI doesn’t have the stomach for dirty work. We will find out what he did with the girl.”
“And if he doesn’t talk?”
Khan smiled thinly. “We have our ways, Mr. Clarke.”
The inspector turned down M. R. Road and pulled his car over to the curb within sight of Suchir’s brothel. It was a Tuesday, and the streets were crawling with men looking for a “short-time,” or quickie, before heading home after work. Looking down the street, Thomas saw Rohit and two other CASE field agents watching the brothel entrance. Suchir stood by the door, smoking a chillum, or hashish pipe.
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