Gustav scooped up the money and pushed it back into the bag. ‘Good, now let’s get on with business. We have an operation to conduct.’
36
KATERINA
Katerina had sat quiet for about twenty minutes while she summoned up the courage to leave through the unlocked door. But now it was time to go, because if they didn’t, it would only be a matter of time before one or more of those men returned for them.
She nudged Jessica’s leg with the back of her hand and whispered, ‘Listen to me, the door is not secure. Hugo must have forgotten to lock it. We need to get out of here.’
Jessica’s eyes widened. ‘They might catch us.’
‘What do we have to lose? If we stay here more bad things will happen to us.’
‘What kind of bad things?’
‘Like those that happened in the video room downstairs.’
Jessica stared at the floor for a moment. ‘Oh yes, that was horrible.’
‘But lucky for us Hugo is incompetent.’
‘Who is Hugo?’
‘The big man who brought you to this room.’
Jessica’s eyes squinted as she stared at Katerina. ‘Why is he incompetent?’
‘Because he forgot to lock the doors.’
Jessica glanced at the door. ‘Maybe he left them open on purpose.’
‘I doubt that. He is evil. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t have let that man assault you while the other man filmed it.’
Jessica eased back and looked up at Katerina. ‘But he…’
Natasha interrupted. ‘We need to go.’ She grabbed Jessica’s hand.
‘But what about the camera? They’ll see we are not here.’
‘That’s a risk we’ll have to take. But don’t worry, I’ll look after you.’ Katerina knew just how ridiculous that would sound to any adult. But just maybe it would carry some level of credibility to a ten year old. After all, she used to look up to the older girls in her neighbourhood and would have believed them if they’d told her the same.
Jessica gave Katerina a tight lipped smile as she got off the bed and followed her to the door. It was a smile that said maybe she wasn’t so confident in Katerina’s ability to protect her. But Katerina could only hope she wouldn’t be put to the test.
Even though she had tried the door earlier and knew it was open, her heart still jumped as she pushed down on the handle and pulled. They moved to the opposite wall below the scope of the camera and then hurried to the main door.
Once outside the room they were confronted with the long corridor stretching out in front of them for around eighty meters. She held Jessica’s hand tight and soon found the stairwell half way along. She looked over the banister at the flights of stairs going down. The sound of a door swinging open and banging against the wall echoed up from two floors below. Someone was in a hurry. Men’s voices soon followed and from the tone of their shouting Katerina guessed their absence from the cubicle had been noticed.
She brought her finger up in front of her lips, signalling to her young friend to stay quiet, then she pointed up. They ran up three flights of stairs to the top floor and into the middle of a similar corridor to the one below. They paused briefly to listen. The only sounds were echoing up from the stairs, so Katerina pulled Jessica along to one end of the corridor hoping to get as far away from the stairwell as possible. They passed what she guessed were general dormitory wards that must have accommodated many patients in the past. She wondered where they all were now.
The room at the end of the corridor was large with three desks on one side and three beds on the opposite side with curtains partially pulled around each bed where the patients could have been examined and treated in private.
Katerina led Jessica to the last bed and pulled the curtain, shielding them from view should anyone enter the room. They sat huddled together on the bed and waited.
Katerina sighed. It would only be a matter of time before they were discovered. She eased off the bed, slipped through the gap in the curtain, and went to a set of white drawers a few meters away. In the top drawer she found what she was looking for. A range of medical implements lined up in trays like cutlery in a kitchen. She selected the largest scalpel she could find and returned to Jessica behind the curtain.
Her young friend stared wide eyed at the sharp, thin bladed scalpel in Katerina’s hand. ‘What are you going to do with that?’
‘Whatever I have to. I’m not going to let them take us back. And if Hugo finds us I’m going to kill him.’
‘Why?’
‘I hate him.’
‘Why?
Katerina stared quizzically at Jessica. ‘Because he let them sell me to some man at the auction earlier and because he let that man rape you in the video room.’
‘But that’s what I was trying to tell you. He didn’t.’
‘What?’
‘He didn’t let that man touch me, he stopped him.’
‘But a few minutes ago you agreed that what happened in that room was horrible.’
‘It was, but not because of anything that happened to me.’
‘So what did happen?’
‘Hugo pulled the man away from me and when he resisted Hugo choked him to death.’
Natasha took a deep breath. ‘So, you weren’t assaulted?’
Jessica shook her head. ‘Hugo pushed the man and his clothes out of sight under the bed. Then the camera man told Hugo that he would have to take the place of the other man because they had to make a movie. When Hugo refused, the camera man threatened to tell the boss. I think he called him Gustav. But Hugo grabbed the camera man, and I think he broke his neck because the man went all limp. He hid him in a cupboard. So you see it was horrible, and it was the worst thing I have ever seen in my whole life, and I’m ten now.’
Katerina’s mind swirled with mixed emotions, pleased and even proud that Hugo had done what she had asked and stopped Jessica from being abused, but he had still brought her back and had initially locked her in the room next door. So maybe he just couldn’t watch Jessica being attacked. And where was he now? Had he already left?
Footsteps approached in the hall. The hydraulic hinge at the top of the door made its signature cracking sound. The footsteps stopped. Someone was standing in the doorway. She held her breath and hoped whoever it was would leave. But the footsteps came closer as the door swung shut.
They were now in the room.
The metal curtain rings rattled and scraped along the pole around the first bed. Then came the same sound again but closer. It was coming from the middle bed.
Theirs was next.
Katerina moved to the gap in the curtains and held the scalpel up above her head. Her heart thumped in her ears, her legs trembled, but she was ready to strike.
As the curtain moved she shrieked and thrust the scalpel through the curtain into something or someone on the other side. She pulled her weapon back for another strike but heard the thud of a body hitting the floor.
She turned and grabbed Jessica’s hand. ‘Run.’
They ran out from the cubicle and Katerina froze. Hugo was laying on the floor clutching the top of his chest below his right shoulder.
He shook his head at her. ‘Damn it girl, what did you do that for?’
Katerina stared down at him. ‘You sold me, Hugo.’
‘I did what you asked and stopped them hurting your little friend.’
‘I know that now, which is why I’m not going to stab you again.’ She looked closer. ‘Where did I get you?’
‘Near enough the same place Anton stabbed me.’ He used his left arm to push himself up onto his knees, then got up and sat on a chair at the last desk on the opposite side of the room, the one across from the end bed. ‘Get me something to stop the bleeding.’
Katerina went back to the cupboards near to the drawers and found some lint pads, tape, and scissors. She blew the dust off the packaging and returned to Hugo, opened two buttons on his shirt, and pushed a pad onto the wound. Then
she secured it with the tape.
When she had finished, he grunted. ‘This is becoming a habit.’
‘Can you help us escape?’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry kid, if they found out they’d kill me.’
The sound of doors opening and closing in the hall drew closer and closer. Someone was working their way along the corridor towards them, one room at a time.
Katerina wrapped her arms around Jessica and pleaded with her eyes for him to do something.
He stared at her for a moment, then pointed to the end bed. ‘Get back in there.’
She moved fast and ushered Jessica into the cubicle then held her breath as the door open again. She watched Hugo through the gap in the curtain and listened to the exchange between him and another man.
‘Anything?’ the man asked.
Hugo shook his head. ‘I’ve checked the whole room. Nothing here.’
‘What happened to you?’
Katerina’s heart missed a beat. The man must have spotted the blood on Hugo’s shirt and probably the tape and scissors on the table next to him.
‘It’s nothing,’ Hugo said. ‘It’s just where that idiot Anton stabbed me back in Hungary. I’ve had to change the dressing.’
Hugo walked out of sight. ‘Come on, let’s check the floor below this.’
As the door swung shut, Katerina breathed out a long slow sigh.
Jessica looked up at her. ‘See, he’s not evil, is he?’
‘Yes, he is. He didn’t give us away but you heard him, he’s not going to help us escape. We are on our own.’
37
MASON
Mason and Natasha followed Gustav out of the reception room and up one flight of stairs to the next floor. He led them along to the far end and through double doors into what was clearly an operating theatre.
It was just like any regular theatre in any regular hospital. Spotlessly clean, with the operating table centred beneath adjustable overhead lights. Stainless steel trolleys on each side displayed an array of medical instruments designed for cutting flesh. Next to them were shiny medical versions of small circular saws used to cut through bone.
Mason had seen most of this equipment before when, as a detective, he had attended post mortem examinations on unexplained deaths and homicides. And he never forgot his first. It was soon after joining the department. The pathologist must have spotted his reluctance to observe the autopsy and instead of making allowances he called him over to assist with the procedure. Mason couldn’t refuse because his detective sergeant and inspector were also present. So he held the stainless steel trays while the pathologist cut out the brain and internal organs and placed them into the receptacles before instructing him to put them on the scales for weighing. The pathologist carefully noted down each reading before proceeding.
Although Mason had been hardened over the course of his career attending fatal accidents, suicides, and murders, he still shuddered as he remembered how the small, shiny, circular saw was used to cut away sections of the skull and the rib cage of the deceased allowing the pathologist access to the internal organs. To Mason, the high pitched whir of the saw blade as it cut through bone was always the worst part of the procedure.
Gustav walked over to the empty operating table. ‘This is where it all happens, where we retrieve the organs.’ He turned and pointed to a clear glass window in the wall separating the theatre from the next room. ‘You can watch from in there.’
Mason sighed, ‘I was hoping to be a little closer to the action.’
Gustav shook his head. ‘That won’t be possible. We have to follow strict procedures to prevent any chance of infection. Although it won’t matter to the donor, it will to the recipient.’
Mason nodded. ‘I understand.’
Gustav shrugged. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t care less what happens to the rich bitch who gets the heart, whoever she is, but if she dies from an organ infected here and word gets around, even on the black market, it would be bad for business.’
Mason wanted to knock Gustav out right there and then, but he remained silent.
Gustav opened the door to the observation room. ‘Take a seat in here. We will be ready to operate soon.’
‘Where’s the surgeon?’
‘He is with the donor administering the drugs.’
‘Drugs? Don’t you anaesthetise her in here?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘We don’t have an anaesthetist, just the surgeon and his assistants.’
Natasha gasped and Mason knew why. The dead trafficker back in Munich had been right. They operate while the girls are alive.
‘Do the drugs knock her unconscious?’ Mason asked.
Gustav smirked. ‘Hell no, they just paralyse her so she can’t move and ruin the procedure. But she’ll still feel every incision and every slice of the scalpel.’
‘But if she was unconscious, she wouldn’t be able to interfere.’
Gustav seemed to be getting impatient with all the questions. ‘Look, we don’t just operate on the girls while they are conscious for the fun of it. We are not sadists.’
‘Why then?’
‘Simmons, our surgeon, reckons there is a greater chance of a successful transplant if the donor knows what is about to happen and feels the scalpel cut into her. He says the terror she feels when her skin is cut and pinned back, and her ribcage sliced through and removed, causes her to release adrenalin into her blood stream so it’s present in the heart when it is cut out. He says the heightened levels of adrenalin help to restart the heart in the new patient.’
Mason just stared at him, speechless.
Gustav shrugged again. ‘I know what you’re thinking, and maybe you are right. Maybe it’s all bullshit and our surgeon is a sadist. But the donor is going to die anyway so what the hell does it matter?’
Mason glanced at Natasha. She was standing just behind Gustav’s line of sight giving him a look that said, you are a dead man.
Gustav walked out mumbling something about the show starting soon.
When he was out of sight Natasha flashed Mason a look of horror. ‘Did you hear what he said? They are drugging the girl so she won’t be able to move.’
‘I heard, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.’
‘Well, get ready, because it looks like we will get to it pretty damn fast.’
Mason hadn’t had chance to tell Natasha that he’d seen Katerina and Jessica, but that would have to wait a little longer. They may only have a few moments to plan before the operation starts, and he needed Natasha to be focused.
He left the observation room and went to the nearest trolly containing the instruments. From a row of scalpels he selected the longest and returned to Natasha. ‘Not as good as a firearm, but better than nothing.’ He lifted his shirt, pulled out the pistol, and handed it to Natasha.
She pushed it down her waistband and stared back at him. ‘Where’s yours?’
‘My what?’
‘Your gun, there were two under the seat in the car.’
‘I only had a chance to get one.’
She pulled out the pistol and offered it back to him. ‘Then you keep this one and give me the knife.’
‘I’m not leaving you defenceless against these animals.’
She grabbed his wrist, prised the scalpel from him, then pushed the gun into his hand. ‘Are you kidding me? When it comes to these bastards I’m already a serial killer and this knife will do just fine. And beside that, you can handle a gun better than me so this is no time for chivalry. Too many lives depend on us.’
Mason hesitated. She was right. They needed every advantage and that meant he should have the pistol. When in the force he had practiced at the shooting range many times, and even though he had never carried a firearm operationally, he was considered proficient.
He pushed the pistol back into his waistband. ‘Stay close to me and this gun then.’
‘Try stopping me.’
Seeing them in their scrubs almost brought an air of normality to the proceedings. That is, until the guy acting as the auxiliary nurse peeled off velcro restraints on Sofia’s arms and legs that were securing her to the trolley’s rails, and with the help of the two security men, lifted her onto the operating table. Then he strapped her down with similar restraints.
Mason tutted to himself. So much for keeping things sterile.
Natasha nudged his arm with her elbow. ‘Okay, we are at that bridge, now what the hell are we going to do?’
Mason studied Sofia. She was wearing a white apron, the kind that tie at the side making it easy to remove. But she was struggling, writhing around, and trying to pull her arms free from the restraints while her eyes searched the room, probably looking for him, remembering his promise to be there to save her. Either they hadn’t given her the drug or it hadn’t taken effect yet.
Gustav didn’t look happy as he spoke to the surgeon. ‘Simmons, why is she moving?’
The surgeon turned away and walked over to a counter where his assistant was busy preparing a syringe. ‘Increase the dosage to speed things up.’
Gustav’s face was red, his jaw flexed like he was gritting his teeth. Mason studied the surgeon. He didn’t seem concerned. He must know he was indispensable. Without him there would be no organ recovery, and no big fat illegal profit.
The surgeon walked back and looked across the table. ‘I didn’t think there was any rush. We decided to administer the drug here this time.’
Although Gustav was clearly annoyed by the change of procedure, it was good news to Mason, because it would make rescuing Sofia much easier if she could walk. But there was very little time left. The nurse was holding up the syringe and flicking it with her fingers, as they do, to ensure there are no air bubbles. A habit, surely, as it would hardly matter if air was injected into a girl minutes before they cut out her heart.
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