Old Growth & Ivy (The Spook Hills Trilogy Book 1)

by Menard, Jayne

  Tomorrow the team flies to our target destination. Take your time to consider what I have told you. It is unlikely that I will be able to pick up a personal call or email in the next week or two or even longer. If you still want to move forward in a relationship with me, call my cell phone and leave a voice mail. If you decide this harder side of me is not for you, then understand I will always treasure having known you, if only briefly.

  I feel as if I have come to your door as a charming spook in a white bed sheet on Halloween, then I took off my mask to reveal the ugly ghoul underneath. Ivy, be sure you make the right choice for yourself.

  Steve

  Ivy pulled a warm lavender wool plaid throw closer around her to ward off the early morning chill. She felt torn between spending time contemplating the message from Steve and work obligations. While they had met the client's deadline the day before, Ivy had other work to tackle that morning. Unfolding herself from the chair and tossing the throw over her shoulders, she decided to go handle the critical items at the office, check in with each of her direct reports and leave work no later than noontime. She had some thinking to do that afternoon and she was still reeling from the excessively long work hours of the last few days.

  Chapter 6

  In Sofia the session on Tuesday afternoon with Matka was challenging. At least on the surface, Brian was smooth, confident, and cool as he performed his impersonation of a female executive. Even Mathew found him believable -- for sure he had hoodwinked the perps with his short gel nails, hair blown into a feminine style, perfect eyebrows, soft slacks, a set of modest falsies and a sexy, throaty voice. Mathew took most of the negotiations, however he would check with Brian for approval, as he (she) was the lead in Matka's understanding.

  With the perps, Mathew talked about how they wanted to start a so-called personal network out of St. Louis and then expand into other cities in the American Heartland. From what they knew so far, the brothels Matka already dealt with were located in the major cities in the United States and Europe. Their proposed enterprise would step that down to the next tier of cities, with a concentration in the Midwest. He described how they would handle security and how they would rely on the still-existing exclusive clubs and organizations for business executives to get the word out, one man to the next. The network would be fronted behind their existing chain of upmarket steakhouses, using adjunct space in the basement or on upper floors. They owned each of their restaurant buildings, allowing them more flexibility in how they managed their businesses. They would offer a variety of services, from upscale women to gay men to more youthful alternatives. Mathew could feel a line of tense sweat forming on his back and under his arms and was glad he left his suit jacket on. Luckily, his face stayed cool and he kept his demeanor serious but not brusque.

  Matka had a number of questions concerning their finances and their expected growth rate. Mathew discussed their proposed operations as if he were laying out a business plan, relying on the scenarios they had put together the previous week. At one point, Brian opened his briefcase and took out a computerized line graph that showed their planned growth rate in terms of numbers of so-called employees by age group over the next 12, 24 and 36 months, as well as where they were targeting to be at the end of five years. Matka managed a cold smile as she looked at the numbers. Mathew could see her calculating her revenues on the sale of the children. Dragomir asked a tough series of questions on how they would keep the operations secure and away from the prying eyes of police or local do-gooders.

  They were there for over two hours. When it was over and they were back at the hotel, Mathew walked to a nearby park and called Steve in Frankfurt.

  "You're on." Mathew said by way of greeting. "Tomorrow at one. We asked to see the so-called orphanage. Got a no go. Brian stood up to walk out; deal off."

  "That took balls," Steve said admiringly.

  "His action changed Matka's thinking. After a third of the cash is wired to their bank account tomorrow morning, we get to make our choices. Then the next third is due the following morning and the rest will be COD St. Louis. They have a way to bring the kids into the U.S. The process takes two weeks."

  "Good negotiating on only a third of a million up front. What are the logistics?”

  "Hotel lobby. Tomorrow at one. Car coming for you, me and Ms. London."

  Tomorrow they would do the smash-up, kids out and arrests all in one, provided they made it to the so-called orphanage. Once an operation was underway, Steve never liked to play it slow. They had to hope the technology worked, the backup team would be at the ready and they did not encounter too many curveball surprises. Steve made a mental note to reinforce with Lenny that they had to minimize any impact on the kids when the bust in the orphanage went down.

  ***

  Secure Email from Ivy Littleton, November 13, 2012

  My dear Steve,

  Sorry not to have been in contact sooner -- I saw your email last week, but only read the beginning, which warmed my heart. I was in the office, crunched for time and wanted to savor the rest by reading it at a quiet time at home. As it turned out that same day our Project Manager for a big client walked out leaving a mess. I had to spend my every waking moment going through papers, making assignments for the team to document the test results and observations properly, reviewing the findings, writing the required report, and so on. We made the deadline to give the client proof of compliance for a large federal contract, so the client is happy. However, now I need to reassess the timeliness and thoroughness of our project reviews my directors conduct.

  I went home from those long days of work and little sleep, took a shower and fell into bed. My eyes popped open at four this morning with the memory of your email surfacing in my brain. I read all of it and after comprehending its full contents, I fear my delay was unkind to you. What you had to say about yourself and illustrated with your replays of team activities made me remember times in my career I would rather forget. However I like to think that each of us has always tried to do what is best for the greater good -- in my case, the company and its clients, and in yours, the FBI, the law and the victims of the crimes committed.

  You called me guileless. Oh Steve, I have guile. You have seen only part of my persona. I am that person. However, I have other sides too, some of which are less attractive. Ivy Littleton has been a corporate career executive. Corporations have their politics in the same way that the Bureau does. Sometimes I had to take on tasks concerning employees that I would rather not have done. Even though it benefitted the Company, an employee might have been fired, suffered the ignominy of a demotion or slunk out of the building for good because of me. While I never acted without the conviction that it was good for the Company, I wonder what right I had to play judge and to take away a person's livelihood.

  You talked about over-challenging agents on your teams. I am not always nice to my staff. I give them a lot of latitude when maybe I should be there as their safety net. Sometimes I want to make a point on their performance; more often I want to see if they had the strength of character to stand up to me. If employees can survive these tests, I can be supportive, even mentoring, but it can be hell for them to gain my confidence.

  I can be tough with clients if they demand more than they contracted for, without paying more. I can be harsh with service providers and vendors if they do not perform. No Steve, all too often in business I am not a nice person. How different am I from you? You fight for real causes; at best I have fought to keep a company solvent, people employed and our clients satisfied. Will you still want to see me, now that you see that I have a flawed side in addition to my sometimes hot temper?

  I believe that you acted in the best interests of our country, our citizens and your teams as a whole. What was required in the line of duty, I could never hold against you. If anything, I am attracted to you more for your concerns, for wanting to be open with me, and for being the man of character that you are.

  I feel shabbier for having revealed par
ts of my career and myself that do not sit well with me, but you have been so open that I am compelled to be the same. Now I will say what you said to me. Call me on my personal cell, if you want to keep exploring what we started, knowing that Ivy Littleton is a somewhat tarnished version of Ivy Vine.

  Ivy

  After rereading her reply to Steve, Ivy reluctantly hit the Send button and pushed back from her laptop. She did not want to lose Steve. However he had to be aware of these aspects of her personality and character or he could find out at some later point and be disappointed by her lack of honesty about herself. For now, she would have to wait and hope.

  ***

  The next morning in Sofia, equipped with a hidden wireless microphone that would transmit to Lenny, Steve confirmed that the first third of the million-dollar payment had been wired to the required account. He then met Mathew and Brian (aka Ms. London) in the lobby just before one. He and Mathew carried locally-supplied Glock handguns; Brian had only a small plastic Smith & Wesson hidden in the purse he carried, buried at the bottom under a comb, wallet, lipstick and other paraphernalia that a woman might have. While they did not expect any weaponry to get past the perp's security, they had to try.

  Security was a pat-down search by the perp they had dubbed Dragomir. The large hulking man had small black eyes, a square face and pock-marked skin. He checked each of them with his thick hands, removed their guns, and then pawed through their briefcases. When he reached Brian, Dragomir grabbed for Brian's purse to search it.

  "No, please," Brian said quietly. The man looked up in surprise.

  Brian ducked his head and stammered, "Wrong time of the month." Dragomir opened the purse anyway. It was tall, but too narrow and thin for a conventional weapon, so much less suspect. He raked through the tampons Brian had tossed on top and shoved the makeup around, but didn’t get down as far as the little Smith & Wesson lying on the bottom under a slim notebook.

  Dragomir then escorted them to the conference room where they had met with Matka the day before. They were in an older two story building in a rundown section of Sofia. The business that operated there was ostensibly an employment agency. After a few minutes, Matka joined them. She had such a cold assurance about her that Steve wanted to backhand her across the face but he held his cool.

  "You have the first third of the money," he growled without preamble, having decided to play the pit bull, which was a frequent role for him.

  "Yes. It arrived in our account," Matka's English was precise, although it carried a noticeable Slavic accent. She was a stout woman of medium height, dressed expensively with a showy Gucci scarf arranged around her neck, and wearing a plethora of hefty gold jewelry. Her makeup was equally heavy. Her hair was medium length, streaked with silver and pulled back with a bejeweled thick barrette. In an Eastern European way, she had the appearance of a successful executive from the retail industry.

  "Let's see the goods." Steve responded impatiently. "We have a plane to catch."

  Matka nodded at Dragomir who led them to an elevator. She followed them. They rode down and emerged into a basement lit by harsh fluorescent bulbs. In the bleakly bright room were six barred cells. Each one contained four to six children. Steve estimated that they varied in age from five to fifteen. While most were girls, two cells held boys. He noticed that they were all silent and withdrawn, likely from drugs. Where he could see their eyes, each one was terrified. Steve clenched his jaw, thinking that they should be in school or playing at home, not locked in sunless cells waiting for horrid fates.

  He slid his eyes to Mathew and Brian, checking that they kept their faces serious and showed no horror or sympathy. He had drilled them well. Their faces were impassive. Steve then spoke the code words into the microphone that would signal Lenny and the arrest team to make their way inside in silence and alert Mathew and Brian that things were about to grow hot. "We will make our choices."

  The three of them walked past the cells where the children watched, cowed and fearful. It was a struggle for the three agents to keep their emotions off of their own faces. As they walked back, the elevator door slid closed and the elevator motor ran, startling Matka and Dragomir. Steve slid his eyes left and right to Brian and Mathew, and then lunged for Matka. Mathew lurched forward to overcome Dragomir who swiftly pointed his gun at Mathew. Brian leapt through the air at Dragomir, throwing himself between the gun and Mathew. The gun went off, hitting Brian in the leg. Mathew wrestled the gun away from Dragomir, pinning his arms behind him. From the floor where he knelt, Brian pointed his small gun from one perp to the other, ignoring the blood running from the wound in his thigh.

  Footsteps clattered down the stairs. The backup team burst into the room with Lenny in the lead, submachine gun in hand. Steve's eyes swept over the children, who had taken whatever cover they could. Most were cowering near or under the cots in their cells, making him glad the shooting had not been worse. He stood with Matka's left arm bent up behind her back and his arm wrapped around her neck until he could turn her over to Lenny. Then he knelt down by Brian, whipping off his own tie and using it as a tourniquet around Brian's leg. He yelled for a medic. Mathew shoved Dragomir over to be cuffed, and then searched him for keys to the cells. The two perps stood by the elevators in handcuffs with agents on either side. They would be taken to squad cars parked outside.

  "Go with them," Steve pointed to two of the agents. "Call the legats. You know the drill on questioning."

  Two medics rushed in and took over Brian. They were surprised to find him talking like a man dressed the way he was. Steve explained the impersonation to them in a couple of terse sentences, then he pulled out his cell phone, dialed and ordered the jet they had on standby to be ready for departure in an hour for Bern, getting a little heated when he met resistance about flying on such short notice. He hung up and sent another agent to pick up their suitcases at the hotel.

  "Mathew, handle things here. Do a quick search for where the kids were sent in the past. Then get the files and computer equipment inventoried and packed for shipment. I’ll send the jet back here right after we land. I want that stuff transported to the Bureau office in Bern with as much of our team as you judge are not needed here. If you find any locations where the other kids were sent in the U.S., send them to Moll right away so he can start coordinating the takeover of the brothels and rescuing those children. Any in other countries will go to the legats in Bern for coordination. Also see if you can find any backup media on-site or where they might have backed data up offsite so we can access an audit trail of past events."

  "You got it. See you in Bern."

  "Hard to believe that these kids are the lucky ones." He nodded towards the children in the cells.

  A large team of social services workers led by two FBI legats came in. Steve noticed how shocked their faces were when they saw the children incarcerated in cells. Nonetheless they quickly recovered and worked out a procedure to take the children a cell at a time. They would then do the research needed to move them back to their families or into foster care. Two FBI legats would oversee that aspect of the operation. Lenny came back down after ensuring that Matka and Dragomir were cuffed, in a squad car and on their way to be held for trial.

  "Lenny you fly with me, Brian and a medic to Bern. From there, I'll dispatch you to the nearest city where we have to free more children."

  Lenny sadly regarded the rescued youngsters as the first group filed submissively out of a cell, following a social worker. He gripped his submachine gun resolutely and said gruffly, "Send me to every site you find. No kid should go through this."

  All those weeks of planning, all those scenarios Steve had the team practice, all the technology, the agents, and the local arrest team, worked out. Nothing ever went 100% according to plan. This operation came close and their impromptu actions were flawless. Even though he wished Brian had not been shot, Steve was satisfied with the results. Unless something absurd happened in court, Matka would serve her life out in Bulgaria's penal
system. As part of the deal that the FBI legats had negotiated with the Bulgarian authorities, Matka's assets would be seized and ultimately directed to local children’s programs. The third of the million wired that morning would be returned to the Bureau.

  With the arrests made and following their plan, Mathew organized the on-site work effort to do quick scans for leads and then called Moll to be on standby in the New York office to organize local FBI and police teams for raids of the child prostitution centers. They had to act fast so that the local perps would not relocate the children before the FBI teams could shut them down and rescue the children. They also had a team standing by to take phone calls and respond to emails that came in to Matka so that the communications would stay intact, giving them a longer window of time.

  Mathew and two other agents flew to Bern that night, joining Steve at the FBI office where they would methodically comb through the computer systems and archive tapes searching for additional information. They distributed copies to agents in New York and Washington to hasten the analysis work. Lenny flew out to join the local shut down teams as if he were a jet-setting action hero. Another team reporting to Mathew would track and arrest the so-called recruiters who stole children from their homes.

  Steve stayed with the team in Bern, working around the clock to force fast action on having the brothels shut down, arrests made and children in the hands of social services, using the leverage of his position at the Bureau to gain local cooperation, both within the FBI and with local police forces and governments.

  On the following Monday in Bern, Steve had the FBI team assemble in Brian's hospital room where he was recovering from surgery. Working quickly, Steve set up the FBI equivalent of a Skype station on his laptop and hooked it to the TV screen in the hospital room. He had cameras and microphones pointed towards Brian and himself. He was on his cell talking, and then the Director of the FBI appeared on the screen.