The police had questioned Karen for hours. When they had their fill and let her leave, she went home to find two Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents waiting for her at her door. She had expected a police guard but not CSIS. The agents introduced themselves as Thompson and Dietrich. They asked their questions too but at this point Karen had no answers for them, not yet anyway.
She had taken a cab to the address on the key and ended up at Tiny’s Gym. With predictable irony, Tiny wasn’t tiny at all. He was a big man with a big heart who had spent years training me as a fighter. I would have turned out a hell of a lot worse if it wasn’t for his thoughtful influence.
Tiny told Karen that I was one of the greatest young welterweight boxers in the world, and that I could’ve been a champ. He told her I had been married and that my wife was my world. He explained that my wife, Catherine, had disappeared two months after we had found out that she was pregnant for the first time. She was found in a storage container on a boat bound for Prague, at which time her body had been expired for more than three weeks. My wife had died carrying my unborn daughter. We would have named her Grace.
Tiny choked on his words but continued through, telling Karen my story. Tiny knew that one day someone would come to see him about me, but he wasn’t expecting it to be another woman. He knew I wouldn’t be coming around anymore, but he knew I had done what I had to do.
After my wife’s disappearance, a CSIS agent named Dietrich had come to see me about her abduction and death. Dietrich had offered me an opportunity. He needed someone who could fight, but not just any fighter, someone who could infiltrate Arnie’s syndicate. I agreed to help and CSIS falsified my death so that I no longer existed. The only people aware of my past life were Tiny and agent Dietrich. For years I had been working under deep cover, clawing my way into Arnie’s world and working for the likes of Loudon the Louse and other losers just like him. You cannot imagine my sense of relief combined with the urge to vomit when I sat down that first time years ago at Gen Go Chow, and watched Arnie slurp down those detestable noodles. I had finally made it inside the lion’s den and I would spend every moment thereafter planning to burn it down. I could’ve put a bullet into Arnie’s brain many times over and trust me when I say I came close to doing so a few times. But that would’ve only been a band-aid. Someone else would have taken his place. I needed to bring the whole organization down so other women like my wife and Danika would never have to live a life in slavery again. For Danika, I was able to let her know that her death was not in vain. When I whispered into her ear as she was slipping from this world, I let her know of my years of undercover work. I told her I would see Arnie’s organization and others like it fall, even if it cost me everything, including my own life. It was a promise I kept.
Tiny took Karen to the locker where I used to hang up my gloves. She used the key I had given her to unlock it. Inside, she found some old pictures of me with my wife and it brought fresh tears to her eyes. But it was on the backside of the pictures where she found what I had sent her there to find; names, dates, times, patterns, an entire schematic to a worldwide network of human trafficking. My chess meetings with Dietrich at the airport were in fact information-sharing sessions, and not even Dietrich realized just how important the information I had collected was until it was later analyzed.
An entire international operation would be brought to its knees over the course of the next two years, supported by the data I had collected and the joint efforts of various governments and Interpol. Some of those arrested went to prison and others ended up with worse. Karen found twelve years of my work in that locker and put it in the hands of Dietrich, who moved the pieces on the board to checkmate.
Under Dietrich’s leadership, 42 women were discovered on the Dark Agnes vessel. After lengthy investigations and miles of international red tape, all but two of the young women were reunited with their families. Despite this small victory, these women had their innocence corrupted in such a way that even on their best days, they still struggled to find a will to live.
I’m no hero. I am nothing more than a man who made a life out of falling down and finding a way back to his feet every time. I am an actor who has said and done things that I can never take back, because I needed others to believe. The only one I couldn’t fool was Danika, and it was Karen that fate baited me with, testing my commitment to staying in character and playing the part.
The night falls without fail upon us all. We die and we don’t come back. I could tell you what I know about the other side of it all. I could tell you there’s a really nice place waiting for us that lies too far outside the reaches of anyone’s imagination to even contemplate. Or, I could tell you that there is nothing to hope for at all and that when it’s over, there is nothing left. But none of that really matters. What matters is whether you decide to put up your dukes.
La Rotonde
Pavlova and French roast
Out of the cold
Of Violence and Cliché Page 13