The Stolen Ones

by Owen Laukkanen

  “You were put in the box in Bucharest, right?” Windermere said. “What do you remember about where you came out?”

  Irina furrowed her brow. “I remember the ocean,” she said. “The smell of it, the salty air.”

  Stevens made a note in his notebook. “This was days later,” he said. “You thought you’d been on a boat?”

  “Yes,” Irina said. “First we were on a truck, I think. Overnight, maybe. Then they put us on the boat. I could tell when the crane was lifting us. And then the ocean—some of the girls got seasick.”

  “But you didn’t see anything when you came out?” Windermere asked.

  “We were on a truck again, briefly,” Irina told them. “A quarter of an hour, maybe. Then the doors opened. It was a yard full of boxes like ours. I heard gulls in the distance. The two men were there. They—” She shuddered. “They tried to take Catalina.”

  “But they didn’t, though,” Windermere said. “They took a couple other girls, and Catalina went back into the box with you, correct?”

  “Correct,” Irina said. She opened her mouth. Then she faltered. “She went back into the box, and I abandoned her there.”

  “You were scared,” Stevens said. “You were trying to escape.”

  Irina looked at him sharply. “I left her,” she said, her voice cracking. “I left her there to die.”

  Windermere watched the girl dissolve into sobs. Violent and uncontrollable. Watched the translator try in vain to console her, couldn’t imagine how the girl was feeling, her little sister gone and, face it, probably dead. Couldn’t imagine the guilt.

  Personally, Windermere felt anger more than anything. Irina Milosovici was still practically a kid herself, and her little sister was barely too old for Barbies, for Christ’s sake. Somewhere, there were men who’d stolen these girls, sold them. Somewhere, there were men who would buy them.

  Stevens touched her shoulder. “Let’s give her a second,” he said. “Take a breather.”

  Windermere wanted to complain. A breather was the last thing she needed; she had about a million more questions to ask Irina Milosovici. Was aching to saddle up and get the case under way. But the girl was still sobbing, pretty much a wreck, and Windermere realized Stevens was right. She followed him out into the hallway, held the door open for Harris coming out behind her.

  “These guys,” Harris asked Stevens. “These traffickers, who are they? Do you have any leads?”

  “We’re still putting the pieces together,” Stevens said, “but obviously, these guys are major. They didn’t hesitate to kill that deputy to keep their shipment moving. It’s only blind luck they didn’t shoot Irina.”

  “Well, you got her here safe,” Harris said. “And she’s not leaving until we track these guys down.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stevens said.

  “I told you we needed to wait,” Harris told Windermere. “Evaluate the situation and come up with a plan.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Windermere. “You did.”

  “The time for waiting is over, Agent Windermere. Consider that woman’s case your priority. I can’t promise you a task force, but I’ll do what I can to get you the resources you need.” Harris fixed his eyes on hers. “Just track these bastards down, understand?”

  Windermere nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. “We’re on it.”

  27

  THE AMERICAN KNOWN AS MIKE peered through the windshield of the battered Škoda at the lights of the village of Berceni. He’d borrowed the car for the short drive south from Bucharest; his own Audi would have attracted attention in such a tiny farming town.

  It had not been easy to trace Irina and Catalina Milosovici back to this shitty little place. The sheer volume of women Mike processed for Andrei Volovoi made remembering any single one of them difficult. In the weeks after he’d secured these particular girls in their container, Mike had traveled to Budapest, Bratislava, and Zagreb, sowing the seeds for more shipments west. The Dragon’s call had surprised him, pulled him away from his task, and why? Because some lunkheads had let the older sister get away.

  Mike idled the little Škoda through the village, pausing beneath a streetlight to glance at the address on the map he’d printed back in Bucharest. Found his way to a narrow road, a little cottage backing onto farmers’ fields and darkness.

  This was the house that the Milosovici sisters had come from. Single-story, ramshackle, an unkempt front lawn. Some clunker of a Soviet-era vehicle sat rusting in the car park; a mutt lay asleep on the doorstep. Considering the state of the house, it was not hard to imagine why Irina Milosovici and her little sister had yearned to run away. America would seem like a paradise compared to Berceni.

  He climbed from the car and crossed the road to the yard. The dog stirred, woke, rose on its chain, its tail wagging as he approached. A friendly dog. All the better.

  From his pocket, Mike removed a computer printout. A picture of Catalina Milosovici, and a short, simple note. A warning. A message to the family and the town, to all of Romania: Don’t fuck with the Dragon. The Dragon will destroy everything that you love.

  The dog reached the end of its chain. Whined and yelped as it leapt at Mike, again and again. Mike watched the dog. Its tail wagged furiously. It licked and slobbered and choked on its chain.

  Mike reached for the knife on his belt.

  28

  “SO, OKAY,” WINDERMERE SAID. “I’ve never taken down a bunch of human traffickers before. How do we approach these guys, Stevens?”

  Stevens watched her move. She was pacing, jumpy, unable to sit still. She had peppered Irina Milosovici with questions until she couldn’t think of any more, then dragged Stevens into an adjacent conference room and still couldn’t stop moving.

  Windermere had asked Derek Mathers to put in a call to the FBI’s Organized Crime division to dig up whatever they could find about known trafficking outfits with ties to Eastern Europe. She’d also asked Mathers to put sketches of Dale Friesen’s killers out on the wire, to get people talking, in the hope that some law enforcement agency somewhere would recognize the faces.

  Windermere was excited, Stevens could tell. His sometime partner lived for the big cases, thrived on excitement and danger and jet lag. She was every bit the glamorous FBI agent, while he, on the other hand . . .

  Well, if he was honest, he felt a little bit daunted. A little scared, even. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Irina Milosovici in tears. Saw Andrea, for heaven’s sake. These were professional-grade criminals. They trafficked in human life. Who could guess how many women they’d stolen?

  But Windermere was waiting, and she wanted a plan of attack. Stevens tried to forget about his misgivings.

  “We’ve got a box full of women on the back of a truck,” he said, straightening. “According to Irina, the truck was heading west. We track down that truck, odds are we find Catalina.”

  Windermere stopped pacing. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “About Catalina . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  She sat down across from him, looked him in the eye. “Okay,” she said. “This is going to sound harsh, Stevens, but bear with me.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I think we need to accept, first and foremost, that we might never find Catalina Milosovici,” she said. “The girl might be dead already, or so far underground that she never turns up. If we go into this case trying to rescue one little girl, we’re going to drive ourselves crazy.”

  Stevens felt suddenly hollow. “Jesus, Carla.”

  “I know,” she said, “but think about it.”

  “That girl is Andrea’s age.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “But so are half the girls in that box. And who the hell knows how many more boxes there are? This is a broad-scope situation, Kirk. We need to cut the head off this monster. Find the source.”

  Stevens didn’t say anythi
ng, and Windermere’s eyes softened. “We’re not going to get anywhere looking for a red container truck headed west,” she said. “The more we can learn about these assholes, the better the chance we have of tracking down Catalina Milosovici alive. So where do we start, Kirk?”

  Stevens rubbed his eyes. Knew she was probably right, even if admitting it made him feel like a monster. “Irina said she was kidnapped from Bucharest roughly two and a half weeks ago,” he said. “She crossed the Atlantic in that box, and her next breath of fresh air came in a container yard when the ship docked. So we know how she came over here, and we know basically when. How many ships made that crossing over the last couple of weeks?”

  “Good question,” Windermere said. She walked to the door, poked her head out, and hollered, “Mathers.”

  There was movement outside as Mathers came to the door, and Stevens felt the familiar pangs of jealousy when he caught sight of the kid, a big Wisconsin farm boy with a wide, easy smile. Windermere had hooked up with Mathers on the last assignment, and the two were some sort of an item now.

  “More research,” Windermere was telling Mathers. “We need transatlantic shipping schedules, from anywhere within a day’s drive of Bucharest to any port on the East Coast within the last week or so. Vessel names, ports of entry, the works, okay?”

  Mathers nodded. “Got it,” he said, tossing Stevens a sheepish grin before disappearing from the doorway.

  Stevens watched him go. “Your minion?” he asked Windermere.

  She shrugged. “Sounds better than ‘boyfriend,’ doesn’t it?”

  “Is he—” Stevens frowned. “Are you guys—”

  “Who knows, Stevens?” she said, shaking him off. “Focus on this case. What else have we got? The clock is ticking.”

  29

  BOGDAN URZICA and Nikolai Kirilenko sold the last of the women to the buyer in Reno, emptying the box of every last little tramp but the Dragon’s special princess.

  “So now what?” Nikolai asked Bogdan as they returned to the truck. “What do we do about her?”

  Bogdan regarded the box. Normally, at this point, he and Nikolai would allow themselves a little time to decompress, have a drink, a nice meal, maybe check into a motel for a decent night’s sleep for a change. Not this time, though. Not with one girl left to go, and the Dragon waiting for her arrival. Bogdan had heard stories about people who’d disappointed the Dragon. They didn’t tend to survive very long. Neither did their loved ones.

  “I guess we should feed her,” Bogdan said. “Clean out the box. That waste bucket is probably overflowing at this point.”

  Nikolai made a face. “I think I’ll let you handle that,” he said. “I’m too tired to be slopping around shit.”

  “You’re just going to leave me to it?”

  “You let the little bitch’s sister escape, Bogdan,” Nikolai said. “You earned yourself that bucket of shit.”

  > > >

  BOGDAN CLEANED THE TRUCK. Found a 7-Eleven and bought the little sister a frozen burrito and a bottle of water. Locked her away in the box again and caught up to Nikolai at the Peppermill Casino. Had to drag him away from a cocktail waitress beside the craps tables. “What are you doing?” Nikolai protested. “She liked me.”

  “What an unfamiliar feeling that must have been for you,” Bogdan told him. “We have to get moving.”

  Bogdan was in no mood for his partner’s antics. The Dragon was waiting for his delivery. The job wasn’t finished, not by nearly three thousand miles.

  He followed Nikolai to the truck, where his partner, with one last mournful glance back at the Peppermill, tossed him the keys. “Your turn to drive,” he said. “I want to dream about what I could do to that waitress.”

  “You embarrass yourself,” Bogdan told him. “She was hustling you for tips.”

  “Everyone’s a prostitute, Bogdan.” Nikolai climbed into the cab. “Whether they admit it or not.”

  Bogdan stepped up to the driver’s seat. Let’s get out of here, he thought, shifting the truck into gear. Deliver the little girl and forget about the Dragon for a while.

  30

  STEVENS AND WINDERMERE worked through other possibilities while Mathers studied up on the transatlantic shipping trade.

  “Irina said the truck made a couple of stops before she wound up in Walker,” Stevens said. “Both times, the drivers dragged a bunch of women out.”

  “Deliveries,” Windermere said. “Like fucking UPS. So who’s buying these women, Stevens?”

  Stevens brought up a map of the country on his computer. “That truck wound up in northern Minnesota,” he said. “The highway she was on when they found her, the 200—it’s pretty much a straight shot from Duluth.”

  “A hundred and thirty some miles from Walker. That’s, what, three hours on the road? Irina said the truck’s last delivery came a few hours before she escaped.”

  “And it’s the easiest path across the state from Duluth,” Stevens said. “If they had a cargo of more women, they were probably headed to hook back up with the interstate around Fargo, head west.”

  “So where’s their next delivery? And where’d they stop before Duluth?”

  Stevens studied the map. “Could be south, could be east. Could be Canada. Pretty easy to slip across the border up there in the wilderness.”

  Windermere stuck her head out the door and hollered for Mathers again. The kid showed up quick, Stevens noticed. And he showed up with that same unflappable smile, didn’t blink when Windermere asked him for a progress report.

  “It’s tough sledding,” he told Stevens and Windermere. “Plenty of ships make that transatlantic run, and they call in up and down the coast, from Halifax to Miami and everywhere in between. Even if I can narrow it down, those ships carry thousands of boxes apiece. It’ll be a needle in a haystack trying to figure out which container held the girls.”

  “We crush the needle in the haystack game, Mathers,” Windermere told him. “Keep working.”

  Stevens watched the kid disappear down the hall again. Wished he shared Windermere’s good spirits. He considered the map some more, zoomed out to the entire Eastern Seaboard. Halifax. Boston. New York. Baltimore.

  “The kid is right,” he said. “Every major city has a container terminal. They could have come in anywhere.”

  Windermere caught the expression on his face. “Cheer up,” she said. “I have an idea what we can do while we wait for Mathers to find us our haystack.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She winked at him. “You know folks in Duluth, don’t you?”

  31

  “IT’S DONE,” Mike told the Dragon. “The message is sent.”

  The American sounded groggy. It was nearly dawn in Romania, and Mike had been running the Dragon’s errand all night.

  “Excellent,” the Dragon said. “And the message was clear?”

  “Oh, it’s clear,” Mike replied. “Nobody in that pissant town will mess with you again. And if big sister calls home, she’ll lose her fucking mind.”

  The Dragon smiled to himself. “Perfect,” he told Mike. “You’ve done well, Mike. Thank you.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “Maybe you can pass the good news on to that partner of yours. Maybe he stops worrying so much.”

  “I’ll tell him,” the Dragon said. “I’m sure he’ll be very pleased.”

  “You can tell him his next shipment’s on the way, too,” Mike said. “The Atlantic Prince. Give it four or five days.”

  “You made the changes to the order as I instructed?”

  “Sure did. Swapped out any girl over eighteen, put together a box full of the prettiest teenage product you ever laid eyes on,” Mike said. “I guess that means Andrei finally agreed to go in with you on the New York thing, huh?”

  “Not yet,” the Dragon said. “But he will.”

  3
2

  IRINA MILOSOVICI LOOKED AROUND the little conference room where the FBI had decided to keep her. It was comfortable enough; there was a couch and a big TV, and somebody had run out for sandwiches, but it was still a prison. The police were everywhere, the famous FBI. An army of strange men, just outside the door, studying her with prying, curious eyes.

  Irina had decided that she trusted Agent Stevens, and his wife. She trusted the beautiful black woman who seemed to be friends with Stevens. The other agents, though, the quiet men, Irina did not trust.

  Probably most of the other agents were good people. Kind men, and brave. Undoubtedly, though, a few of them were bad. They would watch her like predators. They would hurt her if they wanted, and she could do nothing to stop them. She could not even pick out the bad men from the good.

  She did not want to be around any man right now, she decided. She didn’t want to take the risk. She would tolerate Kirk Stevens because he would help her find her sister. Because he had been kind to her. Because she trusted him.

  She would not trust anyone else.

  The translator, Maria, sat in an office chair at the conference room table, eating a croissant and watching a bottle blonde cling to a chisel-faced man on the TV set. The blonde was weeping, and the man was pouting. He was wearing hospital scrubs. Irina didn’t recognize either of them, and she knew most of the American movie actors.

  A soap opera, then, and a bad one, judging by the melodramatic soundtrack and the woman’s ceaseless sobbing. Irina stood from the couch and walked to the window, gazed out over the high iron fences, the security guards by the parking lot, the roadway and the flat fields beyond. Yes, this was a comfortable prison, but it was still a prison.

  Still, it’s better than what Catalina has.