The Stolen Ones

by Owen Laukkanen

  “So you went for it.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Apparently Callaway thought the question was rhetorical. “Yeah, man, I went for it. The girls weren’t cheap, but they worked for it. Long as you kept them in line, anyway.”

  Stevens felt his muscles tense, his fists clench at his sides. He cleared his throat. “You had, what, fifteen girls? Where’d you keep them?”

  “Rented a couple townhouses a mile or so from the club. Three bedrooms each, three girls to a room,” Callaway said. “It worked fine. They never tried to escape. Hell, they were terrified, and where the fuck would they go? You saw how we kept their passports.”

  “Uh-huh,” Windermere said. “And you got a delivery from where?”

  “East Coast somewhere,” Callaway said. “Nobody told me anything. I called the number they gave me and told them I wanted a couple girls. A few weeks later a truck showed up with a couple girls in it.”

  Windermere pushed him a pad of paper and a pen. “Write down that number, Jimmy.”

  “They switch phones all the time, though,” Callaway said. “Sometimes I have to wait for them to call me, just so I know how to get in touch again.”

  “Let us worry about that,” Windermere told him. “Just give us the last number they gave you and we’ll take it from there.”

  Callaway looked a half second from puking, but he scribbled something down. Windermere passed the paper to Stevens, who couldn’t place the area code off the top of his head. “This guy who approached you, you dealt with him the whole time?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “And he’s the guy bringing the girls into the country.”

  “No.” Callaway swallowed. “That guy, he’s the main guy. The guys I was dealing with were some lower-level guys. I think they were just, like, the drivers.”

  “Show him the sketches,” Windermere said.

  Stevens brought out the sketches the FBI artist had made. Callaway sucked his teeth. “Fuck,” he said. “I fucking knew this thing was too good to be true.”

  “The contact, Jimmy. Tell us what you know.”

  Callaway studied the sketches. “Yeah,” he said. “These are the guys.” He pointed to the thug with the scar on his face. “I remember the scar. Like he’d face-fucked a screwdriver.”

  Windermere looked at Stevens. “Same guys as killed the deputy.” She turned back to Callaway. “What are their names, Jimmy?”

  “Names?” Callaway laughed, incredulous. “You think these assholes ever told me their names?”

  “Okay,” said Stevens. “What the hell did you call them?”

  “‘Hey, you,’ and ‘Yes, sir,’” Callaway said. “I didn’t need to know anything more than that.” He shrugged. “Sorry, guys. My line of work, you don’t ask too many questions you don’t need to know the answers to.”

  37

  WINDERMERE’S PHONE RANG just after dawn.

  “Carla.” It was Mathers. “I wake you?”

  Windermere sat up in bed, looked around the motel room. She’d fallen asleep barely four hours earlier, her laptop open, the TV playing reruns on mute. She and Stevens had run down the phone number Jimmy Callaway had scribbled out for them, traced it to Newark, New Jersey, some corner-store disposable, paid for in cash. If the traffickers were as careful as Callaway thought, Windermere figured she probably wouldn’t find much when she tracked down the phone records, but she’d made a note to put Mathers on the trail anyway. Then she and Stevens retreated to the local Super 8 to catch a few winks, planned to start interviewing Jimmy’s girls in the morning. The late morning.

  “Carla?”

  “I don’t sleep, Mathers,” Windermere told him. “You know that. You calling because you miss me?”

  “Actually, yeah,” Mathers said. “I didn’t really know what to do with myself last night, without you chirping at me and hogging all the blankets.”

  “Sounds like you had it pretty good,” Windermere said. “I met a high-class call girl and a degenerate strip-club boss. And,” she said, eyeing her unopened suitcase, “I fell asleep in my makeup.”

  “You get all the fun assignments,” Mathers said. “If I want to see strippers, I have to pay the cover charge.”

  “As if you need a strip club,” Windermere said. “I don’t even stick you with the two-drink minimum.”

  “You keep running away with Stevens, I might just pony up.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She went into the bathroom, splashed water on her face. “You call me up just to flirt, Mathers, or do you have something to talk about?”

  “Depends.” She could hear the smile. “What are you wearing?”

  “My chastity belt. Now spill.”

  Mathers sighed. “Fine,” he said. “If I can’t get you hot and bothered, maybe this will do the trick. The Ocean Constellation.”

  Windermere shook her head. “Nope, not feeling anything.”

  “Wait for it,” Mathers said. “The Ocean Constellation is a thousand-foot container ship running the Mediterranean trade route to the eastern United States. It left Trieste three weeks ago and arrived in the port of Newark, New Jersey, around the same time we think Irina Milosovici arrived on American soil.”

  Instantly, Windermere was awake. “Hot damn, Mathers. You do know how to get a girl’s attention.” She told him about Callaway, about the burner phone with the Newark area code. “But why Trieste?”

  “Closest major container port to Bucharest,” Mathers said. “Irina didn’t seem to think the box was moved more than once between Bucharest and America. They must have trucked it overland before they loaded it on the Ocean Constellation.”

  Windermere turned on the shower. “It’s perfect,” she said. “Let’s say the Ocean Constellation is our ship. Now we just have to figure out who sent the container.”

  “I’m working on it,” Mathers said. “One more thing.”

  “Uh-huh?” Windermere said.

  “The Ocean Constellation off-loaded in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, after Newark,” he said. “It’s supposed to head back to the Mediterranean in a day or so, but they have an outbound stop in Newark scheduled for tomorrow. If you haul ass, you might be able to get on board, talk to the crew.”

  “Dynamite,” Windermere told him. “Call Newark and tell them to prepare for my arrival. Don’t let that ship set sail before Stevens and I get a good look at it.”

  “Roger,” Mathers said. “Any shot I can let Irina call her family? Her translator’s getting pretty worked up about it.”

  “Negative,” Windermere said. “Wait for me to get home.”

  “You know, we’re supposed to let her talk to her people, Carla,” Mathers said. “Legally, I mean. We can’t just keep her locked up forever. And I don’t know if you noticed, but that translator is kind of scary.”

  Windermere knew he was right. Still, something made her reluctant to let the girl do much without her direct supervision. The case was too fragile.

  “Just a little longer, Derek,” she told Mathers. “See if you can keep her in check for another day at least.”

  “Okay,” Mathers said. “I’ll try.” Then he brightened. “Hey, since you’re not coming home, can I have the name of that call girl you talked to?”

  “You can’t afford her,” Windermere told him. “I’m getting into the shower now. Think about that while I’m gone.”

  38

  “FUCKING FBI INSECTS.”

  The Dragon smiled at Volovoi, clucked his teeth in commiseration. Beside him, Volovoi stared out the town car’s smoked windows at the Manhattan skyline across the river, the twin humps of Midtown and Lower Manhattan, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Citigroup and American International buildings, the new World Trade Center—the Freedom Tower, they were calling it—the Dragon’s city. He knew it was no accident that the Dr
agon’s driver had taken this route.

  The FBI had raided Club Heat in Duluth. Volovoi had learned of the disaster this morning. The women were freed. The club owner imprisoned. Shortly after he’d heard the news, the Dragon had called.

  “Insects,” the Dragon said, smiling again at Volovoi, a bad approximation of sympathy. The gangster couldn’t hide his delight. With the Duluth club out of business, Volovoi was down a buyer. Out thousands of dollars in revenue, money he’d been counting on to pay back the Dragon.

  Shit, Volovoi thought, it wouldn’t be so surprising if the Dragon was behind the raid at Club Heat himself.

  Sure enough, the Dragon turned away from Volovoi to watch the Manhattan skyline. “You will need a new source of income,” he said, as though the thought had just occurred to him. “Perhaps now is the time, Andrei, to consider my New York offer.”

  “Now is not the time,” Volovoi replied, sinking back in his seat. “The FBI has picked up my drivers’ trail. They will be searching for traffickers, picking at threads. Now is the time to lay low and be cautious.”

  “Caution never made a man any money, Andrei,” the Dragon replied. “And surely you’d agree that now, more than ever, you’re in need of a profit. You have a new shipment coming in a couple of days. Where will you send it?”

  Volovoi didn’t answer. There was money in Manhattan, he knew, enough to push the Dragon off his back forever. But there was also heavy risk. And the Dragon wouldn’t go away easily, even after the Manhattan project took hold.

  If he were a smart man, he would ditch the next box, now that the FBI had begun to trace the big sister’s trail. A cautious man would not attempt to sell any more women. He certainly would not employ Bogdan Urzica and his idiot partner, not with police drawings of their faces on every news channel in America.

  But he couldn’t just quit. The Dragon wouldn’t allow it, would chase him if he ran. Would hunt down his family, his sister, her children. The Dragon would demand payment, one way or the other.

  “Just a small meeting with my New York friend, Andrei,” the Dragon said. “You don’t have to agree to anything, no obligation. Just allow us to lay out our proposal.”

  The driver turned the town car away from the river, and Manhattan receded in the rearview mirror, replaced by grimy, soul-crushing New Jersey. Volovoi closed his eyes, imagined the FBI insects tearing down his operation. Imagined severing ties with the Dragon, the havoc it would wreak. He’d come to America for glamour and sensationalism. Such things required a man to make difficult decisions. Sometimes a man had to take risks.

  Volovoi knew there was only one answer. He opened his eyes. “One meeting,” he told the gangster. “No obligation.”

  The Dragon smiled back. “No obligation, Andrei,” he said. “None whatsoever.”

  39

  “NEWARK, NEW JERSEY,” Stevens told his wife over the phone. “We’re wheels-up in about half an hour. Hopefully, someone on this ship saw something we can use to start following the trail to the bad guys.”

  “This is the same ship that brought Irina and her sister over?” Nancy said. “It’s back in Newark already?”

  “It’s an outbound stop,” Stevens said. “It docked in Newark last week, its first stop in America. Went down the Eastern Seaboard dropping off boxes and then turned around to pick up a few more in New Jersey before it crosses the Atlantic. Lucky us, I guess.”

  “Have to be good to be lucky,” Nancy said. She let her breath out, weary. “We almost had World War Three around here last night.”

  “Oh no,” Stevens said. “What happened?”

  “I worked late,” she said. “Left Andrea to handle dinner for JJ. I get home and he’s starving, and your daughter is nowhere to be found. She straggles in a half hour later, says she went to McDonald’s with her friends.”

  “Friends,” Stevens said.

  “One friend in particular.”

  “Calvin.” Stevens rubbed his eyes. “That guy still around?”

  “She left JJ alone for an hour, Kirk. I don’t care about her little blossoming romance. It’s not acceptable.”

  “Of course not,” Stevens said. “So what happened?”

  “Nothing,” Nancy said. “She stomped off to her room, and I made JJ spaghetti. You’re going to have to talk to her, Kirk. She won’t listen to me.”

  “Maybe if we texted her.”

  “Ha-ha,” Nancy said. “Hurry back, would you?”

  “I will,” Stevens told her. He ended the call and hurried out of the motel to where Windermere stood beside a waiting cab. She raised an eyebrow at him as he approached.

  “Andrea has a boyfriend,” Stevens told her. “For once in my life, I’m glad I’m not home to deal with it.”

  “Say no more,” Windermere said, climbing into the taxi. “I’d take Romanian mobsters over a moody teenage girl any day.”

  Stevens laughed. “You and me both.” He slipped in beside her, slamming the door as the cab motored out of the motel parking lot toward the airport. Somewhere in the distance, the Ocean Constellation waited.

  40

  IRINA PACED the conference room. “My parents,” she told Maria. “No doubt they are frantic with worry. How long do I have to wait before I can call?”

  Maria looked up from the television. “Agent Mathers said you could call today,” she said. She checked her watch. “With the time difference, it’s already nighttime in Romania.”

  “I’ll wake them up if necessary,” Irina told her. “I need to contact them as soon as possible.”

  She’d been pacing all day, racked with guilt that she hadn’t contacted her parents sooner. They’d no doubt been panicking since the day Catalina had disappeared, weeks ago now. Irina was dreading the call, knew what she had to tell them was as bad as anything they’d imagined. But the thought of waiting even one more night to speak to them seemed even more like torture.

  “As soon as possible,” Irina told the translator. “Please.”

  Maria glanced at the TV again. Then, wearily, she pushed herself to her feet. Walked to the door and beckoned to the young FBI agent. Irina shrank away as the man approached. He was big, tall, and broad-shouldered, and he walked with a power and purpose that scared her. If the young agent wanted to, he could break her like a piece of dry spaghetti.

  > > >

  “WE HAVE TO WAIT until Agent Windermere gets back,” Mathers told the translator. “Shouldn’t be more than a couple days.”

  “A couple days?” The translator gestured to Irina Milosovici. “Her sister has been kidnapped. Her parents have no way of knowing either girl is alive.”

  Mathers followed the translator’s eyes to where Irina sat huddled in a corner, hardly daring to lift her head from her chest. He knew the translator was right. Knew his own mother would have worked herself into a panic by this point, and she lived the next state over.

  “It’s just cruel to keep her isolated like this,” the translator was saying. “Not to mention, it’s illegal. This woman has rights.”

  Mathers said nothing. He knew that, too. He’d done a little research on human trafficking cases, found out that a victim like Irina had the same rights as an American citizen. Hell, if she wanted to, Irina could walk right out of the building, and it wouldn’t make much difference what the FBI had to say about it. A phone call, Mathers figured, was the least of his worries.

  The translator was watching him. “You know what I’m saying is true,” she said. “And I mean it. You let this woman call her parents, or I’ll start calling lawyers.”

  Mathers looked at her. Looked at Irina, who shied away, hid her eyes like he was some kind of boogeyman or something. A monster, like the assholes who’d put her in the box in the first place. Mathers felt his resolve weakening. What was one little phone call, anyway? Hell, it was the decent thing to do.

  Still, Windermere—
<
br />   “Do it,” the translator said. “Tonight.”

  Mathers sighed. “Carla’s going to kill me,” he said.

  41

  THE OCEAN CONSTELLATION towered over the pier like a skyscraper, dwarfing the FBI sedan as it pulled alongside the ship’s massive blue hull. At a thousand feet long and over five stories high, the thing was a behemoth, the biggest moving object Stevens had ever seen. Brightly colored containers covered every inch of deck space, stacked four and five high like Legos, and for the first time, Stevens began to comprehend what an impossible task the Customs and Border Protection guards faced in stemming the flow of contraband—be it women, drugs, guns, or anything else—into the country.

  He and Windermere had landed in Newark a little before two. Met a special agent from Newark’s Organized Crime division, a fair-skinned, solid guy named LePlavy, and by three, they were on the pier, driving through a customs checkpoint and navigating the chaotic mess of trucks and trains and dockworkers scattered beneath the giant orange gantry cranes that loaded the ship.

  There were ships everywhere. Containers by the thousands. There was no way that anyone could check every box that came into the country, Stevens decided. Hell, even checking one container in five would be an impressive feat.

  Beside him, LePlavy seemed to read his mind. “I did a little research on this ship of yours,” he said, pulling the car to a stop beside a spindly gangplank hanging from the Ocean Constellation’s flank. “Apparently she off-loaded over a thousand boxes in Newark last week. Almost half of those came from Trieste.”

  “Any chance you got a list of the cargo in those boxes?” Stevens asked him.

  “I did. None of them said ‘women.’”

  Stevens glanced at Windermere. “Needle in a haystack territory again,” Windermere said. “Even if nothing on the manifests raised any flags, maybe we can isolate single boxes, work through every shipper individually. Maybe something jumps out at us.”