The Stolen Ones

by Owen Laukkanen

  “Five hundred boxes,” Stevens said. “That’s a lot of digging.”

  Windermere nodded. “Sure is,” she said, reaching for the door handle. “So let’s hope one of these sailors can give us a clue.”

  42

  THE BIG AMERICAN AGENT led Irina into a small office, sat her behind the desk in a comfy leather chair, and gestured to a telephone. Irina felt a tightness in her chest as the agent dialed her parents’ number and the phone began to ring in her ear. Anxiety. She wondered how she would tell her parents what had happened, how she would explain that she had lost them their youngest daughter. She wondered how she could dare to speak to them at all, and she reached to hang up the phone as her guilt overwhelmed her.

  Before she could hang up, though, her father answered. She hesitated, closed her eyes, and began, haltingly, to explain. She was afraid of his anger when he found out how she’d failed him.

  But her father already knew about Catalina. Her father, she realized, was crying.

  “They came to the house,” her father told her through his tears. “Someone, in the night. They left a picture of Catalina, a warning for us. For the whole town.”

  Irina felt sickness in her stomach. Felt like she was going to throw up.

  “They slaughtered Sasha-dog,” her father said, and Irina pictured Catalina’s little mutt and felt a dam burst inside of her, began to cry as her father choked back his own sobs. “They warned us that if we contact the authorities, they will do the same to Catalina.”

  “I’m sorry,” Irina told. “I’m so sorry, Papa.”

  Over the phone line, her father wept bitter, helpless tears that scared Irina almost more than anything she had endured. If the devil-faced man could turn her father into this kind of terrified mess, what would he do to Catalina?

  Then her father regained control. She could hear him blowing his nose, and when he came back his voice was clear again. “These people are evil, Irina,” he told her. “There is nothing you can do to stop them. Come home and help us pray, for Catalina’s sake.”

  > > >

  IRINA PUT DOWN THE PHONE. Felt suddenly claustrophobic in the tiny office, suffocated by fear. Her sister was in danger. Irina was in danger, too, imprisoned here with these men.

  She would not go home, she decided. Going home would accomplish nothing. But staying here, sitting and doing nothing, would be just as stupid. Every minute she waited was another minute of Catalina’s life wasted. Catalina didn’t have much more time to waste. And it wasn’t like the police were finding her anyway.

  Maria was watching her. So was the young FBI agent. Irina swallowed. Welled up her courage and looked at the translator. “I want to leave this place,” she said. “Please. I will find my sister myself.”

  43

  BY NIGHTFALL, Windermere was sure that somebody on the Ocean Constellation knew something about Irina Milosovici’s container. She just wasn’t sure how to get the crew to talk.

  She and Stevens left LePlavy on the pier while they boarded the ship. The captain, a Dane named Pedersen, met them on the bridge, where he was supervising the loading of eight hundred more containers onto the ship. He was middle-aged, handsome, and clean-shaven, and he smiled apologetically as he shook their hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he told them. “I’m not sure what you’re hoping to find here. This ship has a crew of twenty, and a capacity of almost twenty-five hundred forty-foot containers like the box you’re describing. It would be impossible for anyone to know what was inside each box.”

  “Sure,” Stevens said. “We’re just wondering if anyone heard or saw anything out of the ordinary.”

  “This box had forty women in it,” Windermere said. “Maybe somebody heard something they weren’t sure about. We can jog their memory.”

  “I can say almost for certain that the officers wouldn’t have heard anything,” Pedersen told them. “We don’t spend much time on deck during a voyage. And the rest of the crew is from all over the world—mostly the poorer parts. In my experience, they don’t speak English very well at all.”

  “Can’t hurt to try, though.”

  Pedersen hesitated. “Very well,” he said finally, glancing out the bridge window to where a giant gantry crane was depositing another long container. “But hurry, please. This ship sails at slack tide. I have a schedule to keep.”

  > > >

  “SO HE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING,” Windermere said to Stevens, as they descended in the ship’s elevator toward the deck. “Does he?”

  Stevens shook his head. “I don’t think he was lying,” he said. “That leaves us the crew.”

  Captain Pedersen had his third officer gather the crew in the mess, a low, utilitarian room with the long cafeteria tables and flat beige walls of a hospital—or a prison. The crew hailed mostly from the Philippines, and they were entirely men. They spoke halting English, but they seemed to understand what Stevens and Windermere represented; they stiffened, avoided eye contact, answered in single syllables. Whether they knew anything or just feared the police, though, Windermere couldn’t tell.

  One man, however, gave Windermere a funny feeling. He was a short, bearded man, nondescript, kept trying to edge his way to the back of the mess and out of sight. He froze when her gaze caught him, avoided her eyes when she called after him.

  “You there,” she said. “What’s your story?”

  The man didn’t look at her. Didn’t answer.

  “This box with the women,” she said. “What do you know? Did you hear something, see something? What can you tell us?”

  The man finally spoke. “I didn’t see anything,” he said, his accent heavy.

  “A red shipping container. Forty women inside. Maybe you heard something. Come on.”

  “I can’t help you,” the man said. “I’m sorry.”

  “‘Sorry.’” Stevens stepped forward. “Why are you sorry?”

  The whole room was quiet. Nobody looked at Stevens and Windermere. Nobody looked at the man they’d cornered.

  These people know something, Windermere thought. They have to know something.

  “Why are you sorry?” Windermere said. “What do you know that you’re not telling us?”

  The man stayed silent. Kept his eyes downcast and seemed to be fighting a battle with himself. Attaboy, Windermere thought. You can do it.

  Then the man slumped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just—I cannot.”

  “Sure you can,” Windermere said. “Just tell us what you know.” She started toward him, pushing between the rows of the sullen-faced crew. Not a man cleared a space for her to pass.

  Before she could reach the man, though, she was interrupted by a knock at the door. The third officer, wearing the same apologetic smile as Captain Pedersen. “I’m afraid we must be preparing to sail,” he told Stevens and Windermere. “The company has a strict schedule to keep.”

  “Just a couple more minutes,” Windermere told him. “We’re getting somewhere. Please.”

  The third officer tapped his watch. “We really must be getting under way,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

  44

  WINDERMERE STOOD BESIDE LePlavy’s Crown Victoria and watched the Ocean Constellation slip away from the pier, feeling like she was watching her case sail away with it.

  “We should have stopped that ship,” she told Stevens and LePlavy. “That little guy knew something. I know he did.”

  “Maybe,” Stevens said. “Or maybe he was just scared.”

  “Maybe he had something else to hide,” LePlavy said. “Maybe he’s smuggling drugs in his knapsack. Lot of narcotics coming into the country on those ships.”

  “Exactly,” Stevens said. “Would be hard to convince a judge we have to tie up a sixty-thousand-ton ship just because one of the crew is giving us the side eye.”

  Windermere said nothing. Just watched from the
pier as the Ocean Constellation slowly turned in the harbor until its bow pointed toward open ocean.

  Soon as that ship hits international waters, we’re screwed, she thought. That shady crew member will jump off the boat the next stop they make, and he’ll disappear forever. We’ve lost him.

  “Maybe we can get a helicopter,” she said.

  Stevens looked at her. “What?”

  She gestured out over the water. “Fly out to the boat, keep interviewing the crew. One by one, this time. Maybe that guy opens up when his friends aren’t around.”

  “A helicopter.” LePlavy laughed, incredulous. “I, uh— Are you serious?”

  “She’s not serious,” Stevens said. He turned back to her. “We need more than a hunch, Carla. We need something solid.”

  She was about to tell him to screw the hunch when her phone started to ring. Mathers. She answered it. “Tell me good news, Derek.”

  “Maybe I should call back,” Mathers said.

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “What did you do?”

  “I—” He gave it a beat. “I let Irina call her parents,” he said, finally. Then, before she could say anything: “I had to do it, Carla. Legally, we can’t just keep her locked up incommunicado. The translator put the screws to me. She was going to call a lawyer.”

  Windermere glanced at the other two agents. Stevens met her eyes, gave her a look: What’s up? She turned away.

  “Okay,” she said, “so you disobeyed my instructions and gave Irina the phone. What else?”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” Mathers said. “It sounds like whoever has the little sister, they have people in Romania. They paid the girls’ parents a visit.”

  Windermere closed her eyes. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. I guess they left a picture of Catalina and some kind of warning note. And they—well, they killed the kid’s dog.”

  “The dog.”

  “Irina says Catalina loved that dog. They cut him up and told the parents if they tried to intervene with the case, they’ll do the same to Catalina. She’s pretty scared, Carla,” he said. “She wants to get out of here.”

  “She wants to— Where the hell does she want to go?”

  “I don’t know,” Mathers said. “She just wants to go. And legally, Carla, I don’t think we can stop her.”

  Windermere opened her eyes. Out in the harbor, the Ocean Constellation was picking up speed now. In a few minutes, it would disappear forever.

  And now Irina Milosovici wanted to walk. Windermere clenched her fists, felt her whole body tense. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Are you kidding me, Derek?”

  45

  “WELL, OKAY,” Stevens told Windermere. “Let’s forget about Irina for a second.”

  Windermere shook her head. “We can’t just—”

  “Mathers and Harris can stall her until we get back,” he said. “We go home to Minnesota with a break in this case and that girl won’t be so eager to walk, I promise.”

  Windermere opened her mouth to reply. Thought better of it apparently, and sank down in her seat and said nothing.

  They were in LePlavy’s car, driving away from the empty pier where the Ocean Constellation had docked. Stevens watched Windermere from the backseat, figured he understood his partner’s frustration.

  Mathers was right about Irina, of course; it was against the law to keep the poor girl from contacting her family. And of course she was scared. But she wouldn’t get anywhere by running.

  In the front seat, Windermere opened her eyes. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “That girl isn’t getting out of FBI custody.”

  “Of course not,” Stevens said. “She’s a witness in a major investigation. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Legally, you can’t just keep her in a cell, though,” LePlavy said. “If she doesn’t want protective custody, you can’t force it on her.”

  “So what the hell is she supposed to do?” Windermere said. “Get her own apartment somewhere? What if she wants to go home? Just pack up and head back to Romania with Mommy and Daddy?”

  “I guess we petition a judge,” Stevens said.

  Windermere made a face. “Fucking Mathers,” she said.

  Stevens sat up. “Yeah,” he said, “but we’re not completely screwed here, Carla. We still have a case.”

  “That ship’s the one that delivered these women,” LePlavy said. “You’re pretty sure of that, right?”

  “We’re sure,” Stevens told him. “Based on the timeline and that Newark phone number—”

  “Which has given us absolutely nothing,” Windermere said. “Derek says there’s nothing in that number’s records but a bunch of anonymous calls. Started two months back and ended with this delivery. These guys were too goddamn careful.”

  “They gave us Newark.” Stevens sat forward. “And we have the Ocean Constellation and Irina’s description of the container. This harbor is lousy with checkpoints and security cameras. If we do some digging, we’ll find that box.”

  LePlavy met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Well, okay,” he said. “Let’s dig.”

  46

  STEVENS AND WINDERMERE waited while LePlavy called in a warrant. Then they all drove to the Port Authority office, where the supervisor was waiting with his hands on his hips and an I don’t have time for this shit expression on his face.

  “We’re on the hunt for a forty-foot red container that came off the Ocean Constellation,” Windermere explained in the supervisor’s office. “The owner is shipping women into the country through your facility, so let’s just assume you’re going to bust your ass to help us, okay?”

  The supervisor looked at her. Looked at Stevens and LePlavy. “You know that ship dropped off a thousand boxes,” he said. “You—”

  “We know,” Windermere told him. “Just hook us up with the tape.”

  > > >

  THE SUPERVISOR LED THEM to the Port Authority’s security office, a large, windowless room filled with computer screens and banks of monitors. The place was cold, the air-conditioning on full blast, but Windermere forgot about the chill as soon as the supervisor brought up the footage from the Ocean Constellation’s arrival.

  The Port Authority had cameras everywhere. On the pier and in the parking lots, in the vast marshaling yards amid stacks of containers, at the customs checkpoints and the entry and exit gates to the facility. They had manifests, too, and electronic scanners to track each container as the cranes lifted them from the ships, placed them on the backs of trucks or on train cars that shunted them away from the pier.

  “Amazing,” Windermere told Stevens and LePlavy. “If we can pin down which box is ours, we can trace the manifest to the shipper, easy.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Stevens said. “Let’s get to work.”

  > > >

  THEY STUDIED THE MONITORS for hours, an endless procession of containers of all sizes and colors.

  How many of these boxes hold women? Windermere thought.

  Most of the boxes had logos on their sides, the names of shipping companies or railroads, or big-box discount stores. Windermere watched them move from ship to shore and out through the exit gates, felt her senses dull with the monotony, the chill in the room the only thing keeping her awake.

  She realized she was shivering, was about to ask for a sweater or a blanket—hell, a parka—when she caught the flash of red. “There,” she told Stevens and LePlavy, pointing at the screen. “Check it out.”

  The two men squinted at the screen. Watched as a giant gantry crane lifted a plain red container from the Ocean Constellation’s hold and deposited it on the back of a flatbed truck.

  “That’s a red tractor,” Stevens said, and she could tell from his voice that he was starting to feel it. “Just like the one Irina described.”

  LePlavy copied something into a notebook. “I’ll r
un the owner data,” he said, standing. “You guys keep watching, make sure this is the one.”

  “It’s the one,” Windermere said. She could feel it, plain and clear as she felt the sailor on the Ocean Constellation was hiding something. “Hurry up and tell us who owns this thing.”

  LePlavy hurried off. Stevens hit play on the monitor again, and they watched as the driver of the truck slowly pulled out from under the crane, the container secured on the back of his flatbed. Windermere imagined the women inside, their fear, their disorientation. She closed her eyes and tried to chase the thought from her mind.

  We’ll find who owns this box, she thought. We’ll track them down. We’ll find Catalina Milosovici and the rest of the women.

  We’ll make these bastards pay.

  47

  THE TRUCK IDLED AWAY from the pier, the giant cranes, the Ocean Constellation. Navigated the massive stacks of waiting boxes and lined up at the customs checkpoint that guarded the facility. Stevens and Windermere watched as the truck waited. The line was long. Windermere wrapped her arms around herself and exhaled, half expected to see her breath in the air.

  Beside her, Stevens tapped his fingers on his knee. “I keep waiting for a camera angle that’s going to show us this guy’s face,” Stevens said.

  “We already know the guy, Stevens,” Windermere said. “Hell, we have sketches of both of them.”

  The truck inched forward. Windermere watched the screen. Ached to reach through the camera and just stop the truck, open her up, and free the damn women right there. Hated that she couldn’t. Hated that she knew what happened next.

  Finally, the truck made the customs checkpoint. From what Windermere could tell, some trucks were pulled aside for secondary screenings. A small fraction were directed through an X-ray scanner. The Ocean Constellation had arrived on a busy day at the port, though. Most of the trucks drove away unchecked.