“Already done. So far, no hits. Sounds like this guy’s a bigger deal in Europe than he is over here.”
“So basically, we have nothing,” Windermere said. “That’s what you’re saying.”
“We have the big boss man,” Mathers said. “And maybe Interpol can—”
“We have a guy named ‘The Dragon,’” Windermere said, “who nobody’s ever seen. Big goddamn deal.”
“We’re working on it,” Mathers said. “I lit some fires. Short of going over to Romania myself, I think I did all I could.”
Maybe you should go, Windermere thought, but she held her tongue.
“Oh,” Mathers said, reaching for a sheet of paper. “Interpol faxed over this.” He handed the paper to Windermere. On it was the picture of Catalina Milosovici and the note that Mike had left for her parents. The girl was a smaller, dirtier copy of her sister, her eyes sunken, her skin pale. Windermere passed the picture to Stevens, who stared at it a long time without saying anything.
“What about Irina?” he asked finally. “Where do we stand with her?”
“She still wants to go,” Mathers said. “She’s terrified here, and that translator’s telling her she doesn’t have to stay. Which she doesn’t, but why the hell would she want to leave?”
“Because you gave her that phone call,” Windermere said. “And you scared the shit out of her.”
Mathers winced. “Come on, Carla. I’m doing all I can here.”
He looked across the room at her, and she quickly turned away. Couldn’t stand to see him. Anyone else, she thought. Anyone else makes this mistake and I tear them a new asshole and walk away satisfied. It had to be fucking Mathers.
For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Stevens cleared his throat. “Let’s see if we can’t convince Irina to stick around at least,” he said, glancing at the picture of Catalina again. “Try and keep this situation from getting any worse.”
54
“SO HERE’S THE THING,” Stevens told his wife. “Irina Milosovici called home, as was her legal right. Got ahold of her parents, who told her that some gangsters had come by with a picture of her sister, and had cut up her dog as a warning.”
He’d dropped in on Nancy at work, figured maybe his wife could help him navigate the legal issues around Irina’s sudden desire for freedom.
“My God,” Nancy said. “But that means Catalina’s alive at least, right?”
“We think so,” Stevens said. “I mean, the implication of the warning was that if Irina continued to cooperate with us, the traffickers—we think the boss is this guy called the Dragon—would hurt her sister.”
“The Dragon, huh?” Nancy said. “He sounds cuddly.”
“I guess it doesn’t change much,” Stevens said. “We’re still looking for a way to find Catalina. But in the meantime, the parents want Irina home. We, obviously, don’t want her to leave. But legally, we’re not sure we can keep her.”
Nancy thought it over. “I think, legally, she can walk if she wants,” she said. “If I were her lawyer, I’d certainly advise her to stay put, but if she wants to pack it in, the government isn’t going to want to detain her, no matter how many murders she’s witnessed. She calls the consulate, it’s an international incident.”
“Yeah,” Stevens said. “That’s what we’re afraid of.”
“You want her to stay. Her parents want her to go.” Nancy looked at him. “What does she want?”
“She wants to get out of FBI custody. Wants to get out there and find Catalina.”
“What, just set off on her own?” Nancy grimaced. “Well, she obviously can’t do that, Kirk. Let me talk to her.”
> > >
IRINA MILOSOVICI sat in a holding cell, staring at the walls and trying not to think about Catalina. It wasn’t working.
You did this, she thought. You doomed your own sister. You need to get out of here and go and save her yourself.
Footsteps down the hall. Irina stiffened. There were guards outside, more big American policemen with bulletproof vests and guns. More potential threats, more risks. More men she would never be able to trust.
But when the door swung open, it wasn’t the devil-faced man or a terrifying policeman, but Kirk Stevens and his beautiful wife. Maria followed them in, stood between Irina and the Stevenses like a protective parent.
Nancy Stevens said something to Maria. “They want to talk to you,” Maria told Irina. “The woman says you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”
Irina looked at Nancy Stevens and her husband. The police agent looked tired. He looked anxious. Irina felt sorry for him. He was only now realizing how outmatched he was.
“Will they let me out of here?” Irina asked.
Maria relayed the question. Nancy glanced at Stevens. Pulled up a chair and sat beside Irina, her elbows on her knees. “Here’s what we know,” she said, as Maria translated. “The man who has Catalina is a gangster named . . .” She turned to her husband again.
“Pavel Demetriou,” Stevens said. “Also known as ‘The Dragon.’”
“The Dragon,” Nancy said.
Irina frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”
“We’re telling you because we want you to know what we’re dealing with, Irina,” Nancy said. “We believe this Dragon man used his contact in Romania to give your parents the warning.”
“Mike.” Irina felt her breath catch. “My parents said his letter swore they wouldn’t hurt Catalina if I just kept my mouth shut and went home.”
“They were lying,” Nancy said. “You think they’re just going to forget about you? You know too much, Irina.”
Nancy reached out, touched her arm. “You don’t have to talk to us,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything if you think it will risk Catalina’s life. But if you leave, Irina, we can’t protect you, and chances are you’ll die. And if you die, they’ll probably kill Catalina, too.”
Nancy’s eyes were kind, her expression sympathetic. She was right, Irina knew, and she hung her head and said nothing.
“I can get you out of this cell,” Nancy said. “Into a halfway house, with plenty of protection. You can talk to your family and go outside if you want to, and in the meantime, my husband and his partners will bust their humps searching for Catalina. Just promise me you won’t run away.”
Irina looked around the holding cell. Imagined a warm bed, a shower. Knew the traffickers would have her killed as soon as she returned to Berceni. Her parents, too, probably. Knew she’d never get far in America on her own.
Irina looked up at Nancy, at Agent Stevens, at Maria. “No men,” she said. “Please. Not even policemen.”
“No men,” Nancy said. “I promise.”
55
“I DON’T GET IT,” Windermere said. “So the girl’s still not talking? What did we accomplish here, Stevens?”
Stevens watched the electronic floor numbers flash by above him as the elevator climbed. “She’s staying put,” he said. “Nancy’s moving her to a halfway house under U.S. Marshal supervision, and in return, she promised not to flee the country or go underground.”
“Yeah, but she’s not talking,” Windermere said. “So what?”
“So she’s still here, I guess,” Stevens said. “We can keep working on Irina while we search for Catalina. And in the meantime, the Dragon doesn’t kill her.”
“Great.” Windermere rolled her eyes. “This sounds like a really good deal for Irina Milosovici, Stevens. But it doesn’t do jack shit for us. How are we going to save this girl’s sister if she won’t help us?”
Stevens leaned against the wall. “Yeah,” he said. “When you put it that way.”
“It sounds pretty damn slim, doesn’t it?” she said. “We need something better.”
The elevator doors slid open. Stevens and Windermere walked out into the FBI’s Crimin
al Investigative bullpen and across to Mathers’s cubicle, where the junior agent was just hanging up his phone.
“Where do we stand with Interpol?” Windermere asked him. “Stevens here just undid the damage you caused with Irina and bought us a little time, Derek, but we need leads to work with. So I hope that was a long-distance call.”
Mathers scribbled something on a notepad. “It was a long-distance call,” he said. “But not to where you’re thinking. Agent LePlavy and I are still tag-teaming with Interpol and the Financial Crimes guys. In the meantime, maybe you can do something with this.”
He handed her the notepad. Windermere took it. “What is it?”
“Anonymous tip made to the field office in Billings, Montana,” Mathers said. “Guess someone called in, said they saw those sketches we sent out of Irina’s bad guys.”
Stevens felt his heart syncopate. “They made the drivers.”
“That’s right,” Mathers said. “The scar-faced thug and his buddy both. The tipster said both guys came into his restaurant, parked their big truck in his lot. Said they had heavy accents and they didn’t talk much, but they ate sandwiches and kept checking their watches.” Mathers paused, his smile growing. “Said he overheard something they said just before they paid the bill. Something about needing to go meet the buyer.”
“Billings, Montana,” Windermere said. “That must be where they were headed after Duluth.”
“It’s a straight shot down I-90,” Stevens said. “It makes sense.”
“I’ll say it does.” Windermere grinned at Stevens. “I’ll book us a flight, partner. You go pack another suitcase. We’ll hit Billings tomorrow.”
56
THERE WAS A TEENAGE BOY sitting in Stevens’s living room when he returned from Brooklyn Center. The kid was sprawled out on the couch, watching some kind of gross-out teen comedy, soda cans and empty potato chip bags everywhere. He sat up quickly when Stevens walked in.
“Oh, hi,” he said. “You’re Mr. Stevens.”
The boy was Andrea’s age, tall and skinny, his hair sandy blond. He wore flower-print shorts and a faux-vintage tee, a typical teenager, and he blushed and shifted his weight and looked away quickly when he caught Stevens’s eye.
“Dad?” Andrea Stevens poked her head in from the kitchen. “Hey,” she said, hurrying into the living room and picking up the garbage from the couch. “Hi. You’re home early. We’re just watching a movie. I’m making some lunch. Are you hungry?”
Stevens regarded his daughter, then her companion. “Am I to assume this is Calvin?”
Andrea blushed bright red. “Dad.”
“Calvin Tanner,” the kid said, holding out his hand. “It’s good to finally meet you, Mr. Stevens. Andrea said you were away on business?”
“I was.” Stevens shook the kid’s hand. “I will be again shortly.”
“You’re a cop, Andrea said?”
Andrea was still blushing. “A BCA agent, I said.”
“So what are you working on?” Calvin asked. “Anything crazy? Andrea said you hunt down crazy bad guys, like that guy from our school, Tomlin. That was you, right? What are you working on now?”
“Nothing so crazy,” Stevens said. “Where’s your brother?” he asked Andrea.
“At Greg’s house,” she said. “I think they went swimming or something. Are you going away again?”
He nodded. “Tomorrow probably. Billings, Montana.”
“It has to do with that woman? From up north?”
“It does,” he said.
“Cool.” She shifted her weight. “Okay, so you met him, Dad. Can I have some privacy now?”
Stevens looked at her. At Calvin. At the TV, where a man in a diaper was running through a shopping mall. Calvin glanced at the TV and then grinned up at him, sheepish. “It was sure nice to meet you, Mr. S.”
Mr. S., Stevens thought, as he went upstairs to pack. Can I have some privacy, Dad?
Maybe he was romanticizing things a little, but Stevens figured it wasn’t so long ago that his daughter would have run to the door to greet him, would have begged him to tell her all about his new case. Hell, she’d even started talking about becoming a cop herself. Now, his biggest case yet, and all she cared about was a little privacy with Calvin.
Kids these days, Stevens thought. No wonder Nancy’s frustrated.
57
ACROSS TOWN, Carla Windermere stared at Derek Mathers across her living room and wondered how she was supposed to feel.
On the one hand, the guy had screwed up her investigation, the biggest damn case she’d ever worked. He’d made a dumb mistake and nearly scared Irina Milosovici back to Romania, and even now Windermere figured the odds the girl would do any more serious cooperating were long, long, long.
But he’d apologized for it. He’d spent the night at his desk, busted his ass with Interpol, and managed to dig up a damn solid lead. Tomorrow, if there was any justice in the world, she and Stevens would track down another buyer in Billings, while Mathers and LePlavy pinpointed the identity of the shipper who’d imported the Milosovicis’ container. Her colleague had done good.
Even so, Windermere kind of hated him.
“I said I’m sorry, Carla,” he told her from the window. “I said it a hundred times, it was an honest mistake. What am I supposed to do about it?”
“You should have known better,” she said. “I told you to wait until Stevens and I got back, and you didn’t listen. You just have to be smarter.”
Mathers flinched, and she knew she’d touched a nerve. “I guess I’m just a big dumbass, huh?”
She closed her eyes. “Come on, Derek.”
“Just a big dumb lug. That’s what you call me, right?” He glared at her. “Guess I finally proved you right.”
“Derek—” She approached him, but he turned away.
“This is stupid,” he said. “It was a bad idea to begin with, us hooking up. We work together. Something like this happens and it all goes to shit.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if—” She caught herself too late.
“If I hadn’t fucked up, Carla, yeah, I know. If I wasn’t the department meathead.” He sighed. “Look, the point is, I don’t even know what we’re doing anymore. Even before I fucked up your case.”
“Our case,” she said.
“Whatever. It’s your case, Carla. You and Stevens.”
“Please don’t bring Stevens into this.”
“Well?” he said. “You’ve always been hung up on him, Carla, even while you’re hooking up with me. I don’t even know why I bother.” He turned to leave, brushed past her. “I should go.”
Windermere followed him to the door. “Don’t go,” she said, and knew she meant it. “Just forget it, Derek. I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he told her, one hand on the doorknob, his blue eyes dark. “It makes you a hell of an agent anyway.”
Then he walked out, and the door slammed closed, leaving Windermere standing alone in her little entryway, feeling like, however she was supposed to be feeling about the situation, this wasn’t it.
58
BOGDAN URZICA RUBBED HIS JAW as he piloted the big Peterbilt into the outskirts of Chicago. Beside him, Nikolai chuckled in the passenger seat.
“That will teach you to get in between a man and his woman, Bogdan,” he said, smirking across the cab at his partner.
In the driver’s seat, Bogdan said nothing. He still hurt from the haymaker Nikolai had thrown at him, and he’d driven all night on minimal sleep, replaying his conversation with Andrei Volovoi in his head.
“I mean, seriously,” Nikolai continued. “I was only trying to get to know her better. Test her out for the Dragon. Quality control, do you know what I mean?”
Bogdan ignored his partner. Kept his eyes on the road as the highway widened, a col
lection of warehouses and train tracks and truck-stop motels peeking through the trees. He watched a highway patrol cruiser approach in an oncoming lane, held his breath until it had passed. There were sketches on the news now, Bogdan knew. His face and Nikolai’s, too. The truck was a liability. The police would be hunting for it.
I’ll deal with Nikolai, Andrei had promised.
Nikolai leaned over and spat brown tobacco juice into his ubiquitous Big Gulp cup. “You are such a princess, Bogdan,” he said. “Do you really think the Dragon is going to give you a gold star for bringing him his little bitch?”
Bogdan wondered if Nikolai could sense his apprehension. “We will not be delivering the little girl to the Dragon,” he said. “Andrei is coming. He will take her off our hands tonight.”
“He’s coming out here?”
“To meet us,” Bogdan told him. “He will take the girl himself. It’s too risky to leave her with us.”
Nikolai said nothing for a moment. Studied the road. Then he laughed. “You pussies,” he said. “You’re all so afraid of that fucking Dragon.”
“And you’re not?” Bogdan said.
“No, Bogdan,” Nikolai said, “I’m not. He’s an ugly punk with a terrible beard. Let him come for me. I will shave that beard off of him.”
Nikolai laughed, that ugly, terrible laugh. Bogdan said nothing. Just drove.
“Let Andrei Volovoi come for the girl,” Nikolai said finally. “The little bitch stinks anyway; he can have her.”
“I’m sure he will be happy to have your permission,” Bogdan said.
“We’ll hand the girl over tonight,” Nikolai said. “Andrei will pay us. Then we’ll find a steak and somebody to fuck us, Bogdan, what do you say?”
Bogdan said nothing. Kept driving. You’re already fucked, Nikolai, he thought. It’s only a matter of time.
59
NANCY STEVENS gestured into the sunny little room and smiled and said something in English. Behind Irina, Maria began to translate, but Irina waved her off. She understood the American well enough.
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