by Terry Toler
She decided to get rid of the gun. The trash at the hotel was an option, but if discovered, the authorities would assume it was hers. The exits in the hotel scrolled through her mind. She’d memorized them when she first checked in. Just as a precaution. They weren’t an option. The only way out was the main entrance in front. Other exits had fire alarms attached to them.
Jamie got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and proceeded with her daily routine. She put on workout clothes and put the gun in a fanny pack which she attached around her waist. She checked the room to make sure she left nothing incriminating. She also boobytrapped it so she would know if it had been searched.
Satisfied, she carefully looked out the door and scanned the hallway of her hotel room floor. No one was there. Not wanting to get trapped in an elevator, she took the stairs, stopping on the second floor where there were meeting rooms. Fortunately, no one was meeting in the Bernardin room, and the entire area was vacant.
The room overlooked the front of the hotel and had big windows with half-closed blinds. Jamie walked over to the windows, careful not to be seen. She quickly spotted Moe, the name she gave the man who tailed her the night before. He reminded her of one of the Three Stooges, and Moe was her favorite Stooge.
Her fears were confirmed. Standing next to Moe were two uniformed policemen and another, older man who looked like he could be Moe’s boss. He appeared to be giving them instructions.
They were already on her as a suspect.
Jamie considered her options. If she went out the fire exit, the alarm would sound and would provide a distraction. However, there were cameras at the exits, and they would easily see she was the one who set the alarms. She’d have no logical explanation. Looking out the windows again, a different plan came to mind.
She took the stairs to the first floor and walked through the lobby to the entrance. Moe and the men were standing to the right of the entrance. Jamie went out the door, turned left, and started running like she was going for a jog, hoping they wouldn’t see her. Even if they did, she had the element of surprise, and it would take them a few seconds to react.
Unfortunately, Moe saw her. He let out a squeal, and Jamie saw him pointing at her out of the corner of her eye. She kept a steady pace to make it look like she was just going for a run. She had to maintain her cover if at all possible. If she had to make evasive moves and blow her cover, she would. That would make things more difficult. She’d have to go dark, and everything would be undercover. With all of the police looking for her.
She just needed to keep her cool and execute her plan. Jamie looked back slightly without slowing her pace and saw the two policemen jump in their car which was in front of the hotel but facing the wrong direction. She was already a couple blocks away. Car doors slammed and the tires squealed. They turned on their lights, made a U-turn and headed her way.
Far enough away that they couldn’t see her, Jamie quickened the pace. She needed to lose them, and make it look like she didn’t lose them on purpose. She made the next left, fairly sure they hadn’t seen which way she went. Her advantage was mobility, but they had the advantage of being able to cover ground much quicker than she could.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to go far. The Svislach River ran through the center of Minsk and was only a half mile from her hotel. The most direct route would be the one the policemen would likely take. She ran through the map in her mind, trying to predict which way they’d go. They’d definitely take the same left she took.
She ran past a restaurant with some patrons sitting at tables on the sidewalk eating their meals. She stepped onto the street. Not the place to be. The policemen could easily spot her. An alley was just ahead on the right. Jamie ducked into it and waited as the policemen sped by. She then took off running the opposite direction the way they’d come.
She had a slight risk that her path would intersect with Moe’s. He wasn’t dressed for a run and wasn’t in shape, so she could lose him if she should happen upon him. Jamie could run a five-minute mile, so even if he was in shape, she could outrun him. She figured the boss man was probably searching her room at that very moment and wasn’t a threat.
Jamie crossed the street, so she was running on the sidewalk across from the restaurant patrons. Hoping the policemen didn’t see her in their rearview mirror. She crossed a major thoroughfare, fortunately timing the light right so she didn’t have to stand on the corner waiting. She didn’t see Moe but didn’t look that closely.
She ran past the Museum of Carriages into a cul-de-sac and toward the riverbank. The police had slowed and were circling around behind her. They’d turn back her way shortly. She bolted off the street into an open parking lot. This was the most dangerous time. When she could most easily be spotted. She also had to hurry because it would be hard to explain why she was down by the river with no running trail, and the embankment was steep. She bolted into a sprint.
She ran down the hill to the edge of the river. It was too open to get rid of the gun there. She continued running along the bank toward the Maksima Bridge which was just ahead. Once there, she ran under the bridge where she was hidden from any cars that might be driving above her and the policemen on the street looking for her.
The gun was wrapped in a towel. She took it out of the fanny pack, careful not to touch it. She had wiped it clean of fingerprints back at the hotel. She flung the gun as far as she could into the river while hanging on to the towel. Then she took off running back the way she had come, staying along the river until she could break out into the open and not be seen until she was back on the pavement. Once on the street, she wanted to be seen and searched.
She slowed her pace. The policemen were on the next block over. They circled the block, spotted her, and then pulled up from behind, blaring their siren so she knew they were there. Jamie dutifully stopped. Pretending to be breathing hard from the run. Relieved the gun was gone.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Moe running down the hill, clearly out of breath. He saw Jamie and stopped suddenly, pretending not to be looking her way. She giggled at how obvious he was. Trying so hard to not be seen. She was growing fond of Moe.
The two policemen exited their vehicle and walked toward her.
“Prvvitannie Aficeram. —Hello Officers,” Jamie had said with a smile.
“Adkryicie zapliecnik.” One of the men ordered her to open her fanny pack.
Jamie complied and unzipped it.
They asked for her papers.
She found the documents and handed them to the officer. He scrutinized them for almost a minute and then went back to the car and seemed like he called it in. Customs had screened that passport and visa more than these policemen ever could, so Jamie wasn’t worried. She hoped that they didn’t take her in for questioning or tried to say that she was running from them.
There was nothing left in the pack but the towel and some money. She took the towel out and kept it in her hand to wipe sweat off her brow, just in case there was any residue from the gun on it. They didn’t think to look at it, or if they did, they didn’t ask to.
Jamie assumed they were under orders to search her, but she wore a tight, form-fitting running outfit for that purpose. Nothing to search. She obviously had nowhere to hide anything on her body. Even patting her down would be fruitless. She half expected them to do it anyway, for the cheap thrill of it.
Moe watched the proceedings a safe distance away. The policemen were done.
“Vy volnyia isci. You’re free to go,” he said.
“Dziakui,” she responded, thanking him. Not sure what she had to thank him for but trying to be polite, nonetheless.
She decided not to head straight back to the hotel. If Moe’s boss was searching her room while all this was happening, she wanted to give him plenty of time. She was also hungry for breakfast even though it was already after lunchtime.
Jamie stopped at a little café called Coffee Berry where she ordered porridge with fruit, a croissant, and a latte,
all for 10 BYN, or roughly five American dollars. They were also serving fresh cocktails that early in the morning. She remembered reading that Belarus had the highest alcohol consumption rate in the world, a fact she was seeing firsthand as most people were having a drink with their lunch.
After she finished eating, Jamie headed back to the hotel. The walk back was mostly uphill. She had to wait for Moe who struggled to keep up with her. Back in the room, Jamie breathed a huge sigh of relief that she’d rid herself of the gun in the nick of time. She checked her booby traps. The room had been searched.
After a shower, she got ready to go out again, reset her booby traps, and left the hotel, making sure Moe saw her.
She spent the rest of the day sightseeing in Minsk. Her cover was that she was a tourist and she wanted to make sure Moe reported back that all she did were touristy things.
She decided to make it tough on Moe. Her pace was fast enough for him to keep up but not too fast that she would lose him. By the end of the day, she wanted him to feel like he’d been through a hard workout.
Minsk was a hilly city, so she had to stop periodically to give him time to rest. Jamie saw the City Scales Sculpture, Lenin Square, and walked through Gorky Park—a children’s park with sports and recreation facilities, children’s rides, and an open-air amphitheater.
The day was sunny with a slight chill in the air. Tourists wandered everywhere. Jamie would disappear for a moment and then suddenly appear to Moe after giving him a few minutes of panic. Just to mess with him.
She was actually enjoying Belarus. The Azgur Memorial Studio was an interesting museum with many of the works of Zair Agzur, a famous Belarusian sculpture of the twentieth century. She toured the National History & Central Museum which gave Moe a long break. He waited outside for her.
The Cat Museum was not one of the places she visited. Jamie hated cats and couldn’t imagine an entire museum dedicated to the worst creatures God ever created. She walked past the museum and decided to head back to the hotel.
Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks. Someone else was following her. Not Moe. Another person. She could feel it. Someone who was good. At first, she dismissed the feeling as being paranoid. Her senses were heightened from the stress of the last few days, and she might be imagining it.
Then she felt it again. She scoured the crowd. Looked in every direction. Something was off. Someone was there. A familiar feeling. She was definitely being followed. By an expert in surveillance techniques. She headed back to the hotel, careful not to look around too much, to make it too obvious she’d sensed the other tail.
That complicated things further. She had two tails to concern herself with. The second she couldn’t lose without that person knowing she was an operative. Maybe he already knew. He or she. She sensed it was a man. She’d seen his face in the crowd, and it had registered in her subconscious that something was off. She would search her mind later for the images.
When she got back to the hotel, she waited in her room for a few minutes to give Moe time to leave. Certain he needed a break and time to check in with his boss. Satisfied he was gone she slipped out of the hotel and caught a cab to the airport. There she rented a car and drove back to the hotel. She took several evasive moves to see if she had a tail following her. She pulled off at an exit and then got right back on. She made four right turns in a row. There weren’t any cars following her.
Having a car would give her more freedom. She could leave anytime, and Moe would have no idea she was gone. He wouldn’t be looking for her to leave in a car. Neither would the second tail although he’d probably be ready for anything.
An even bigger problem was that she had been there several days now and made no progress on the reason she was there. She was basically starting from scratch. The meeting with the contact never happened, and she had to assume it wouldn’t. She would have to create her own intelligence.
Where do I begin?
13
Jamie had a bite to eat in the hotel restaurant and then went to the business center to use the one computer with an internet connection and a printer. Fortunately, no one was on it, so she sat down and logged in as a guest and began surfing the web to see what she could find. Anything that might give her a place to start in her investigation. She wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the contact to reach out to her again.
In preparation for the trip, she’d been given a complete briefing on prostitution and sex trafficking in Belarus. According to the information, there were more than two thousand prostitutes and fifty brothels in Belarus. Minsk, as the capital city with the highest population, had the largest percentage of prostitutes and brothels.
Strange that she hadn’t yet seen any signs of it.
She mentally thought through all of the places she went to that day. Jamie pulled out her phone and started scrolling through the pictures of tourist sights she visited since being in Minsk. Scanning through them, she looked to see if perhaps she might have caught an image of her second stalker. No such luck. He was too smart to be caught on camera.
She’d almost convinced herself she was imagining it. Looking at the pictures made her realize she wasn’t. The same feeling came over her while looking at them as it did when walking around the city. Someone was definitely following her.
But who?
After a few minutes, she gave up and went back to searching on the computer. She then remembered something. A light on her phone reminded her she had one unheard voicemail message.
From Alex.
She’d been so busy getting rid of the gun and taking Moe on a sightseeing trip, she’d forgotten he called. She hit play and the familiar voice came over the phone.
“Hi Jamie. Good to hear from you. Sorry I haven’t called. I lost my phone then had to get another one. Couldn’t find your number. It’s a long story. Talk to you soon. Call me.”
Hearing his voice brought a huge smile to her face.
He finally called!
And he had an excuse for not calling. As lame as it was, at least it was something to give her hope that he wasn’t blowing her off. A clock on the wall read five-fifteen p.m., Belarus time. Eight hours ahead of Washington, DC which was eleven hours ahead of California time.
Six-fifteen in the morning.
If she did the calculation correctly in her head.
Jamie let out a chuckle. “It would serve him right if I woke him up.” She thought better of it and made a note to call him before she went to bed. She turned her attention back to the computer screen which had articles written about Belarus, sex trafficking, brothels, and prostitutes. Most of them not good.
Where are they?
Maybe the government crackdown was working. The numbers seemed to be getting better. According to the last available statistics, arrests for prostitution had dropped from five hundred forty-six two years ago to one hundred thirty-five last year. The CIA acknowledged the drop but weren’t sure if the authorities were more successful in fighting the sex trade or if they weren’t trying as hard to prosecute it. Maybe that was why she didn’t see any. They forced it underground.
That will make it harder to find.
Not possible. If hard for her to find, it would be even harder for customers to find. Prostitution didn’t survive long without customers.
Most men knew the usual places to find them. Jamie had tried those. Minsk didn’t have a red-light district like Amsterdam or Bangkok. The city had no seedy areas where someone would normally find prostitutes. No street walkers and no obvious neighborhoods where prostitution would thrive. No social media posts advertising services, and Johns weren’t posting recommendations on where to go for sex.
“Welcome to a communist country,” she said to herself.
Whatever a communist government decided to crack down on, they were usually successful at.
How was someone trafficking three hundred women a month out of Belarus with no one knowing about it and were successfully avoiding the government efforts to curtail it? T
hat didn’t seem logical.
After about an hour of searching, Jamie left the financial center and walked down the street to a shop that sold electronics. She purchased a throw-away burner phone, walked out of the shop, and made a couple evasive moves to ensure to herself no one was following her. Moe was definitely gone. Probably soaking his feet from the strenuous day’s activities. The thought brought a grin to her face.
Her second stalker wasn’t there either, but as a precaution, she walked down to the Svislach River to a large open park where she could see in every direction. She pulled out the burner phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.
A man answered on the second ring.
“Hello, Mr. Foxworthy,” Jamie said.
“Very funny,” Brad retorted.
The number was a direct line to Brad only operatives in the field possessed. Fictitious names were used just in case the calls were being listened to by the local government. Not likely in Belarus, but Jamie wasn’t taking any chances. She chose Foxworthy because Brad had a slow southern drawl, and she often joked that he sounded like the comedian Jeff Foxworthy. Brad hated the nickname and let her know it every chance he got.
“I’m just checking in,” Jamie said. “Unfortunately, I don’t have much to report. My friend never showed up yesterday.”
“That’s not good. He’s never missed a performance before.”
“He may not have missed it. I might’ve been late. There may have been an incident.” Jamie said the last sentence hesitantly.
Silence on the other end.
“I hate to ask,” Brad finally said.
“Don’t then. It’s handled.”
“Does it have to do with a couple of boys attacked in an alleyway?”
She was continually amazed by the reach of the CIA. She had no idea how Brad already knew about the boys.
“Maybe. Like I said, better if you don’t ask. Couldn’t be helped.”
“Thought that might’ve been some of your handiwork. Have you found anything of interest?” Brad said, changing the subject.