The Stolen Ones (11 page)

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—

“Do it,” the translator said. “Tonight.”

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

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.”

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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?”