Traffyck (48 page)

Mariya turned out the map light, and Janos took the road right to Tuzar Camp. If another vehicle came toward them, both would need to hug the side in order to pass. But the road ahead was dark and empty, tall trees blocking even the starlight. The only living thing they saw was a deer, which flashed across the road and was gone before Janos had time to move his foot to the brake pedal. It was 3:15 in the morning. It was cool, windless, and, so far, moonless.

A small, hand-drawn sign marked the campground. There was no box for collecting fees. As they drove slowly, they could see it was a primitive camp with only a picnic table here and there, fire pits, two outhouses, and a hand water pump. The glitter of starlight was visible on ripples of water through the trees at the west side of the campground. At first, they thought the campground was deserted, until Janos saw a light at the south end. The light went out when they pulled in, and he saw the white side of a small, hard-sided camping trailer. He parked in the center of the camp, about 100 meters from the trailer, making sure the camper van’s side door faced away from the trailer. Once the engine was off, the silence of night reigned.

“Only one trailer here,” whispered Mariya. “It is parked so whoever is inside can see the entire camp. Did you see the light inside go out as we were driving in?”

“Yes,” whispered Janos, standing and walking down the center aisle of the camper van. “Open the curtain on the side window. I want whoever is in the trailer to see us. I’ll start up the generator. The trailer must not have a generator, or we would hear it.”

“I always wanted to be an actress,” said Mariya, straightening her gray wig.

Janos kissed her quickly before they turned on the lights.

After the lights were on, they moved about slowly, then sat at the booth for a snack.

Janos checked his cell phone. “There is no signal at all.” He put the phone on the table. “I wish we were really going to bed when we turn out the lights.”

“I wish you would reconsider going out alone,” said Mariya.

Janos stared at her. His eyes were bloodshot, and for a moment Mariya wondered if either of them would ever grow old.

“We had 800 kilometers of discussion,” said Janos. “The logical choice is for me to go alone. Two would draw attention, and I need to be able to observe whoever is waiting.”

“You are a wild horse,” said Mariya.

“And you are fire,” said Janos.

Mariya reached across the small table and squeezed his hand. “One night, at the strip club, someone brought in the actual Rolling Stones recording. They were so much better than the Russian techno version. The girls all came out to dance, the drunken men in the audience went crazy, and Igor the bouncer gave up, allowing men on stage so they could also dance … Please be careful, Janos.”

After eating cheese and crackers Mariya had purchased at the market in Salycha, Janos stood with his back to the window, stretched, and then pulled out the jackknife sofa to make it into a bed. Mariya cleared the table, and they sat on the edge of the bed, took off their jackets, and reached down, as if taking off their shoes. Janos reached out and turned off the generator.

In the dark, they took off the wigs and changed back into their own clothes—dark jeans, shirts, and jackets.

“Do you have your pistol?” asked Mariya as Janos sat on the floor near the door.

“Yes.”

“What will I do if I hear shots?”

“Watch who comes. If it’s not me, drive away. The keys are in the ignition. I’ll lock the door on my way out.”

“What will I do if you don’t come back?”

“The same.”

“How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

“Give me an hour.”

“And if I do not leave? Or if I decide to go outside instead of staying here?”

Janos knelt at the door. “Mariya, I cannot force you to do anything. If you must go out, run to the woods and stay undercover. Stay hidden, and let others make the first move. But please stay here at least an hour.”

Mariya knelt with Janos in her arms, and they kissed.

“Does this count as part of the hour?” asked Mariya.

“Yes,” said Janos, kissing her again and holding her tightly against him.

Once outside the camper van, Janos went back to the north, keeping the camper van between him and the trailer. He stopped every few meters, listening, but heard nothing in the windless night. Eventually he found himself in the wooded area between the river reservoir and the campground. The river was calm with faint ripples. He took out his GPS and started it. While waiting for the GPS unit to acquire its satellites, he stared from horizon to horizon across the vast reservoir but could see nothing. When the GPS was on, he zoomed out to see the peninsula 7 kilometers on the other side of the reservoir. He shut off the GPS, put it away in one of his zippered pockets filled with cartridges, and adjusted his shoulder holster.

During his approach to the trailer, Janos saw a light go on inside. Not a bright light like the one earlier, but a faint grayish light flickering from dim to bright. One thing he had not noticed until now was the absence of a vehicle parked at the trailer.

He crept slowly, bent low, the wet tips of weeds touching his hands and wrists. He circled to the side of the trailer facing away from the camper van. The weeds grew thicker and taller, and he had to move carefully to avoid breaking hidden twigs.

Panting and heavy breathing sounds came from the trailer, then the moan of a woman making Janos think back to the couple he had seen making love in the screened-in porch of their tent in the campground south of Kiev. He was about to turn back, tell Mariya about his voyeur mission and make her laugh, take off the pressure, but the moaning and panting stopped abruptly, and the grayish flickering light became a steady glow.

Suddenly, Janos realized someone inside was watching a recorded movie. He crept closer to get below the window. The window was open a little, tilted outward, and he raised his head to just below the window and listened.

“Vlad?” A man’s voice, coming from a speakerphone or radio.

“Okay.” Another man’s voice.

“Dolgi?” The first man’s voice again, and Janos detected an accent … Hungarian.

“Okay.”

“Sharaf?”

“Okay.”

“Yuri?”

“Okay.”

“Dmitri?”

“Okay.”

The last voice in the exchange, the last “Okay” in the series, was not through a speaker. It was a man inside the trailer. Cell phones did not work here; therefore, the men he heard were using radios. A man with a Hungarian accent had called each man. Inside the trailer, the man named Dmitri had said, “Okay,” which meant Dmitri must have been fooled by Mariya’s wigs and costumes. But how much longer could such an organized surveillance team be fooled?

The light flickered again, the panting and moaning resumed, obviously coming from a skin video. Before Janos circled the trailer to confront the man, he memorized the names he had heard. Vlad, Dolgi, Sharaf, Yuri, Dmitri. Five of them, plus the one with the accent doing the checking. Five of them, and all probably quite near.

With the skin video playing inside, Janos knew he would have a better chance catching this man off guard than any of the others, wherever they were. He circled the trailer, staying below the windows. At the windowless door, he took out his gun, clicked off the safety, took a deep breath, and tried the door. Of course, it was locked. Even a Mafioso or SBU agent, or whoever this man was, knew better than to leave the door unlocked.

Janos examined the space below the trailer. He circled the rear of the trailer, where it backed up to the woods, and searched with his free hand in the weeds until he found a branch about a meter long. He returned to the trailer and crawled beneath, slithering in feet first and on his stomach. Once underneath, he faced the single stair hanging down below the trailer’s door.

No time to waste. If there was a knock now, the man inside might assume it was the old man who had just pulled in, perhaps needing help with something. Janos reached out and up with the branch and tapped on the door.

He heard sudden movement above, silence, and then more movement at various locations of the floor. The man was checking all the windows. But, finally, a creaking sound came from above Janos’ head, just inside the door.

After watching a film, the man’s eyes would need time to adjust. Even if he looked out the windows on this side and could not see anyone, he might think the gray-haired old man he had seen stretching before bed was standing directly in front of the door, or he might think the old man had already walked off.

Janos reached up with the branch and knocked again, then threw the branch aside as the door flew open.

It took several seconds, but the man finally stepped down. When he did, Janos grabbed an ankle through the space between the step supports, pulled toward him as hard as he could, and scrambled out from beneath the trailer.

“I have a gun,” said Janos, not wanting to shout in case the others were near.

This did not stop the man. He was at Janos, all over him swinging like a boxer, clipping Janos’ cheek and the side of his head. Then the man was at the ground, searching with hands hovering like metal detectors for his own gun—long-barreled, silenced—which Janos could barely see in the weeds. Rather than kick at the gun, Janos used the moment to pistol-whip the back of the man’s head, sending him to the ground face-first.

Janos ran to the silenced gun, beating the man’s crawling pace for it. But even though Janos had both guns, the other man kept coming, and Janos, holding the silencer end, smashed the man across the face, sending him to the ground once more.

Yet it was still not ended. There was desperation. Janos could feel it and hear it in the man’s breathing and his refusal to grunt or moan from pain. When the man came this time, Janos sidestepped and gave him a brutal smash over the back of the head. After this, he kicked the man in the gut to make sure he was out, and kicked him once more.

A quick inspection of the trailer, after the discovery of a light switch, revealed a portable computer, which had been used to watch the skin video, night vision binoculars, and a handheld radio. Inside cupboard drawers he found the usual utensils in all but the bottom drawer, which contained forty-five caliber ammunition, rope, nylon strapping restraints, and a small bottle of chloroform.

Janos opened the chloroform bottle, soaked a kitchen towel, and ran outside where the man had just begun to move. Once again, he put the man out, this time much more gently and against less resistance.

After much effort, Janos had the man back inside the trailer, tied to his chair with rope and nylon restraints. The man had a bloodied face and a scowl, even in sleep. Before leaving the trailer, Janos held his breath, soaked the end of the towel once again with chloroform, and draped it over the man’s head so it hung down in front of his nose. The man was large. Dmitri. The other man on the radio had called him Dmitri. Dmitri’s face was dark, needing a shave. He wore SBU green slacks and jacket. Janos was about to listen to Dmitri’s heart to see if he had overdone the chloroform, but dismissed the idea when he heard a groan.

Janos looked at his watch and retrieved his notebook and pen from one of his zippered jacket pockets. He wrote the names he had heard so he would not forget them. Vlad, Dolgi, Sharaf, Yuri, Dmitri. He put the notebook away, then took the man’s pistol, the handheld radio, and the night vision binoculars with him from the trailer. He had left Mariya only fifteen minutes earlier and decided to use the extra time, before she might get herself involved, to inspect the surrounding area. Outside the trailer, he found the on-off switch on the radio, turned it off so it would not make noise, and put it in his pocket. The heavy pistol he hid behind one of the trailer wheels. Then he made his way south along the woods and away from the trailer and camper van.

Only a few hundred meters down the river shore was a house with lights on inside. The house was set up and back from the river, and there was a boat dock down a rocky slope with two inflatable boats tied to one side. As he got closer to the house, he could see a car parked at the side and a large barn-shaped garage in back. In the light coming from the house windows, he saw the garage had open doors on one side and three vans and two more cars parked in the garage. If this were a busy campground, it could have been a caretaker office, but there were no signs of this on or near the house. He used the night vision binoculars but could see no one in the perimeter of the house.

Something buzzed out on the river. When Janos scanned the horizon with the binoculars, he saw the faint shape of a boat far out in the river reservoir coming his way. He stayed hidden, away from the house and closer to the steep embankment, to watch.

Soon the sound of the outboard engine grew louder, and with his night vision sharpened, Janos did not need to use the binoculars to see the shape of an inflatable boat speeding into shore. As it got closer and slowed, lowering the bow, Janos saw a single passenger. A muscular man shut off the motor and moved forward with a line. An automatic rifle swung from his shoulder on a strap. The man jumped from the boat to the dock and wrapped the line quickly on a cleat. The man was obviously in a hurry as he ran up the embankment, leaping from rock to rock. He wore a baseball cap on his head.