Twisted Traffick Page 10

  Anne helped push the gurney along the corridor and she and Julia squeezed into the service elevator with it and the medics. One of the guards reached in after Julia to try to pull her back out, but the attendant shoved him aside and the doors closed. As soon as the elevator hit ground floor, the medics rushed the gurney and the girls to the ambulance, and helped them climb in just as the guards who had run down the stairs caught up to them.

  “They cannot go. The women stay here,” the leader of the group of thugs said.

  “If you want us to save the life of your friend here,” the one medic said, staving them off, as he pushed the guard aside to close the back doors, “they come with us. We need to know what happened. And you have to make sure that we are not stopped at the gate. If we don’t get your buddy to the hospital right away, the man will die. He is losing much blood.”

  There was a rapid conversation among the guards, as the driver started the engine and took off at speed toward the gate. Fortunately, the barrier was up when they got there, and they sailed through, but Anne only breathed a sigh of relief when the ambulance accelerated on the highway toward the hospital.

  Chapter 16

  As the ambulance turned onto the highway and picked up speed, Anne hugged Julia. “I’m glad you are safe now. That we’re both safe, out of the hands of those depraved human traffickers.”

  Julia hugged her back, and tears came to her eyes. “Yes, thank you. Thank you, Anne, for rescuing me. It was so awful in there. I was starting to wish I could die.”

  “Well, we have this monster now.” Anne looked over at Hetzel, who was delirious and moaning in pain, in spite of the morphine he had been given. “And for all that you have been through, I am glad you didn’t die.” She stroked Julia’s hair and let her doze off. Her friend needed all the rest she could get.

  ***

  Greg saw the ambulance speed out of the compound, and the tracker immediately registered that Anne was inside and moving fast away from them.

  “Okay, go! She’s in it. Follow the ambulance,” Greg yelled.

  The driver had the BMW already accelerating, and, as it passed the gate, it almost collided with a black SUV that turned out onto the road behind the ambulance. Fortunately, the close call caused the other vehicle to veer off the road and come to a full stop in the ditch.

  “Those guys know the fake Kallay is in there. And they may also know that Anne and Julia are inside as well. They will no doubt want to make sure that the ladies do not give anything away about the criminal activities they were up to,” Labrecque said, looking back at the receding SUV. Then he saw it finally go into reverse, and power out of the ditch, but after hesitating for a moment, instead of racing after them, it turned back into the compound. “Phew. They’re not coming after us.”

  “Hmm. We must have surprised them. They were probably not expecting to be under surveillance.”

  “Yeah. Either someone got hurt in there, or something is wrong with the vehicle. Or else, they realized they had better clear out all the evidence of their illegal shenanigans at the compound, before we come back with the Hungarian authorities and muster a raid. That would certainly be the smart thing to do.”

  “They will no doubt figure out other ways to take care of their buddy Hetzel, if they want to--or whoever the hell that is in the ambulance.”

  Labrecque dialed his Hungarian Interpol counterpart, George Szekely, whom he had already alerted on the way from Vienna, and who was now racing there from Budapest, a little over two hours away. “George, we are on our way to the hospital. I think it must be at Vasvàr.” He had looked on Google for the nearest town with medical facilities. “Can you meet us there?”

  “I am still a little over a half an hour away. But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Good.”

  “Must be the Zala County Hospital. I will also get a police officer I know and trust to come there from Szombathely. Lieutenant Peter Kormendi. He’ll be able to get us some local help. I expect he’ll be there around the same time as me.”

  “Thanks, George.”

  Greg called Anne, hoping she would still have the phone she had used to call him.

  “How is everything?”

  “Boy, we’re glad to be out of there, Julia and I. She’s not in very good shape, poor girl, and I am a bit rattled, to say the least. But we’re hanging in there, I guess.”

  “Don’t worry, love. We’re right behind you, and you will soon be in my arms. We have lots of reinforcements coming.”

  “Good. And Greg, thank God for the tracker. It was a good idea.”

  “Amen.”

  ***

  By the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Hetzel was sedated with painkillers, his wound thoroughly bandaged and the bleeding staunched. The medics wheeled him in and also insisted that Julia--who was not looking good--be put in a bed and given a thorough examination. Anne had told them the whole story on the way over. They were appalled, and insisted on calling the police, although she told them that matters were in good hands. After all, she had been with Interpol, and her former colleagues were on the case.

  Anne did not have to linger long at the emergency entrance before Greg and Labrecque showed up. She ran into her husband’s arms, and they hugged for a good minute or two before Greg asked, “Julia? How is she?”

  “She’s being looked at by the doctors.”

  “Good. And where is this Kallay impersonator? You are convinced it’s Hetzel, no?”

  “Absolutely sure.”

  “Well, I would finally like to meet him, to see for myself. Is the jerk compus mentis?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s go and find him.”

  ***

  A nurse led them to Kallay’s room--Anne had registered him with his Hungarian alias--and they all crowded in.

  “Hetzel!” Greg immediately recognized the man lying with eyes closed, pale and motionless in bed, who, despite the dyed-blond hair, could be none other to those who had known Adam’s Viennese friend.

  Hetzel did not respond. He was far away in dreamland, thanks to all the morphine he had been given for the pain.

  Anne took the opportunity, while the others consulted the doctors, to excuse herself, and went into the unused en suite bathroom. She needed to relieve herself, and at the same time, wanted to extract the uncomfortable tracker, now that she was safe again. As she finished, she noticed that Hetzel’s borrowed jacket was hanging there on a hook, so, on an impulse, she slipped the little gadget into a zippered pocket. “I sure hope I won’t need this thing anymore. Although it did save my life. But it may serve some purpose again now with our friend here,” she muttered to herself on her way back into the hospital room. “Even if he just goes straight to jail, the bastard.”

  Since Hetzel was in no state to be questioned yet, they asked to see Julia.

  But the doctors were not finished with her, so they went down to the waiting room and tried to piece together what they knew.

  ***

  “So Hetzel-Kallay-Kalinsky runs this operation to traffic young women from Russia--and any others he can pick up along the way, it seems. After all, he did capture Julia and me. And abuse us, the creep.”

  “I’m sure Polyakov is behind it all. Hetzel is just the front man,” Greg mused, glancing at Anne, immediately regretting that he had said the Russian’s name in front of her when she was in such a fragile state. So he was rather surprised when Anne said, “Well, in fact, Polyakov was there, at the compound. I heard one of the guards say. Fortunately, our paths did not cross. Or else it could have been even a lot worse for me.”

  Greg was glad to switch focus. “Remember, I told you that Adam recounted to me that Hetzel and Kolchakova had a nice little side business, alongside the obvious main one of stealing and selling nuclear material. Kolchakova would make the referrals of parents with teenage girls who worked for her, and Hetzel would approach them to provide the service of getting their daughters away from that contaminated hellhole of Ozersk. B
y offering to place them in jobs and with families in the West, but in reality selling them as sex slaves or using them as strippers. A nice little side business, indeed!”

  “Yes, they would make money both coming and going--they would rake in an exorbitant sum from the parents, and then sell the girls for a lot in the West. Or else, make them perform as strippers, and more than likely as prostitutes, to earn their keep.”

  “So the Revuebar Rasputin in Vienna was just some kind of...of vertical integration in this sorry business, and I guess, a showroom. How clever!” Labrecque was getting the picture.

  “It was there, though, that these gangsters did the actual trafficking. At least, that’s where they sold the young women to all those perverse rich buyers. Take me, for example. I was sold to some Chinese official there, upstairs. For a good price, supposedly because your friend Hetzel claimed that I was experienced.” Anne shuddered at the thought. “And that young Russian girl, Nadia--whom you lecherous old geezers gawked at stripping alongside Ginger at the Revuebar--was sold to a Middle Eastern sheikh. Again, for some very high price, this time though, because she was still a virgin.”

  “Horrific.”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it? Nadia was telling me that she and a number of other girls her age were brought by plane from Chelyabinsk to an airstrip in Hungary, and then taken to the compound we were just at. There, they were abused in some fashion or other.” Anne paused and took a deep breath, as she remembered that her ordeal had been similar to Nadia’s. She did not want to go into the details now with Greg. Or perhaps ever. “Then, some were sent to Vienna, still others to other cities in Europe and elsewhere. To be sold, or used as strippers.”

  “We will close down the Revuebar. And of course, this compound here in Hungary,” Labrecque said indignantly. “We must find all the other clubs around the world that these gangsters use for their despicable business. Now that we have this guy Hetzel in custody--”

  “It may not be that easy. This is a very slippery lot,” Anne observed. “And we first have to free all those girls they hold captive at the compound.”

  “Well, at least we have Julia back. And you, of course, my dear.” Greg thought to himself that Anne and he had achieved what they had set out to do when asked by Demeter to come back to Vienna.

  Time to go home? Not yet. There were still all those girls in the hands of the traffickers, as Anne had said. And the ultimate goal for Interpol, of course, would be to capture Polyakov and destroy his evil trading business.

  “Yes, let’s go see Julia. Maybe the doctors are finished with her now.” Anne jumped up. “Her mother must be worried sick. We need to get her home as quickly as possible.”

  Chapter 17

  It was four p.m., and Mikhail was glad that another workday was done. Today, he had the early shift at the East Gate to Mayak, and there was always a lot of traffic here with officials on their way to the Plutonium Palace--the huge, ultimate storage facility to safeguard highly radioactive material, built largely with American money--just outside the gate. So there was always a lot of checking of vehicles here, to make sure that no uranium or plutonium was leaving the facility illicitly, but at least the work at this post was routine, and Mikhail had a lot of time to think.

  And today he had indeed thought a lot, especially about his dear daughter, Nadia, whom he missed greatly since he had entrusted her to the European Placement Agency. He had paid them a lot of money to find work for her in Germany or Austria or somewhere in the European Union. Now, he was hoping to hear from her, after, all, it was already four days since she had left. But Mikhail was in a good mood as he walked over to the locker room in the main building. In spite of his initial misgivings--especially about that guy, Kalinsky--he was generally happy. He had convinced himself that he and Galina had made the right decision to send Nadia off to the capitalist West. His darling daughter would experience new things, the bigger world--things they had never had the chance to live--hopefully, improve her German and English, meet new and interesting people--maybe even a future husband. And most importantly, get away from this godforsaken contaminated place where any grandchildren she might eventually give them were not very likely to be wholesome and healthy.

  Inside the changing room, as he opened his locker and took off his holster, his friend, Pavel, who had worked the other side of traffic today, came in and sat down on the bench. He, too, must have been thinking about his daughter, Sasha, for he asked, “Mikhail, have you had any news from Nadia?”

  “Not yet. But I hope we hear from her very soon. We really do miss her, Galina and I.”

  “It’s funny. Svetlana and I talk about nothing else. We keep rehashing the decision and convincing ourselves that we did the right thing.”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean, old friend.”

  ***

  They parted as always, by the imposing Kurchatov Statue in Lenin Park, Pavel going left and Mikhail right. Mikhail habitually glanced up at the stern, bearded face of the father of the Soviet atomic bomb with mixed feelings, mindful of the terrible suffering and devastation the nuclear program had caused, but at the same time grateful that he had a good job now despite his lack of higher education. His thoughts returned to his daughter, and he was proud that she would be escaping his lot and have a chance at a better life, perhaps in the capitalist West somewhere. Yes, with a good German husband, Mikhail smiled inwardly, repeating the thought for the second time that day. And maybe--he dared hope--Nadia would even be the ticket for Yuri, Galina and him too, to emigrate.

  He was already at the very edge of the park, when he was jolted out of his reverie by a young man on a bike, who pulled up in front of him out of nowhere. “Gospodin Glinkov?” the youth asked.

  “Why? Who are you?”

  “Never mind, sir. I was told to give you this.” The stranger reached a thin envelope toward Mikhail. “Your daughter.”

  Mikhail was stunned, but he grabbed the packet, as the young man rode away at great speed, back into the park.

  For a minute, Mikhail just looked at the envelope, thinking how odd it was that the delivery boy had taken off through Lenin Park, even though riding bicycles there was forbidden. He eventually turned the envelope over, and saw that it was indeed addressed to him, then vehemently tore it open. The only thing inside, was a note saying:

  Papa: Please go to the site www.nadiaglinkov.com on our computer for greetings and news from me.

  Your loving daughter,

  Nadia

  Hmm, good, she must have sent this, Mikhail thought relieved and happy, And then: So, now she even has a website! Well, at least we finally have news of our daughter, and if I am right, we will see her on the computer screen. Talking of her first impressions of the West, and maybe even a little video of her, walking around filming the sights, all just for her parents who have never had the chance to travel. She could not come in person to greet us, no, so she did the next best thing. What a clever girl, she is, my dear Nadia!

  Mikhail picked up the pace, wanting to get home as quickly as possible to view what was on the site Nadia had directed him to open. Oh, but Galina was not going to be back till later. Tonight was the one night a week she went out with the girls after work. Well, too bad, he would go ahead and watch it himself. It would not spoil. And he could look at it with her again when she got home. So much the better.

  ***

  He ran up the three flights of stairs and lost no time unlocking the door to their apartment. Throwing his bag on a chair as he went straight into the small living room, which served also as dining room and office, Mikhail booted up the computer, and while the machine purred to life, went over to the kitchen to pour himself a celebratory drink from the bottle of Putinka he took down from the cupboard. No, a double vodka. He gulped it down, and poured another one that he took over to the small desk, then sat down and, with eager but shaking hands, typed into Google the site with Nadia’s name in it.

  The first picture that filled the screen was the one he had given
Kalinsky along with the application form. Mikhail smiled at what followed. Nadia waving to them as she boarded the plane--someone must have had a video camera, or maybe just used a cell phone, and given her the video. Nice touch, that. Then some music, and lo and behold, Nadia dancing on stage with a black woman. But what was this? Mikhail suddenly started to get alarmed--his darling teenage daughter was doing what amounted to a striptease! This cannot be, no, no, no! The middle-aged man stood up, banged his fists on the desk, and sat down again, as tears started to flow. “I--I cannot believe it,” he muttered, clutching his heart where he felt his angina acting up, just as the take ended with his daughter completely naked-- save her panties--on stage, with strangers applauding, laughing and giggling, she about to break into tears while vainly trying to shield her lovely little breasts from those lusting eyes. Oh God, no, what have I done? This is monstrous!

  But what came next was much, much worse. As an unidentified male voice spoke, pictures of Nadia--being manhandled and made to strip by a pudgy little man whose face was blotted out, then her head shoved brutally between the legs of another woman--flashed on the screen.

  Mikhail turned away in despair and disgust, and listened to a deep voice make, in an even tone, the following terrible statement: “Mikhail Petrovich, you must listen carefully, if you ever want to see your daughter alive again. Unless you do exactly as I tell you, she will be sold as a sex slave or made to do things much worse than what you have seen here. Take this as just a taste of what might come if you do not carry out what we ask of you. She has suffered relatively little so far, and if you obey, and if our mission is successful, you will get her back intact. If not, as I said, you will be giving her a future filled with horrors.