The Trade

by Chris Thrall

  “Jessie, describe the room you are in.”

  “. . . ark and col . . . lik . . . time we . . . asco . . . stle . . . Mommy . . .”

  Hans prayed the voice recorder was getting all this and that he would be able to make sense of it later.

  “Jessie, can you hear any noises—any cars or people or animals, anything you can tell me?”

  “. . . saw . . . ike Lucky in . . . mouth . . .”

  “Listen, Jessie, the first chance you get, I want you to run away. Do you hear me? I want you to run and find an adult and ask them to take you to the nearest police station.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Jessie, can you hear me?”

  The sound of a man’s heavy breathing came over the loudspeaker.

  Hans looked at Penny – and the line went dead.

  The two of them sat in silence for a moment, both trying to take in what happened.

  “Penny.” Hans handed her a Bic and pad from the driver’s-door compartment. “Write down what I tell you.”

  Hans replayed the recording –

  “. . . older . . . you, Papa . . . speaks . . . ish . . . José . . .”

  – craning to make out the syllables, mouthing the words he understood and attempting to fill in the blanks.

  He pressed pause. “Right, it’s a Latino or Hispanic in his sixties.”

  Penny began scribbling. “How do you know that?” she asked, not questioning Hans’ judgment but curious.

  “Because José is the husband of our Mexican domestic back home.”

  “And the age?”

  “She’s saying he’s older than me. If it were ten years or so, Jessie wouldn’t be able to distinguish it. But in his sixties he’d likely be graying and possibly balding with wrinkles, and that would look significantly older.”

  “Why not seventies or eighties?”

  “Do you think many people that age make money from trafficking kids?”

  “Good point.”

  Hans pressed “Play.”

  “. . . ark and col . . . lik . . . time we . . . asco . . . stle . . . Mommy . . .”

  “Ach! Something about a dark and cold place. She must have been somewhere similar with her mom.”

  “. . . saw . . . ike Lucky in . . . mouth . . .”

  “Okay, the guy owns a terrier – Lucky was a Jack Russell belonging to a homeless guy we met in Plymouth.”

  Hans adjusted the voice recorder’s graphic equalizer, turning up the bass and treble, and then replayed the middle part of the call.

  “. . . time we . . . asco . . . stle . . . Mommy . . .”

  “Those two syllables, they have to be the name of a place back home.”

  Penny kept silent. She could see Hans’ mind was in overdrive going through the possible permutations.

  “Oh no!” Hans let the phone drop in his lap.

  “What is it?”

  “No, no, no!” He slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “Why didn’t I see it before?”

  “Hans, you’re scaring me.” Penny was visibly shaking. “What is it?”

  “Take a look at the photo again.” He scrolled through the phone and brought up Djenabou’s final message.

  “What if I said that’s six letters and an arrow – not five letters, a period and a claw?”

  “I-I-I—”

  “Penny, the place Jessie mentioned was Trasco Castle – it’s a cheesy theme park in Portland built around the nearest thing we have to an actual castle.”

  “Are you saying . . . ?”

  “Elderly Spanish guy. Lives in a castle and owns Jack Russells?”

  Penny look at the Fulani’s handwriting again.

  “That doesn’t say ‘Logan,’” Hans prompted.

  “No,” she whispered. “It’s ‘Laguna,’ and the arrow means she’s in the dungeon.”

  - 77 -

  As Fernando approached the cell door, having returned the Jack Russell to its owner, the mayor, a conversation saw him freeze in the gloomy corridor.

  “. . . and he talks like José.”

  Sobering immediately, he tiptoed forward.

  “It’s dark and cold, like the time we went to Trasco Castle with Mommy.”

  Hearing this confused Fernando. No one could have got into the cell in his absence. The little pissant appeared to be talking to herself.

  “I saw a doggy like Lucky in Plymouth.”

  Then he realized – she was using his mobile phone!

  Fernando threw open the door, ran across the cell, snatched the handset from Jessica and put it to his ear.

  “Jessie, can you hear me?” asked a man – an American.

  Fernando terminated the call and put the phone back in the pocket of his jacket hanging on the chair. He turned to Jessica, face red and looking about to burst.

  Once again terror had her in its ugly grip.

  Fernando began openly shaking, and spittle built in the corners of his lips. Jessica tried to back away, but once again chilling fear paralyzed her body.

  The butler felt an overwhelming urge to grab the little bitch by the throat and strangle her until her face went blue, her eyes bulged and life drained from her body. Everything told him to smash her pretty little face into the wall and listen to the satisfying crack of her skull splitting apart, and to keep ramming his fist into her brain cavity, relishing the experience as hideous green matter splattered his face and torso.

  As the butler stepped forward, Jessica wet herself again without even realizing. His face contorted beyond the extreme, the tendons in his neck, arms and legs as taut as bowstrings. Jessica’s innate sense told her something terrible was about to take place, something primeval. Her legs gave way, and she collapsed with a jolt on the bare stone floor.

  Then a strange thing occurred. Despite his intense rage, the Spaniard experienced an external locus of control telling him if he put a single mark on the kid, the fixer would see to it that the mayor, Gonzales, wasn’t paid. The rings in Europe liked their children unblemished and unadulterated, for torturing and abusing the innocents was a large part of their sick, twisted game.

  If Fernando’s actions jeopardized his boss’s massive paycheck, his life would not be worth living. For, an old man now and past fighting prime and the cunning of his youth, he relied on his boss’s charity, knowing many younger, more able men would gratefully take his place with the profits on offer.

  There was a time, over the water in the fog of war, when he could do what he liked to the innocents. His boss not only laughed and egged him on but also praised him for it. They would see who could frighten the children the most, who could abuse them the most, followed up by the most sadistic death. He’d liked that time: no rules . . . no anxieties . . . just reaping the rewards of the slaughter . . . the glorious slaughter . . . But all that had changed.

  No, he couldn’t harm the girl.

  Fernando began to shake. A tear built in the corner of his eye and rolled rapidly down his cheek to drip onto the cobbled floor. Then another tear and another, and before long he was blubbing like a baby, shoulders shrugging up and down as he lost control.

  He turned and left the room.

  - 78 -

  Hans drove flat out toward the villa, but as they came around a bend on the coast road, a tractor held up a line of ten cars. “Damn!” he muttered, instinctively checking his wing mirror.

  “Hold on, Penny.”

  He floored the jeep’s accelerator and took the oncoming lane, passing the sleepy island drivers one by one.

  A heavy goods truck approached head-on.

  “Hans, look out!” Penny curled up in the fetal position.

  Hans didn’t flinch, timing his maneuver perfectly and sliding through the narrowing gap to leave the traffic in his wake.

  Back at Karen’s, he connected his cell phone to the notebook and opened a secure Internet browser used by the Concern. He typed a code into the address bar and accessed a nondescript portal hidden from search engines. Putting in a usern
ame and eighteen-digit alphanumeric password brought up a dialogue box requesting insertion of a security token – a memory stick generating a synchronous dynamic password from a cryptographic algorithm. This brought him to a futuristic-looking interface with links to all areas of the Concern’s operation and a constantly updated newsfeed scrolling down one side.

  “Wow!” said Penny, blowing her sun-bleached fringe away from her face. “It looks like something from that Tom Cruise film.”

  “Minority Report,” said Hans. “It’s actually designed for touchscreen operating systems. I just haven’t upgraded my notebook, so I struggle through it with the mouse.”

  Through this front page, Hans could access a secure email platform, as well as several databases – each requiring differing levels of clearance – and a search engine to look up fellow operatives’ profiles. Should Hans require a Russian-speaking electrician in Tanzania, he had only to toggle with the drop-down menus, click the relevant radio buttons and type the appropriate key words to find the closest match.

  While Penny set to work cleaning and oiling the M9, emptying the rounds from the magazines, polishing and refilling them and replacing the batteries in the walkie-talkies, Hans navigated to the database storing the siphoned CIA records and began searching for information on Videl Gonzales.

  - 79 -

  Gonzales surprised Umchima. For a man past his prime, he sure kept up a performance in bed, subjecting her – how she’d describe it – to sex during the night more times than she cared to remember, along with his rancid breath, flaccid lily-white skin and maniacal eyes.

  After each ravage, Gonzales lay back on the purple satin bedsheet and smoked a cheroot in silence, its coarse aroma mingling with that of the sex in the room to create a sickening miasma. Then he’d drift off to sleep without so much as a visit to the bathroom to wipe a washcloth over his increasingly stinking self.

  Umchima put up with it. Business was at stake, and she was on a mission she had sworn to see through to the end.

  The mayor was in his element, not having slept with an adult for some time, especially one as beautiful as this “crossbreed,” as he thought of her, his preference being young boys and street sex workers – the more impoverished and sluttier, the better. Knowing he still had what it took to attract a good-looking woman, Gonzales experienced immense narcissism.

  They slept until late in the morning, when the mayor called Fernando to request breakfast.

  “May I use the shower?” Umchima asked.

  “You may use the bath, Brenda,” he reprimanded her. “This castle has never had a shower, and so long as I am living here it never will!”

  Gonzales’ eyes glinted with cognitive detachment, a sign the sociopath possessed zero ability for the self-reflection required to form meaningful relationships.

  When Umchima entered the dining room after her bath, she found the mayor at the head of the long polished table, on which Fernando placed an ornate porcelain coffee jug and large, white, oval serving plates neatly stacked with smoked sardines, eggs scrambled with red pepper and chorizo, sauté potatoes, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, think-crusted white bread and croissants.

  Still unwashed, the mayor had wrapped a dressing gown around his skinny body, and combined with the aroma of smoked sardines, the pong was enough to make Umchima want to run from the castle and never return. She reminded herself how well she had done – not only to liaise with the Trade but also to contact and seduce a high-ranking trafficker, one who’d taken her into his confidence.

  Now she needed a result, to sell a child, and all her efforts would be worth it. Umchima considered her next move. What would a professional child trafficker do in this situation?

  Money! They must discuss money. A trafficker would want to know the rewards for putting their freedom on the line.

  “Gonzales,” she began, smiling disarmingly. “As much as I don’t want to ruin the mood, after a perfect night” – she paused to cast a subtle seductive look – “I’m a businesswoman, and I need to know the economics of our proposed union.”

  “Mi amor, I didn’t want to discuss such a crude matter during our most intimate evening, but of course you are right: no one ever got rich in business by letting other people make all the decisions.”

  “Especially taking into account the considerable risk,” said Umchima, leaving the food in front of her untouched and only taking a sip of coffee – all part of her performance.

  Gonzales was impressed, for the women he’d breakfasted with over the years – mostly desperate prostitutes – would usually gorge on such a feast, particularly after the all-night-long bondage session he subjected them to. Puncturing someone’s back and buttocks with a thousand tiny holes using an electric drill, smearing their eyes and other sensitive membranes with piri piri sauce, whipping them until the welts became an indistinguishable mass of bloody purple and blue – or doing all three – generally tended to work up appetites . . . for the ones who made it through the night.

  Putting business first was a true display of professionalism by this gorgeous creature, and it was reassuring to see she was equally as greedy, wanting to drop the preliminaries and start trading little brats.

  “The first thing you must understand is that neither I nor you set the price – the market sets the price,” Gonzales went on. “Naturally, I will strike the best deals I can with the traffickers in the North. You can expect to be paid ten thousand euros for children traded into the illegal adoption market in Europe, and five thousand for those going to the sex gangs. Of course, for the adopted brats it’s a sliding scale depending on skin color.”

  “So how much for an orphan with my color skin?” Umchima held up her bronze wrist.

  “Still negroid,” said the mayor, not bothering to look as he chased a mushroom around his plate. “So about seven thousand.”

  “What if you can’t strike a deal?” said Umchima. “Am I not putting myself through all this risk for potentially no reward?”

  “Rarely will there be nothing, except when a child is terminated for security reasons, such as those thrown overboard from the speedboats when the coastguard interferes. Even the unwanted bastards fetch up to three thousand from local begging syndicates and the sex-tourist trade.”

  “And how often will you take children from me?”

  “I think every six months or so, to keep the market from flooding. We have existing commitments to fulfill and limited space to hold them here at the castle—”

  “You hold them here?”

  “The valuable ones, yes. Does this surprise you?”

  “I-I-I figured you’d keep a degree of separation. You know, as the middleman.”

  “Brenda, I am mayor of this city. I’m also a member of – how we can say? – a special club. No one is above me in these islands. Entiendes? Besides, the people know me for my kindness and charity – and do they not say the best way to hide such business is to conduct it in plain sight?”

  Umchima felt an ice-cold pang of reality, having inadvertently opened yet another window through to the dark side. Gonzales was a serious player, on a par with illicit arms traders and drug lords. She knew now her time on this planet had considerably shortened. Gonzales didn’t get to his position of wealth and influence by letting other people dictate his moves. He would use her while she was of worth to the Trade and then snuff her out like a discarded cigarette butt when the relationship was no longer profitable. In fact no, the wily old fox that Gonzales was, he would wipe the orphanage manager out before that, at a time she least expected it, to silence her and bury all evidence of their transactions.

  It was tempting to formulate an exit strategy, but she needed to focus on the here and now and maintain her game face.

  “Fifteen thousand euros for children traded into the adoption market and ten thousand for those going to the sex gangs. That is my minimum,” she proffered, setting her coffee cup down on its saucer with a succinct chink. “You can take it – or you can leave it and we cal
l this whole thing off. I’m not prepared to lower my price.”

  Gonzales was impressed. Umchima passed every test he set for her with consummate professionalism. Had this beautiful creature acquiesced and accepted his initial offer, she would shortly be on a boat traveling out to sea with her throat slashed from ear to ear – after he’d had fun with her corpse. But she’d held her ground, a true player refusing to kowtow under pressure and risk losing face. There would be one final part to her initiation, however, and with the little English girl requiring a bullet to the brain, he had an idea.

  “Then I think we have a deal.” Gonzales raised his coffee cup.

  As Umchima lifted hers, the door flew open.

  Fernando burst into the room, a frantic look on his moronic face. “Commandante, tenemos un problema!” he blurted, then explained in rapid-fire Spanish how Jessica got hold of his cell phone and called her father.

  “Calma, calma.”

  Needing time to think, Gonzales motioned his former sergeant to sit down. This was serious. He’d known Hans Larsson would be trouble the moment he set eyes on him and had to predict his next move. It wouldn’t be to go to the police – the American made it clear during their dinner party he thought little of their bungling efforts. Besides, even if Larsson did get the law involved, Gonzales was grand master of the Lodge, and most of the officers belonged to it. Those not in the fraternity were either in his pocket or smart enough not to cross him. No, the former Navy SEAL turned detective would take matters into his own hands and see his investigation through to the end – his downfall.

  After thinking awhile, the mayor had a plan.

  “Okay, call the Boy,” he ordered the butler in Spanish. “Tell him we need to set up an ambush.”

  “Like Jinotega, Commandante.” Fernando sniggered.

  Gonzales nodded, remembering the trap his rebel troops laid on the outskirts of the Nicaraguan city, the success of which had been a turning point in the Contra’s resistance.

  “And what about the girls?” the butler grunted, praying he would put his huge hands to gratifying use.