Twisted Traffick

by Geza Tatrallyay

  But the Russian girls were happy to see them. All three had come to trust and look up to them. After all, it was they who had rescued them from their terrible ordeal. And Nadia had witnessed the cool manner in which Anne had dealt with her tormentor on the yacht and admired her for it.

  “Nadia,” Anne started after they pulled up chairs to join the girls outside, “Julia was just in Ozersk, because we managed to get her away earlier, and, despite what she went through with you at the compound in Hungary, she had some very important things to do there. She works for the International Atomic Energy Agency and these criminals were about to steal some nuclear material and sell it to terrorists.”

  “Yes,” Julia said, taking over. “Your father happened to be on duty just then, and he helped stop it. Unfortunately, though, he was shot and injured. Your father, too, Sasha.”

  “Oh no,” Nadia whispered, as she sat up, on the verge of tears.

  Sasha covered her face with her hands.

  “They are both all right,” Anne said. “As far as we know. They are in the hospital, and in good spirits. And really looking forward to seeing you both.”

  “I am too,” came Nadia’s reply through the sobs.

  “You are sure he is okay, my father?” Sasha wanted more reassurance.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’ll get you back there as soon as we can,” Greg joined in. “But first, to help us catch these gangsters, is there anything more you can tell us about them? Especially anything that would help us understand who they are and how and where they operate from. Did they give any names away that you might remember, for example? Please, please think hard, and later today or tomorrow, if you’re up to it, we would like you to talk to Anne’s former colleagues at Interpol.”

  “We are making arrangements for you to go home, that is, if you are ready to see your families,” Anne continued. “It will probably be the day after tomorrow. Julia will go with you to help explain everything and to make sure that you have what you need.”

  “Thank you,” came the chorus of gratitude.

  ***

  “Julia, I am sure you are keen to see your mother, as soon as possible,” Anne said on the way down in the elevator. “So here is what I propose. I don’t think we can do anything more here in Porto Montenegro--my former Interpol colleagues are better equipped than we are, for sure, to handle all the interrogation. And really, it is their job to clean all this up. The three of us can fly back to Vienna--maybe even this evening--and you can link up with Nadia and the other girls in Moscow the day after to fly to Chelyabinsk with them.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “Yes, that makes a lot of sense,” Greg agreed. “I will see what flights are available, Anne, if you can notify Nicholas and Radomir and then pack up.”

  Chapter 34

  It was close to nine p.m. by the time the taxi dropped them at the building where Julia lived on Momsengasse in Vienna’s Fourth District.

  “I am worried about what I will find,” Julia said, after she pressed the button to call the elevator. “I am not sure that my mother would have been able to take care of herself all this time, even though she said she was okay when I called earlier.”

  “I bet she’s asleep,” Greg suggested.

  And she was. Sitting in front of the TV, Gospodja Pleshkova had dozed off. But when she saw her daughter, she struggled to her feet and embraced her with tears streaming down her cheeks, “Oh my darling! I thought I would never see you again.”

  “Matushka, me too,” came Julia’s whispered answer, as she too, started to cry.

  “Your daughter has been through a lot these last few days,” Anne said. “But so have you, Gospodja Pleshkova.”

  “The main thing is she is here, and in one piece,” the old lady said, holding her daughter’s two hands in hers, and not a bit ashamed of the tears that were streaming down her face. “And I get to see her and hold her one more time, my darling, before I go.” And then looking at Julia’s two friends, she added, “Thank you, Greg and Anne. I knew I could trust you to bring her back to me.”

  “But, Mama, sit down, we have something to show you.”

  “What, my love?”

  Greg took the old cardboard box marked ‘Top Secret’ with the red Cyrillic letters out from his suitcase, and placed it on the coffee table in front of Gospodja Pleshkova, who was sitting between Julia and Anne.

  “Open it, Matushka,” Julia said, untying the string.

  The old lady leaned forward and took the lid off with trembling hands. She looked inside and gingerly pulled the top piece of paper out and then stared at it for several minutes without saying anything.

  “Oh my God, my sister! Katerina!”

  “Yes, Gospodja Pleshkova,” Anne said. “These papers tell the story of the last days of your sister.”

  Julia’s mother took out the next sheet from the box. “And this is a letter from Katerina. In her hand, I recognize it after all these years! Julia, read it for me, will you, my love! Oh no, I am about to cry again,” Gospodja Pleshkova said, wiping her tears away.

  Dispassionately, Julia read the letter from her aunt, written many years ago.

  “At least she had some peace and happiness during those last few months,” Julia’s mother said, breaking the silence that reigned after her daughter finished. “And she was with child, she says! Do you know what happened to the baby?”

  During the entire trip from Porto Montenegro, they had agonized over how to answer this question.

  “That is the tragedy, Matushka. Both Aunt Katerina and her unborn child died in childbirth,” Julia lied quietly, looking away. “She was just not strong enough, and the conditions in the camp were so terrible. Moreover, it was the middle of winter.”

  They had decided that the truth that her nephews were the illegitimate sons of Lavrenti Beria, the offspring from the rape of her sister, coupled with all the horrors that the Polyakov twins were accomplices to, would be too much for the old lady. Certainly, they had concluded, there was no reason to traumatize her last days with the facts, terrible as they were.

  “That’s what these remaining few papers tell us,” Julia summed up. “Here, this is the death certificate for Aunt Katerina. See, right here it says, ‘Died in Childbirth.’” After showing this document to her mother, she put it back in the box, gathered up the others, and closed it. “There’s no need to exhaust yourself by looking at the rest. There is nothing more in them,” she lied again.

  “My poor, dear sister! What she went through, we will never fully know--” The old lady was crying again. “--but at least now I have had closure. Thank you, for finding this little box and for bringing it to me. And more importantly, thank you again, Greg and Anne, for giving Julia back to me! I will never forget this.”

  “We’re going to go now and leave you with Julia, Gospodja Pleshkova,” Greg said. “But we are also happy that this is ending well. You will have your daughter back now to look after you and help restore your health.”

  “We will just need you, Julia, to come tomorrow to the Interpol offices,” Anne said. “And we will have Interpol make the reservations for you to join Nadia and the others to go to Ozersk the day after tomorrow. Afterward, she will be all yours.”

  ***

  They walked down Argentinierstrasse, and Greg was reminded of the time he had walked to the Sacher pulling his roller bag from Adam Kallay’s apartment several Februarys ago after his friend had not been there to receive him on his arrival from the USA. And now they were taking this very same sidewalk from Julia’s place back to the hotel, as he had when he had been deeply involved in trying to solve the mystery of Adam’s sudden disappearance. The snowy night, when he was sure he had seen Kallay under a streetlight and then tried to catch the phantom. He remembered the good times and the bad times with his former best friend and wondered again how the man he had loved could have been tempted over to the dark side.

  The fragility of human existence. The fluidity between righ
t and wrong. The ease of slipping into the gray. The basic human penchant to rationalize one’s actions.

  Probably, it had been the same for Hetzel, Polyakov, Billy, and all the others.

  But had they slipped farther?

  Were there degrees of evil? Was evil absolute, or was it all subjective?

  Greg pondered these questions as he walked in silence with his wife. The route took them through Karlsplatz and Resselpark then down into the Opernpassage, which, he mused, seemed to have been cleaned up since those earlier days. No more homeless people, drug addicts. Certainly, there was less filth now, and the stench was not as pungent.

  Passing by the Staatsoper, Greg noted that the next evening, Bela Bartók’s masterpiece, Bluebeard’s Castle, was on the schedule in a double billing with Tschaikovsky’s Iolanta. Hmm, he had always wanted to see the former, and had also been intrigued by the latter, which was sometimes paired with the Bartók.

  At the Sacher, he thought he recognized this doorman, which made him feel right at home. As he approached the front desk, he remembered his first time arriving at the hotel one night too early--because he had planned to stay that first night at Adam’s, only to find that his friend had vanished--and being accommodated. So, since they hadn’t booked this time, he hoped they would have a free room again. And as the clerk checked through the options on the computer, he wondered whether Crabbe would show up like that time several years back and offer to cover the costs, although Greg reflected, this time their stay would be on Demeter’s bill.

  Fortunately, they had a room for Herr und Frau Martens, and he was pleasantly surprised that the clerk called him by his name--although, upon reflection, he was quite sure that it was the computer that had recognized him, because when they had stayed a week or so ago, a different clerk had been at the desk--but still, it was a good feeling. As the man handed him the two keycards, Greg asked him whether the hotel could try and get two tickets for them to Bluebeard’s Castle and Iolanta at the Staatsoper for the next evening.

  He wanted to surprise Anne, who had been through much lately--and who was standing a bit removed with their bags, so she would not have heard--although he was not quite sure that these operas would be to her liking. As he remembered, they--at least the former--had a rather dark theme. But going to the Staatsoper in Vienna was always a treat, and they would have a nice dinner after at Meinl am Graben, just like the last time.

  ***

  “How long do you think we can--or need to--stay in Vienna?” Greg asked, as they cuddled in the cozy king-size bed.

  “Tomorrow we will go to my former office to brief Demeter, and organize the return of Nadia and her friends to their families. And to make sure that Demeter is onside with Julia taking them back to Russia. And that he will mobilize the Interpol men there to stand by in case. I must say, I am worried about her going.”

  “So am I,” Greg agreed. “But I think Nicholas was right about it being much more dangerous for us. I certainly could not bear losing you. Or having you mistreated again.”

  “Well, we need to make sure Demeter gets the colleagues in Moscow and Ekaterinburg to give Julia some backup. And then, I think we do need to stay here to see this through until Julia gets back from taking the girls home.”

  “I guess spending a few more days with you in Vienna is not the worst way to pass our time,” Greg said.

  Anne kissed her husband, murmuring “I love you,” and matters simply progressed from there.

  Chapter 35

  The next morning, after a quick Viennese breakfast in the Sacher Eck, the stylish cafe attached to the Hotel, Greg and Anne made their way over to the Interpol offices.

  There, Greg and Anne briefed Demeter on Julia’s recent trip to Mayak and the foiling of the heist attempt and told him of their successes in Porto Montenegro in freeing the girls and capturing most of the gang of human traffickers.

  “Yeah, you guys and Nicholas did good,” the Interpol chief complimented them. “Nicholas told me that you captured this guy Hetzel and several high ranking clients, including the Deputy Chief of Police for all of Hungary and a Montenegrin general.” It seemed that Labrecque had already told him a bit about what had happened in Porto Montenegro and Ozersk, but not really gone into the details. “Those are huge prizes.”

  “Yeah, it was a pretty slick operation those gangsters ran,” Greg said. “Polyakov, along with all his other Mephistophelean activities, and aided and abetted by that pervert, Hetzel, ran a ring that trafficked girls from Russia and elsewhere, mostly into Europe and the Middle East.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that,” Demeter said.

  “The way it would work, John, is that Hetzel would procure the girls, mainly from the contaminated towns near Mayak and the other former Soviet nuclear cities--convincing the parents that those regions were not healthy places to bring children up--while Polyakov had the connections with customers, partly through his arms trading, drug dealing and money laundering.”

  “Yes, the merchant of evil, Polyakov,” Anne interjected, “would handle all the logistics through his various companies, including the flights to a small remote airbase in Hungary, near where they established their central compound. From there, they would send the girls off to strip bars in European capitals and larger cities, which they either owned, or with whose owners they were on good terms.”

  “Hungary was a good staging point for them, as it is part of Schengen and there are no real border checks between it and many other European countries,” Greg continued. “They would showcase the girls in these strip bars, then sell them as sex slaves to rich perverts, or as prostitutes to pimps.”

  “As a matter of fact, I was sold to a Chinese oligarch,” Anne said. “Fortunately, we disrupted the operations before they could hand me over. ‘Deliveries’--as they would call them--outside the Schengen zone would be made by Polyakov’s planes, flying from the airstrip near the compound. The yacht, the penthouse suite and the warehouse in Montenegro, as well as the compound in Hungary, were all owned by a network of offshore companies that lead to Polyakov. Under the name Adriatica, it would seem.”

  “And to make matters worse,” Greg continued, “we caught them sexually abusing and torturing one of these teenager girls from Ozersk--the daughter of a guard at Mayak--and making a video of it all, to get her father to look the other way as some stolen HEU was to be taken out of the facility. Julia went to convince him that we would rescue his daughter, but he needed to not do what they wanted him to, and help us prevent the nuclear material from leaving Mayak. And, although we managed to foil this first attempt, they were about to do it again, with another video they were making.”

  “So that’s how they did it,” Demeter said.

  “We’ve got to get the monster Polyakov,” Anne said. “He is behind it all. Until he is dead or behind bars for life, he will continue to be the source of these problems. Nuclear heists, trafficking, and sexual abuse of women, trade in blood diamonds, as well as arms, and God only knows what else.”

  “We are trying to track him, you can be sure,” Demeter said. “Not easy though. The man is worse than a chameleon.”

  “He is supposed to have flown from Tivat to Grozny. With Brother Peter,” Anne informed her former boss. “Another chameleon.”

  Demeter shook his head in concern. “We get very little cooperation from the Russians, as you know.”

  Just then, Frau Huth interrupted. “Ms. Saparova is here.”

  “Show her in,” Demeter said, as Greg and Anne got up to greet their friend.

  After introductions, and another thank you to Julia from the Interpol boss for her role in foiling the most recent heist, talk turned to her trip to Ozersk the next day to take Nadia and her friends home. Demeter asked Frau Huth to coordinate with Labrecque so she would be on the same flight from Moscow as the girls coming from Porto Montenegro.

  “We’re going to mobilize our agents in Ekaterinburg and Moscow to give you support,” Demeter said. “I will have them contact you a
s soon as you land at Balandino. Frau Huth will give you their details.”

  “Thank you. But I don’t think even the FSB would interfere with an official of the IAEA trying to do her job,” Julia said.

  “Let’s hope you’re right. In any case, it’s not the FSB we’re worried about. It’s these nasties, Polyakov and crowd, who seem to have a long reach. And we don’t know where they will pop up next. But good luck to you, Julia. Be safe!”

  ***

  It was over a light lunch of Wurst mit Brotchen und Sauerkraut and a Caesar Salad, a carafe of Zweigelt they shared at the Cafe Central that Greg broke the news to Anne.

  “I have tickets for the opera tonight, my dear. And then we’ll have dinner at Meinl am Graben, just like the last time.”

  “That was the evening when you seduced me, you rake. But I couldn’t be happier for it,” Anne responded, with a little smile, putting her hand on his. “Last time it was Verdi’s Don Carlos. My favorite, so it will be hard to beat. What will we be seeing this time?”

  “It’s a double billing--”

  “Cav and Pag?” Anne asked, referring to Cavaliera Rusticana and I Pagliacci, two one act operas usually performed together. “I love those too.”

  “No. It is more modern. At least, one of them. And a bit out of the ordinary, but something I have always wanted to see, so I am glad it happens to be on at the Staatsoper tonight.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. It is coupled with Tschaikovsky’s Iolanta.”

  “God help us,” Anne said, with a smile. “If I remember correctly from reading about it somewhere, the story of the former is pretty horrific. All about obsessive love, no? And the music...well, modern. Bartók. Is it the Hungarian aspect that appeals?”