“Not true, mademoiselle. Miss Clare paid a great deal of money to find out what happened to the girl. Israa didn’t drown—she was kidnapped.”
“Audrey told you this?”
“She didn’t need to. The Joint Investigations Team has been investigating traffickers for years. Agent Bertin’s team was composed of members of different EU nations—law enforcement, prosecutors, judges. I’m involved because France is the lead nation coordinating the operation. Agent Bertin’s team accumulated substantial evidence that unaccompanied children were falling prey to exploitation. Criminal gangs have taken advantage of the refugee flow. I did try to suggest as much to your colleagues in Izmir.” She broke off to mull this over, managing to convey her disappointment. “The efforts of these gangs have intensified in the past eighteen months. They’re cooperating with each other: there are those who smuggle refugees into Europe, and those who exploit the vulnerable for slavery or sex or both. Israa was held back from her boat in Turkey. Aya was luckier than her sister.”
Sehr sipped her coffee, gripped by Roux’s revelations. She listened as Roux laid out the JIT’s case. The number of unaccompanied minors had been estimated at 27 percent of the previous year’s arrivals in Europe. Of the staggering number of 270,000 children in transit, Europol had conservatively estimated that 10,000 children were unaccounted for.
“Children have gone missing in Italy, Sweden, and the UK. But a disproportionate number of minors are missing from the Turkish coast. If they’re snatched before they’re registered in Europe, they simply disappear. If they register a destination such as the UK and don’t arrive, there’s no way to track where they’ve ended up. We don’t have the systems in place, we don’t have personnel or resources.”
Of all the terrible permutations of the refugee crisis, this was one Sehr hadn’t considered. She’d been distracted by the discovery of the documents in Delft. But Audrey had begun in Izmir—her thoughts cleared in an instant.
“The counterfeit life jackets made Audrey think about the factories. From the news reports on the police operation, she knew Syrian children had been conscripted to work there—is that when she began to suspect the smugglers had widened their operations? She thought they were targeting children?”
Inspecteur Roux looked at her with satisfaction. “You’re very bright. From her inquiries, Audrey learned of other disappearances. So she began to track them.”
“Is Israa lost, then?”
Her face hardening, Roux said, “There is a massive team working on this. Israa is not irrecoverable. Neither are the others.”
Sehr tried another tack. “So you don’t think Audrey vanished out of choice.”
“I think she was taken as a means of silencing her.”
“And killed?” Sehr asked. “Or trafficked?”
Roux’s response was frank. “Audrey called to tell us she was on the cusp of confirming the identity of the ringleaders of the gang operating in Greece and Turkey. She was afraid to share her suspicions without proof, so we sent Agent Bertin to assist her. Agent Bertin knew the full parameters of the JIT operation in Europe; we knew she’d be able to connect the dots in Greece. Whatever else Audrey was in the middle of, she made it back to Lesvos for that meeting. She prioritized it. It’s evident someone found out about that meeting, someone with a reason to prevent it. It’s possible they killed Audrey, but if her body had been found with the others, this would be a different investigation. Your government’s involvement would put on a spotlight on the traffickers.” She sighed. “Disappearing Audrey was safer than leaving her body to be found.”
Roux’s purpose on Lesvos was becoming clear to Sehr. “You’re not looking for Audrey. You’re looking for the leaders of the ring.”
“Bon,” Roux said. “That has been the focus of Agent Bertin’s work since the beginning of the refugee crisis; we are not about to abandon it. And now you know enough to help us.”
Sehr swallowed the urge to scream. So much time had been wasted in the search for Audrey because of a Europol investigation they’d known nothing about. She didn’t intend to waste another minute.
“Why did Audrey go to Calais? Why the trip to Brussels?”
“She was tracking the smuggling route, confirming her suspicions to herself. Children from the Calais Jungle are also unaccounted for. But Brussels, mademoiselle, don’t you know what took her to Brussels?”
Sehr bristled at the censure. She’d pieced together as much as she had in the face of Roux’s calculated silence.
“I don’t know and I don’t want to guess.”
Roux’s tight smile acknowledged Sehr’s anger. She handed over Sehr’s bag. “Missing Children Europe is the organization that highlights these issues: their headquarters is in Brussels. Audrey went to Brussels so she could sound the alarm. Missing Children referred her to me. That’s how this all began.”
38
Mytilene, Lesvos
Showered and resting from the detour of the past two days, Rachel was at the Sirena guesthouse. Sehr had called her from Amsterdam to pass on a long list of facts that made Rachel curl up her hands, her nails biting into her palms. Sehr was furious at Roux. Rachel tried not to be distracted by a similar sense of outrage. What a waste of time it had been. Roux hadn’t needed to accompany them to Apaydin because she’d been ahead of them. She’d known the reason for Audrey’s visit to Apaydin—she’d had an outline to work with.
Rachel sat down with her notebook and a pencil whose eraser she’d chewed off, working out what they now knew about Audrey’s activities. Audrey had been working on two parallel tracks, tracks that didn’t overlap, as far as Rachel could tell. Of greatest importance: she’d been assisting Ali—or Sami, as she must now remember to call him—with his search for Israa. Sami was the key to Audrey’s actions. Everything Audrey had done sprang from her relationship with Sami. Sami was the one who’d directed her course, who’d driven her actions forward. He’d trusted her to help him find Israa, he’d trusted her to aid his precarious work as a courier. But Audrey had trusted no one, crushed by her responsibilities … and by the weight of her secrets. She’d tried to help a boy she’d grown to care for, only to find herself floundering in the depths, swept up by dangerous currents.
She could have told Nate why she’d needed more money, but she must have been afraid of tipping someone off; she’d kept her network closed because she’d gotten in over her head. She could have asked for help, she should have asked for help. But maybe she was more like Ruksh than Rachel had guessed, determined to prove something to her brother.
Either of the tracks Sami had persuaded her to pursue could be the reason for the murders and her disappearance.
Ali might have been the target; Aude Bertin would have been in the way.
Or Agent Bertin had been the target, and Ali had been a collateral kill—in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Rachel thought she knew which scenario was more likely. If a defector had escaped Apaydin, he wouldn’t have lingered on Lesvos. He would have moved on to the European continent and disappeared.
The first time she’d visited Moria, Rachel had overheard the conversation of a pair of volunteers. What they’d said tracked with the information Sehr had just supplied.
They’d warned the Afghan father not to leave his daughters unattended. Boiled down to its essence, they’d warned him against bad men.
Rachel had assumed they’d meant residents of the camp.
But Sehr had said traffickers were picking off kids from both sides of the crossing. So the unaccompanied minors in the camps on Lesvos and Chios were vulnerable.
But who could pass in and out of the camps without drawing attention to their actions? She considered the possibilities. Volunteers who worked for the various NGOs. Members of the militant group Golden Dawn, who’d raided the Souda camp. The men who’d been watching Khattak from their table at the fish restaurant. The Greeks who ran the guesthouses near the camps.
Rachel remembered something. The
proprietor of the hotel she’d stayed at on Chios—Nikos Papadakis—had approached the camp after the Golden Dawn raid. He’d made a list of names, offering rooms to women and children.
A benevolent gesture, or a means of marking off targets?
She should get back to Chios and check if there were new reports of missing persons. There had to be a way for her to confirm who was involved. If Audrey had inadvertently stumbled onto an answer, Rachel would get there faster. Her thoughts raced back through her encounters on the islands, through bits of information she’d gleaned firsthand or through peripheral knowledge—faces, places, dates, leaping from point to point, searching for correlations.
She found them.
Her face and her neck flushed red. She snapped her pencil in half.
She had to find the volunteers at Moria. Because they’d spoken of a witness.
Of a girl who’d escaped.
She’d made another assumption, thinking the volunteers had been speaking of a sexual assault. What if they hadn’t been? What if they’d meant a kidnapping?
What if the same van had been used? And the witness had seen the van?
She shoved her chair back from the table, making for the door.
Just as she reached for the handle, Nate entered the lobby. He looked relieved to see her, a smile breaking over his face. She could see from the shattered look in his eyes that he was losing hope—the search was getting to him.
Rachel swallowed hard. She didn’t want to tell him what she’d learned. Whatever he was fearing, his fears would be amplified to the point of terror. She couldn’t hurt him like that.
“You’ve found something?” He seemed to read the tension in her face. “Have a drink with me?”
He didn’t need to look for his host. At his entry, the manager brought over two glasses of beer on a tray covered by a doily. It was a simple place, but the manager had done his best to echo Nate’s air of careless prestige. He set the tray down at a table in the lounge area, and told them to ring if they wanted anything more.
“I was about to check out a lead.”
“On Audrey?”
She nodded. He tugged her over to a sofa. Rachel took a seat with some reluctance, picking up her glass and cradling it in her hand.
“Tell me,” he said. “This waiting is worse than anything.”
Rachel took a fortifying sip of her drink. In a low tone, she sketched out what she knew of Audrey’s role acting as a courier for CIJA. Then she hurried over Sehr’s discoveries at Europol. Nate took the news badly.
He rubbed his eyes with his fists. Then he grasped Rachel’s shoulders, forcing her to face him.
“How long have you known this? How long has Esa?”
“Ten minutes,” Rachel said.
The quiet words defused his anger. He released his bruising grip with an apology. When he looked at her again, his eyes were wet with tears.
“So she’s gone,” he said in a hollow voice. “She’s dead, or she’s taken—I don’t know which is worse.”
Rachel wanted to console him without falling into the trap of offering him false hope. Since she couldn’t think of a way to do that, she scrambled to her feet. “We can try to get answers,” she said. “Then we can take it from there.”
Nate looked around the lounge as if his eyes were having trouble focusing. “Where’s Esa?”
“He’s waiting for Sehr at the airport.”
“And Inspecteur Roux? Christ, she could have told me this the day I landed. How much time has she cost us?”
Rachel was able to consider this with more objectivity than Nate. She hadn’t known that his pain would resonate so personally, or that her feelings had deepened to this extent. She had suffered the agony of Zach’s disappearance—she couldn’t bear what was happening to Nate.
He wanted Esa, she could see. He wanted reassurance from his closest friend because he knew Esa would offer hope. So she tried to act in Esa’s stead.
“Listen,” she said. “They’ve been searching for Audrey longer than we have, with firsthand knowledge of her actions. That time isn’t lost. Our actions support theirs—not the other way around.”
She grabbed his hands and held them in her own. His amber eyes focused on her face. After a moment, he nodded.
“You’ve got to hold it together. Audrey needs you to think.” She worked up the nerve to say a little more. “You’re not alone,” she mumbled, amazed at herself for taking the risk. “I won’t leave you alone.”
His expression softened. He shifted his hands so they were holding Rachel’s. For a moment, she felt weightless, hopeful and expectant.
“There are so many things about you, Rachel. So many things that I—” He broke off. “Where were you going?”
Encouraged by this beginning, she responded, “I’ll explain on the way.”
* * *
She had a hazy memory of the volunteers in Moria. A Danish girl named Freja with blond hair, and a young man who was a translator. She stopped at each NGO and described them. No one seemed to know them, but she was directed to the service tents near the toilets.
The stench assailed her nostrils, but Nate didn’t seem to notice. There was a zeal in his eyes that disturbed her because it was so familiar. So many times she’d thought she had the answer to Zachary’s disappearance. Each time she’d been wrong.
When she’d met Khattak three years ago, she’d been going through the motions, angry at everyone, angriest at herself. She prayed the same thing wouldn’t happen to Nate.
She thought of Audrey’s teasing e-mail to Ruksh. I hope Nate doesn’t blow this thing with Rachel.
She was trying not to look at the truth, trying not to accept it. Whatever this was between her and Nate—and she wasn’t sure what she wanted it to be—part of her knew it was over. She would always be tied to the outcome of this case, and to its prospects for grief.
She knew what Zach’s disappearance had done to her parents.
She couldn’t bear to be the reminder of someone’s tragedy again.
* * *
They found Freja at the tent that dispensed hot chocolate.
She didn’t remember Rachel, but she took Rachel’s ID as evidence of her right to ask questions. She snatched a tray of hot chocolates and led them to a less crowded corner. Rachel’s gaze skipped from one of the children’s faces to another, though she didn’t know what she was searching for. Perhaps she was making her own record.
She was still staggered by the figure Sehr had quoted her: ten thousand missing children. And she wondered how hard it would have been to record their photographs and names.
Rachel asked after the translator. Freja told them he’d left the camp. Rachel kept her face impassive; she didn’t want Nate to view his absence as a setback.
“You mentioned a girl who fought off an attack in the camp. You said she’d scratched her assailant. Is that girl still here?”
Freja shook her head. “She moved on to Athens a few days after the incident. I have no idea where she is now.”
“Was she alone?” Rachel asked. In her peripheral vision, a group of children were playing with a set of cardboard shapes in a game of their own invention.
“No, she had parents and younger brothers. She had taken a walk to the beach by herself—you know where the road meets the beach?”
That allowed for the possibility of the van. She pressed ahead. “Was it a physical assault?”
Freja looked uncertain. “She says the man was tall and very strong. She couldn’t see his face, but he was trying to get her in the van.”
Nate gripped the lapels of his jacket. “You were right,” he said in a tight voice.
Rachel cautioned him. Their knowledge about the trafficking ring had to be kept to themselves until they were given the all clear from Roux. There was also the possibility that the van had been used to take the girl to another location for the purpose of sexual assault.
“Did she see the van? Could she describe it?”
; Freja nodded, her ponytail bouncing with her desire to be of use. “She gave us the license plate. You can use it to crack the case.”
Rachel took a breath to calm herself. “Do you still have that number?”
The girl beamed with pride. She pulled out her phone: she’d kept a record for herself.
“Did you report the incident to the police?”
“Of course! But I don’t know if they followed up. No one got back to us, but we’ve been keeping an eye on the kids.”
“Freja—” Rachel hesitated. She had to ask her next question with utmost care. “Why did you warn that father about bad men? You said ‘men,’ not ‘man.’ Was there a reason why?”
Bemused, the girl answered, “Did I? I don’t remember that. But you hear things, you know. All around the island. Men coming in after the boats arrive, strangers in the camp who aren’t volunteers. Sometimes kids come for meals several days in a row, then we don’t see them again. If we check back with the authorities, they say they can’t keep track. The intake process is a sieve. So we worry about these kids, though there’s nothing we can do without better institutional support.”
She was confirming Rachel’s suspicions. “You said the men in the camp were strangers?”
When Freja nodded, Rachel described the men she’d seen on Chios. She also described Papadakis at the Athena.
“But those men are Greeks! I’m sorry, the strangers in the camp weren’t Greeks.”
Freja was describing volunteers like herself.
39
Mytilene, Lesvos
Esa waited for Sehr to join him in the lounge. He’d had a brief conversation with Rachel, who was on her way back from interviewing a witness. She was stopping off at the local police station, and she and Nate had split up the car rental agencies on the island, in the hopes of tracking down a van that might be the same one Sami had spotted. He hoped Sehr would hurry so they’d have a chance to speak about more than just the case.
She’d been tired when he picked her up at the airport, but she’d put her mind to Audrey’s disappearance on the drive back to the guesthouse. She’d left Amélie Roux in Athens. Esa guessed Roux was coordinating her team’s operation on the ground, advising the Greek police. He’d been strictly warned through Sehr not to jeopardize their work.
A Dangerous Crossing--A Novel Page 28
