Lost Girls

by George D. Shuman

  Dantzler took a pause. Sherry could imagine him deliberating on the other side of the ocean.

  “I am told you are a serious woman, Miss Moore, a woman who understands the nature of our work. Graham tells me I can speak candidly with you. That I can trust you to keep secrets.”

  Sherry only listened.

  “I said mutual friends in the plural earlier; I understand you are also acquainted with a Madame Esme.”

  “Madame Esme?” Sherry repeated, and this time she was really surprised. It was a small world indeed.

  “Yes, Miss Moore, and Madame Esme asked me to convey to you that she would have joined our conversation but for a matter most urgent. Unfortunately, the events unfolding no longer permit a delay.”

  Sherry was immediately reminded of Esme’s voice, memories of Africa invading her thoughts. Madame Esme was founder and president of World Freedom, a nongovernmental organization that provided humanitarian relief to tens of millions around the globe. Sherry had been called upon by Esme to do work for World Freedom in 2002, when Janjaweed rebels attacked an envoy of UN peacekeepers guarding aid workers bringing food into Darfur. The rebels killed the military escorts and stole the food stores, kidnapping one of World Freedom’s executives, who had just arrived on the continent.

  After a week no one had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. No one asked for a ransom and in Darfur it was difficult to tell what leader of what faction of the Janjaweed rebels might be responsible. Time was working against the hostage.

  The bodies of rebel soldiers killed in the raid in Darfur were transported to Kenya. World Freedom, being a humanitarian organization, were neutralists in a hostile land, but Madame Esme was anything but. Esme, heir to the Chalmers diamond fortune of South Africa, was one of the richest women in the world. She had friends in very high places and was said to have a penchant for manipulating events as needed.

  Sherry had been flown by United Nations military units to Kenya and was escorted—hood over her face—to a makeshift morgue where the rebels’ bodies were being stored. Through the memory of one of the dead soldiers, Sherry was able to describe the leader of the attack, who had been riding a particularly striking horse—a white Arabian decorated with a strand of putrefied human ears around its neck. Armed with this information, the government in Khartoum successfully identified the tribal leader and brokered the release of Madame Esme’s emissary.

  “I need not explain that World Freedom’s charter forbids the organization from interfering in criminal acts. I’m sure you’ve heard all this from Madame Esme before, but I must repeat it now.”

  “I will keep your secrets,” Sherry said, “and Madame Esme’s as well.” Sherry had to admit she admired the character—embellished or not—that Madame Esme portrayed. She was purportedly able to manipulate whole governments to do her will. Things just seemed to happen when Esme was around. Perhaps it was coincidence or perhaps it was her clever machinations, one never quite knew with Madame Esme.

  “What happened a week ago?” Sherry asked.

  “One of World Freedom’s aid workers in Haiti befriended a young girl in the village of Tiburon. The girl’s father was trained as an explosives engineer by Reynolds Metals before they pulled out in 2000. When the company left, this man moved his family out of the city and began to do freelance work. There are still a few people with means in Haiti and government construction projects come and go with foreign aid.

  “Anyhow, the girl overheard her father telling her mother that he had been in the cellar of a building he was working on and saw women locked in a cell. The girl didn’t know where her father was working, but the village of Tiburon is on the extreme west coast of Haiti, so our assumption is that it was in that region of Haiti. Anyhow, the father tells his wife that the women in the cell had been tattooed with a likeness of Baron Samedi on their faces. Samedi is a religious symbol in Haiti, the keeper of the underworld. He is represented by a grinning skull wearing a top hat.”

  “Ahhhh,” Sherry said, deflating in her chair, the images on Denali now occupying her mind.

  “Two days later the girl’s father was thrown dead from a car in front of his house. He had been shot in the stomach and a pencil and paper stuffed in his mouth. A poppet was pinned to his chest.”

  Sherry heard a phone ring in the background.

  Dantzler excused himself and closed a door.

  “There are few secrets in Haiti, Miss Moore. Only the rich can afford secrets. The pen and paper left in the man’s mouth were a warning to anyone in the village that the man might have confided in. That especially included his family.”

  “The wife knows who he was working for?”

  “If she knew she wouldn’t tell the aid worker.”

  “But it could have something to do with the drug cartel. The Mendozas?”

  “The cartels use many means to disperse their product throughout the world. Countries like Haiti become important because their harbors and airports are open to the traffickers. Haiti’s very own leaders profit from cocaine. There are only so many fingers to plug the holes in the dike and the same is true for human trafficking. The borders of South America are both isolated and vast. We know that many European women end up in Brazil, but no one can control a coast that is twice the distance between New York and Miami. Islanders have been smuggling in the Caribbean for centuries. Cigarette boats and airplanes can easily penetrate the South American borders and meet truck caravans that move the women into Brazil. Haiti provides a hub from which to do that. It nullifies the efforts of legitimate customs inspections in South America’s seaports. All of which is to say it is possible that the Mendozas are involved, yes, but these women you imagine to have seen were probably in Haiti.”

  “What about the Haitian police?”

  “They came and looked at the body and left. They wrote it off as a drug casualty. The police in Haiti are often both corrupt and self-motivated. If there is nothing in it for them, they will stay out of private matters.”

  “So it was Madame Esme who called you.”

  “Yes and we in turn contacted a colonel in the national police known to our friends in French intelligence. He is in charge of Haiti’s drug task force and was trained by your DEA. He’s little more than a figurehead in the police department. He provides low-level intelligence to the French, mostly the political climate in the palace, and heads-up for French investments in the country. Other than that he is a self-admitted token to appease the American government. He says the police are entirely ineffectual in stemming the cocaine trafficked through Haiti. He doesn’t even trust his own people.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sherry interrupted. “But you said DEA-trained. Haitian police are trained by DEA?”

  “Select members of a narcotics interdiction team were trained by DEA in the late twentieth century in exchange for U.S. economic aid. Something like forty million in U.S. aid to reform Haiti’s police organization.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The colonel has limited assets, a helicopter and a handful of men, but even one helicopter is more than we can get into Haiti right now. We are appreciative.”

  “What exactly is he looking for?”

  “Anything that would require an explosives engineer on the site: government or private construction projects, working mines, land being cleared.”

  “Do the Mendozas own anything in Haiti?”

  “Not by name.”

  “You mentioned a poppet. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the term.”

  “A doll,” Dantzler said, “a voodoo doll. These are a highly superstitious people, Miss Moore.”

  “What does the doll signify?”

  “Someone wants the family to believe the dead man’s soul is in jeopardy. It is believed in Haiti that the dead can be turned into zombies to serve new masters for all of eternity. To the descendants of slaves there can be no worse fate. Wizards, or bocors, as they are called, are paid to make magic into images of one’s enemies.”

  “Wh
at about the paper and pencil in his mouth?”

  “We had the aid worker mail them to us. Our lab people found writing on the paper along with DNA of the dead man. The writing wasn’t much more than a name, Aleksandra. It was written in Polish.”

  “She was one of the girls the dead man saw where he was working,” Sherry said.

  “Probably, if the story is true.”

  “And a week ago you considered sending me to Haiti, to see if I could get near this dead villager’s body?”

  Dantzler laughed. “Absolutely not, Miss Moore. I wouldn’t have thought of calling you a week ago. There is little one can do in Haiti but get hurt, and while the dead man’s story was compelling, your presence would have endangered not only yourself but the wife and little girl and Madame Esme’s aid worker, as well.”

  Sherry grunted. “I might have been able to get in and out of the country unnoticed, Mr. Dantzler. Maybe tell you where the dead man had been working. Now the body is buried. The opportunity has passed.”

  “To begin with, it is impossible to connect what you believe you saw on Denali with the dead man. We have no proof the Mendozas have interests in western Haiti. Anything might have precipitated the man’s murder, even drugs, as the police there like to believe.” Dantzler paused.

  “Miss Moore, I’m only trying to offer you some background here. If I thought sending you into Haiti was prudent I wouldn’t hesitate. For that matter the dead man hasn’t yet been interred. The voudons believe the soul lingers on for nine days. The ninth night of the wake is called the denye priye; a ceremony is held to discourage the person’s soul from wandering the earth. Then and only then is he or she buried.”

  “Go ahead, Mr. Dantzler.”

  “Something came up this morning, something no less urgent but far safer than sending you to Haiti. The question is whether you are interested in getting involved. A body was found in the Jamaican channel and there will be a window of opportunity to examine it before it officially becomes a murder. A window in which you could get in and out of the morgue unnoticed.”

  “Tell me,” Sherry said.

  “An inspector from the Jamaica Constabulary Force was fishing off the coast of Jamaica this morning when he saw a body fall from a small plane. He managed to reach it within minutes and discovered a young white woman dead in the sea. The plane turned south and disappeared. There was a tattoo on the dead woman’s face under one eye. A black top hat on a purple skull.”

  “Baron Samedi,” Sherry whispered in awe.

  “Yes,” Dantzler said. “Call it what you will, coincidence or providence, but this police inspector happened to attend an international law enforcement conference in 2007 where I was speaking on the subject of human trafficking. He knew the story I shared with you about the Bulgarian informant and the tattooed women supposedly being trafficked to South America.”

  Sherry sat back in her chair; the recorder on the answering machine snapped off as it ran out of memory. She ignored it. “So he called you to ask what to do and you could not tell him what happened in Haiti a week ago because World Freedom was the source of your information.”

  Dantzler made a sound of acknowledgment. “Yes,” Dantzler said. “At least for the time being, Miss Moore. You must understand that Interpol, like all intelligence agencies around the world, relies heavily on their confidential sources of information. The relationship between Interpol and Madame Esme is a very old and delicate one. More is at stake than meets the eye.”

  “I can appreciate that,” Sherry said. “But you have shared it with me.”

  “Which is why it was so important for me to know I could trust you, Miss Moore. Before I acted on your request to Mr. Graham that I call, I tried to learn as much as possible about you. Frankly, I was surprised by what I read. Even more surprised after I made a few inquiries. I am even ready to allow there are things in this world that no one can label or understand. It was Graham who convinced me in the end, however. Graham says that Admiral Brigham all but asserts you can walk on water, Miss Moore, and Graham says no one takes the admiral lightly. If you are willing I would like you to bridge that gap between Jamaica and Haiti. Madame Esme has only asked that I convey to you her wish that you will use the utmost discretion with what I shared with you today.”

  “You have my word, Mr. Dantzler, but tell me about Bulgaria, please. Exactly what was known last year that didn’t pan out?”

  “In a nutshell, the Bulgarian’s informant said a large number of women were being trafficked out of the Black Sea port Burgas, to South America. The informant described the buyer as a dark-skinned black man with a white glass eye. As I said, this man bragged about tattooing the women’s faces with a human skull before he sold them.”

  “Interpol found the ship?”

  “Interpol found a ship, but by the time they got to it, the information was several months old. The ship had been twice resold and she was dry-docked in Singapore being refitted to barge coal. The paper trail it left was as useless as the information about its owners, a law office in Liberia.”

  “So,” Sherry continued, “you want me to go to Jamaica, to see the body that was thrown from an airplane and then tell you if the woman had memories of where she had been before her death.”

  “The plane was not marked, Miss Moore. There will never be another way to connect this woman to Haiti, if in fact that’s where she came from.”

  “What’s going on in Jamaica now, because of this woman’s body, I mean. What am I walking into down there?”

  “The Jamaican police inspector was very discreet about what he saw. We know he filed a report with the ministry that he discovered the victim of a probable drowning. He made a show of sending coast guard vessels out to look for signs of a boating accident. Nothing more. He couldn’t keep the press from reporting a body was found. The inspector was seen transferring the body from his boat to his vehicle. But all they have been told is that she was found in the water and that she was Caucasian and blond. Soon, however, they will want a picture and a name to go with the body. If they don’t get a name they will begin to get suspicious. You remember how it went on another island in the Caribbean several years ago.”

  “Of course,” Sherry said. “And if it leads to Haiti, Mr. Dantzler?”

  “Then we will talk again, but please, Miss Moore, one thing at a time. I made a promise to contact you if anything came up relevant to what you saw. I have done that. Perhaps what you see in Jamaica will be enough to lead our police colonel friend in Haiti to a specific location. We wish we could approach the Haitian government and ask them about the dead man in Tiburon directly. We wish they would be cooperative about the unidentified airplane seen heading toward their country, but the police in Haiti are far from cooperative. Please understand, Miss Moore, that Haiti is not without its good people, good politicians, and good policemen. Men like the colonel I spoke of. But those with the best intentions are caught in the reality of Haiti’s corruption. Haiti is like Doctor Dolittle’s Pushme-Pullyu creature with two heads going in opposite directions, neither being able to take a step forward or backward. We are concerned for the safety of the dead man’s family in Tiburon. We are concerned for the safety of Madame Esme’s aid worker. General inquiries might only lead to more deaths. Haiti is a country of extreme poverty and civil unrest. They don’t have the time, money, or talent to investigate or prosecute organized crime. They will not be moved to pursue unverified sightings of captive women from dead or anonymous sources. They do not care about bodies that fall from airplanes in international waters. And, on top of it all, a third of Colombia’s cocaine travels through Haiti on its way to the United States and Europe. If they won’t intercept whole shiploads of cocaine, why would they help us locate a few women?”

  “Point taken,” Sherry said.

  “I do not want this girl from the airplane to have died in vain. If we do not learn something specific about where she came from, the investigation is over. Perhaps it is already over. Perhaps the trafficke
rs are destroying evidence even now. But we must try. I can arrange for you to fly to Kingston this afternoon and have the police inspector meet you. I will brief him about what you are supposed to do. I would also tell you the obvious. A tattoo suggests the buyer deems the women disposable. If there are others out there anywhere in the Caribbean, they are in grave danger.”

  “And exactly what is it that you will tell the police inspector about me?”

  Dantzler muffled a laugh. “Of all the things I’m not sure of right now, that one weighs most heavily on me.”

  KINGSTON, JAMAICA

  Rolly King George sat in a corner of a waiting room in the basement of University of the West Indies Hospital, flipping through magazines and tapping his foot impatiently on the stained linoleum floor. He had just delivered the young woman’s body via an underground ramp to the hospital’s basement loading dock. A cell phone call to a friend produced attendants who moved the body to a cold chamber in the hospital’s teaching morgue. The young woman would be safe there from prying eyes until she could be examined by the chief of pathology and scheduled for autopsy.

  An old woman sat across from him, her pale green eyes set in skin like burnt parchment. She watched him carefully as she pared a coolie plum with a pocketknife, most likely waiting for someone in X-ray. Radiation was just down the hall from the elevator that went to the morgue, and it had been another bloody night in St. James Parish. Inspector George was avoiding the reporters roaming the halls looking for relatives of the shooting victims. The old woman must have wandered into the waiting room taking refuge from them as well. If she was one of the relatives, she showed no outward sign of grief. But expressions weren’t always telling in parish ghettos. For many, life and grief were interchangeable terms.

  Inspector George was thinking about his phone call to the Ministry of Justice. His superiors were far more concerned with where in the ocean the woman’s body had been found than with what had happened to her. They would give him some freedom to do as he wished with the body as long as he asserted she had been found in international waters.