‘Well, unclassify it and maybe I’ll think about helping you.’
She gives me a stare that I assume is something she learned at Quantico or wherever the hell they train FBI agents, a look that’s designed to intimidate me into rolling over and complying, but after the day I’ve just had, after the events of the last half hour in particular, I don’t give a damn what she thinks. I don’t care what anyone thinks.
Agent Parker smirks at her in the rear-view mirror.
We ride the rest of the way in silence.
35
We weave through the streets of Manhattan and finally pull into an underground parking lot, beneath a nondescript, sturdy skyscraper in mid-town. There are several security checks along the way. IDs are held out for inspection and faces pressed against the window to verify the contents of the car – i.e. me.
We’re waved through and finally make it into a service elevator that drops us into the bowels of the building. They march me along a tiled corridor that reminds me of a morgue and usher me into a small room with a bolted-down table and four white plastic chairs. There are no windows and it has the heavy, echoey feel of a bunker. The air is stale and the carpet muffles the sound so it’s like being held in an underground cave with artificial lights frying my eyes. I can’t help but stare at the door they close behind me. It’s reinforced steel and mutes any noise from outside. It looks like it could withstand an explosion. But even so I can’t relax. Every single muscle in my body is primed for flight. I perch on the edge of one of the plastic chairs and scan the walls and ceiling for cameras. There’s an air-conditioning vent silently blowing air into the room and in the top right-hand corner a small hole has been drilled in the ceiling, through which I’m guessing a lens is trained on me.
I pick up the go-bag, which is by my feet, and pull out my phone. There’s no reception this far underground but I’m only checking the time. It’s nearly two a.m. Which means I have just five hours before I’m due to meet my father. My foot starts tapping as I start working out a plan.
I toss the phone back in the bag and rezip it, thanking my lucky stars that they didn’t take it from me. Agent Kassel seemed to be debating it, before deciding to let it go. She did make me pass it through a security check though, which resulted in a few raised eyebrows and the confiscation of the switchblade. They left everything else though, including the roll of dollars, and they didn’t find the envelope hidden beneath the false bottom either.
I guess they’re treading lightly, not wanting to annoy me unduly, which is why they’ve left me the bag. It makes me think they’re eager to keep me onside, which then makes me think they want something from me. But what?
At just that point Agent Kassel and Agent Parker enter the room. I wonder if they took these last five minutes to figure out their good cop/bad cop roles because for the first time Agent Parker looks friendly – he smiles warmly at me as he drops down into the seat opposite mine. He’s taken off his jacket too and rolled up his sleeves. He even tears open a packet of M&Ms and offers them to me.
Agent Kassel, meanwhile, keeps a stony face. She drops a manila folder down heavily on to the table in front of me.
‘Coffee?’ she asks, holding a Styrofoam cup out to me. For a minute I’m flung back to the police station and Detective Owens asking me the exact same question just minutes before the shoot-out occurred. What happened to him? I wonder . . . I want to ask, but I’m afraid to know.
I shake my head at the proffered coffee. My brain is firing too fast – coffee will only spin me out more. I’ll end up like Teo – jittery and unable to think clearly. For a second my mind flips to Jay. Did the cops arrest him yet? Is he safe?
No. Forget him. He betrayed you, I tell myself. Except he didn’t. Not really. He didn’t know that it was me. And he was only doing the job to protect his brother. Maybe I should tell Agent Kassel about the link between the Blades and the people chasing me. But is it important? Won’t it get Jay in even more trouble? And besides, I’m not giving them any information. I’ll trade it, but I won’t give it.
‘So, is it all still classified?’ I ask, sarcasm drenching my words.
Agent Kassel shakes a sugar packet into her coffee.
‘Olivia,’ she says, and she sounds even more tired than I feel. I guess she’s been up for over twenty-four hours too. But my sympathy quota is exhausted. ‘What I’m about to tell you is going to be hard to hear.’
I open my mouth to fire back some razor-sharp retort but the look on her face silences me. She looks deeply sad, can barely hold my gaze. The air leaves my lungs in a blast. She has the expression of a doctor before they give you a fatal diagnosis.
‘Agent Parker and myself are seconded to the Criminal Organisation Unit here at the FBI,’ she says, holding my gaze firmly. ‘But in actuality, we’re both with Internal Affairs.’
I blink up at her. ‘Internal Affairs?’
‘Yes. Do you know what Internal Affairs does?’ she asks.
‘Don’t you investigate the police and government departments for corruption?’
‘Yes. Exactly. We investigate crimes and corruption being committed by government employees.’
‘I don’t get it.’
She takes a deep breath then exhales sharply. ‘We’re investigating your father.’
‘My father?’
‘Yes.’
‘I still don’t get it.’ My mind whirs. What? I look at Agent Parker hoping he’ll be able to provide clarification. But he just gives me that perfect blank stare of his. The smile has gone AWOL I note though.
‘We have substantial evidence and reason to believe that your father is behind one of the biggest trafficking rings seen this decade,’ Agent Kassel says. And while I sit there feeling the room start to spin, she starts reeling off numbers and facts from a sheet of paper. I don’t hear her. I don’t compute a single word because I’m struggling to understand what she just said. My father? As in MY father? The guy running the task force to try to stop trafficking is actually the one behind the trafficking?
I burst out laughing. Then I stand up and walk to the door. ‘Let me out,’ I say tiredly. ‘I want to go.’ There isn’t enough air in the room. It feels as though they’re pumping poison gas through the vents. My legs feel leaden all of a sudden and my head all woozy.
‘Olivia, sit back down,’ Agent Kassel barks.
‘Open the door,’ I say, starting to pound on it.
‘Even if I wanted to open the door, I wouldn’t,’ she says evenly. ‘It’s not safe for you outside. The people who are after you have still not been apprehended.’
I spin around. They’re both just sitting at the table, impassively observing me like a pair of scientists watching an atom bomb explode from a safe distance. ‘Well, maybe you should be out there now trying to apprehend them,’ I shout. ‘Rather than in here spinning me a bunch of lies about my father.’
Agent Kassel presses her lips together. Her hands are clasped on the table top as though she’s praying.
‘A bunch of lies? Let’s see.’ She spreads the papers from the manila folder across the table and picks out a sheet. ‘A six-million-dollar transfer into a bank account with your father’s name on it, by way of the Caymans, just last month. And another here. His name on the company accounts of the shipping container firm used to traffic girls as young as six into this country from Pakistan, Oman, Nigeria. Ring any bells to you, Olivia? Sound familiar? Your father’s contacts and his network make him the perfect man for the job.’
‘Yes, for the task force job,’ I hurl back.
‘No, Liva. For the job of running a trafficking business.’
I stare her down, my arms crossed over my chest. ‘No.’
‘There are other bank accounts. All offshore. Linking him to contacts we already have under surveillance in Nigeria and Thailand. Middlemen who cut the deals. Who buy the girls. And the boys. It’s not all girls. Want to see the pictures?’ She tosses some photographs across the table towards me, but I ref
use to look. ‘We’re working with Interpol and various police forces around the world to apprehend them, and chasing down the money trail, because that’s the rule of thumb in all this. Follow the paper trail, find your man. Your father has offshore accounts containing hundreds of millions of dollars, Liva. Where do you think he’s getting money like that from?’
The piece of paper in the go-bag – the one with all the numbers on – flashes into my mind.
‘His job,’ I say, a seed of doubt germinating in my stomach. There’s no way my father earns that much from his job. Not even factoring in the payments from oil companies, and rich Arabs needing bodyguards, and insurance payouts from shipping companies who sail into trouble in the Gulf of Aden and need his help getting out of it.
Agent Kassel shakes her head at me.
‘The men who are after you, Olivia. Why would they come after you so relentlessly if all they believed you were was the daughter of the head of a task force? A task force with no more authority to stop them than a Girl Scout troop. It’s a task force of civilians.’ The word civilians drops with scorn.
‘They write a few reports with lots of big words in,’ she scoffs. ‘Someone in the White House might read it one day, probably an intern, and if they’re lucky it might get fed into some policy that may or not get passed on to the statute books but which will never, ever do anything to actually stop a single girl or woman or child from being trafficked into this country.’
‘Shut up.’
‘No,’ she says, her voice angry now. ‘You’re a bright girl, Liva. Does it make sense to you?’ She leans across the table. ‘Or does it make more sense that they might come after the daughter of the man who’s threatening to kill their business – a business worth billions of dollars a year? A rival businessman?’
‘No!’ I shout. ‘None of it makes sense.’
I want Jay. I want him so badly I feel like I’m going to lose my mind. I want to cling on to him. I want him to help me figure it out. Then I remind myself I’m on my own. I bang on the door again, uselessly, feebly. ‘Let me out.’
‘We need your help, Olivia.’
I turn around. ‘My help?’ I ask, dumbfounded. ‘For what?’
‘To bring your father down.’
36
They leave me in the room alone with the now-cold coffee and a desk strewn with papers. I stand in the corner of the windowless box, staring at the table and not moving. They locked the door behind them. I heard the bolt sliding across. My fingers bite into the flesh of my arms. I glance up into the corner of the room at the camera, knowing that they are right this moment watching my every move.
I drop my arms and try to take stock. I need to get it together. But it’s difficult in here. I hate this feeling of being caged. Of being observed by unseen eyes. I want to be outside. I want to be up high. I need air.
What would be the purpose of lying to me? I ponder.
I can’t think of any reason. What Agent Kassel said about the relentlessness of the pursuit struck a chord. It didn’t make sense. Not until she put it the way she did. Why would they come after the daughter of the boss of a task force with no power?
The papers on the desk are beckoning me, but I fight the urge to step closer. I question why that is.
The answer is obvious. Because I’m scared.
Why am I scared?
Because I think she might be telling the truth.
I close my eyes. The walls shrink nearer, squeezing the air out of the room.
I stride to the desk, the camera feeling like a laser burning a hole in the back of my skull. Let’s see what proof they have.
Agent Kassel has left a sheet with the facts on the very top of the pile, clearly a deliberate move on her part. I pick it up though, holding it in both hands, trying not to let them shake. It’s similar to the UN Report summary I read at my dad’s.
Two point four million people across the globe are victims of human trafficking at any one time.
Only one in every hundred victims of trafficking is ever rescued.
My muscles feel as though they’ve been injected with a neurotoxin; they contract sharply, refusing to relax, and it’s getting hard to breathe. I collapse down heavily on to one of the plastic chairs and rifle through the rest of the papers. There’s a whole folder of surveillance notes – detailed ones – covering the last six months. I scan them and realise it’s a detailed list of every move my father has made, from taking his suits to the dry cleaner’s to the size of the coffee he bought at Starbucks. I flick forwards and find the date I arrived in the States. It’s there. My name. My flight time. There’s even a photograph of me walking through the arrivals hall. Another one, shot through a haze of people, of me hugging my dad. We’re both sharply in focus. My dad is almost picking me up off the ground and he is grinning, his face half buried in my hair. My throat squeezes closed, my eyes burn.
I toss the papers aside. Several of the sheets go floating off the table.
I grab something called a witness statement and I start to read.
By the time I finish reading, I’m sick to my stomach. Paperclipped to the back of the statement is a small photograph – a headshot of a woman. A girl, in fact. Not much older than me. It’s colour. All the better to showcase the split lip, puffy eye and look of hopeless defeat on her face. She was the one in a hundred. The girl who escaped and who managed to tell her story. The report says she’s from Oman. I stare at her photograph for several minutes absorbing the final sentence of her statement.
Witness identified Daniel Harvey from a photograph.
Daniel Harvey. My father. The room pulses, the walls pressing close. I have to force myself to breathe in, though it hurts so much I think I might suffocate.
Stapled together in a pile are close to thirty more witness statements. With shaking fingers I pick up the pile and read one more, but then I set the pile down. I can’t read on. The details are horrific. But even without them all you need to do is look at the photographs to get an idea of what these girls and women – and in some cases, boys – have been through. The lights have gone out in their eyes. They look unseeing into the camera in most cases, though some glare with defiance, some seem to burn with shame, others with anger. And even though they’ve been rescued, are considered the lucky ones, their expressions tell otherwise.
I move the statements to one side, my heart a ticking bomb.
At the bottom, just peeking out of the manila folder is a stack of photographs – black-and-whites mainly, glossy as varnished tiles, white bordered. Some are blurry and pixellated, like they’ve been taken through a blizzard, others are crisp as wedding shots.
Even in the out-of-focus shots I recognise my father. He’s a big man, hard to miss, his bearing military and upright. He has a thick head of dark hair that in the pictures shows not a trace of grey. In one shot, the biggest, he is standing alongside another man in what looks like a warehouse. There are massive containers in the background. A dock of some sort? I lean closer over the picture and then hold it up to the light, my heart beating faster and faster until it feels like it’s going to burst. It’s the cop. The other man is the cop who’s chasing us.
And my father is shaking hands with him.
I sit there for what feels like hours and I don’t move. I push all the paper to the edge of the table and I just stare at the wall opposite and try to keep my face impassive. But behind the façade I’m in a thousand jagged pieces. There will never be a way of putting them back together again. Numbness fights shock, fights anger, fights despair, fights disbelief. And rage threatens to overcome all of it. And I don’t want to feel any of this. I don’t want to feel anything. It’s too much.
I close my eyes and I picture myself in that basement with Felix. He’s holding my hand, murmuring softly, telling me how to grapple with my fear and lock it away. To survive that’s what you need to do, take control of all your emotions – not just fear – and lock them away. I have to think my way through this – and the only way
to do that is by locking all emotions down. Switching them off and using reason. Only, Felix morphs in my head into Jay. And he strokes the inside of my palm with his thumb and in the darkness I know he is shaking his head at me.
I hear the lock click in the door and my eyes flash open.
Agent Kassel is alone this time. I notice the badge on her belt, and the gun in its waist holster. I notice the tight-fitting white shirt tucked into her navy pants and I notice that Mrs Francis was right – she does look a bit like Jennifer Lopez. She sits down in the seat opposite me but I stand up.
‘No,’ I say. ‘If you want my help then I want to talk outside.’
37
I can tell they’re nervous because as well as Agent Kassel and Agent Parker, there are two other agents stationed by the stairs at the entrance to the High Line. The upside to them being FBI agents is that despite the fact the High Line is closed to the public until seven a.m., they’ve somehow managed to get access. It’s not yet four a.m. and the sky is velvet dark, with no sign yet of the approaching dawn.
I told them I would only talk up here, out in the open. They complied, but from the steel glares and unsmiling faces I can tell I’ve pushed the limits of their patience. It’s strange being here so early. The streets are almost quiet below. I can even hear birdsong. The rumble of traffic is replaced by the occasional rise and fall of a siren in the distance. I can pinpoint the sound of someone whistling on the sidewalk below us and the clanking sound of containers being unloaded at the wharf a few blocks over.
Agent Kassel keeps checking her watch. She looks like the consummate FBI agent from the movies, hands on her hips, scowling at me as though I’m Hannibal Lecter. I feel like I’m tainted by association with my father and a part of me realises that from now on every time I say my name I’m going to be hit with a wave of shame.
‘Your father stepped off a plane at JFK two hours ago,’ she tells me. ‘He’s just made it back to his apartment. Where’s he expecting to meet you? Here?’
Out of Control Page 21
