The Unwanted

by Brett Battles

  The only people who knew she was no longer on the job were her boss at the UN who had approved her request for emergency leave— "A family issue," she had said—and the two trusted colleagues whose help she'd needed to leave Côte d'Ivoire.

  The first thing she'd needed were papers to get out of the country. Not for herself, but for Iris. There was no way she was going to leave the child behind. One of her colleagues in Africa had assisted her with this. Noelle Broussard was the only one Marion had told the whole story to. Marion was afraid that if she didn't, the woman would have turned her in to the head of the mission instead of helping her to escape.

  It must have worked, because ten hours later her friend showed up at her hotel room near the UN compound with a full set of backdated adoption documents, naming Marion as Iris's mother, and a Canadian passport for the girl.

  And that wasn't all.

  "Here," the woman said, handing Marion a second packet.

  Marion looked inside. There was another set of papers and two additional passports.

  "What's this?" Marion asked.

  "In case of emergencies."

  Marion pulled out one of the passports. The picture inside was hers, but the name was different. Niquette Fournier. Hometown: Gatineau. The second passport was for Iris, only her name was listed as Isabel Fournier.

  "What am I supposed to do with these?" Marion asked, confused.

  "Maybe nothing," her friend said. She looked over at Iris. The girl was sitting on the bed, holding a doll, but she was watching the two women. The woman turned back to Marion. "Someone came looking for you earlier today."

  Marion felt a chill go up her spine. "What? Who?"

  "A man. A European, I think."

  "Caucasian?"

  "Yes. He asked about a woman with a child. An African child."

  "What did you tell him?" Marion asked.

  "I didn't talk to him. But I heard about it later. Since no one else knows about the girl, they didn't know who he was talking about."

  "Did he say who he was?"

  "No name, just said he worked for an NGO and needed to talk to . . . well, you, I guess." She nodded at the document packet in Marion's hand. "So hold on to those. If you don't want anyone to know where you are, they'll help. They're valid. No one will question you."

  Marion's initial thought had been that she and Iris would be safe once they were out of the country. But would they be? Would she and the child need to disappear completely?

  You need to get her away . . . you need to disappear . . . don't let anyone know where you are. Jan's words before Marion took Iris from the orphanage.

  She put both sets of documents on the end of the bed and picked up Iris.

  "Thank you," she said to her friend.

  The woman stood and walked to the door. "Be safe," she said, and then she was gone.

  Marion hugged Iris tightly, feeling the child smile against her cheek. So innocent. So vulnerable, yet almost always happy. She would be childlike for life, thanks to a genetic misfire, but in a way Marion envied that. But it was also that misfire, that malformed chromosome giving the child Down syndrome, that had made her both unwanted in her own community yet desired by men with guns who tried to steal her in the night.

  That's why Frau Roslyn had hidden the child at the first hint that her orphanage was going to be searched again. She had told Marion a few weeks earlier that there was a group on the lookout for discarded children of a certain type—those with traits that in the West would label them "special needs." Specifically those with either autism or Down syndrome. Other facilities had been searched, and word had spread among those who cared for the orphans in the city to be on their guard. Why someone wanted these children, Frau Roslyn had no idea. But whatever the answer was, she'd told Marion it could not have been good. And when Iris came into her possession, Roslyn had made Marion promise to do what she could to help keep the child safe. Only Marion hadn't realized at the time it would turn into this.

  After what she and the child had been through, Marion knew she'd done the only thing she could have. And no matter how difficult, it had been the right thing. She was even starting to rethink her plan to find Iris a real home once they were safe. The child's home should be with her. How could it not be?

  That was if Marion didn't get them killed first.

  She brought Iris back to New York on the first flight another colleague, one who worked at the UN headquarters in Manhattan, could get her and Iris on. At JFK Airport, she had been tense as she approached passport control. She had chosen to go with the set of documents bearing her own name, but still worried about those Noelle had given her for the child. But Iris's papers had held up, and they were both allowed into the country without a second look.

  Marion got a hotel room not far from Port Authority, but her sleep that night was counted in minutes, not hours. She told herself it was jet lag, though she knew that wasn't true. She'd been on edge for several days straight and now didn't know how to turn it off. She was up and out of the hotel with Iris before 7 a.m.

  "They'll keep looking for her," Frau Roslyn's cousin Jan had said. "You need to get her away. Once you do, you need to disappear. Don't let anyone know where you are. These people will find you. And once they have the girl, they'll kill you."

  She knew she should get out of New York, but there was something she needed to do first.

  She purchased an umbrella stroller for Iris from a Duane Reade drugstore on Fifth Avenue, then found a Kinkos.

  Using one of the pay-by-the-minute computers, she searched for any news from Côte d'Ivoire about similar abductions, either attempted or successful. She needed to try to find out what was going on, knowing it might be the only way to save the child. But there was nothing; no news that even hinted at anything other than what could best be described as normal kidnappings and abductions. She almost quit there, telling herself she should be satisfied with the results, that the desire for Iris was an aberration, that Jan had just been overly cautious. And now that she and Iris were thousands of miles away, everything would be fine.

  But she knew there was one more place she should check, a database that had more information than could be found in even the most ardent Internet searches.

  She glanced around the computer room with the sudden feeling a thousand eyes were staring at her. But the two other customers and the attendant behind the desk were preoccupied with their own concerns, and none had a direct view of her computer screen.

  She allowed her nerves to calm for a moment, then typed an address into the Web browser. Using her own password, she logged on to the United Nations employee site. Her friend Noelle back in Côte d'Ivoire had promised not to process her leave of absence for several days, thus ensuring she would still have access to the site. Still, Marion held her breath until the home screen came up.

  "Thank you," she whispered.

  It didn't take her long to navigate to the section she was looking for. Again, she had to use her password. Access to this area of the site was limited to those who worked in certain departments.

  She selected the databases she was interested in, typed in her parameters: kidnapping, children, Down syndrome, disabled, Côte d'Ivoire. She hit Enter. Nothing came up. She decided to change up her search tags, changing Côte d'Ivoire to western Africa in case there were some reports from the surrounding area. This time the search took all of forty-five seconds to complete. When it was done, it presented her with a list of seventy-three potential matches. But while she'd been looking for additional cases in Côte d'Ivoire and the surrounding area, she'd actually found reports from countries spread across the globe: Guatemala, Rwanda, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mexico, and at least a half-dozen other developing nations.

  Marion skimmed the list. She had seen similar reports before. Most would be secondhand observations from locals telling UN officials what they had seen. She eliminated those that were of no interest to her. When she was done, she was still left wi
th forty-four items, many of them several pages long. Beside her, Iris stirred in the stroller. She'd be awake soon, wanting something to eat and some attention. Marion decided the best route was to print out the ten most promising reports and take them back to her hotel to read.

  By the time she finished, Iris was fully awake, and sitting in her lap.

  Iris made a fussy noise as if to say she wanted to be anywhere but here.

  "Just one more," Marion whispered in the child's ear.

  She hit Print, then logged off the computer.

  After collecting her printouts, she wheeled Iris up to the counter to check out.

  "Cute girl," the woman said as she handed Marion her change.

  "Thanks," Marion said.

  "Is she yours?"

  "Eh . . . no," Marion said, taken aback by the question. Beside the fact that it was rude, Marion's sense of security kicked in. A Caucasian woman with an African baby would be remembered. "I'm just babysitting for a friend."

  "Well, it looks like you're doing a pretty good job," the woman said. "What's her name?"

  Another moment of panic. "Emily," Marion said, then immediately regretted it. Emily was her sister's name.

  The attendant leaned over the counter. "Hi, Emily. How are you?"

  Iris smiled at the woman.

  The look on the woman's face began changing from one of happiness to one of curiosity. Marion knew the woman had seen there was something different in the child's face—the epicanthic folds at the corner of the girl's eyes, her nose broad yet smaller than normal.

  Before the woman could say anything, Marion wheeled Iris toward the door and out onto the street. As they headed away, she knew she could never return to this particular branch again.

  She got them a room in a hotel just off Times Square. That evening, after Iris fell asleep on the bed, Marion was finally able to read through the reports. Some were only a paragraph, and some were several pages. A few had been investigated, but most had not. There was a note in the report from Bangladesh saying the story was probably fabricated, and that the people involved were most likely just trying to get some money out of the UN.

  Marion would have believed it once. But not now.

  The targets were always the same: unofficial orphanages where the parentless came to live because there was nowhere else. There was no set hour when the abductors would arrive. Sometimes it was during the day, sometimes night. But they always came for the same thing, for the special children, the ones like Iris. The children no one else wanted.

  It was the report from Afghanistan that was most interesting. The details of the kidnapping were pretty much the same. Several tough-looking men showed up at a building dozens of children called home. Once the men had what they wanted, they were gone. But it was the final paragraph that caught her attention.

  A vehicle was stopped at a U.S. military checkpoint. Inside was a Caucasian male. He was accompanied by a driver and a bodyguard, both Afghanis. There was also a child in the car. The soldier couldn't say for sure, but he guessed the young boy was about six years old. Though the soldier had no way of knowing, the basic physical description he gave matched that of the boy kidnapped the previous day. The Caucasian man said he was a doctor, and that they were transporting the child to a facility in Kabul for treatment. He produced paperwork backing up his story. Seeing no threat, the soldier let them through. "Our job isn't to look for doctors transporting disabled kids," he told an investigator later.

  The report surmised that the supposed kidnapping and the doctor with the child in the car were unrelated. Again, Marion might have believed that, too, at one time.

  After she finished reading all the reports, a part of her wished she had stopped with her simple Internet search. Her mind might have been more at ease then. She would have assumed the incident involving Iris had been an isolated event. But now she knew that wasn't true. It wasn't even some localized event happening just in Côte d'Ivoire or even just West Africa. No, it was much bigger than that.

  The next day she decided to collect as much information as she could. She wasn't sure who she would give it to, but someone had to know. And the more evidence she had, the better chance she had of someone listening. She found a coffeehouse with a couple of computers in back, and signed on to the UN site again. She got through the first portal fine, but when she attempted to navigate into the restricted area she'd been in the day before, her access was denied. A message popped up asking her to call the system administrator at her earliest convenience.

  That was the moment she knew she'd made a serious mistake.

  Immediately she logged off and left. She took Iris down into the subway system and randomly rode the trains as she tried to think what she should do. At Times Square she got off and found a pay phone.

  She called the UN, but not the system administrator's office. She dialed the extension for the friend who had helped her with the airplane tickets, a Dutchman named Henrick Roos.

  "It's Marion," she said, before he could speak.

  "Marion?" Roos said. "Are . . . you all right?"

  "I need you to check something for me," she said. "I seem to be locked out of everywhere but our main site. It was fine up until this morning. Is everyone having problems or is it just—"

  "You should probably come in," he cut her off.

  She paused. "Why?"

  "There are some . . . questions that need to be answered."

  "What questions?"

  "It would be best if you just came in. I'm sure it will all be fine."

  "Okay," she said, trying not to let her fear seep into her voice. "If you think that's best."

  "Yes. I do," Roos said. "When . . . can we expect you?" His words were unnatural, forced.

  Marion took a deep breath, and did a quick calculation in her mind. "I can be there in an hour and a half. Two tops," she said.

  "We'll see you then."

  He hung up without letting her say goodbye.

  For a second the world seemed to pull away from her. She was standing in one of the busiest places on Earth, yet she felt like she was alone in the middle of a large clearing, visible for anyone to see her. A small cry reminded her that she was anything but alone. Marion reached down and pulled Iris out of the stroller.

  "It's all right, sweetie," Marion said, hugging the child. "Everything's fine."

  Iris rested her cheek against Marion's shoulder.

  "I won't let anyone hurt you," Marion whispered.

  Two hours, she thought. By then they'd realize she wasn't coming.

  The only question was, how far away could she get by then?

  CHAPTER

  12

  DAYLIGHT INVADED THE ROOM FROM SOMEWHERE. Quinn forced his eyes open, not really wanting to wake up, but knowing that it must be time. The light was coming from around the edges of the curtain covering the window on the far side of the room—the whiter light of midday, not the yellow of morning.

  The room was as old and tired now as it had been when he'd entered it early that morning. The bedspread, the dresser, the nightstands, even the television, all relics of an older time. But as a place to sleep, it had done fine.

  Quinn struggled for a moment to remember the name of the place. The Murphy? Marsh? No, the Morgan Motel. Just south of Albany, he remembered.

  Quinn turned away from the window to reach for his watch when he realized he was alone in the bed.