SAVE THE GIRLS: A JAMIE AUSTEN SPY THRILLER (THE SPY STORIES Book 1)

by Terry Toler

  One thing she appreciated about him. He didn’t make an issue about things he couldn’t do anything about. If the mission went well, he’d probably not ask anything more about the boys. If it went bad, he’d bring it up several times and tell her everything she did wrong.

  “What I have found is very interesting?”

  “How so?”

  “I haven’t found anything. No red light districts. No street walkers. No websites. How is that possible in a country the size of Belarus?”

  “I know you’ve only been there for two days,” Brad continued, “but you always say you’re the best, Ms. Torres. You’ll find something.” He said the name sarcastically.

  Brad’s stab at humor. Gina Torres played Superwoman in an old movie version. Better than his other nickname for her, Miss March. Depending on the context, he used it to refer to her as either the dominating woman from the book Little Women or a March Playboy centerfold. Neither of which she cared for and gave him an equally hard time about it. Although, if truthful, she enjoyed the banter. Made her feel like one of the boys.

  “This isn’t like Thailand. There aren’t brothels on every corner. I haven’t seen a single prostitute.”

  “What about strip clubs and casinos?”

  “I was just getting to those.”

  “Go get dressed up in your sexiest outfit and go to the strip clubs and casinos and get noticed. Flash your wares. That will get some attention.”

  “I think that comment borders on sexual harassment.”

  “The laws don’t apply in other countries. I already checked.”

  Jamie let out a slight chuckle.

  “I was reading about forced government labor,” Jamie said, his comment about government laws sparking something she’d seen on the internet and wanted to ask him about. Also providing a good opportunity for her to change the subject. “Do you know anything about that?” Jamie asked. Nothing was mentioned about it in her briefing, but it was something very prevalent in Belarus.

  “We know about it,” Brad responded. “It’s in the ILO report.”

  The ILO report listed “forced labor” as one of the reasons for Belarus’s low Tier 3 score. A law allowed Belarusians suffering from alcohol or drug dependency to be interned in medical labor centers for a period of twelve to eighteen months.

  “I read where more than 6,500 people are in those centers. Somebody could be trafficking some of those workers. I didn’t find any evidence. Could the government get away with that without the CIA knowing about it?” Jamie asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Brad said. “If the government was behind it, I think we’d know about it. Besides, there’s not enough money in it for the government to get involved. They might look the other way, but I don’t think they’d let their state-controlled factories become a front for sex trafficking. They can make more off the girls by forcing them to make products.”

  “I read something unbelievable.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you know that in Belarus, if parents have their kids taken away from them, they have to work in a government job? If a person is unemployed gets a disability or something, they have to work for the government. Seventy percent of their wages are taken from them. Not like the US where you can draw unemployment or disability for months or years. Just the opposite here.”

  There were no government safety nets in Belarus. You were punished if you fell on hard times and didn’t get out of it right away. That would certainly create an environment that might force women to turn to sell their bodies rather than working for the government.

  How would she infiltrate government run operations if they were the ones behind trafficking three hundred girls a month?

  “I wouldn’t waste my time running down that rabbit hole. That’s communism. Nothing you can do about it. Has nothing to do with sex trafficking. Let’s make the eradication of communism your next mission.”

  She almost heard him chuckle to himself. Not quite. But almost.

  “I hear you,” Jamie said, somberly. “I thought the same thing.”

  “Casinos and strip clubs,” Brad said again with emphasis. “You need to go pay them a visit.”

  “What about my friend?”

  “You’ll just have to wait until he schedules the next performance.”

  “That reminds me. Do you have another person working here?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m being followed. By a professional. I wondered if it was one of ours. Are you checking up on me?”

  “I’ll get back to you on that.”

  Brad’s way of saying he wasn’t going to answer that question.

  “Be careful,” were his last words, and then the line went dead. The way he usually signed off signaling the conversation was over.

  Jamie was getting frustrated. She paused to think through the information as she walked back to the hotel. This was going to be harder than she thought it would be. The prostitution and sex trafficking in Belarus were either deep underground, and in the shadows… or right in plain sight.

  She considered that possibility. Looking at the obvious places wasn’t getting her anywhere. She needed to think outside the box. Consider possibilities she’d never considered before. Nothing immediately came to mind.

  She went back to the hotel and logged back onto the computer and continued searching but this time focusing on how the government was fighting sex trafficking to see if there were any arrests or initiatives that stood out to her. The fight against sex trafficking was in plain sight. The government had funded a campaign and placed billboards around the city of Minsk warning women about sex trafficking. She had taken a picture of one and saw it again when she was scrolling through her saved photos. A good idea. One the US should consider.

  The government of Belarus even had websites to fight sex trafficking. They warned women to be wary of scams. They listed some of them. For instance, women were warned of the promise of high-paying jobs in foreign countries. When they arrived for the interviews, they were kidnapped and sold into slave labor.

  Another website warned women not to fall for a telemarketer calling to say they had won a free trip, all expenses paid. One woman in Germany did fall for it. When she got to Egypt, she was kidnapped and sold into the sex trade. Her dead body was discovered after the press got hold of the story. Women didn’t go missing while traveling abroad from European countries without the national press drawing attention to it.

  Jamie remembered Shelly Howell, a young American girl traveling to Belize on vacation with her friends for spring break. She went missing, and a lot of people speculated she was a victim of sex trafficking. Turns out she was killed by a boy she left the hotel with. Didn’t have anything to do with sex trafficking at all. That was the point. Kidnapping and trafficking were hard to pull off and continue as an ongoing operation in developed countries. Certainly not to the extent of three hundred women a month. Everything Jamie read about Belarusian women were that they were sophisticated and well educated. Sex trafficking generally preyed on the poor and uneducated.

  Awareness of the dangers of sex trafficking was actually taught to young girls in Belarusian schools. So much so that most women didn’t fall for those scams anymore. And while they can be effective to a certain extent, it’s only for a short time. People catch on to them quickly, and certainly three hundred women a month wouldn’t fall for something so simple. And if they were being kidnapped, where were the police reports? She only remembered seeing the one article about the one missing woman in another country.

  Jamie thought about a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Amaliya Farhod she rescued in Thailand. Amy, as Jamie called her, was born to an impoverished family in Uzbekistan. Her mother died when she was young, and it left her with the responsibility to care for her four siblings since she was the oldest. Her monthly wage was twelve dollars. A woman approached her and told her she could make a lot of money in Bangkok, Thailand, making cellular phones. The woman said she woul
d arrange all of the transportation. Amy eagerly said yes.

  When Amy got to Thailand, the woman destroyed all of her documents, passport, visa, and entry paperwork. She gave her little food and no money and forced her to work as a prostitute on the streets of Bangkok. Amy had to pay her back for her travel expenses, and then she would be allowed to go to work at the factory.

  She was forced to have unprotected sex with dozens of men each week. If she didn’t, the woman told her she would never get to work at the factory and would never see her family again. Amy calculated she made more than $10,000 a month for the lady and had more than paid her back.

  She tried to tell a policeman on the street about what the woman was making her do. He stood there with Amy until the woman came to pick her up. Instead of arresting her, the policeman told the woman what Amy had told him. The woman took Amy back to her house and beat her nearly to death. Amy was trapped and didn’t know where to turn.

  Jamie met her outside a hotel where she had just completed a trick. She was crying. Jamie asked her what was wrong. At first, Amy didn’t know if she could trust Jamie. Finally, she opened up. Said she was angry because a woman had tricked her into coming to Thailand and then tore up her passport. The woman beat her and made her have sex with men. All she had were the clothes on her back.

  Jamie asked her if she was waiting for the lady who had brought her to Thailand. Normally, Jamie would’ve taken Amy to a shelter and got her help, but she saw an opportunity to get the sex trafficker arrested.

  When the lady arrived, Jamie detained her and called the police. At Jamie’s insistence, the woman was arrested. Amy couldn’t leave Thailand to go back home until she testified against the lady. It went to court, but Amy was so scared to see the lady, she was afraid to testify. With the language barrier, she had a hard time answering the judge’s questions. The trafficker was freed on bail and disappeared. To Jamie’s knowledge, she was never prosecuted. The organization, Save the Girls, did pay to have Amy sent back to Uzbekistan and gave her some money to get back on her feet.

  As she thought about that story, Jamie didn’t think Belarusian women were vulnerable enough to fall for such a scheme. Jamie was missing something, and she didn’t know what it was. One link kept coming up in her searches, sparking Jamie to investigate further.

  An ongoing tie between Turkey and Belarus.

  Several years before, a Turkish citizen was arrested and sentenced to seven years for organizing sex tours to Turkey. His accomplice was captured and sentenced a year later. The article said the funds from the sex trafficking pipeline were going directly to Turkey to fund terrorism. That article described something similar to what she was looking for.

  Why Turkey? Turkey was one thousand, one hundred twenty-five miles from Belarus with the Black Sea between the two countries. People had to travel through several other countries to get there. That seemed implausible, and yet the ties were there.

  On a whim, she looked up newspaper articles about business ties between Belarus and Turkey. She noticed a Turkish businessman recently had been making significant investments in Belarus. He purchased a hotel, a casino, and a nightclub. All three of those could be viewed as fronts for prostitution. Jamie’s instincts told her to dig further. One of the articles had a picture of the man standing next to the President of Belarus.

  The man’s name was Omer Asaf.

  Had she heard that name somewhere before? Seems like it, but she couldn’t remember where. She made a mental note to ask Brad the next time they spoke. Googling his name brought up more information about him.

  Asaf was number sixty-four on the list of the world’s top one hundred richest men. His net worth was estimated at 13.2 billion dollars. Jamie let out a slight gasp. The business tycoon made most of his money in real estate but also had interests in wholesale trade and personal grooming products. Did he have any investments in the US? She searched but couldn’t find any. Strange that a man that wealthy had no obvious business dealings in the United States.

  She studied his picture carefully. Omer Asaf was short, probably five feet six inches, good looking, and wore expensive clothes in the picture. He’d never been married but was said to be a playboy. He must be an important man to get his picture taken with Bobrinsky.

  She dismissed the thought. Why would a successful businessman like Asaf traffic in women? He obviously didn’t need the money.

  Jamie googled Belarus women and sex.

  A link to a website called Belles of Belarus came up. A mail order bride business run out of Pinsk, Belarus, was owned by an anonymous Turkish businessman.

  Asaf?

  The business matched Belarusian women with American men. Hundreds of pictures of ladies came up on the website. All in glamorous poses, well dressed, and made up to look attractive to American men. The company was doing a big business to have that many girls signed up.

  She scrolled through the pictures of the women and was stunned by the natural beauty of Belarusian women. Most had blue or green eyes, and beautiful faces. They were all generally slender and curvy. She was also struck by how modest they appeared. They didn’t wear too much makeup and didn’t dress provocatively, even though they were obviously trying to attract a husband. The women on that website, if they were representative of all women in Belarus, didn’t seem like they would be easily fooled into a sex trafficking scam.

  She scanned the net for any reports of any mail order brides who were reported missing. Nothing came up. Another dead end.

  She logged off the computer, somewhat frustrated. The only lead she had were nightclubs and casinos. And at least one nightclub and one casino had a tie to Turkey, which had a tie to sex trafficking in the past. Not much to go on, but she had to start somewhere. She’d start with the ones owned by Asaf.

  Jamie went back up to the room, showered, and changed into nice clothes. A tight, mini, LBD with high heels. A faux-fur, leopard-print, half jacket over it. She looked in the mirror satisfied she was dressed for the part.

  For two days, she’d been trying to stay under the radar and not be noticed. Tonight, she wanted to make sure she was noticed. Follow Brad’s instructions and show off her wares.

  She looked at herself in the mirror one more time.

  I will definitely be noticed.

  The question was noticed by who?

  14

  Denys, the Minister of Transportation, stood in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Old Town, at Liberty Square, waiting nervously for the CIA operative who was to meet him there at six p.m. He always felt uneasy at these meetings but particularly so for this one, considering the woman CIA operative he was to meet the night before hadn’t shown up. He looked at his watch which read two minutes after six and wondered if the second operative would be a no show as well.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, allowing himself a few moments to take in his surroundings. Not a religious man, it had been years since he’d been in any church. A little boy since he had been in this one, even though it was one of the most famous historical landmarks in Minsk, and one his mother had attended religiously back when she was alive.

  A number of people were in the cathedral, some saying their evening prayers. Also a large number of tourists were taking in the baroque architecture and its beautiful frescoes and artwork. The church contained two holy relics the pilgrims and tourists alike traveled miles to see—the relics of Princess Saint Sophia of Slutskaya, and the Mother of God icon. His mother had told him all about both.

  Princess Sophia lived at a time when orthodox faith in Belarus was forbidden and persecuted. She and her father had refused to convert to Catholicism. Documents verifying her refusal to deny the faith were stored in a shrine in the cathedral.

  She was granted sainthood after a number of women were reportedly miraculously healed at her gravesite. Many people believed the shrine with her documents stored at the church contained miraculous healing powers as well. Denys always wondered why the Princess could not heal herself if
she had such powers. Something he never voiced to his mother so as not to face her wrath.

  Also, at the cathedral was the Mother of God Icon, a painting of the Virgin Mary that had been in Minsk since 1500. Legend said the evangelist Luke was the actual author of the icon. More than four and half feet tall and three feet wide Denys admitted it was as an amazing work of art along with a religious icon. Legend had it that the icon was captured by a Tatar in 1500 and was thrown into the Svislach River in Kiev. It was supposedly found floating in the river near Minsk and fished out of the river by some peasants who placed in safe keeping until it eventually became part of the church.

  It also was purported to contain miraculous powers, and people came from all over to pray for the sick in front of it. Denys’s mother, a deeply religious woman often came to the cathedral and prayed at the relics when she or a family member was sick. Perhaps that was why Denys was not a religious man. His sister died of a lung ailment at age forty-six, her mom’s prayers to the patron saints and relics having gone unanswered.

  He tried to put the thoughts of his mother and sister out of his mind. The operative was ten minutes late. Something was going on. Anger began to rise inside of him. He was the one risking everything to meet with them. He had vital information to share. On time for each meeting, they needed to afford him the same courtesy or he would not continue to take such risks.

  He processed through the instructions for the meet in his mind. He was to enter the church and stand on the far, right side in front of the first shrine. At six o’clock p.m. He was to wait no longer than fifteen minutes. If the operative didn’t show, then he was to leave immediately. That meant something happened.

  Denys was worried about the girl. He knew she was under scrutiny by local law enforcement. He’d learned she was a suspect in a beating of a couple of boys in an alley behind the Piatra Brooka Literary Museum. The attack occurred about six o’clock p.m. the night before. Right about the time they were scheduled to meet. The obvious reason why the operative didn’t make it. He’d hope this meeting took place so he could get a message to her. Maybe the man he was meeting with that night could get her the message.