'Don't worry,' said Carver. 'I've had all the excitement I can stand.'
32
Jana Kreutzmann was the last passenger to board the flight from Berlin, dashing through the terminal towards the departure gate, calling out to the ground staff, imploring them not to close the flight, gasping her thanks and apologies as she stood by their desk and presented her boarding pass. She was always late, always rushing, always trying to fit twenty-five hours of passionate commitment into every twenty-four-hour day.
Ten years ago, a boyfriend had taken her to see the E55 highway that ran from Dresden in the old East Germany through to Prague in the Czech Republic. One stretch of the highway close to the town of Teblice, just over the Czech side of the border, had become infamous for the hundreds of East European prostitutes who touted for trade. They clustered in the neon-lit doorways and outdoor drinking areas of countless sleazy roadside bars. They fought for customers, grabbing and embracing the men who got out of passing cars and trucks. The men would grab them back, pawing and prodding the prostitutes like shoppers sampling fruit in a marketplace.
Prices started at thirty euros for half an hour of sex, and rose to 250 for an entire night's pleasure, either at a girl's tawdry room, with thick grime on the window-frames and no sheets on the bed, or at one of the neighbourhood hotels that catered for prostitutes and their Johns. All the while, the girls' pimps would lurk in the background, forcing their stables to work harder, making sure that none of the men tried to get away without paying. The entire operation was controlled by criminal gangs. Local police, all bought and paid for, had become an irrelevance.
Jana had been working for Amnesty International then, as had her boyfriend, Dieter. He had hoped that his righteous indignation at the appalling exploitation of innocent young women by evil men would earn him a fuck out of political solidarity, if nothing else. But he had miscalculated Jana's response.
Her outrage, unlike his, was not remotely synthetic. When they got back to their hotel, 20 kilometres away, she pulled out her laptop and went online. It took her just a couple of minutes to find sex-guides advising men how to get to the highway's busiest stretches and what they could expect when they got there.
'Listen to this!' Jana had exclaimed as Dieter lay in bed, wondering when the hell she was going to climb in next to him.
Jana started reading from the screen: ' "Unfortunately, most girls do not show much enthusiasm in bed. At least the prettier ones usually lie passively in bed, but if you show them how you want them to handle you they seem quite obedient. They are also often grateful for tips, because they see little or nothing of your payment, after the bar and her pimp take their share. This may also explain their lack of enthusiasm." Can you believe that? These guys know that the prostitutes are basically slaves, who don't even get paid for letting men abuse their bodies, but they still complain because they aren't enthusiastic. Pigs! Fucking pigs!'
'Don't worry about them,' said Dieter. 'Come to bed, huh?'
'What? And have sex? With you? So you can tell your friends that I am not enthusiastic but, oh yes, I am very obedient when I am told what to do? Are you crazy?'
Jana had never again let Dieter anywhere near her. Instead she had devoted herself to the cause of all the women and children around the world who were trafficked and forced into sex-slavery. Subsisting on occasional donations and fees from speeches and journalism, Jana Kreutzmann had spoken to abused women, confronted the criminals who so cruelly mistreated them and lobbied politicians. She had displayed manic determination and unflinching courage and slowly, as the years went by, she had helped to make a difference. The media that had once regarded her as an obsessive, feminist nutcase now saw her as a twenty-first-century heroine. The criminals who had once dismissed her as an insignificant irritant now saw her as an increasingly dangerous threat to their business.
Official recognition was shown to her too. The European lawmakers in Brussels regularly called her, and paid for her consultancy. Now the Nobel Institute, the organization behind the Nobel Prizes based in Oslo, had invited her to a symposium bringing together academics, campaigners and media experts who specialized in the issue of people-trafficking. Together, they would compile a paper to be presented to the Anti-Slavery Conference. Over the past few days Jana had heard rumours that President Lincoln Roberts himself would be addressing the conference. His support, even if it were little more than a gesture, would be a huge boost to the anti-slavery movement.
As she collapsed into her seat and began her flight to Oslo, Jana Kreutzmann felt for the very first time as though she might just be on the winning side.
33
Presidential speechwriter Bobby DiLivio chewed on the end of a newly sharpened pencil. 'OK,' he said, taking it out of his mouth and tapping it on a legal pad in front of him, 'how about this? "Human trafficking is a scourge in the world, a stain upon the conscience of civilized society." What do you guys reckon – too much alliteration, maybe?'
'How about too many friggin' cliches?' sniped his colleague Josh Grunveld, laughing as he dodged the ball of paper DiLivio flung in his direction.
Over at the far end of the White House writers' room, Thornton Black, the third member of the team working on the President's Bristol speech, paced up and down the carpet, squeezing a black and yellow Nerf ball in his hands.
'Don't worry about the cliches, man. That's Roberts's genius. He turns that trash into pure gold.'
'You calling my work trash?' DiLivio asked, beginning to bridle.
'Man, this is politics, it's all trash,' Black replied. 'So, did you guys see that story in the Huffington Post, the one about that sex-slave kid that got rescued in, I don't know, Dubai? Abu Dhabi? Some place like that – Middle East, anyway. Story came out of the London Times…'
'Nuh-huh,' muttered DiLivio, chewing the pencil again.
Grunveld frowned. 'Was that the one where the dude killed the Indian guy? Yeah, think I remember that…'
'So, would it be a totally crazy idea to get that chick over to England for the speech?' Black went on. 'The way the guy wrote it, she sounded pretty cute. I'm thinking a black president with a white slave, that's an image, right? God, that shot's going to be on every front page in the whole damn world…'
'Why stop there?' Grunveld asked. 'We could get a little slumdog and some old Chinese dude, make it a real rainbow nation.'
'Aw, come on, man, I'm trying to be serious here,' Black protested.
'You know, it could even make some money,' said DiLivio. 'If we got enough kids, from enough different countries, we could auction 'em off to Hollywood celebrities after the speech. Get Madonna and Angelina bidding against each other, who knows how high it could go? Pay for the whole trip.'
'Good to know you take the scourge of the century so seriously, DiLivio. Always helps a speech when it's written from the heart.'
'C'mon, Thorn, you know I was kidding.'
'Yeah, well, I wasn't. I honestly think this kid could make the whole thing real. Put a face on the problem, y'know? Give people something they can understand, not just a bunch of fine words and big numbers. The chick was eighteen when she got sold by her own aunt, for Christ's sake. She was flown thousands of miles and forced into prostitution… People are going to look at her, think, "Gee, she could be our daughter." That's what I mean – she makes it real.'
'You know, Thorn, that's not a totally dumb-ass idea… considering it's one of yours,' Grunveld conceded. 'You should think about it, Bob.'
'OK, I'll take it to Hal, see what he says,' said DiLivio, as Thornton Black shouted, 'Yes!' and danced a touchdown celebration. 'Now, the speech… How about I make it, "Human trafficking is a curse upon the world"?'