“I’m going to have to think about that one,” Mike admitted. “Giving up the Keldara women is, clearly, out of the question.”
“I dunno,” another Keldara said. “There’s always Anisa…”
“Hey!”
Mike was leaning on the front of the lead van, looking at a map, when Cottontail came back out of the woods wiping at the corner of her lip with her thumb.
“Everybody satisfied?” Mike asked, cautiously. He hadn’t told her she was going to have to bribe border guards and he felt curiously shamed by the incident. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t screwed enough men for two more to be no big deal.
“They are,” she replied, archly.
“And are they alive?” With Cottontail you always had to ask.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I considered it, but it would interfere with the mission, no?”
“Yes, it would,” Mike said.
“And the mission is killing many slavers. This is a mission I like. I would not want it to fail.”
Her eyes were as clear and innocent blue as a child’s.
Chisinau was the capital of the small country of Moldava. Moldava was more an agreed upon border state between Russia and Romania than a real country. Russia had troops on the east side of the Dniester River to support the local Slavic ethnic groups so the central government couldn’t really call that “their” territory. The situation was so bleak, they’d even elected a communist as president and more or less regressed to a semi-communist, sort of Stalinist, failed state. Totally landlocked, the poorest country in Europe, its total exports were limestone, hookers and people looking for a real life somewhere else.
The team had been installed at the Hotel Stalin on the outskirts of town. The hotel was near an industrial area and if Chisinau had a better and worse part of town, it was in the worst. In keeping with the general dilapidation of the neighborhood, the hotel looked as if it had been used by every rocker at Woodstock. The carpet, where it wasn’t pulled up entirely, was about fifty years old and poorly made then. The rooms were filthy, the corridors were littered and the bathrooms didn’t bear description.
It also was doing a booming business. They’d barely been able to get enough rooms for all of them and when Mike checked out their fellow travellers he could see why. They weren’t the only people bringing girls through Moldava.
He wandered down to the bar, which gave “dive” a whole new meaning, and looked over the offerings. To his amazement, they had Johnny Walker Red.
“Walker,” he said, perching on the rickety stool. The bar was about half filled and the clientele was telling. The men were all beefy and from various bulges mostly armed. The women were all wearing damned near nothing and given the temperatures in the bar they had to be freezing. Most of them also seemed rather… subdued. As in “if I make a wrong sound, my pimp is going to beat the shit out of me. In public. And nobody will care.”
One of the girls had just had her head pushed under the table when he sensed someone coming up from his off-side.
“Where you in from?” a man said in Russian as he settled in the seat next to Mike.
“Georgia,” Mike said, honestly.
“Strange accent,” the man said, frowning. “You’re not Georgian.”
“American,” Mike admitted. “This is a way to pay the bills and the fringe benefits are great.”
“Now we’ve got Americans in the game,” the man grumped. “I am Ahmed Pasha. I saw some of your girls, though. Very nice. How much?”
“I’m taking them to Montenegro for an auction,” Mike said. “They’re not for sale. Mike Duncan.”
“I saw one, a blonde, very big breasts,” the man replied. “I’ll give you a thousand euros and you won’t have to feed her from here to Montenegro. I don’t keep them, myself, you know. I am broker and move them. I know men will give me good price for her.”
“I can get better money there,” Mike said, laughing. “The buyers are special, pimps with wealthy clients. They want virgins or damned near. Clean and undamaged so they can have them first and hard. That’s why I’ve got so much muscle with me, so the girls don’t have to be disciplined. I’ll go with the plan. What’s the word on the roads west?”
“Ungheni was covered when I came back through,” Pasha said. “You have to go all the way up to Balti to get through without a check. But the guards on Balti will usually take only five euros per passenger. They prefer euros. Here in Chinisau so many girls come through, so many men. Some have do this long time, some, like you, just getting started. I know everybody, can find best price for you. Fifteen hundred. She was very lovely. The one wearing the blue blouse. Very nice breasts. Very nice. I, too, have special customers and girls that good are getting hard to find.”
“They had guards on Ribnita,” Mike replied. “Five euros per passenger and they wanted a freebie. Fortunately I had one that had already been broken in or I’d have been out a lot of money. I’ve only been doing this for a while, yeah, but I’ve got a covered racket. Just me and my partner and we cut out the middlemen. When we’re done with them we sell them to guys like you; my partner handles that. No dice. Not even in the game. That’s Vanda and I’m looking at damned near ten grand for her first. You’d just dump her into the pipeline; if you’ve got special customers I’m the pope. What was happening in Romania?”
“Not much until you get near Cluj Napoca,” the man said. “There was a checkpoint on the E-60 near Tarnaveni. Real bastards when I went through west. They acted like I was transporting my girls for immoral purposes and against their will. The shame. And it was very expensive in bribes. Ten thousand in dollars or euros? It doesn’t matter, that is crazy. I can buy twenty girls for that.”
“Don’t know how far east you’re going, but we hit one like that near Novyi Buh,” Mike replied. “I explained to one of the girls that she had to talk us through. Or else. I understand, though, that there was a crackdown in Odessa and some of the guys are looking to move their more noticeable girls. You could probably get some good trades. And she’s not really for sale, anyway.”
“I operate here,” Pasha said. “Although I buy Ukrainian girls. And if you have any more like those, next time through, I’ll give you a good deal. I know all the men who buy and sell. I wonder who you know in Montenegro? Ammad? Tufa?”
“Neither,” Mike said. “Very small network; I doubt you’ve run into it. We get high price girls and charge Westerners, mostly American, for the privilege of breaking them in. Charge them through the nose. You have to have the contacts for that. My partner is connected in the States. Then we dump them in the regular channels. We’re in the market for those types of girls, though. Bringing these all the way from Georgia is a pain. You know a guy named Smegnoff? I understand he’s got some girls that I might want to buy.”
“Everyone has got girls,” Pasha said, shrugging. “Smegnoff, yes, he has some good ones sometimes. If you really want to see him, he is in the Café Arrendi in the evening. But so do my suppliers. And we don’t use them as hard as he does. He had one girl that tried to run away, so he broke her knees. She can walk only with a limp, now. Very sad.” He didn’t seem terribly broken up about it.
“I need them unused,” Mike said, standing up and tossing a twenty euro bill on the bar. “I can do with a couple of very high quality girls, very pretty, virgins, young. I’ll give you a good deal on them. I’ll be around for a couple of days if you get anything worth talking about.”