With a certain amount of reluctance he finally climbed out of the water and wandered back to his beach chair. Which was occupied.
“You’re…” Mike said and then paused.
“Daria,” the girl replied, getting up. She was about nineteen at a guess, one of the girls they’d recovered from Rozaje. Tall and statuesque, she had a great set of knockers and an air of naivete that had to be an act. “Sorry, was I in your chair… Kildar?”
“Call me Mike,” Mike said, waving for her to get back in the chair as he squatted down by it. “How are you doing?”
“The nightmares are less,” the girl said quietly. “We knew what we were there for; the guards made sure to tell us. And we could hear some of it. Girls would leave and not come back. I was sick when I arrived and I wasn’t presented.”
“Good thing,” Mike said. “I’m sure you would have been a first pick.”
“Thank you so much,” Daria replied, her face tight. “I thought the same. The doctor had just given me a clean bill of health. They told me I was going to be presented to the next… customer.”
“And now you’re not,” Mike said. “Be happy. Enjoy the sunshine knowing you’re going to get to keep enjoying it.”
“Am I?” Daria asked, pointedly.
“Uhmmm, yes,” Mike responded. “Right now, I can’t afford to let you leave. You’re still, effectively, a prisoner. But you won’t be raped or beaten and when this mission is done I’ll drop you anywhere you care. Back home if that’s what you want.”
“Home,” Daria said, quietly. “I don’t know if I recognize the word. If you’re talking about the Ukraine, there is nothing there for me.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Mike said, picking up his sunglasses.
“Where do you live?” Daria asked. “In Georgia? But you are American.”
“I’ve got reasons to live there,” Mike said, shrugging.
“And you have a house there,” the girl said, tilting her head to the side.
“And a harem.” Mike shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve been talking to the Keldara girls.”
“Is that where we will go?” she asked carefully.
“For a time,” Mike said, shrugging again. “Until we figure out what else to do with you. I’ve got to figure something out; the caravanserai’s going to fill up with women otherwise and then it’ll be nag, nag, nag all day and night. ‘Kildar, when will I have my turn? Kildar, can I have a new dress? Kildar, am I the prettiest?’ ” He grinned at the girl and was surprised to get a grin in return.
“I can tell you live with women,” Daria said. “You have that look.”
“Domesticated, that’s me,” Mike sighed. “Just a hopeless love slave to women’s desire…”
“And you get nothing?” Daria asked lightly.
“Oh, I suppose so,” Mike said, grinning again. “But I try to give as good as I get.”
“I get nothing,” Daria said, shrugging. “I was virgin until…”
“Get a good job in Western Europe?” Mike asked.
“Yes, but, I knew about the problems with that,” Daria said, frowning. “The thing was, the person who… sold me was my boyfriend!”
“Ouch,” Mike said, shaking his head. “That’s cold.”
“He said that he knew someone who could get me a job in Belgium,” Daria continued, looking out at the sea. “I am trained as secretary, yes? I can read and write in English, French and German. My boyfriend… well, he is not great man. Has no job but… I like him.”
“I had a girlfriend one time. She said that she was a bum magnet,” Mike said, nodding. “She wasn’t, by the way, referring to me. But… there are women who attract those sorts of guys like flies.”
“That is me,” Daria continued, her nose thinning in remembrance. “He is introduce me to another man who said he had contacts with business in Belgium…”
“I’m sure he did,” Mike said dryly.
“We meet… three times before I agree to take job,” Daria said, sighing. “He is having letterhead and letters of employment. But I have not the exit visa or entry visa, so Pasha…”
“Pasha?” Mike said, crinkling his brow. “Ahmed Pasha?”
“That was his name, yes,” Daria said. “And there was another man with him, Peter…”
“Looked like Santa Claus?” Mike asked.
“Yes!” Daria said, turning to look at him.
“You need to talk to Oksana,” Mike said, his jaw working. “So, you certainly didn’t make it to Belgium.”
“They took me over the border to Moldava,” Daria said. “There…”
“They raped you, beat you and took away your passport,” Mike said. “So you couldn’t leave without their aid. And sold you to the Albanians.”
“Yes,” Daria said, turning back to look at the ocean.
“Run into a guy named Dejti?” Mike asked.
“Yes,” Daria replied, quietly.
“Well, he sleeps with the fishes.”
Daria paused and frowned, then shrugged.
“That means nothing to me,” she admitted.
“American slang,” Mike replied. “It means I broke both his knees and then shot him through the head and dumped his body in a lake.”
“Oh,” Daria said, breathing out. “Oh.”
“I doubt you ran into a man named Nicu…”
“In Romania,” Daria said, her face hard. “It was he who sent me to Rozaje.” She paused and quirked an eyebrow. “Fishes?”
“Fishes.”
“I am not sure how I feel about that,” she admitted.
“That’s because you’re a nice girl,” Mike replied. “And I am not a nice man.”
“That I don’t believe,” Daria said, laughing breathlessly. “If you were not a nice man, we would have been left in the villa, still chained up, waiting for the next men to take us.”
“Believe it,” Mike said flatly. “Because I do nice things, does not mean I’m a nice man. The men who raped you, the men who beat you, simply do the things I would like to do. And occasionally do when a young lady likes that sort of thing. I’m not a nice man. A nice man would not beat another human being to death with a sledgehammer.”
“Dejti?” Daria asked.
“Nicu’s boss,” Mike replied.
“Dejti poked my breast with needles,” Daria said, softly. “And shocked me with electric cables. He hit me in the belly so hard I was peeing blood. He didn’t leave any scars on the outside…”
“But he left them on the inside,” Mike said.
“Many.” She paused again and then shrugged. “You know women who like this sort of thing?”
“My harem manager for one,” Mike said, smiling faintly. “Anastasia used to… belong to a shiek in Uzbekistan. She told me she was happy to come work for me, because he would not hit her hard enough. She likes to be whipped and hurt. Giving her what she wants, without causing scars, is hard.”
“She is your harem manager?” Daria said, shaking her head. “I have a hard time thinking about that.”
“They are girls that I picked up for various reasons,” Mike replied. “I didn’t know what to do with them, so I kept them as girlfriends, concubines really. They can leave any time, I even offer them a stake to get started. None of them took me up on it. When they get old enough to make it in the world, and educated enough, I’ll kick them out the door. In the meantime I’m giving them an education and a chance for a real life.”
“And they give you sex?” Daria said tightly.
“I don’t force them,” Mike said, shrugging. “Most of them were from small farms in the mountains. They considered it an honor, which surprised me. The thing they call me, Kildar, is a sort of nobleman in the area. But… yes, they give me sex. You can say they pay their way that way, but I prefer to think of it as consensual. We all live with the lies we tell ourselves.”
“Yes,” Daria said, sitting back and sighing. “That we do.”