“Did you get my message?” she asked, sitting down and catching her breath.
Dr. Lukas nodded. “It’s all right,” she said, tapping the paperback she was reading. “I have my book. I was prepared to wait. They know me here. They are very understanding.”
Annie browsed the menu, which was decidedly traditional, and decided on ratatouille. Dr. Lukas had already settled on bouillabaisse. Once they’d got their orders in, the doctor poured Annie a glass of Chablis and topped up her own.
“I’m sorry I made you come all this way,” she said, “but I couldn’t possibly tell you over the telephone.”
“It’s all right,” said Annie. “I had to come back anyway. You’re going to tell me everything?”
“Everything I know.”
“Why not tell me before?”
“Because the situation has changed. And things have gone too far.”
The waiter appeared with a basket of bread and Annie broke off a chunk and buttered it. She hadn’t eaten on the train and realized she was starving. “I’m listening.”
“It’s very difficult for me,” Dr. Lukas began. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”
“Helping the girls?”
“Not that so much. If I hadn’t done it, who would?”
“Is it about Carmen Petri?”
“Only partly. To understand what I have to say, you have to know where I come from. L’viv is a very old city, a very beautiful city in many ways, with many fine ancient buildings and churches. My mother was a seamstress until arthritis made her fingers of no more use. My father was a mining engineer. My parents remember when Jews were rounded up and killed by the Germans in the war. You hear about the massacre at Babi Yar, near Kiev, but there were many smaller massacres elsewhere, including L’viv. My parents were lucky. They were children then and they hid and were not found. When I lived there, Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. I grew up in a modern part of the city, ugly Stalinist blocks. We were poor and ill-fed, but there was a strong sense of community, and sometimes you could even believe in the ideals behind the reality of the revolution. When Ukraine became an independent state in August 1991, things were chaotic for a while. Nobody knew what was going to happen. That was when I left.”
Annie listened, interested in Dr. Lukas’s story but curious as to where it was leading. Before long, their food was served and Dr. Lukas poured more wine. As if reading Annie’s mind, she smiled and said, “You might be wondering where all this is going, but please indulge me.” She talked more about her childhood, the state school, unsanitary living conditions, her ambition to become a doctor. “And here I am,” she said. “Ambition fulfilled.”
“You must be very proud.”
Dr. Lukas frowned. “Proud? Yes. Most days. Then, about a year ago, a man came to see me at my home. I remembered him from school, from the building in L’viv where his family lived, close to mine. He said he had heard I was a successful doctor here through his parents, who had read an article about me in the local newspaper. It’s true. Many people left Ukraine, but their stories continue to be of interest to those who have not experienced the world outside.”
“What did he want?”
“When he was at school, he was a bully. When he got older, he and his gang terrorized the building we lived in, extorting money, burgling apartments, selling black-market goods. Nobody was safe from him. Then suddenly he was gone. You can imagine how relieved we all were.”
“But he turned up here, in London?”
“Yes. He told me he traveled all around Europe, learning the ways of the free world, the free economy, and his training in L’viv served him well.”
“He’s the man who sends the late girls to you, isn’t he?”
Dr. Lukas said nothing for a moment. She had turned pale as she was talking, Annie noticed, and her bouillabaisse sat mostly uneaten in front of her. Finally, she whispered, “Yes. That’s what he is now. A pimp. When he first came to see me it was because one of his girls had problems with her periods that made her unreliable. Then he realized what a good idea it would be for me to be their unofficial doctor, so to speak. And that was the start of it all.”
“And this has been going on for a year?”
“Yes.”
“And how many girls have you seen during that time.”
“Maybe fifteen, sixteen.”
“All pregnant?”
“Most. Some had sexually transmitted infections. One had a bad rash in her pubic area. One girl was bleeding from her anus. Whatever it was, he brought them to me at the center after it was closed for the day. I would get a phone call telling me to stay late.”
“Why did you help him?” Annie thought she knew the answer to the question as she was asking it, but she needed to hear it from Dr. Lukas. A noisy party across the room broke into gales of laughter.
Dr. Lukas looked over at them, then she turned to face Annie, her expression somber. “He told me he would kill my parents back in L’viv if I didn’t do as he said or if I told anyone. I know he can do it. He still has contacts there.”
“What’s changed?”
“My parents are no longer in L’viv. They have left for America to live with my brother in San Francisco. I was waiting to hear the confirmation that they have arrived. They telephoned me today.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t care about me,” said Dr. Lukas. “Besides, he’s not going to hurt me. I’m far too useful to him alive.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Annie said, “he’ll be in jail.”
Dr. Lukas laughed. “Yes,” she said. “Running his empire from a cell. And on the outside someone will replace him. Another monster. The world has no shortage of monsters.” She shook her head. “But it’s gone far enough. Poor Jennifer… that man…”
“Roy Banks was his name. What about Carmen Petri?”
Dr. Lukas gave Annie a curious look. “That was the beginning of the end, really. Carmen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Until Carmen, I could turn a blind eye, could even believe that what I was doing was good and that the girls had better lives as prostitutes here than they would in their war-torn villages and towns back home. I didn’t know the truth. Like everyone, I thought they chose to do what they did, that there must be something wrong with them to start with, something bad about them. I was naive.”
“How did Carmen change this?”
“The girls wouldn’t talk. I asked them about their lives but they refused to tell me anything. They were too scared. Carmen… she was a bit more confident, more intelligent… I don’t know. Perhaps it was even Jennifer, the way she was kind to her. Whatever the reason, Carmen did let something slip.”
“What was that?”
“She told me that one of the new girls had been locked in a small room and beaten because she refused to perform some vile sex act. She also told me that the girl had been on her way home from school in a small village in Bosnia when two men abducted her by knifepoint and forced her into prostitution. She was fifteen. That was the first time I realized that these girls didn’t start out one step from prostitution in the first place, that there was nothing ‘bad’ about them. They were normal girls, like you and me, and they were forced to do what they do. Like me, they fear for their families back home. Those who have families. These poor girls… He has them smuggled from Bosnia, Moldavia, Romania and Kosovo. Many are orphans because of the wars. When they have to leave the orphanages at sixteen, they often have no money and nowhere to go. His men are waiting for them on the doorstep. The girls are terrified of him. They won’t talk about what happens, but I’ve seen bruises, cuts sometimes. I didn’t ask questions, and I am not proud of that, but I saw. Then Carmen… she spoke out.”
“When was this?”
“A week ago last Monday.”
“What happened to her?”
“Nothing, as far as I know.”