Boris drives and drives. Finally he wends the van through an older neighborhood on the edge of Bucharest. Cheap houses line the streets here, not apartments. Of course they would need a house. More privacy.
I shove a fistful of money at the cabbie and I get out, a block away. The tip is enough that the cabbie calls me kind miss and rewards me with a tea-stained smile.
I walk towards the house. A single light burns. I cut across to the side of the house and creep up to a window.
I hear the soft hiss of the television – a basketball game, Croatia playing Spain. I hear Boris clomping around in a household symphony: footsteps, refrigerator door, hum of its motor, click of it shutting. I hear the soft pop of a bottle opening. But I hear him. Only him.
I put my weapon into my hand. I go up to the front door. The doorbell is old and its light warms my finger.
Moldovan and Romanian are the same language – really the only difference is a political label dependent on borders. As he answers the door, I say: ‘Yes, hello, I am here today to talk to you about our Lord Jesus Christ’, and then I stop, with a firm, polite smile.
Boris holds his bottle of Noroc beer and because I am a harmless, petite girl he smiles at me, he hesitates before he would slam the door in my missionary’s face.
Then I raise the Taser and fire.
Boris dances back, the needle-tipped wires jolting him, down into a quivering, tongueless heap. I step inside and I hit him again with the charge. He convulses and I close the door with my butt while he dances for me. The beer sprays across the hardwood floor, foaming into an ugly orange throw rug.
He’s paralysed, helpless. I pull the plastic restraints out of my purse and I bind him, wrists behind back, ankles together so tight his feet will begin to swell.
Boris has a gun, a sleek Beretta lying on a kitchen counter. I check it. The clip is full, a round loaded. I pocket the gun in the back of my pants.
I move through the house. In one room there are two beds, unmade. They smell of dirty man. One bed has empty Noroc beer bottles by it and an unsettling stain on the sheets. Blood. A crescent of it, halfway down the mattress.
Heavy construction paper blacks out the windows, like the kind I use back in my classroom. Being a teacher feels like a thousand lifetimes ago. I can never go back.
I go through the rest of the house. Nothing, no one else.
But a door off the kitchen is locked. I scramble fingers through Boris’s pockets and find the keys.
The door opens to stairs that lead down into a basement. The room is coal-dark. I find and flick on the light. Eight beds in the room. Three are occupied.
‘Hello? Are you all right?’ I call. First in Moldovan/ Romanian, then in Russian.
Two of the girls moan, stir. On a table stand I see powder, syringe, candle, spoon – equipment for a horrible witchcraft. I hurry over to the young women. Track marks mar their pale, pearly arms; their flesh thrums under my fingertips. Chains bind them to the beds.
The third girl is dead. Eyes half open, showing a moon-sliver of white, throat choking with bile.
Another key on Boris’s ring unlocks the chains and I get the two girls to sit up. They shudder and cry, lost in between the high of the cruel drug and the pain of what they’ve suffered. I find their clothes folded in a corner and get them dressed.
Natalia was wrong, or lied. This is where the women are broken and bent to force, not Istanbul. I wasn’t expecting to lead a rescue mission; I was going to handle Boris like I handled Vadim, get the information on the next stage of the trafficking trail, move onto Istanbul. I lead the women up to the kitchen, reassure them all will be fine.
I talk to them in what I call my teacher-calm voice. The two girls stare at the dazed and bound Boris. They don’t cry, they just stare at him, like I’ve dragged in the devil in chains to lay at their feet. I want to get them to safety – but I need information from Boris. The girls seem okay for the moment, just relieved to be free. I ask where they are from and both are from small towns in western Moldova. The dead girl was from Ukraine, they say.
Boris, gagged, stares up at me. I decide to risk more time under this roof. No one else is here. I tear the tape off his mouth.
‘You fucking bitch we will kill you and your whole family you goddamned bitch’ – and then I seal the tape back over his mouth. They are all so unoriginal in their name-calling. Then I tear off another strip. I play the sticky side of the tape against Boris’s nostrils, like a teasing feather. His eyes widen and he kicks against the hard tile floor, trying to get away from me.
‘Did he hurt you?’ I ask the two girls.
One’s too blissed out, riding a narcotic surf, to answer. But the other nods, hair hanging down in her eyes.
‘Then I’m going to hurt him. Keep your seat if you want or go into the other room.’
The girls stay. The more sober one clutches her friend’s arm.
I put my face close to Boris’s. ‘Six months ago. Moldovan girl named Nelly. Blonde. Do you remember? Nod yes or shake your head no.’
Boris nods. Vadim must have told him he was going to work Nelly’s sister to get new recruits.
‘Where is she?’ Now I rip the tape free from his lips.
‘Tel Aviv. A massage parlor called Lucky Strike, on Rehov Fin. It’s above a pizzeria.’
This confirms Natalia’s story. ‘Who has her? The man with the blond mohawk?’
Boris hesitates and so I seal the tape back over his mouth. Then I stick the extra strip over his nostrils. I run a finger along its edge. Boris begins to buck. His eyes roll and bulge in panic.
That’s probably how the girls felt, like they had no control, no help, and they were going to die.
Boris screams behind the tape.
‘Did you rape my sister? Did you pump heroin into her veins?’
He writhes, screams his throat raw. Begging now in his eyes as his body craves fresh oxygen.
I watch his face. I count to forty. He is a smoker and he didn’t get a lungful before I sealed the exits. I tear the tape off.
Now Boris babbles: ‘The man who bought her, there is a laptop upstairs… ’
Tape really is the most useful tool around the house, I think. I put the tape back over his mouth but not his nose. I run upstairs. I find a file cabinet, a weathered desk spotted with beer bottle rings. And a laptop. I open it. It awakens from sleep; apparently Boris was web-surfing before he headed to the train station.
I pick through the hard disk. I open a folder called PRODUCT. Each girl has a file. The top of the window tells me there are one thousand and thirty-six files.
I can’t wrap my head around the number. Thinking about it is an ax to the brain. I search for Nelly. Sold, for a combination of heroin and $6,000, to a Yaakov Zviman in Tel Aviv. The notes in the file indicate she was auctioned off at a motel room in Eilat, five different bidders.
I try not to vomit at the thought.
I memorize the address. But I copy the entire folder to a disc and put the disc in my jacket pocket. I open the desk drawer and find rolls of money: euros, American dollars, Romanian leu, Turkish lira and Israeli sheqel banknotes. I scoop them all up, shove them into my pockets.
I close the laptop and head downstairs.
And hear the front door opening and a woman’s voice, ‘Boris, did you remember to feed the whores?’, then ‘What the hell?’
I run down the rest of the stairway and in the kitchen is a woman, standing over Boris’s wriggling form. The woman is blonde, close to six feet tall, wiry, hair cropped short.
And this woman is pulling out a gun from the back of her jacket.
Mind goes blank – I forget I have the Taser – and I throw myself toward the tall woman. Like Ivan has taught me. I need a punching bag now. A rage fuels my blood. My fist courts her jaw. The blow, delivered, hurts my hand but the sheer force of my attack knocks the woman back into the refrigerator.