Traffyck (25 page)

Janos drove north toward the central city along the river and stopped at a park in the shade. He plugged his cell phone into the car charger, took out his notebook, and flipped to the names and numbers he’d copied at Aleksandr Shved’s office from the “Adults Only” file. The former image of pornography spilling out of a cabinet was amplified by the present one of schoolchildren being led along a path by two teachers, one young woman in front and one at the end of the line. The children in the distance resembled jewels on a necklace being pulled through the forest.

Before Janos called any of the numbers, he called the Korona Club, a restaurant, bar, and casino that was always open.

“Jarek.”

“Jarek, this is Gypsy. I need to leave a message for Comrade Strudel.”

“I can do this. If his heart survived the night, he will be in shortly.”

“Ask him to meet me at the usual location at seventeen hundred hours.”

“Five, the happy hour. You should meet here. I have your Hungarian wine.” Jarek paused when Janos did not comment. “I will pass the message to Comrade Strudel.”

It took Janos an hour to call the numbers he’d copied from Shved’s “Adults Only” file. No answer at four numbers, and two were adult bookstores he’d never heard of. But most importantly, the rest of the numbers connected to either the mother or father of a missing child.

The morning before, when he’d called several of the numbers, he had not mentioned missing teenagers and children, because he hadn’t known about the connection. But today, as soon as he asked if the person he spoke with had a son or daughter missing, none of them hung up. It was difficult asking them to hang up, even after giving the facts he knew. He did not mention the child pornography issue or the possibility of trafficking. He simply said Private Investigator Aleksandr Shved died under what he considered mysterious circumstances and that, because he was a colleague of Shved’s, he would help in anyway possible.

Listening to the parents’ stories, one after another, was disturbing. Most of the missing were teenagers. One was a thirteen-year-old girl. The missing youths became real to Janos, even though he had never met them. Each became a son or daughter, through each anguished voice detailing his or her disappearance. It became obvious the parents had gone over the events thousands of times in their futile attempts to turn back the clock.

During his conversations with parents, Janos paused to calm his emotions. Mariya’s description of what was said in the van came back to him. One man had said, “How would you like to be a little girl?” The other had said, “Little girls are taught to watch for
traffic.”

Two of the parents gave him the name Eva Polenkaya and said she was the head of their committee. Because her name was familiar, Janos saved her for last. When he called Eva Polenkaya and explained who he was, she asked him to come to her apartment.

The sky grew overcast, and it began drizzling while Janos used his GPS to locate Eva Polenkaya’s apartment. She lived in an area of expensive apartments in the Pechersk district. When Janos got out of his car, a sudden gust of wind released large drops from the leaves of chestnut trees lining the street.

The apartment was on the top floor with a magnificent view of the city and of the river through the window at the end of the hallway. To admire the view, Janos walked past the apartment door after exiting the elevator.

“Investigator Nagy?” inquired a strong voice behind him. “I have been waiting. It is quiet up here, and the hallway floor squeaks.”

Eva Polenkaya was an energetic, well-endowed woman in her fifties. She had long, black hair and wore black slacks and blouse. She walked quickly but gracefully behind a huge desk piled with stacks of paper and phone books in the middle of the main room.

“I don’t know if you recall, but we have met,” said Janos.

“Of course I recall,” said Eva Polenkaya. “I danced the
czardas
with Lazlo Horvath, your detective friend from Chicago. You danced with my daughter-in-law. We had dinner at Casino Budapest and could not resist the Gypsy music. As I recall, you were both talented dancers.”

“Thank you, Eva Polenkaya. I’m sorry I don’t recall your daughter-in-law’s name.”

“No matter,” she said. “Please call me Eva, and I will call you Janos.”

There were two telephones on a side table and a computer on another desk behind her. Living room furniture was pushed to one wall, and the other walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books.

Eva Polenkaya pointed to a chair in front of the desk. “Janos, please sit.”

He must have stared at her too long without speaking, because she said, “Sometimes people think I am insane to have converted living room into office.”

She sat in her desk chair, which was not taller than the guest chair, as happened quite often with desks so large. “My husband, Valentin Alekseevich, had his office in the House of Government, where he was a deputy minister.” She lifted her arms and looked upward. “He worked many hours to afford such an apartment. We were leftover Russians, but ones who supported the Orange Revolution. I have been in La Strada many years and made this into my office when our own grandson, Alek, disappeared. Shortly after Alek disappeared, Valentin died of a heart attack.” She pointed to a group of photographs in stand-up frames on a side table. “That is Alek before we lost him. He was fourteen. Now he is sixteen. My daughter-in-law divorced my son, and I joined La Strada. That one is my husband, Valentin, God rest his soul. So now you know our broken history.”

The boy named Alek smiled out at Janos from the photograph. On either side were other photographs—grandmother and Alek; father, grandfather, and Alek. Eva Polenkaya’s face in her photographs with the boy was full and round. Now her face was thinner, younger looking. Her husband’s face was stern, yet sad, and Janos wondered if his grandson’s disappearance had caused Valentin’s fatal heart attack.

“One thing I should tell you, Janos. You will not see me weep. This upsets some unless they know I spend twelve hours a day in here.”

“What do you do?”

“Besides working for La Strada, I am chairwoman of the committee for the missing. We have twenty-seven members … couples and singles. They are parents; I am the grandparent. Some children disappeared while living at home; some disappeared while away at school; some, the militia insists, have simply run away. Most were teenagers when they went missing, most are girls, but some of the youngest are boys. I call all of them children. One parent is a single father whose wife committed suicide after their daughter was gone three years. I do not oversee the operation. I spend most of my time placing phone calls, looking for leads. We do not simply search for our own. We search for all missing children. This morning, I called every militia office near Odessa asking about a Podil girl. This afternoon, I will call Donetsk militia offices. Many militiamen know me by the sound of my voice.”

After a pause, Janos asked, “Are you an official in La Strada?”

Eva shook her head. “I am a member of La Strada, one who feels more can be done. Some in La Strada object, saying I am not diplomatic. Simply announcing one is against trafficking at NGO meetings is not enough. Many parents refuse to consider trafficking as the answer to where their children have gone.”

“Did you hire Aleksandr Shved?”

“Our Kiev parents hired him to report his findings to me.”

“Did he find anything?”

“I do not know,” said Eva, staring at Janos. “You should tell me. You were his friend.”

“We were close,” said Janos. “But I have only begun. Do you know how Shved died?”

“Yes. Our members are unhappy about this, as well as other things.”

“What things?” asked Janos.

“He took many trips. Some claimed he was vacationing at our expense.”

“Did he say what he did on these trips?”

“Shved claimed to have information from informants; the latest was from Odessa. Shved said the Odessa informant believed young people were being held as a group somewhere. He spoke of communes and cults. Many parents think he simply wanted to take trafficking out of his investigation because so many refuse to believe their children would work as sex slaves. Recently, he was at Black Sea villages looking for some kind of compound. And now, back in Kiev, with Shved killed in an adult video store, our committee began discussing pornography. One mother who lost her daughter, Nadia, has already begun visiting video stores. She searches photographs on the video jackets and has even purchased and watched videos.”

“Has she found anything?”

“She found there is enough pornography in Kiev to fill many garbage containers.”

“Are there many in your group whose children have disappeared within the last year?”

“More than ten recently joined, for obvious reasons, after hearing a Kiev Radio news program warning about trafficking of young people, usually young girls. I noticed you are exactly like the parents.”

“In what way?”

She stared at him a moment before answering. “You have also begun to refer to them as children, even though many have been gone long enough to be considered adults.”

Janos thanked Eva Polenkaya and was about to leave when she asked him to wait. She went to a cabinet, pulled out a folder, and handed it to Janos. “Take a look. I want you to have an idea who you are searching for.”

Janos opened the folder. Inside were many pages containing photographs of young women dressed in see-through blouses, short skirts, tall boots, and fur jackets. They wore heavy makeup, but through the makeup Janos saw innocents caught up in the trafficking network.

“These are photographs taken from Web sites and printed advertisements used to lure soldiers to bars and brothels located outside the gates of military bases. These include US, Russian, UK, French, and even UN bases. All pretty girls … but flip to the last pages, and you will see the pretty boys who lure gay men and sometimes even women in the military.”

Janos looked at the boys in the photographs. Most wore tight blue jeans and sleeveless tee shirts. Rather than smiling like the girls in the folder, the boys had serious looks, like the faces of movie actors. Although they flexed their muscles, they had an oddly dangerous look about them. Was the danger aimed at the viewer of the photographs, or was the danger a reflection in a mirror? Yes, like boys at play, their testosterone levels rising. Boys looking for trouble, yet in some ways apprehensive.

Janos closed the folder and handed it back to Eva Polenkaya. She began speaking rapidly as she went to the cabinet, put the folder away, and walked back to her desk, standing while she said things she apparently needed to say.

“I wanted to give you some idea of what you are dealing with. These are only the young people situated outside military bases. The folders for other locations are thicker. Even though my missing grandchild is a boy, 95 percent or more are girls. The International Organization for Migration estimates over a quarter million females have been trafficked since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Orange Revolution here in Ukraine had some effect on trafficking, but it is a matter of supply and demand. If the numbers of girls, or boys, available in Kiev dries up, traffickers move farther east to poorer cities and towns and villages. Interpol in Kiev is no help. I know a Kiev militiaman on assignment with the UN working in Albania. He said it is hopeless to convict pimps there. Law enforcement corruption is rampant, militia officials are on the take from traffickers, and bribes are handed out to border guards. In Greece, they have corrupted the police totally. And these days, with Germany and Netherlands having legalized prostitution, how can anyone stop sexual slavery?

“First, the recruiter makes a promise of a job outside the country, waiting tables or doing some innocent-sounding go-go dancing. Next, she is driven or flown under guard, and she finds herself in Moldova or Romania or Albania or Croatia or Serbia. Her papers are taken away, and she is told she must work off her debt. Her relatives at home will be in danger if she does not give in. She may be turned over to Bedouins who march her across the desert to Israel or one of its enemy neighbors. Do you know that when girls work in the Middle East, it does not matter if they are on their period? These so-called men, who claim to be devout believers, do not even look at the girls! And, Janos Nagy, I have not even mentioned the very young girls and boys trafficked to the Far East, where sex holidays involve children!

“Yes, La Strada is a good organization. But bureaucratic meetings are not enough. We live in a mobster society. Warnings to beware of trafficking appear on television, radio, billboards, and newspapers. Yet Mafia organizations in our once Soviet Republics rule the henhouse. Finally, because there are fewer women and children available, traffickers resort to kidnapping. This is what your friend, Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved, was investigating when he died. Kidnappers would need a place to hold the children until they are properly programmed, or aged. I fear, as did Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved, that trafficking has been turned into an assembly line somewhere in Ukraine. And I pray you can do something to find and destroy this assembly line before it destroys you!”