Traffyck (7 page)

“I prefer crowds when I listen to a magazine story. It will take at least two days to pull my foot out of my mother. Tell the magazine story lady to meet me at the gate on Monday at flight time for the first Aerosvit outbound to New York after 10 a.m. Do you have it?”

“I have it. No need to repeat. So, what to do with yourself until then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. Simply think of me when you flip through the magazine.”

“I will, Svetlana. You are like a page from a magazine … glossy.”

After he hung up, Janos got out his GPS and planned his trip back to Kiev.

Later that afternoon, other campers came in and set up. Campfires lit up the campground and everything seemed at peace. Then, as other campers fell asleep, a small five-cylinder camper van started up and cruised slowly through the quiet camp.

CHAPTER
FOUR

In his Khreshchatik Boulevard office, SBU Agent Yuri Smirnov spent the morning scanning the latest telephone system data report on his computer. Although the report was useful in several cases during the past year, Smirnov disliked the task. Automated information processing conflicted with the idealized version of an SBU agent he’d dreamed of while attending the National SBU Academy on Zolotovoritska Street ten years earlier. He was not naïve. He knew investigative work was mostly tedium. But he had envisioned more field work.

The report listed calls placed through Kiev area switching stations the previous week. Not all calls; the report was selective, generated using landline telephone numbers and cellular numbers for search criteria. Smirnov scrolled through the file himself instead of leaving the job to a clerk because information gained could not “officially” be used in court. This “experiment,” being run jointly by the SBU and the Kiev militia to investigate the possibility of detecting certain crimes before they happened, could be considered illegal.

Smirnov’s part of the experiment was to convert the report into a concise summary he would send to SBU officials several floors above his floor. He searched a series of numbers from his active list, put the appropriate name in with the search, and continued to the next series of numbers. He made no changes to the database, nothing left over to cause legal problems. Smirnov paused to sip tea before continuing. Although the office courier did not deliver the computer file with the report upstairs until noon, he usually finished first thing Monday so he would not have to rush to meet his deadline.

Most names from his active file were unfamiliar, simply someone the head office wanted to track. But several names he did recognize. When Smirnov came across Investigator Janos Nagy, a Kiev private investigator nicknamed “Gypsy,” he made a separate note containing information about Nagy’s calls. A few minutes later, Smirnov gave his completed summary report to his secretary for copying. While his secretary was gone, Smirnov made a phone call.

“Chief Investigator Chudin,” said a tired-sounding voice on the other end.

“Boris, this is Yuri from State Security.”

“I thought it would be you,” said Chudin.

“Why?”

“Because it is Monday morning. What do you do on weekends, Yuri?”

Smirnov chuckled. “On weekends I pull out my crystal ball.”

“Is this about the Gypsy again?”

“You are a seer,” said Smirnov. “How could you possibly know?”

“Word association,” said Chudin. “Crystal ball … Gypsies … You called about him last Monday when you created your magic phone report.”

“He is in the Carpathians,” said Smirnov. “Once again, he has phoned your Investigator Svetlana Kovaleva.”

“Must I repeat myself about their relationship?” asked Chudin.

“Please simply ask about the call.”

“What kind of details do you desire?”

Smirnov stood from his desk and raised his voice. “Boris, the top offices want information on the Podil abortion bombings. Nagy opened a crack in the dam but it closed. We live in Ukraine, not America! We want to know what he is doing in this matter!”

“I understand,” said Chudin, obviously trying to remain calm. “I will ask. On another matter … and I assume the reason he is not in Kiev … Can you tell me anything about the bombing of his office?”

“No,” said Smirnov. “My agents are working with your militia. Together, perhaps we can solve something in this ancient city before it becomes even more ancient.”

“And before we become ancient and are forced into retirement,” said Chudin.

After Smirnov hung up, his secretary returned with a hard copy of the report and Smirnov put this and a copy of the computer disk in the envelope marked
Secret
. Perhaps this afternoon someone upstairs would be on the job and be kind enough to open the envelope.

The Gypsy named Nagy would be traveling up the elevator where Smirnov could only assume his file was getting thicker and thicker each week.

That afternoon Smirnov received a scrambled call from Sergei Izrael, his old roommate at the National SBU Academy. Izrael had been head of the Odessa field office but was recently transferred to Slavutich, the town built for Chernobyl workers. Izrael called Smirnov at least once a week. During their conversation, the Gypsy came up again.

“Why are you interested in Nagy?” asked Smirnov.

“A private investigator implicates a Moscow Patriarchate priest, and following this he is bombed,” said Izrael. “We had many female clinics in Odessa, and I preferred observing non-pregnant nymphs on the beach.”

“You have a way with words, Sergei.”

“I owe it to our beloved days at the academy. I wish I was still in Odessa. But it was a promotion. Yuri, do you recall after graduation you and Brekhov and myself vowed to keep one another informed, no matter who moves up the ladder?”

“Yes, so what is new?” asked Smirnov.

“Something Brekhov said might relate to female clinics being bombed and adult video stores burning down. But the information must stop with you.”

“I understand,” said Smirnov.

“A deathbed letter from another Moscow Patriarchate priest was sent to Brekhov. He reported it to headquarters in your building and was told to send it in and close the file. No copies, no report, by order of SBU Deputy Anatoly Lyashko, head of the Directorate for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime.”

“Now I understand why you called on a scrambled line.”

“You are alone?” asked Izrael.

“Yes,” said Smirnov.

“The deathbed letter implied teenagers are being recruited and kidnapped to be trafficked and used in pornography and members of the church are involved. To cover themselves, they bomb female clinics, burn down adult video stores, and implicate rival churches. Murders of the Moldavian Ivan Babii, the Ukrainian pornographer Belak, and the American pornographer Donner also may be part of a plan to cover a trail leading back to Kiev.”

“The upper floors of this building?” asked Smirnov.

“I cannot say for sure,” said Izrael.

“I wonder,” said Smirnov. “I’ve always wondered about the agenda of our Anatoly Lyashko, especially being head of Combating Corruption and Organized Crime.”

“Yes,” said Izrael. “NGOs like La Strada have also wondered about him. Perhaps this is why no information has been released concerning the murders of the pornographers in the Carpathians and the fate of the teenagers taken from them.”

“We tread on sensitive ground,” said Smirnov.

“I agree,” said Izrael. “One last thing before we end this unpleasantness: the reason your superior, Anatoly Lyashko, keeps quiet. Pornographers kidnap teenagers, use them in videos, and then sell them on the trafficking market. Mostly girls, but there have been some boys. Either Lyashko does not want to upset every parent in Ukraine who has a child missing—”

“Or he has other reasons,” said Smirnov.

“Reasons related to his expensive SBU Bentley and an apartment in Kiev while his wife lives far away near the Russian border.”

“He claims to work at his apartment more often than one would expect,” said Smirnov.

“I have heard rumors of visits from women,” said Izrael. “Do you think they are true?”

“I don’t know,” said Smirnov. “My worry would be that rumors of visits from women emerge to cover something else.”

“Is it true he has a special SBU security unit assigned to him?” asked Izrael.

“Yes,” admitted Smirnov. “He can come and go as he wishes, travel abroad, and is secure in his office as well as in his apartment.”

“Such contrast,” said Izrael. “Here I am reassigned to Slavutich with Chernobyl refugees and workers. No one smiles here. And now, with the economy going to shit, companies are pulling out and Natashas walk the streets eager to be trafficked because families starve. Meanwhile, our superiors live high on the hog. There is a rumor here of a Chernobyl Trail taking girls away to so-called jobs, but I believe it is simply a rumor started to cover the old Balkan Trail. Soon the traffickers will be waiting at the orphanage gates the day the girl reaches puberty. Oilmen in the Middle East still think they are all Russian Natashas, no matter if they come from Ukraine or Romania or wherever. So there is my speech for today.”

After hanging up the phone, Smirnov went to his window and looked down at Khreshchatik Boulevard. As he did so, he realized he often went to his window when information piled up, coming at him from many directions. He wondered if it was psychological—the connections, the firing of neurons in a certain sequence—that made him stand and go to his window. Perhaps it was a kind of enlightenment, his subconscious knowing these facts are related in some way while his conscious mind slithers along the ground like a slug.

Below his window the afternoon rush home had begun. The street and sidewalks on both sides were jammed, and sidewalk movement was faster than street movement. One man down there reminded him of Izrael because of his black, bushy hair as thick as the hair on a black bear.

As he stared down at the rush, Smirnov thought how easily the masses were controlled. The lighting of a simple
DO NOT WALK
sign like an electric fence. But soon the
WALK
sign lit and pedestrians oozed out onto the crosswalk, slugs like him. Unlike Kiev, the village in which Sofya Adamivna Kulinich lived was very quiet. This was because only a few old women lived in the village. Sofya’s neighbor, Tatiana, had come for lunch and stayed at least an hour afterwards. Sofya stood in the doorway watching the entire time Tatiana made her way back to her own cottage. Tatiana had brought over an herb to put in their tea during lunch, something to give them more energy and help them forget they were widows. Of course, they both agreed no one could forget a thing like this and spent an hour after finishing their borsht, bread, and tea speaking sadly of the days when husbands walked the streets of the village, or rode their horses, or went on errands to restock the vodka supply using the collective’s truck driven by Albert Nikolaevich Bobrova, the party boss.

Without men, the village was simply not the same. The only men they saw came from outside the village—a militiaman visit, a postal worker visit, a food delivery, or a medical team. Of course, the doctor was a woman, but she sometimes had assistants who were men. And this would give the women of the village enough gossip for a week.

“You should have seen how low he bent when she checked my varicose veins.”

“That’s nothing. When she did the female examination, he didn’t even leave the cottage. He stood there looking out the window and
… I
swear on my Bible this is true … sniffing.”

In previous summers they would at least have some activity, like a bus now and then full of young workers going to the guardhouse at the fence west of the village. This was not the large guardhouse to the south on the paved road into the Zone, but a smaller guardhouse next to a swinging gate in the fence. In the past a lot of young women workers looked out the bus windows, and there was hope for a time some of the young men might want to board in the village. Of course, this fell through when they asked a guard at the swinging, padlocked gate about it.

And this summer, for whatever reason, the buses stopped and the dirt road to the guardhouse became two ruts in the grass. Whether in her cottage or tending her garden, Sofya felt closer to joining her husband in death. Beyond the fence the shouts or voices of young workers were rare. And now, at summer’s end, Sofya dreaded winter more than ever. Even Tatiana, normally cheerful at lunchtime, was completely heartbroken this day as they spoke of husbands, and of the past before the accident.