I stumble upon a small park with a playground in the corner. There’s a little girl in a pink dress hanging upside down on a jungle gym while an older woman, her grandmother maybe, reads a book on a bench. It’s about as cheery a sight as I can hope for right now, so I sit down on the ledge of a low wall not too far away and watch.
The little girl says something in Czech, then repeats it, louder this time. Look at me, I assume. The grandmother looks up and smiles and nods, then throws a look in my direction. She pretends to turn her gaze back to her book, but I can tell I’m on her radar of dangers. After another minute, she gets up, gathers the girl, and leads her away, casting a glance over her shoulder at me as they move down the sidewalk.
A solo raindrop, a scout for the rest of the storm, lands on the knee of my dirty jeans, spreading out into a little circle of darkness. Another one catches my scalp, and tickles through what’s left of my hair and down my neck. I close my eyes and picture Tompkins Square Park and Terrance on that afternoon just before everything turned to shit.
I pull out my phone, install a new SIM card, and dial his number. There’s a hiss in the sound of his phone ringing that only emphasizes the hours and ocean between us.
His voice is quiet, like at the far end of a tunnel. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” I whisper.
The static of distance, of signals moving through storm clouds, through space, through satellites, and down again.
“It’s—me, too,” he says.
“We know who we are,” I say.
“Still. Dangerous to talk.”
“I’ll get a new SIM when we’re done.”
“Did you find—accomplish it?”
“Not yet. But I’m close. Well, closer than I was.”
“Can I help?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Can you chat online soon?”
“Twenty minutes?”
“Fine. The usual way, Tor proxy.”
“Is that why you called?”
“Partly.”
“And the other part?”
I close my eyes, feel my eyelids becoming hot, feel my breath catch in my throat. It means everything to me that for this moment another human being is with me, listening to me, even if he’s as far away as the moon. “Just, you know, to hear someone normal.”
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I lie.
Connecting to Tor Servers
Anonymousprox.altnet01.Rhymer (Japan) CaravanServ.hamd08.SamizdatGambol (Serbia) MacherKurland.glick04.Storytime (Canada) BigMacMcGarey.Alerform03.Gambol (Jordan) <<Congratulations! You are now connected to Tor Anonymous Chat!>> <<Entering Private Mode / Secure>> <<AnonUser Red is now connected>> AnonUser Red: thanx for helping AnonUser Scholar: no prob so great to hear ur voice AnonUser Red: need your mad hacker skills AnonUser Scholar: skills not mad but I can try AnonUser Red: not much to go on AnonUser Red: czech guy with initials bk AnonUser Red: sends gun and bombs to Germany AnonUser Scholar: terrorists???
AnonUser Red: no
AnonUser Red: maybe. Idk.
AnonUser Red: arms traffickers I think AnonUser Scholar: what else?
AnonUser Red: that’s it
AnonUser Red: all I got
AnonUser Scholar: serious?
AnonUser Red: YES!!
AnonUser Red: sorry frustrating fr me to AnonUser Scholar: give me five
AnonUser Red: ???
AnonUser Scholar: minutes
AnonUser Red: u there?
AnonUser Red: u there?
AnonUser Red: U THERE?
AnonUser Scholar: one min
AnonUser Red: k sorry
AnonUser Red: ??????????????
AnonUser Scholar: shit takes time!
AnonUser Scholar: this is what I got
AnonUser Scholar: lots of ppl with initials bk AnonUser Scholar: but one guy is big czech criminal AnonUser Scholar: name is Bohdan Kladive AnonUser Scholar: sorry Bohdan Kladivo not e at end AnonUser Red: holyu shit
AnonUser Red: are u sure?
AnonUser Scholar: criminal records to 1992
AnonUser Scholar: arms trafficking
AnonUser Scholar: and human trafficking are the big ones AnonUser Scholar: big kingpin now
AnonUser Scholar: pablo escobar level shit AnonUser Red: for real? how do you know?
AnonUser Scholar: yea all of it in interpol database AnonUser Red: mind=blown
AnonUser Red: how did u get into Interpol database?
AnonUser Scholar: ;)
AnonUser Scholar: kidding its public
AnonUser Scholar: kinda
AnonUser Scholar: just need to knw how to search it AnonUser Red: still youre a genis!!!!
AnonUser Red: genius
AnonUser Scholar: gracias but it was no prob AnonUser Red: where does kladivo live?
AnonUser Red: ??
AnonUser Scholar: he’s super dangerous AnonUser Scholar: no fkng way
AnonUser Red: need to know AnonUser Red: pls
AnonUser Red: fucking PLEASE
AnonUser Scholar: no address for him
AnonUser Scholar: probably moves a lot AnonUser Red: what city
AnonUser Red: just the city AnonUser Scholar: Praha 1
I switch over to a normal unsecured browser and Google Bohdan Kladivo. Links to article after article appear on the screen. In Praha, many criminals.
The stories in the Czech press focus on Kladivo’s local dealings. His stake in Prague’s casinos. His connections with judges and police officials and powerful figures in the Czech government. There’s a sensational headline from a Prague tabloid, and the translation comes back: JUDGE FOUND BEHEADED IN KARLOVY VARY. It’s a gruesome piece, complete with pictures. Another article speculates on the group’s deep reach into Prague’s petty street crime and features a profile of one pickpocket who refused to pay tribute to Kladivo and had his right hand cut off with a circular saw.
My eyes close. The idea of my dad being held by men like these—but I break the thought off. Don’t think that. Stay productive.
Then I dig further, beyond the articles in the Czech press. I find a piece in the New York Times linking Kladivo to arms smuggling in Sudan and Iraq and Syria. In the Guardian I find a diagram showing the routes of Kladivo’s mysterious cargo flights—Russia to Syria, then Syria to Moldova, then Moldova to China—contents of the planes unknown.
I scroll to the next article, this one in Der Spiegel. It claims Kladivo’s organization handpicks women and children from Eastern Europe and Russia for lavish auctions, in which the victims are sold off to wealthy clients around the world. Fleischkurator, the article labeled him. Curator of flesh is one way to translate it. Curator of meat is the other.
But my own flesh goes cold when I arrive at an article in the Economist only a few days old about how Kladivo was already transforming the nature of organized crime in Europe—creating new supply channels, innovating decades-old systems—mere weeks after the death of his former boss, the Serbian crime lord Viktor Zoric.
The man I’d seen a picture of on my dad’s laptop. The man with a bullet hole the size of a dime in his forehead. “Very bad things,” my dad had said when I’d asked him what Zoric had done. “The worst things.”
*