“Sofia. New girl. Boss thinks it’s a good idea to have women around these days,” Emil says.
He gives me the once-over and a nod. “I’m called Fischer,” he says. Then he looks back to Emil. “These guys in there? Serious-as-hell gangsters. No fucking around, okay?”
The door of the loading dock slides up. The serious-as-hell gangsters look the part, with leather jackets worn and patched over, work boots shifting uneasily on the ground. But Emil takes them in stride and climbs out of the van. “Come on,” he says to me.
Fischer, Emil, and I climb up the loading dock and into the back of the shop. The garage door lowers behind us with the sounds of clanking chain and squeaking metal wheels. Fischer introduces them, Russian names all around.
Their lead guy, Max, stands behind a workbench and smiles at us with all the sincerity of a dogcatcher to a dog. He has a thin gauze of blond hair and wears patches on his jacket—a bat with its claws around a grenade, a skull with two hammers crossing beneath it. “You bring it?” he says in English, nodding to the knapsack in Emil’s hand.
Emil pulls the three bags from the pack and lays them out on the workbench. One of their guys, the smallest of the group, opens a bag and removes a sample with a pair of tweezers. He places it into a test tube and retreats to a counter where he has a few portable lab machines set up. All eyes are on him and the testing, and I can smell the tension in the air. I finger the gun in my pocket.
Finally, the tester turns around and speaks loudly in Russian so the others can hear.
I lean close to Emil and interpret. “Very pure. About ninety percent.”
Max extends his arms and grins. “Three kilos, top quality.”
“Just as promised,” Emil says. “So, you have the cargo?”
Max nods to his men, and two of them head off into the shop. “So, as agreed, ten units?”
“Correct,” Emil says. “Ten units.”
From somewhere deep in the shop I hear two men shouting followed by high-pitched yelps. Then, rounding the corner, emerges a group of young women—girls, actually. The youngest is maybe fourteen, the oldest maybe seventeen. Beads of sweat appear on my skin, and a sudden and powerful nausea takes hold of my stomach. This is the “cargo.” These are the “units.”
They’re bound at the wrists with zip ties and being herded with sticks. The men lash out at them arbitrarily, with no purpose but to hurt.
“Hey! No fucking bruises!” Emil shouts, then turns to me. “Tell them!”
I shout the translation.
They’re brought to the front of the room. Ten girls, hunched over, shaking, shivering, eyes wide with fear. They are, each one, extraordinarily beautiful, shockingly so. The kind of beauty every woman wants and every girl’s parent fears. A few of them stare at me, finding room enough next to their terror for hatred. They’ve learned to expect this from the men here, but they’ll reserve an even worse place in hell for me.
My jaw and fists tighten. Pull out the gun and set them free. In the name of whatever good is left in you, Gwendolyn, do the right thing. But I don’t. There’s nothing I can do, I tell myself. I have a pistol with, what, maybe eight bullets? Even if I were an expert shot, I’d be dead on the floor before I could drop just two of the Russians. That’s what I tell myself to stop from doing it. Because I’m a coward and because I’m selfish.
Max walks around the workbench to stand next to Emil. “Nice, yes? The redhead, she is from Petersburg. I think, maybe I make extra cost for you, but no. I give her to you as…” He looks at me. “Podarok?”
“Present,” I say. “Gift.”
“Yes, gift. I make it to you and maybe we do more business together, okay?”
Emil reaches forward and takes the redhead by her bound wrists. “No track marks,” he says.
Max shrugs. “As you ask, no junkies. Top quality all.”
Emil moves on to another girl. She recoils as he touches her black hair. “Where are the rest from?” he asks.
“Poland, Romania, Russia, Albania. I don’t know. As you ask, we find only best for you.”
“And are they clean?” Emil asks.
Max squints.
“Disease? No. We have doctor look. Clean as soap.” He pats Emil on the shoulder. “You find HIV, syphilis, whatever, you call me. Refund, no problem.”
Emil holds out his hand, and Max shakes it. Very gentlemanly, the whole thing.
Someone rolls up the garage door, and Emil sends me down to unlock the back of the truck. I stand on the deck, helping each one in, grabbing them by their thin forearms and pulling them up. Two or three girls start crying. One of them even resists, but Emil yanks her head back by the hair and puts a pistol to her cheek and that’s the end of that.
I reach for the redhead’s arm, but she refuses and climbs in on her own. Then she spits in my face and calls me a devil-bitch in Russian.
*
The windows are down, and Emil is rapping along with Lil Wayne on the radio, slapping his hand to the rhythm against the outside of the truck’s door.
“Stop it,” I say.
“What?” he shouts over the music.
I press the power button on the radio with the palm of my hand and the music goes silent. “Stop it. Stop hitting the door, and for Christ’s sake, stop singing.”
Emil’s smirk glows in the dashboard lights. “See, this is why Roman never should send a woman for this job. The girls back there, they’re just whores, you know.”
“And what’s the difference between them and me?”
He shrugs. “You’re the one sitting in front.”
I close my eyes, unable to stand it any longer, the rage like a heat within me, threatening to melt my skin. Hand in my pocket. Hand wrapping around the butt of the gun. Finger finding the trigger. This, the mission to find my father, ends tonight. Ten lives for one, maybe two. It’s an easy choice, isn’t it? No made-up god’s made-up morality would ask otherwise. Watch his brains explode and grab the wheel.
“We’re bringing them to the—what is it, the tábor?” I ask.
“Yes,” Emil says.
“And what happens to them there?”
Emil thinks a minute as he lights a cigarette. The smoke whips out the open window. “The tábor is for, like, to hold them. You know.”
“Hold them,” I repeat. “Rape them?”
Emil grimaces. “They are whores, Sofia. It is not rape if they are whores.”
I flip the safety with my thumb, and slide the pistol from my pocket, keeping it hidden next to my thigh. But first, a confession from Emil. It’s not enough for him to die; he needs to know the reason. “Are they raped at the tábor, Emil?”
“Are you kidding? Fucking Pan Kladivo would cut our dicks off. We just keep them there. Until the auction.”
He’s talking about the auction I read about on the German news site. Fleischkurator. Curator of flesh. Curator of meat. Only a foot or so between us. I’ll have to be quick about it, fire as soon as I raise the gun.
“Every few months,” Emil continues. “Big party at the casino. Special girls like these only.” He studies my face and seems surprised by my expression. “This angers you? About the girls?”