Fear darkened her eyes as the interpreter explained the question.
Maddocks leaned forward, kept his voice calm, quiet. “I want you to know that we will do everything we can to protect you, and the more information you can give us, the better we will know who to protect you and the others from. Recording this interview will go a long way toward helping put them away. Are you okay with that?”
She said something in Russian to the interpreter, who in turn said, “She wants to know if she will have to face the men in court if she speaks about them on tape.”
“We can make sure that doesn’t have to happen. We can protect your identities,” he said. “Okay?”
The girl nodded. Only then did Maddocks place the recording equipment on the table. He pressed the button, and the red light came on. She stared at it.
“Can you tell me what your name is?”
She listened to the interpreter, then glanced at the victim services counselor, who nodded.
“Sophia Tarasov.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen this month.”
“And where is home, Sophia?”
“Novgorod in Russia.”
“Do you have family in Novgorod?”
She glanced down and shook her head.
“How about somewhere else? Is there someone we can inform that you’re all right?”
She shook her head harder.
Maddocks nodded. Not only was she afraid, but she was also embarrassed perhaps. He’d come back at that angle later, because someone had to be missing and worried about this teen. “Can you tell me how you came to be on the yacht called the Amanda Rose?”
She inhaled deeply and began to speak while staring at a crack in the table. The interpreter relayed Sophia Tarasov’s story in Russian-accented English.
“I answered an Internet advertisement for modeling. I phoned the number. They told me to come to an address in Novgorod. A man took pictures of me and gave me food, something to drink. He seemed nice. And then I woke up inside some kind of van. I was hurt. They had raped me. I was bleeding. They gave me water, and there must have been drugs in it because I passed out again and remember nothing. I don’t know how many days I was in the van. Taken to Prague. I only knew it was Prague from something one of the men said. In an apartment in Prague, I was beaten and raped many times over by different men. And I was drugged. I was kept chained to a mattress on the floor, no clothes.”
Maddocks swallowed. “There were other girls in this apartment?”
“In my room, yes. Three more on mattresses. And in the other rooms. I heard them. Crying. Sometimes they screamed. I don’t know how many days it was, maybe a month, and then they took twenty of us in a truck. It was a long journey.”
“The same men who brought you to Prague?”
“Different men. They spoke a Russian dialect.”
“Would you be able to describe any of these men?”
“I don’t know.” She was silent for a while, then said, “One man had a blue crab, here, a tattoo, on his arm.” She patted her forearm. “They took us to city with port. They put us on boat.”
“Do you know which city?”
“It was Russian. Maybe Vladivostok—I heard this name when the men talked quietly when they thought I was knocked out from the drugs.” This answer came from Sophia directly, in broken English. The interpreter glanced at Maddocks in surprise.
“Jump in if and when you need to,” he said quietly to the interpreter, then turned back to Sophia.
“You speak English?”
She nodded. “Bit. I learn at school.”
“What kind of a boat?”
“Fishing boat. Crab. Rusty, old. Bad smells.”
“What makes you think it was a crab fishing vessel?”
“I know from my grandfather. He was crab fisherman. King crab. Sea of Okhotsk. Long time ago. He told us stories and had pictures, how American boats from Alaska have square crab cages and throw them over the side one at a time. In Russia we use ones shaped like this.” She made a cone shape with her hands. “Russian fishermen slide cages off back of boat.”
Adrenaline quickened in Maddocks. This was very specific information they could check.
“And from there—maybe Vladivostok—twenty of you sailed on this crab fishing vessel?”
She nodded. “We were in bottom of the ship. No light. It was many days. Bad storms. We got sick. One night they shook all of us awake, told us put on all warm clothes. They tied our hands, like this.” She brought her wrists together. “They brought us up to deck. There was another ship close. Could see it through fog.”
“Also a fishing vessel?”
“No. Like cargo ship. Containers on the deck. Piled high.”
“Did you see any names on the hull? Anything to identify the vessel?”
“Only when we were brought on board new ship. They took us over side in fishing boat and across to cargo ship in the smaller boat. I saw flag from South Korea on cargo boat.”
Maddocks’s heart beat yet faster. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“What else did you see?”
“Very little. Getting dark. It was foggy. No moon. Lights on the boat nearly all off. It was very cold. Windy.”
“What language did the crew aboard the South Korean vessel speak?”
“Some Russian. And an Asian language.”
She reached for a glass of water in front of her and took a long swallow, hand trembling.
“They transferred all of the twenty women from one ship to the other?”
“Yes, and some other cargo. It took long time. I don’t know what other cargo was. Maybe crab.”
“And once you were aboard the Korean cargo vessel?”
She shook her head, her eyes going distant. Her face tightened. “They kept us in container, all twenty of us. We had two buckets for toilet. A man with scarf over face come once per day with new buckets and some food and water. We got very sick and thirsty. I lost all track of time and the days. One girl, she died. She took long time to die. They left her body inside container with us.”
Maddocks rubbed his jaw. The interpreter shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Maddocks sensed that Tarasov’s victim services counselor was going to cut him off any second now—she was also getting edgy. But he didn’t want to rush Sophia Tarasov. If he paced things carefully, she might speak to him again on several more occasions. He might get more in the long haul through patience. Nevertheless, urgency nipped at him—because the longer things took, the more time it gave the organized crime rings to bury evidence.
“Where did the South Korean ship take you?”
She shook her head, looking down at her fidgeting fingers. “Maybe port in South Korea. Then another ship, which stop maybe China. Cargo change. Then Vancouver.”
“When you docked at the Port of Vancouver, how did they take you off the ship?”
“Some men opened container, make us hurry out. We were already on land with other containers all around. Dark. It was night. The men in big rush, watching everything. They take us to another dock, put us in another boat. Small one.”