The guard glanced at her. She nodded. The prisoner was led out.
As Angie watched Belkin go, her heart thumped in her rib cage. She could barely breathe. She had just looked into the black eyes of a man who’d seen her past. She’d smelled fresh blood on him, hot and raw in her nostrils. And like a pit bull with the taste of a red, meaty bone in her mouth, there was no way in hell that she was going to let this drop now.
CHAPTER 38
The energy in the briefing room was palpable as Maddocks entered carrying his laptop and files. He seated himself with the other officers around a long horseshoe-shaped table, and he nodded to Bowditch and Eden, who sat across from him. They were the only officers he recognized. Their response was tepid. At the head of the room, two large smart screens flanked a traditional whiteboard. Across the top of the whiteboard, in black marker, the words OPERATION AEGIS had been scrawled.
The briefing was to begin at 12:00 p.m., and that’s precisely when a black-haired male officer in RCMP uniform—pale-gray shirt with lapel insignia, dark pressed pants, dark-blue tie, weapons belt—entered the room and went to the head of the table.
The uniform reminded Maddocks of something his facilitator had said back at Depot Division in Saskatchewan, where he’d undergone his police academy training. Day five was the first day that the cadets had been permitted to don their Mountie uniforms. Their facilitator had asked them to look down at their shirts and ask themselves why they were gray when most other police agencies around the world wore white or blue or black. He’d gone on to say that the cadets should see in their shirts a symbol of what law enforcement was about. Because policing doesn’t always have black or white answers, he’d said. Sometimes the answers are gray, and in their future careers the days would come when they needed to look down at their shirts and remember that.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” said the officer up front. “For those who don’t know, I’m Sergeant Parr Takumi, in charge of Operation Aegis.”
The man who’d withheld intel that could have kept Sophia Tarasov alive. Maddocks was dead keen to hear the extent of that intelligence now.
Takumi made introductions around the table. Present were RCMP members from gang crimes, human trafficking, vice, a representative from border security, and another from Interpol.
“And joining us today is Detective Sergeant Maddocks from the MVPD, where he’s been leading an investigation into the Bacchanalian sex club aboard the Amanda Rose,” Takumi said, meeting Maddocks’s gaze. “Six barcoded underage sex workers were discovered forcibly confined aboard the Amanda Rose. They were taken into MVPD custody and held at an undisclosed location. One was found dead yesterday with her tongue excised. Operation Aegis has since asserted jurisdiction.”
Not one around the table murmured or showed surprise, Maddocks noted. This team was clearly familiar with barcoded women, and with cut tongues. And his case. He flexed his hand under the table. It helped him remain outwardly cool, calm.
“Detective Maddocks’s team is also continuing its investigation—and bringing possible further charges—in the homicides of two Victoria females in relation to the Bacchanalian Club. Some of the key suspects who were on the Amanda Rose have yet to cooperate fully with the MVPD, including two French nationals, Veronique Sabbonnier and Zaedeen Camus. Both helped harbor a serial rapist and lust killer on board the yacht, who came to be known as the Baptist. The murders of the two young Victoria women are unrelated to Operation Aegis. However, Sabbonnier and Camus remain persons of interest to Operation Aegis.”
Takumi held his hand out toward another officer at the table. “We also welcome today Detective Corporal Nelson Rollins, who has been heading up Project Gateway, a year-long undercover investigation into Hells Angels collaboration with the longshoremen’s union at the Port of Vancouver in facilitating the entry of Columbian narcotics and precursor chemicals. It was the work of Maddocks and the MVPD that resulted in Project Gateway being brought on board—the MVPD interview with Camus brought to light a link between the Hells Angels at the port and the Russian criminal network that Aegis has been investigating for the past eight months. Up until now we were not aware of this link,” Takumi said.
“For those new to the table, Aegis was formed after the bodies of five unidentified young sex workers employed by Russian-affiliated clubs were found with their tongues cut out. One body was discovered by a barge operator in the Fraser River near the Vancouver airport early last winter. She was naked. COD was strangulation. She had a high level of alcohol in her system along with heroin. The body of a second woman turned up in a vacant Burnaby lot four months later. COD was heroin overdose. Both had their tongues cut out. Both had barcodes tattooed onto the backs of their necks. The tongue and barcode details were held back from the media. The same MO surfaced in Montreal last summer, where another barcoded female body was discovered with no tongue. Another turned up in Brooklyn, New York, and one in the desert outside Las Vegas last spring. The FBI also withheld details of the barcode tattoos and the missing tongues. No ID on the bodies. No DNA or prints or any other identifying factors in the system, until we got in touch with Interpol and linked two of the Jane Does with missing person cases out of Europe. The operating theory now is that these girls are coming from a Russian operation in Prague, which took over the sex trade in that city from Albanian organized crime. Contact with law enforcement in Prague, and again with Interpol in Europe, has confirmed that underage barcoded women are being sold or rented into sex slavery in the UK market and across Europe, and since last year, they’ve been showing up across Canada and now in the United States. But to date it is unknown how these women are trafficked from Prague—which serves as the supply hub—and it is unknown where these women have been entering North America.” Takumi turned to Maddocks.