32

Jana Kreutzmann was the last passenger to board the flight from Berlin, dashing through the terminal towards the departure gate, calling out to the ground staff, imploring them not to close the flight, gasping her thanks and apologies as she stood by their desk and presented her boarding pass. She was always late, always rushing, always trying to fit twenty-five hours of passionate commitment into every twenty-four-hour day.

Ten years ago, a boyfriend had taken her to see the E55 highway that ran from Dresden in the old East Germany through to Prague in the Czech Republic. One stretch of the highway close to the town of Teblice, just over the Czech side of the border, had become infamous for the hundreds of East European prostitutes who touted for trade. They clustered in the neon-lit doorways and outdoor drinking areas of countless sleazy roadside bars. They fought for customers, grabbing and embracing the men who got out of passing cars and trucks. The men would grab them back, pawing and prodding the prostitutes like shoppers sampling fruit in a marketplace.

Prices started at thirty euros for half an hour of sex, and rose to 250 for an entire night's pleasure, either at a girl's tawdry room, with thick grime on the window-frames and no sheets on the bed, or at one of the neighbourhood hotels that catered for prostitutes and their Johns. All the while, the girls' pimps would lurk in the background, forcing their stables to work harder, making sure that none of the men tried to get away without paying. The entire operation was controlled by criminal gangs. Local police, all bought and paid for, had become an irrelevance.

Jana had been working for Amnesty International then, as had her boyfriend, Dieter. He had hoped that his righteous indignation at the appalling exploitation of innocent young women by evil men would earn him a fuck out of political solidarity, if nothing else. But he had miscalculated Jana's response.

Her outrage, unlike his, was not remotely synthetic. When they got back to their hotel, 20 kilometres away, she pulled out her laptop and went online. It took her just a couple of minutes to find sex-guides advising men how to get to the highway's busiest stretches and what they could expect when they got there.

'Listen to this!' Jana had exclaimed as Dieter lay in bed, wondering when the hell she was going to climb in next to him.

Jana started reading from the screen: ' "Unfortunately, most girls do not show much enthusiasm in bed. At least the prettier ones usually lie passively in bed, but if you show them how you want them to handle you they seem quite obedient. They are also often grateful for tips, because they see little or nothing of your payment, after the bar and her pimp take their share. This may also explain their lack of enthusiasm." Can you believe that? These guys know that the prostitutes are basically slaves, who don't even get paid for letting men abuse their bodies, but they still complain because they aren't enthusiastic. Pigs! Fucking pigs!'

'Don't worry about them,' said Dieter. 'Come to bed, huh?'

'What? And have sex? With you? So you can tell your friends that I am not enthusiastic but, oh yes, I am very obedient when I am told what to do? Are you crazy?'

Jana had never again let Dieter anywhere near her. Instead she had devoted herself to the cause of all the women and children around the world who were trafficked and forced into sex-slavery. Subsisting on occasional donations and fees from speeches and journalism, Jana Kreutzmann had spoken to abused women, confronted the criminals who so cruelly mistreated them and lobbied politicians. She had displayed manic determination and unflinching courage and slowly, as the years went by, she had helped to make a difference. The media that had once regarded her as an obsessive, feminist nutcase now saw her as a twenty-first-century heroine. The criminals who had once dismissed her as an insignificant irritant now saw her as an increasingly dangerous threat to their business.

Official recognition was shown to her too. The European lawmakers in Brussels regularly called her, and paid for her consultancy. Now the Nobel Institute, the organization behind the Nobel Prizes based in Oslo, had invited her to a symposium bringing together academics, campaigners and media experts who specialized in the issue of people-trafficking. Together, they would compile a paper to be presented to the Anti-Slavery Conference. Over the past few days Jana had heard rumours that President Lincoln Roberts himself would be addressing the conference. His support, even if it were little more than a gesture, would be a huge boost to the anti-slavery movement.

As she collapsed into her seat and began her flight to Oslo, Jana Kreutzmann felt for the very first time as though she might just be on the winning side.

Загрузка...