The Death Trust

THIRTY-SIX

The ambush was a long way behind us now. The glow from burning tires and fuel oil was no longer visible from our position high in the hills. No one had spoken a word, saving our breath for the climb. Radakov called a halt and some bread and cheese was passed around. A couple of the men joked privately. No fire was lit. “How does it feel to be a Chechen rebel, eh?” asked Radakov in a whisper as he carved off a chunk of cheese with a knife that glinted in the starlight and fed it into his mouth.

“You going to answer my questions now?”

“Why don’t you ask them and we’ll see how far we get?”

This was not quite the response I had hoped for. I said, “Did General Scott come on one of your little field trips, too?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you bring him?”

“I wanted him to witness the important work being done.”

“Being done by the separatists?”

“No, by The Establishment.”

“This is an Establishment operation?”

“What isn’t?” he replied.

“These answers aren’t going to make much sense until I know who or what The Establishment is,” I said.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“You can’t because you don’t know the answer? Or can’t because you’ve been told not to?”

He gave an ambiguous shrug.

I took a different tack. “So the mission you brought the general on was what? An attempt at recruitment?”

“You could say that.”

“You wanted Scott to join The Establishment?”

“Yes.”

So the general wasn’t a member of this…this ultracovert organization. “Did you tell General Scott what The Establishment was?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t have to.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’d been told.”

“By whom?”

“By his wife.”

“Harmony?”

Radakov nodded.

I don’t know why I was surprised to hear this. “Did Harmony Scott conspire to kill her husband?”

Another shrug.

We heard the distant thump of helicopter rotor blades way down in the valley. The Russians would have a Hind out searching for the insurgents who whacked their patrol, so the men were keen to vacate the area.

“Is that why you’ve brought me here, too? Part of your recruiting drive?”

“No.”

“Then why?” I could only think of one other possible answer to that question: to make me disappear. I’d had two attempts on my life in the past week. Was The Establishment going to go for third time lucky? I felt a presence over my right shoulder. I knew who it was before I looked — the weasel. Radakov got to his feet and I followed. The three of us stood there for what seemed like half a lifetime, the cold starlight sheening off our perspiration. Radakov appeared uncertain, maybe putting the question of whether to kill me or not on the scales. I turned my back on the pair of them and walked off to sit on a rock. Nothing I could do would influence the situation in my favor. Up here, with no one around for miles, I was completely at the mercy of these men.

I watched Radakov speak briefly to his lieutenant, who then slipped something sharp and metallic into his belt. Both men came toward me, Radakov’s man smiling, which, even in the poor light, was not a pleasant sight. Radakov stopped beside me but the weasel kept walking. “I should kill you,” he said.

“Why don’t you?” I said while the voice in my head screamed, What are you doing? Don’t fucking taunt him!

“If you are killed, someone else will take your place.” He said this as if it was a matter of fact. Maybe it was, but I had my doubts. I was now pretty certain I’d been chosen for this gig because no one expected or wanted a result. Not great for my self-esteem. Lucky for me, I have a thick skin. And it made me all the more determined to shove it all back in their faces. I was suddenly deeply committed to peeling the scab off this little sore, because I was now certain that a voracious and malignant cancer was hiding below it.

The wind shifted slightly. It brought with it the thump-thump of helicopter blades, closer this time. “We must go now,” Radakov said, looking down the valley. We resumed the climb and reached the ridgeline a short while later, where the going became easier. There were a lot of questions in my head. I took potluck and asked one: “Were General Scott and Varvara lovers?”

Radakov actually laughed at that. “Lovers? No. He was full of American sexual repression. Just like you.”

“So, if they weren’t lovers, then why would Scott go to all the trouble of taking Varvara back to Ramstein?”

“He did not like my business. After his son died in Iraq, he wanted to save someone. It was as simple and as complex as that.”

The image of the two women back in the village came to mind. They were beautiful and young, born into a life of grinding poverty, war, and zero choices. Thanks to Radakov, they would spend that youth and beauty being screwed by loveless men for money, none of which they’d ever see. They were purchased human beings: slaves. Could I imagine General Scott, grieving over the loss of his son, risking everything to save just one person from this life?

That got me thinking about Abraham Scott. He’d been a mystery man when I began this investigation, but I was getting to know him. He was a man with morals, admired and respected by the people in his command. Something had disillusioned him and so utterly compromised his belief system that he risked his only child to bring it down. It was a gamble he had lost, and the guilt of it had crushed his spirit.

“Why do you trade in women?” I asked Radakov.

“Because it is easy money. There is a ready market and a willing supply. We Chechens are fighting a war, Cooper. Guns and bullets don’t fly into our hands.”

“You mean, grow on trees.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

And I finally saw it. Perhaps it was the fucked-up metaphor, not mine but his — the one about guns and bullets not flying into their hands — that peeled back the clouds over this case and let me see those confused markings on the ground with clarity for the first time. “When did General Scott realize that you were using NATO planes to fly sex slaves into Germany?”

Radakov didn’t answer right away. At that moment, he was probably reconsidering his decision not to kill me. “You are a clever man, Cooper. He is right to fear you.” The men walking up ahead paused to listen. I wondered exactly who “he” was. I was about to ask when Radakov raised his hand to stop me. The night was filled with the noise of crickets and frogs, but no more sounds from helicopter blades, distant or otherwise. Satisfied, the men ahead trudged on, climbing steadily into the frost, picking their way through the trees. “Over a year ago, Scott came to Riga looking into some unauthorized NATO flights,” said Radakov softly.

Yeah, the flight-progress strips, the highlighted RIX entries on the ATC log… I also remembered glimpsing Varvara’s passport. “What about identities for the people you smuggled in?”

“German passports are not all biometric yet. They are relatively easy to forge. Moving outsiders around Ramstein was the only difficulty, but we found a way.”

“That wouldn’t have been by giving each of them a CAC card, would it?”

He glared at me, perhaps thinking he’d given up too much information. “You know about these?”

I nodded. There were those three hundred missing CAC cards the general had been checking into. Scott must have put two and two together and come up with a big fat rat. Radakov’s human cargo had been smuggled into Ramstein on NATO C-130s, posing as returning U.S. servicewomen. I almost laughed — a breakthrough at last. “So you must have a contact inside Ramstein. You going to tell me who it is?”

“No.”

“Is this still happening? Using Ramstein as a slave port?”

“No. There were six flights over a year ago — none since.”

The flights Scott was looking into. I let all this sink in. Who was Radakov’s inside man? I knew it couldn’t have been Harmony Scott, and not because she was the wrong gender. It had to be someone who had complete access to the base, someone who could authorize flights, someone with top-level security access. Then it hit me. Jesus H. Christ! I knew exactly who it was. And this time, I did laugh. And, yeah, he had every damn right to fear me.

“You will be quiet now, Cooper,” said Radakov, tense.

Not in a million years would I have guessed the identity of Radakov’s Ramstein connection. I sucked in a breath to get the mirth under control. There was nothing remotely funny about killing or slavery. I’d been looking forward to getting back to Ramstein to see Anna. And now I had something else to look forward to — the pleasure of stomping very hard on a murderous asshole.