The Last Minute

67

Bucharest, Romania

Gray smears the sky like spilled paint but the sun has woven its light in patches through the clouds. The air in the train out of Moldova feels stale and cloying. No one else seems uncomfortable, though. People read their newspapers and eat their snacks and spin their gossip. I sit far away from everyone, in a corner, watching the countryside unfurl, watching the rain thin and die.

Ivan told me killing would make me feel funny. I do. Did it change you, Sam, after you first killed? You seem so normal, like other people, while I feel like the woman who is different, who is marked, who maybe has no shadow. Maybe I breathe differently now. I wanted to throw up about ten minutes after I put the bullets in Vadim. And every rattle and bump of the train feels like God thumping at me. But then the weirdness passes, because I have no choice. I have done this and I will do it again.

Boris looks for greasy Vadim and three fooled Moldovan beauties. He stands on the edge of the station, wearing clothes that slid out of fashion two years ago. Jeans too baggy, a Real Madrid shirt, a cap too big for his head. He’s here to maintain control if the product gets antsy. I assume that he’s armed.

I walk to a counter and buy a steaming cup of black tea. I make sure to stand near a column, so he can’t see me watching him. Boris checks his watch, digs a phone out of the deep caverns of his pockets, thumbs the keyboard.

In my pocket Vadim’s phone rings. It chirps a ring tone of a Kanye West song. ‘Gold Digger’. How appropriate.

I answer it. ‘Hello, yes, this is Vadim’s phone.’

‘Um, where is Vadim?’

‘Oh. He is in the bathroom.’

‘He’s supposed to be on a train-’

‘We missed the morning train to Bucharest, we’re coming on the afternoon train.’

Boris gives an annoyed sigh. ‘Well, he could have called.’

‘Do you work with Vadim?’

‘Yes. Who is this?’

‘Olia. I guess I shouldn’t answer his phone but he left it here on the table. He took us to lunch.’

Boris is already heading for the exits. I follow. He hangs up without another word and I switch off the phone. He walks to a nearby car park and gets inside a van, older, dusty, that hasn’t been well cared for.

Of course, a van, I think, the product has to fit inside where no one can see.

I grab a cab and tell the driver to follow the van.

‘You want me to follow someone? Like in a movie?’ the cab driver asks. I am his most interesting fare all week.

‘Yes, like in a movie.’ I make it sound lighthearted. The cab driver is going to remember me now but that can’t be helped.

We wind through the crowded streets of Bucharest, the cab driver running lights a couple of times to keep the van, a few cars ahead of us, in sight. I hope Boris is not going to a movie to kill time until the later train arrives. I have not been to Bucharest in years and the city seems so much bigger, so much more… Western. I remember it was once called the Little Paris of the East, before Ceau escu the maniac nearly destroyed its architectural beauty, its spirit.

I shiver again and think: I cannot be afraid now. I had Ivan’s cousin to back me up before, I was on my own turf. This is entirely different, this is the dark unknown.

Boris drives and drives. Finally he wends the van through an older neighborhood on the edge of Bucharest. Cheap houses line the streets here, not apartments. Of course they would need a house. More privacy.

I shove a fistful of money at the cabbie and I get out, a block away. The tip is enough that the cabbie calls me kind miss and rewards me with a tea-stained smile.

I walk towards the house. A single light burns. I cut across to the side of the house and creep up to a window.

I hear the soft hiss of the television – a basketball game, Croatia playing Spain. I hear Boris clomping around in a household symphony: footsteps, refrigerator door, hum of its motor, click of it shutting. I hear the soft pop of a bottle opening. But I hear him. Only him.

I put my weapon into my hand. I go up to the front door. The doorbell is old and its light warms my finger.

Moldovan and Romanian are the same language – really the only difference is a political label dependent on borders. As he answers the door, I say: ‘Yes, hello, I am here today to talk to you about our Lord Jesus Christ’, and then I stop, with a firm, polite smile.

Boris holds his bottle of Noroc beer and because I am a harmless, petite girl he smiles at me, he hesitates before he would slam the door in my missionary’s face.

Then I raise the Taser and fire.

Boris dances back, the needle-tipped wires jolting him, down into a quivering, tongueless heap. I step inside and I hit him again with the charge. He convulses and I close the door with my butt while he dances for me. The beer sprays across the hardwood floor, foaming into an ugly orange throw rug.

He’s paralysed, helpless. I pull the plastic restraints out of my purse and I bind him, wrists behind back, ankles together so tight his feet will begin to swell.

Boris has a gun, a sleek Beretta lying on a kitchen counter. I check it. The clip is full, a round loaded. I pocket the gun in the back of my pants.

I move through the house. In one room there are two beds, unmade. They smell of dirty man. One bed has empty Noroc beer bottles by it and an unsettling stain on the sheets. Blood. A crescent of it, halfway down the mattress.

Heavy construction paper blacks out the windows, like the kind I use back in my classroom. Being a teacher feels like a thousand lifetimes ago. I can never go back.

I go through the rest of the house. Nothing, no one else.

But a door off the kitchen is locked. I scramble fingers through Boris’s pockets and find the keys.

The door opens to stairs that lead down into a basement. The room is coal-dark. I find and flick on the light. Eight beds in the room. Three are occupied.

‘Hello? Are you all right?’ I call. First in Moldovan/ Romanian, then in Russian.

Two of the girls moan, stir. On a table stand I see powder, syringe, candle, spoon – equipment for a horrible witchcraft. I hurry over to the young women. Track marks mar their pale, pearly arms; their flesh thrums under my fingertips. Chains bind them to the beds.

The third girl is dead. Eyes half open, showing a moon-sliver of white, throat choking with bile.

Another key on Boris’s ring unlocks the chains and I get the two girls to sit up. They shudder and cry, lost in between the high of the cruel drug and the pain of what they’ve suffered. I find their clothes folded in a corner and get them dressed.

Natalia was wrong, or lied. This is where the women are broken and bent to force, not Istanbul. I wasn’t expecting to lead a rescue mission; I was going to handle Boris like I handled Vadim, get the information on the next stage of the trafficking trail, move onto Istanbul. I lead the women up to the kitchen, reassure them all will be fine.

I talk to them in what I call my teacher-calm voice. The two girls stare at the dazed and bound Boris. They don’t cry, they just stare at him, like I’ve dragged in the devil in chains to lay at their feet. I want to get them to safety – but I need information from Boris. The girls seem okay for the moment, just relieved to be free. I ask where they are from and both are from small towns in western Moldova. The dead girl was from Ukraine, they say.

Boris, gagged, stares up at me. I decide to risk more time under this roof. No one else is here. I tear the tape off his mouth.

‘You fucking bitch we will kill you and your whole family you goddamned bitch’ – and then I seal the tape back over his mouth. They are all so unoriginal in their name-calling. Then I tear off another strip. I play the sticky side of the tape against Boris’s nostrils, like a teasing feather. His eyes widen and he kicks against the hard tile floor, trying to get away from me.

‘Did he hurt you?’ I ask the two girls.

One’s too blissed out, riding a narcotic surf, to answer. But the other nods, hair hanging down in her eyes.

‘Then I’m going to hurt him. Keep your seat if you want or go into the other room.’

The girls stay. The more sober one clutches her friend’s arm.

I put my face close to Boris’s. ‘Six months ago. Moldovan girl named Nelly. Blonde. Do you remember? Nod yes or shake your head no.’

Boris nods. Vadim must have told him he was going to work Nelly’s sister to get new recruits.

‘Where is she?’ Now I rip the tape free from his lips.

‘Tel Aviv. A massage parlor called Lucky Strike, on Rehov Fin. It’s above a pizzeria.’

This confirms Natalia’s story. ‘Who has her? The man with the blond mohawk?’

Boris hesitates and so I seal the tape back over his mouth. Then I stick the extra strip over his nostrils. I run a finger along its edge. Boris begins to buck. His eyes roll and bulge in panic.

That’s probably how the girls felt, like they had no control, no help, and they were going to die.

Boris screams behind the tape.

‘Did you rape my sister? Did you pump heroin into her veins?’

He writhes, screams his throat raw. Begging now in his eyes as his body craves fresh oxygen.

I watch his face. I count to forty. He is a smoker and he didn’t get a lungful before I sealed the exits. I tear the tape off.

Now Boris babbles: ‘The man who bought her, there is a laptop upstairs… ’

Tape really is the most useful tool around the house, I think. I put the tape back over his mouth but not his nose. I run upstairs. I find a file cabinet, a weathered desk spotted with beer bottle rings. And a laptop. I open it. It awakens from sleep; apparently Boris was web-surfing before he headed to the train station.

I pick through the hard disk. I open a folder called PRODUCT. Each girl has a file. The top of the window tells me there are one thousand and thirty-six files.

I can’t wrap my head around the number. Thinking about it is an ax to the brain. I search for Nelly. Sold, for a combination of heroin and $6,000, to a Yaakov Zviman in Tel Aviv. The notes in the file indicate she was auctioned off at a motel room in Eilat, five different bidders.

I try not to vomit at the thought.

I memorize the address. But I copy the entire folder to a disc and put the disc in my jacket pocket. I open the desk drawer and find rolls of money: euros, American dollars, Romanian leu, Turkish lira and Israeli sheqel banknotes. I scoop them all up, shove them into my pockets.

I close the laptop and head downstairs.

And hear the front door opening and a woman’s voice, ‘Boris, did you remember to feed the whores?’, then ‘What the hell?’

I run down the rest of the stairway and in the kitchen is a woman, standing over Boris’s wriggling form. The woman is blonde, close to six feet tall, wiry, hair cropped short.

And this woman is pulling out a gun from the back of her jacket.

Mind goes blank – I forget I have the Taser – and I throw myself toward the tall woman. Like Ivan has taught me. I need a punching bag now. A rage fuels my blood. My fist courts her jaw. The blow, delivered, hurts my hand but the sheer force of my attack knocks the woman back into the refrigerator.

I hammer another fist, this time into her stomach. The woman swerves, shoving past me, trying to get room to fight back, gasping.

I step back and aim a hard kick at the woman’s throat. I am too ambitious. I miss, hit low, the heel of my boot slamming into the woman’s breasts, driving air from the lungs. The woman’s gun clatters to the tiles.

The two captive girls stumble from the kitchen, one dragging the other, trampling over the bound Boris, who is trying to maneuver to his feet.

I throw the woman across the kitchen. She lands against the counter. Leftovers from breakfast lie by the sink. Coarse bread, mug of coffee. The tall woman throws the mug at me, it catches my temple, ice-cold, bitter coffee splashes in my eyes. I blink away the sting and then I see the sharp bread knife slashing toward me.

The tip of the knife catches me along the edge of the hand and it hurts, I cry out and the tall woman slashes back with the knife, an inch from my throat, the air singing. I can feel the whip of the blade, the slicing of air. Before the tall woman can slam the blade backwards in its arc – and I see her reverse her grip on the knife with a nimble strut of fingers – I grab the skillet, crusted with leftover egg, and slam it into the woman’s face with the force of a tennis racket.

She howls. Blood flies from her mouth.

I crack the skillet against the woman’s knife hand; the knife drops to the tile. It bounces, it gleams.

I use the skillet to batter the woman down, raining the blows. The final barrage sends her sprawling, bleeding, quiet at last.

The two girls are gone. I stand in the doorway and scan the street for them, flat of my hand against the sunlight, like a mama surveying the street for her kids.

Better this way, I think.

I have what I need. The disc, the address for Nelly.

I realize then that I’m hurt – cut across both sets of knuckles, another slash across my stomach. It doesn’t hurt so much until I see the wounds; the blood brings the sharp sting.

I turn and Boris has staggered to his feet, hopping, and I pick up the skillet and I put him back down. Then I take the edge of the skillet and slam it into his crotch.

‘ Tu mori,’ I say to him, but I don’t think he’s listening any more.

I turn to the stove. I crank on the gas on all the burners. I open a drawer and find foil and stick a wad of it inside the microwave and turn it on, set the timer to cook for five minutes. I run out the door, Boris screeching behind the gag, what sounds like a plea for mercy. He’s a smart boy.

I’m not all the way down the street when the back of the house explodes outwards, the roof buckling, taking to air like untested wings.

I hear the debris crashing into the yard.

I don’t look back. Sam, you cannot look back either.