Choke Point (3 page)

I
n another life, Grace would’ve been a witch doctor. A digital witch doctor. She balances between several worlds: her father’s traditionalist Chinese versus the reality that is Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and the other major cities joining the Western world; a love life that has lost its way; a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world of private security; numbers on a page versus numbers in the cloud.

As her fingers hit the keypad, all that changes: she’s transported into a digital realm that both absorbs her and fascinates her. She is in control, despite the vodka. Her eyes stray over to Mr. Smear-n-Off—the digital gates open before her like she’s marching on Troy. She’s through three barriers and onto the corporate network, marching with her army of education, training and experience and pushing her horse through with its belly full of surprises.

The investment firm has thousands of clients—tens of thousands—and she’s trying to find just one. No name. No account number. She’s exhilarated. Electric. Part of it is the voyeurism. Part of it, the excitement of exploration. Part of it, superiority. All she has is a number and a date, and the chances are the number has been broken into smaller numbers. But that’s part of the fun. So it’s down to the date in sorting through hundreds of deposits, knowing the mistake that’s always made is the cents. She’s hunting for fifty-four cents. Over three hundred thousand dollars stolen and she’s going to find it with just fifty-four cents.

With any luck, that will just be the start of this. She suspects the three hundred thousand may be only the tip of the iceberg.

Mr. Smear-n-Off moans and rolls over but isn’t even close to REM—he’s not coming around anytime soon. Her eyes are to the right of the decimal point, the numbers scrolling in what to others would appear a blur, and there it is like a flag waving:
FIFTY-FOUR CENTS
. Her index finger skids the scroll to a stop. She has to back up a page to find the actual entry, but it’s there. A date that makes sense. The alcohol helps her to make a joke just for herself.
It makes cents.
She chuckles. She captures a screenshot almost automatically, saves it to the external drive and deletes it from the laptop. As a hunter she has raised her bow, but is far from firing. This smells of the game she pursues, but only time will tell. And the amount is small: forty-seven thousand, two hundred, eighty-three and
fifty-four cents
, leaving much more to find. Possibly much, much more.

The LED on the external drive stops flashing, the cloning complete. She’s all efficiency of motion as she packs up, wipes down the desk and laptop and makes for the door. She can almost move herself to feel sorry for Mr. Smear-n-Off.

Almost.

T
he air in the room hangs heavy, snowflakes of wool lint mixed with tobacco smoke swirling beneath the rows of arched skylights. An occasional deep-chested cough interrupts the quiet. Four girls to a rug, sometimes six. Ten to twelve rugs. Feet tucked under the girls’ bottoms to ward off the cool concrete floor. Maja, a “local,” ties at station three with two “residents.”

It is a joyless space. A place of deep concentration—mistakes are not tolerated. Furtive looks are exchanged between the girls; they share a language of minute gestures, undetected by the watchers. These messages and warnings travel from station to station as the girls attempt to protect one another. A team of nameless strangers, yet some have known each other for years. Some go back only a few months. Five of the girls arrived less than two weeks ago.

A warning flashes across the room, carried by a dozen hands.

“Inspection!” a watcher cries out sharply.

The shop is a place of routine and schedule. Most of all, it is a secret place. No one leaves—not even the watchers—once the door is closed and locked. The sound of the door coming open means only one thing: Him.

The girls continue their work, shoulders hunched with dread and anticipation.

More frightening than the dog is the man who leashes him. The leader. His face looks like it’s been through a shredder. But it is his deliberateness that terrifies Maja. His calm covers a churning machine inside. He may not exactly enjoy punishing the girls, but he has no problem doing so. He makes the watchers look like nannies.

The clicking of the dog’s nails on the concrete and the animal’s rapid panting send chills up her spine. The inspections are like Russian roulette. Sometimes the girls pass muster, sometimes not.

The leader’s running shoes squeak as they flex. The timing of the inspections, every two to three weeks, is unpredictable. What the leader is searching for remains unclear. Electronics? Forbidden. A camera? Forbidden. Candy? Gum? Forbidden.

The minutes stretch out interminably. Maja is restless. She works furiously at her rug. Even from a distance, she can hear a watcher take a drag on his cigarette and exhale. She hears a gob of dog drool splash on the floor next to her. She does not pause.

The beast is upon her, its nose active. The dog snorts and huffs as it circles her head, her back and pauses at her bottom. Despite her being fully clothed, she’s embarrassed. The animal works around to her crossed legs and stuffs its nose into her crotch. Still, she cranes forward, continuing to tie.

The dull rattle of its choke collar signals that this time she has passed. The dog is led to the girl to Maja’s left. The process begins again.

The dog growls roughly.

Why?
Maja wonders.

“No, no! Please!” the girl cries. The leader coils the girl’s hair around his hand and lifts her straight off the floor. Maja doesn’t even know the girl’s name.

“Too slow!” the leader calls out.

But she is one of the most efficient of them all. Surely one of the watchers will defend her! But nothing is said.

Maja’s partner hangs by her hair, tears streaming down her cheeks. The girl bites down on her knuckles, not daring to scream. It would only get worse for her. They would beat the soles of her feet with the sock—a knot of rocks tied into the toe of a white Reebok athletic sock.

“You dare look at me like that?” the leader spits at the crying girl. “This one!” he tells the nearby watcher. The leader passes the girl by the hair. The watcher lets her settle to the floor and drags her off.

“Faster!” the leader shouts.

All heads are trained down. All hands are busy.

Ten minutes later there’s a ruckus at station nine. “Sloppy!” the leader says in Dutch.

This girl cries out and is slapped repeatedly. She settles into a blubbering sob.

Maja knows better than to look. A moment later, the leader leaves. Two girls are gone, never to return. Taken to where, Maja doesn’t know.

Her fingers twist the length of red yarn. Grab, tuck and pull tight. If they see her tears, she’s in trouble.

S
onia Pangarkar’s newspaper article haunts him as he makes the call to his brother. The reporter was interviewing doctors at a local clinic about the cost of immigrant health care when an emaciated, unkempt girl arrived at the desk, feverish from a festering ankle wound. The writing is excellent—too good for Knox; too many well-crafted images left swimming in his head. Now he wishes he hadn’t read it. They had to include a photo because what would the article be without some nausea to go along with it? A girl of nine or ten, her face all bone and eyes. Pleading. Helpless. These children are used for their small fingers. Their knots can be tied tighter and more quickly. It’s efficiency, at any price. But now it’s their turn to pay the price, whoever’s behind this. Dulwich has his mission; Knox has his own.

Before calling Tommy, Knox tries to settle himself. His brother knows him way too well, and in an uncanny, telekinetic way, his condition—whatever name they’re putting on it this week—allows him nearly insight to where he can penetrate Knox even over a phone line, discerning his mood or state of mind. Knox will use the new job offer as an excuse to delay his scheduled visit; it’s not the first delay, nor likely the last, and he doesn’t want Tommy seeing through to the truth—whatever that truth may be; it continues to elude him. Knox has been focused on Tommy’s financial health for so long that he’s beginning to see himself as avoiding the realities of his brother’s physical and emotional health.

“Hey.”

“There you are!” Tommy comes in two flavors: apathetic and charged. It’s the latter today, which is easier for Knox. When apathetic, Tommy is unreachable.

“How are things?”

“You know.” Tommy feels responsible for the embezzlement of over three hundred thousand dollars by their company’s former bookkeeper, Evelyn, a woman Tommy became infatuated with. No matter how many times Knox explains Evelyn fooled them both, Tommy can’t forgive himself. Part of the guilt revolves around Tommy’s crush, allowing her to manipulate him. Knox has plans for Evelyn when he finds her, and he will find her.

“I’m taking a job with Sarge. I don’t know for how long, but it will pay well.”

“How’d the buying go?”

Knox isn’t sure he’s heard him. Tommy can be funny that way. “Good. You got my e-mails?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you know it went well.” There are those who treat Tommy like a ten-year-old. Not his brother.

“You shipped to the warehouse.”

“Correct.” They’re getting somewhere; Tommy is staying on top.

“We can put the new stuff online as soon as they’re inventoried.” There’s pride in his voice now, making Knox happy.

“Yes. That’s right. You can take care of the inventory?”

“No problem.”

That a boy. “
You heard what I said about Sarge?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t mean you can’t call me.”

“I know.”

“I want you to call me.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Seriously.”

“But not too serious.”

Knox can’t wipe the smile off his face as he answers. “You got that right.”

“What kind of job? With Sarge?”

“Just a thing.”

Much as he knows he needs to keep the lines of communication open, Tommy is a liability. Someone might try to track down Tommy to get to Knox. Ignorance is bliss. People who run sweatshops are not to be messed with. The kind of person who chains a ten-year-old to a worktable thinks nothing of taking out a thirty-something Curious George. He and Dulwich rarely discuss the risks. The pay grade reflects them up front. None of that does Tommy much good if Knox doesn’t come home. Knox is wearing a bull’s-eye on his back before he ever leaves for Amsterdam.

“Yeah, okay.” Tommy knows the rules.

“So we’re good?” A loaded question.

“You’re saying you’re not coming to see me.”

The question hangs over Knox like an executioner’s blade. He can’t speak. Who’s the child now? Knox resents the responsibility for Tommy even as he moves to meet it.

“Take care, Johnny.” It comes out as a memorized line.

G
race enters the Netherlands on her own passport. One of the fallouts from 9/11 for companies like Rutherford Risk is the difficulty in forging identities. It can still be done, she knows, but it’s expensive and time consuming. It has been two weeks since Dulwich offered her the work. Two extremely busy weeks of conference calls with Dulwich and Knox, and Knox alone; CV creation and corresponding background support so that by the time she hands the hotel desk clerk her European Union business card everything will check out. Not exactly a new identity, but a solid academic and employment record that will hold up under all but the most intense and high-level scrutiny.

She is dressed in a conservative gray suit with low black heels. It was bought off a used-clothing rack in Hong Kong specifically for the slight fraying of both sleeve cuffs. She wears the worn, tired expression of an overtraveled low-level bureaucrat. At hotel registration her speech is clipped, but polite, and she displays a road warrior’s knowledge of everything expected of her: passport, credit card, business card, signature. She waves off the bellman and hauls her roll-aboard to the elevator, barely lifting her eyes as she punches her floor number.

Once into her room, she unpacks, maintaining the routine of an experienced traveler. Her mobile alerts her to an e-mail with an attachment she’d rather open on her laptop, so she takes a minute to set up her traveling office. Chargers, wires, the laptop with a Bluetooth mouse. She carries a data/Wi-Fi device that goes on the desk as well. The encryption between the laptop, the data device and the cell network requires a piece of USB hardware, the software equivalent of a tempered stainless-steel lock. Three passwords later, she’s into her corporate mail and is downloading a PDF sent by Dulwich—which turns out to be a scanned copy of an Amsterdam police report. The existence of the report should have been good news, for it signals Dulwich’s having established a local police contact for her and Knox. But it’s anything but.

She responds to her situation physically—an elevated heart rate, sweaty palms. This assignment is important, if not critical. Her moment has arrived; she intends to capitalize on it. Brian Primer will not be sorry he approved her participation.

Grace’s Dutch is better spoken than written and read. It’s true of her Italian, Russian and Arabic as well. But she’s fluent in German and finds it useful as she attempts to decipher the police report.

An Egyptian-born male, one Kahil Fahiz, thirty-two, was the victim of a mugging/robbery just west of the central district. He sustained multiple minor injuries and lacerations, was treated at a hospital as an outpatient and was discharged. On the surface it looks common enough. But for Grace, it is a minor shot of adrenaline. She reviews the initial newspaper article, skimming it for a name that’s echoing around her head. Finds it:

Ka
br
il Fahiz.

Sonia Pangarkar’s article quotes a Ka
br
il Fahiz, a local merchant who took a dim view of child labor sweatshops in his neighborhood.

Ka
h
il . . . Ka
br
il.

She places a call using the laptop.

“Have you opened it yet?” she asks Knox over the VPN’s voice-to-Internet protocol software. As he speaks on his mobile, it is conceivable Knox’s end of the conversation might be eavesdropped on. Not so for her. In a perfect world they would both be on the VPN.

“The police report? I have. My written Dutch is a little lacking.”

“It’s the victim’s statement, short as it is, that interests me—us. That, and his family name of course.”

“Okay,” Knox says.

“It states that they beat him and robbed him. But at the end of the beating, one of them said something in Farsi along the lines of: ‘That’ll teach you to open your mouth.’ The victim said he spent hours trying to figure out what he might’ve said and when he might’ve said it, but came up blank.”

“We all say things we later regret.”

“No . . . it is not that. Not in this case. The sergeant filing the report made an interesting observation. Entirely speculative, but important to us.”

“Okay?”

“Ka
br
il Fahiz,” she says, emphasizing the second syllable, “the man Pangarkar interviewed for her story, is from the same neighborhood—Oud-West—and is the same approximate age as the victim, Ka
h
il
Fahiz, the one they assaulted.”

“These apes go asking around intending to pound this guy who’s speaking to reporters into a different postal code—”

“But they mispronounce his name. Kabril and Kahil—an easy mistake to make.”

“They beat up the wrong guy,” Knox said, speculating. “I like the way you think. Have I told you that?”

“It wasn’t me, it was the police. It is speculation. You’re jet-lagged. Stay on point.”

“They got the wrong guy. Mixed up the names. Listen, I get it!”

“Avoided using a car bomb this time because they didn’t want the assault connected back to the earlier murder. To the newspaper article. But the police made that connection. The police report suggests a follow-up on all of Pangarkar’s sources mentioned in the article. They will have sent them to ground, John. Protect them from the possibility of more reprisals.”

“That won’t help us. Is there contact info in the report?”

“There is.”

“You should interview Fahiz.”

“Who do you think you are dealing with?” She hears herself slip into her Chinese dialect—she sounds like her mother!—and resents Knox for triggering her anger.

She resents a great deal about John Knox—his singular focus, his single-mindedness. The arrogance. Theirs is an evolving relationship. She imagines this is what an older brother would feel like—a combination of love, hate, respect, embarrassment. Together, they wander a no-man’s-land booby-trapped with buried mines of sexual innuendo but lacking the chemistry to go along with it. He is at once fascinating and intriguing, boorish and disagreeable.

“If you go talking to . . . well . . . you know how I feel about it.”

He had objected vehemently to Dulwich’s plan for Grace to take the cover of a low-level EU bureaucrat arriving to replace the victim of the car bombing. Dulwich believed it not only gave her an excuse to follow in Pangarkar’s footsteps, but that it also might “attract the bee to the pollen.” Dulwich showed little concern over using her as bait—a gamble given her increased importance to Primer. For Dulwich, it’s all about efficiency—getting the most out of his assets to reach the endpoint the quickest. He would argue that that included suffering the least collateral damage. But the way he stages an operation often runs contrary to that objective.

“I don’t need hand-holding,” she claims.

“Just make sure to keep the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature turned on. I want you on a leash.”

She pulls the phone quickly from her ear not wanting him to hear her laugh. She knows he’d rather be shopping in Marrakesh than pursuing a bomber in Amsterdam, knows that for him this is about his brother—always will be. Senses there is residual guilt there, but has never heard Tommy’s full story. It bothers her that he has coaxed more out of her than she has from him.

“And you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he says.

“Who said I was worried?”