Old Growth & Ivy (The Spook Hills Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

Now
I want to find my way to you, if you will have me.  At 60 years old I need
to have more of life for myself before it becomes too late.   I would
like to think that you are interested in me too, but you have to understand
what I can be like.   You need to recognize that I have this harder
side that I built over many years.  While I can compartmentalize, it is
there when needed.  I can be a demanding SOB who always, or so I believe,
keeps the end good in mind. 

Tomorrow
the team flies to our target destination.  Take your time to consider what
I have told you.  It is unlikely that I will be able to pick up a personal
call or email in the next week or two or even longer.  If you still want
to move forward in a relationship with me, call my cell phone and leave a voice
mail.  If you decide this harder side of me is not for you, then
understand I will always treasure having known you, if only briefly.

I
feel as if I have come to your door as a charming spook in a white bed sheet on
Halloween, then I took off my mask to reveal the ugly ghoul underneath. 
Ivy, be sure you make the right choice for yourself. 

Steve

Ivy pulled a warm lavender wool plaid
throw closer around her to ward off the early morning chill.  She felt
torn between spending time contemplating the message from Steve and work
obligations.  While they had met the client's deadline the day before, Ivy
had other work to tackle that morning.  Unfolding herself from the chair
and tossing the throw over her shoulders, she decided to go handle the critical
items at the office, check in with each of her direct reports and leave work no
later than noontime.  She had some thinking to do that afternoon and she
was still reeling from the excessively long work hours of the last few days.

In Sofia the session on Tuesday
afternoon with Matka was challenging.  At least on the surface, Brian was
smooth, confident, and cool as he performed his impersonation of a female
executive.  Even Mathew found him believable -- for sure he had hoodwinked
the perps with his short gel nails, hair blown into a feminine style, perfect
eyebrows, soft slacks, a set of modest falsies and a sexy, throaty voice. 
Mathew took most of the negotiations, however he would check with Brian for
approval, as he (she) was the lead in Matka's understanding. 

With the perps, Mathew talked about
how they wanted to start a so-called personal network out of St. Louis and then
expand into other cities in the American Heartland.  From what they knew
so far, the brothels Matka already dealt with were located in the major cities
in the United States and Europe.  Their proposed enterprise would step
that down to the next tier of cities, with a concentration in the
Midwest.  He described how they would handle security and how they would
rely on the still-existing exclusive clubs and organizations for business
executives to get the word out, one man to the next.  The network would be
fronted behind their existing chain of upmarket steakhouses, using adjunct
space in the basement or on upper floors.  They owned each of their
restaurant buildings, allowing them more flexibility in how they managed their
businesses.  They would offer a variety of services, from upscale women to
gay men to more youthful alternatives.  Mathew could feel a line of tense
sweat forming on his back and under his arms and was glad he left his suit
jacket on.  Luckily, his face stayed cool and he kept his demeanor serious
but not brusque.

Matka had a number of questions
concerning their finances and their expected growth rate.  Mathew
discussed their proposed operations as if he were laying out a business plan,
relying on the scenarios they had put together the previous week.  At one
point, Brian opened his briefcase and took out a computerized line graph that
showed their planned growth rate in terms of numbers of so-called employees by
age group over the next 12, 24 and 36 months, as well as where they were
targeting to be at the end of five years.  Matka managed a cold smile as
she looked at the numbers.  Mathew could see her calculating her revenues
on the sale of the children.  Dragomir asked a tough series of questions
on how they would keep the operations secure and away from the prying eyes of
police or local do-gooders. 

They were there for over two
hours.  When it was over and they were back at the hotel, Mathew walked to
a nearby park and called Steve in Frankfurt.

"You're on."  Mathew
said by way of greeting.  "Tomorrow at one.  We asked to see the
so-called orphanage.  Got a no go.  Brian stood up to walk out; deal
off."

"That took balls," Steve
said admiringly.

"His action changed Matka's
thinking.  After a third of the cash is wired to their bank account
tomorrow morning, we get to make our choices.  Then the next third is due
the following morning and the rest will be COD St. Louis.  They have a way
to bring the kids into the U.S.  The process takes two weeks."

"Good negotiating on only a third
of a million up front.  What are the logistics?”  

"Hotel lobby.  Tomorrow at
one.  Car coming for you, me and Ms. London."

Tomorrow they would do the smash-up,
kids out and arrests all in one, provided they made it to the so-called
orphanage.  Once an operation was underway, Steve never liked to play it
slow.  They had to hope the technology worked, the backup team would be at
the ready and they did not encounter too many curveball surprises.  
Steve made a mental note to reinforce with Lenny that they had to minimize any
impact on the kids when the bust in the orphanage went down.

***

Secure Email
from Ivy Littleton, November 13, 2012

My dear Steve,

Sorry
not to have been in contact sooner -- I saw your email last week, but only read
the beginning, which warmed my heart.   I was in the office, crunched
for time and wanted to savor the rest by reading it at a quiet time at
home.  As it turned out that same day our Project Manager for a big client
walked out leaving a mess.  I had to spend my every waking moment going
through papers, making assignments for the team to document the test results
and observations properly, reviewing the findings, writing the required report,
and so on.  We made the deadline to give the client proof of compliance
for a large federal contract, so the client is happy.  However, now I need
to reassess the timeliness and thoroughness of our project reviews my directors
conduct.

I
went home from those long days of work and little sleep, took a shower and fell
into bed.  My eyes popped open at four this morning with the memory of
your email surfacing in my brain.  I read all of it and after
comprehending its full contents, I fear my delay was unkind to you.  What
you had to say about yourself and illustrated with your replays of team
activities made me remember times in my career I would rather forget. 
However I like to think that each of us has always tried to do what is best for
the greater good -- in my case, the company and its clients, and in yours, the
FBI, the law and the victims of the crimes committed.

You
called me guileless.  Oh Steve, I have guile.  You have seen only
part of my persona.  I am that person.  However, I have other sides
too, some of which are less attractive.  Ivy Littleton has been a
corporate career executive.  Corporations have their politics in the same
way that the Bureau does.  Sometimes I had to take on tasks concerning employees
that I would rather not have done.  Even though it benefitted the Company,
an employee might have been fired, suffered the ignominy of a demotion or slunk
out of the building for good because of me.  While I never acted without
the conviction that it was good for the Company, I wonder what right I had to
play judge and to take away a person's livelihood. 

You
talked about over-challenging agents on your teams.  I am not always nice
to my staff.  I give them a lot of latitude when maybe I should be there
as their safety net.  Sometimes I want to make a point on their
performance; more often I want to see if they had the strength of character to
stand up to me.  If employees can survive these tests, I can be
supportive, even mentoring, but it can be hell for them to gain my confidence.

I
can be tough with clients if they demand more than they contracted for, without
paying more.  I can be harsh with service providers and vendors if they do
not perform.  No Steve, all too often in business I am not a nice
person.  How different am I from you?  You fight for real causes; at
best I have fought to keep a company solvent, people employed and our clients
satisfied.  Will you still want to see me, now that you see that I have a
flawed side in addition to my sometimes hot temper?

I
believe that you acted in the best interests of our country, our citizens and
your teams as a whole.  What was required in the line of duty, I could
never hold against you.  If anything, I am attracted to you more for your
concerns, for wanting to be open with me, and for being the man of character
that you are.

I
feel shabbier for having revealed parts of my career and myself that do not sit
well with me, but you have been so open that I am compelled to be the
same.  Now I will say what you said to me.  Call me on my personal
cell, if you want to keep exploring what we started, knowing that Ivy Littleton
is a somewhat tarnished version of Ivy Vine. 

Ivy

After rereading her reply to Steve,
Ivy reluctantly hit the Send button and pushed back from her laptop.  She
did not want to lose Steve.  However he had to be aware of these aspects
of her personality and character or he could find out at some later point and
be disappointed by her lack of honesty about herself.  For now, she would
have to wait and hope.

***

The next morning in Sofia, equipped
with a hidden wireless microphone that would transmit to Lenny, Steve confirmed
that the first third of the million-dollar payment had been wired to the
required account.  He then met Mathew and Brian (aka Ms. London) in the
lobby just before one.  He and Mathew carried locally-supplied Glock
handguns; Brian had only a small plastic Smith & Wesson hidden in the purse
he carried, buried at the bottom under a comb, wallet, lipstick and other
paraphernalia that a woman might have.  While they did not expect any
weaponry to get past the perp's security, they had to try. 

Security was a pat-down search by the
perp they had dubbed Dragomir.  The large hulking man had small black
eyes, a square face and pock-marked skin.  He checked each of them with
his thick hands, removed their guns, and then pawed through their
briefcases.  When he reached Brian, Dragomir grabbed for Brian's purse to
search it. 

"No, please," Brian said
quietly.  The man looked up in surprise. 

Brian ducked his head and stammered,
"Wrong time of the month."  Dragomir opened the purse
anyway.  It was tall, but too narrow and thin for a conventional weapon,
so much less suspect.  He raked through the tampons Brian had tossed on
top and shoved the makeup around, but didn’t get down as far as the little
Smith & Wesson lying on the bottom under a slim notebook.

Dragomir then escorted them to the
conference room where they had met with Matka the day before.  They were
in an older two story building in a rundown section of Sofia.  The
business that operated there was ostensibly an employment agency.  After a
few minutes, Matka joined them.  She had such a cold assurance about her that
Steve wanted to backhand her across the face but he held his cool.

"You have the first third of the
money," he growled without preamble, having decided to play the pit bull,
which was a frequent role for him.

"Yes.  It arrived in our
account," Matka's English was precise, although it carried a noticeable
Slavic accent.  She was a stout woman of medium height, dressed
expensively with a showy Gucci scarf arranged around her neck, and wearing a
plethora of hefty gold jewelry.  Her makeup was equally heavy.  Her
hair was medium length, streaked with silver and pulled back with a bejeweled
thick barrette.  In an Eastern European way, she had the appearance of a
successful executive from the retail industry. 

"Let's see the goods." 
Steve responded impatiently.  "We have a plane to catch."

Matka nodded at Dragomir who led them
to an elevator.  She followed them.  They rode down and emerged into
a basement lit by harsh fluorescent bulbs.  In the bleakly bright room
were six barred cells.  Each one contained four to six children.  Steve
estimated that they varied in age from five to fifteen.  While most were
girls, two cells held boys.  He noticed that they were all silent and
withdrawn, likely from drugs.  Where he could see their eyes, each one was
terrified.  Steve clenched his jaw, thinking that they should be in school
or playing at home, not locked in sunless cells waiting for horrid fates.

He slid his eyes to Mathew and Brian,
checking that they kept their faces serious and showed no horror or
sympathy.  He had drilled them well.  Their faces were
impassive.  Steve then spoke the code words into the microphone that would
signal Lenny and the arrest team to make their way inside in silence and alert
Mathew and Brian that things were about to grow hot.  "We will make
our choices."

The three of them walked past the
cells where the children watched, cowed and fearful.  It was a struggle
for the three agents to keep their emotions off of their own faces.  As
they walked back, the elevator door slid closed and the elevator motor ran,
startling Matka and Dragomir.  Steve slid his eyes left and right to Brian
and Mathew, and then lunged for Matka.  Mathew lurched forward to overcome
Dragomir who swiftly pointed his gun at Mathew.  Brian leapt through the
air at Dragomir, throwing himself between the gun and Mathew.  The gun
went off, hitting Brian in the leg.  Mathew wrestled the gun away from
Dragomir, pinning his arms behind him.  From the floor where he knelt,
Brian pointed his small gun from one perp to the other, ignoring the blood running
from the wound in his thigh. 

Footsteps clattered down the
stairs.  The backup team burst into the room with Lenny in the lead,
submachine gun in hand.  Steve's eyes swept over the children, who had
taken whatever cover they could.  Most were cowering near or under the
cots in their cells, making him glad the shooting had not been worse.  He
stood with Matka's left arm bent up behind her back and his arm wrapped around
her neck until he could turn her over to Lenny.  Then he knelt down by
Brian, whipping off his own tie and using it as a tourniquet around Brian's
leg.  He yelled for a medic.  Mathew shoved Dragomir over to be
cuffed, and then searched him for keys to the cells.  The two perps stood
by the elevators in handcuffs with agents on either side.  They would be
taken to squad cars parked outside. 

"Go with them," Steve
pointed to two of the agents.  "Call the legats.  You know the
drill on questioning."

Two medics rushed in and took over
Brian.  They were surprised to find him talking like a man dressed the way
he was.  Steve explained the impersonation to them in a couple of terse
sentences, then he pulled out his cell phone, dialed and ordered the jet they
had on standby to be ready for departure in an hour for Bern, getting a little
heated when he met resistance about flying on such short notice.  He hung
up and sent another agent to pick up their suitcases at the hotel.