The Missionary (7 page)

“Not say! They know.”

That in itself told Stone several things. First, if an old homeless cripple was afraid of talking about them, then he knew who they were. And if he was afraid of talking about them, they were organized, and brutal. He remembered the briefings before his team had landed in Manila, rumors of informants disappearing. Snitches turning up dead. Sources of information drying up cold, frozen by terror.

Stone also remembered debriefing interviews with the girls he and his team had rescued at such great cost. They spoke of quick and silent abductions. Needles in the arm, brutal beatings and forced addictions, being sold to the highest bidder into sexual slavery.
 

Something told Stone that his team’s strike had only set back the trafficking ring, hadn’t killed the beast entirely. Organizations like that were hydras, seven heads emerging for every one you cut off.
 

And now they were back, and they had Wren.

He left the old man cowering in his den of garbage, flagged a passing taxi and named an intersection far across the city. He set out on foot, navigating narrow streets and busy intersections. In the distance, a mountain of trash loomed, a two-story monument of waste covering several acres, wreathed in smoke and fumes. The closer he got, the more looks his presence received. He was a lone white man in a place most residents of Manila avoided. To one side were the tenement apartments the government had built several years ago, which now housed thousands of people who used to live on the trash mountain itself.
 

The shantytown spreading from the base of the mountain was a world of its own, a maze of tin and rot and desperation, tumbledown heaps of refuse serving as homes for starving millions. It was into this place, this fever-dream nightmare of abject poverty that Stone ventured.

Vacant eyes watched him, apathetic, resigned. Faces peered from glassless windows, watching him shuffle warily from one shadow to another. He wasn’t safe here. He knew that.
 

Ropes were strung from pole to window, strung with shirts and pants and bras. Stacks of cinder blocks formed walls, and often, roofs were the floors of the residence above. The shanties were stacked two and three high in places, patchwork squares of rickety homes. Most were barely six or eight feet wide, and perhaps the same high. Flaps in the wood fronts could be let down to function as windows. Stone hadn’t ever been inside the stacked shanties, and had no idea how the residents got from the street level to the top. Perhaps there were ladders somewhere within. Belongings were hung from the windows, clothes, pots and pans, buckets, water coolers. Bicycles were lined up along the streets, often the only means of transportation for entire families. Where the shanties were only one story high, the roofs served as storage, sidewalk, and homes for those with nowhere else to go.
 

Where the shantytown followed the river, homes often sat mere feet above the water, which was stagnant and green and thick and slurried with trash.
 

 
Stone tried to ignore the eyes on him, ignore the warning prickle of hairs on his neck. He was following old memories, lost in the maze now, swallowed by Manila. He ignored the futility of wandering in this place, ignored the fear. He could disappear here and never be found. He had no idea what he was looking for, where he was going, what he was doing.
 

Nonetheless, he picked his way through the shanties, eyes raking and roving, watching and assessing.
 

Sheer blind, dumb luck brought him his first break. A middle-aged Filipino man, dressed a little too nicely, hands a little too clean, hair a little too neatly cut and combed, stepping gingerly through the dirt, avoiding bits of trash. Stone’s instincts screamed, and he listened. The man didn’t see him pressed against a wooden wall, hidden in shadows cast by the trembling bulk of the jury-rigged buildings above him. Stone followed at a distance, noting his surroundings and the route through the maze back to a main road. The man waited at a curbside bus stop with half a dozen others. After a few minutes, a bus rumbled to a stop, belching diesel fumes. Stone burst into a run, falling into line several places behind his quarry, digging out change. On the bus, he slumped against a railing, peering out the window at the passing cityscape, hoping his prey wouldn’t notice him. The man rode for nearly a dozen stops, de-boarding in the middle of the metropolitan city center. Stone followed, keeping as many people between himself and his target as he could without losing visual. As he made his way through the city on foot, the Filipino man fished an older model flip-style cell phone from his hip pocket, hit a speed dial number, spoke briefly, and hung up, the entire conversation lasting less than ten seconds.
 

And then, between one breath and another, the man vanished. Stone stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, scanning the crowds, the street-side carts and vendors of tourist trinkets, the alleys and doorways. All to no avail. He cursed under his breath, moving into the lee of a doorway, and scanned the crowd again, hunting for some clue to where his target had gone—a closing doorway, a knot of people disrupted, as if pushed aside by someone in a hurry.

Something cold and hard pressed into Stone’s ribs, and fetid breath huffed in his face. “What you want, huh?” The voice was pitched low, thickly accented but fluent.

Stone shifted slightly, and saw the man he’d been following standing beside him, a pistol pressed against Stone’s side, hidden from view by their bodies. “I’m looking for a girl.”

The man chuckled. “I know lots of girls. Maybe you new here, yeah? Pollow me not smart. Pind girls some odder way.”

Stone clenched his fist and forced himself to play a role. “I’m looking for a certain kind of girl.”

“Keep talking.”

“I think you can find the right girl for me. Young. American. I’ll pay good money.”

Silence strung out a little too long, and Stone braced for the shot that would kill him, but it never came. “Show me money. American dollars.”

Stone held his hand out to show it was empty, then rooted in his hip pocket for his emergency stash of US dollars. “There’s a thousand here. I can get more.”

The man laughed again. “You need more. Much more. Dat kind of girl, she not cheap, huh? Maybe you a cop? Work por goberment? Yeah. You smell bad. You smell like po-liss-man.”

“Fuck that. I just wanna get off. You know? Stick my dick in someone warm. She ain’t even gotta be willing, know what I’m saying?” Stone grated the words out. “But I like American girls, and I heard you got ‘em around here.”

“Sometin’ wrong with Pilippines girl? Not so sexy por you, huh?”

Stone shrugged, affecting nonchalance. “Nah, they’re fine. You just get homesick, you know?”

The pistol barrel was still touching his ribs, but wasn’t pressed quite so hard. And then it was gone and the man was gesturing for Stone to follow him. “Dis way. Dis way. I got girls. You got dollars, I got girls.”

Stone tamped down his disgust and followed as the man led him down a block and into an apartment building, up and up and up around endless stairs. Through a doorway marked with a tilted brass number and into a low, dank, dark apartment. Threadbare blankets hung over the windows, sunlight streaming in through cracks along the edges. A drooping couch faced away from the doorway, and a coffee table stood just beyond, covered in empty beer bottles, full ashtrays, empty baggies that had once held drugs. Three girls were draped on the couch, slumped sideways against each other, one resting on the armrest, another drooling onto the first girl’s shoulder, and the third across both their laps. All three were mostly naked, clad in nothing but panties. They were skinny, ribs showing, arms and legs like sticks, hair lank and greasy and unwashed. They didn’t look up as the door opened, but when they saw Stone’s escort, they righted themselves quickly, blinking, eyes going wide and fearful. They cringed as the man rounded the couch.

Stone made himself stay still and not react. The man latched his fist around one girl’s wrist, yanking her upright. She stumbled, bleary-eyed, clearly strung out into dazed incoherency. She stood awkwardly, weight on one leg, the other bent slightly and turned inward, arms hanging at her sides. Her eyes were green, bright moss-green, her hair black. Her filthy, scarred, needle-tracked skin had once been porcelain.
 

She had once been beautiful.
 

Now, as the man shoved her toward Stone, she blinked once, slowly, realizing this was a cue. She glanced up at Stone, forced an empty smile onto her slack, dry lips, and shoved her panties down around her thighs, stepped out of them. She pushed herself against him, fumbling for his belt.
 

The pimp, or whatever he was, stood with his back to the window, watching, a leering grin on his face.
 

“What, are you gonna just gonna fuckin’ stand there and watch?” Stone growled.
 

“Ha, no. You want, I charge extra for dat. Tree hundred dollar, you do what you want with all dese girls. Couch, fine. Room ova dere, fine.” He pointed at a slightly ajar door at the end of a short, narrow hallway. There was one other door, leading to a bathroom, and a tiny galley kitchen.

“What about you?” Stone asked.

“Smoke, out da door. Not far.” He stepped between Stone and the girl, who was waiting apathetically, eyes crossing as she fought to stay conscious. He pinched her nipple hard enough that she whined and stumbled away, but didn’t try to stop him. “Only rule, no cutting, no burning, no makin’ dem bleed. Yeah?”

Stone nodded, and made himself look at the girls as if he wanted them. Inside, his gut was churning, clenching, revolting. This girl couldn’t be more than twenty, but she looked old and used, uncaring and empty, as if this was a scene she’d experienced too many times to count. There was no hope in her eyes, no life.
 

The pimp held out his hand, and Stone fished the American money from his pocket, peeled three bills away, and shoved the rest back into his pants. When the pimp took the money and smoothed a bill out, holding it up to the light, Stone struck. He lashed out with his hand, jabbing the ‘Y’ between his thumb and index finger against the man’s throat.
 

The pimp gasped, surprised, choking, dropping the money and clutching his throat. Stone lunged, driving his knee upward into the pimp’s groin. The girl stumbled backward, fell against the couch and sat down hard. Stone knocked the pimp to the floor and, kneeling astride him, pulled his pistol and pressed the barrel against the man’s exposed throat, knee in his sternum.
 

“I’m looking for a girl,” Stone growled.
 

“I—got you girl,” he gasped. “Tree girls. No charge, do what you want. No charge.”

Stone slammed the butt of the pistol against the Filipino man’s forehead, gashing it open and loosing rivulets of blood. “No, see, I’m looking for a particular girl. New. American. Not on the market yet. I think you took her. I want her back.”

“No new girls. I don’t—please, I don’t know!” He writhed, trying to get at his own gun.

Stone put the barrel between his eyes and pulled the hammer back. “Liar.”

“Okay, okay! I know! I don’t take her. I gonna buy her, but I don’t take. I know where she is. Please, I show you.”
 

“Tell me.”

“Ha, you neber pind it alone. You kill me, you neber pind your girlpriend.”
 

Stone gritted his teeth, knowing the pimp was right. There were no addresses, no streets, no way to navigate unless you’d been there already. He reached under the Filipino man and extracted the pistol, tucked it into his own waistband. He hauled the man to his feet, keeping the 9mm trained on him. How was he going to manage this? If he took his eyes off the pimp for even a split second, he’d be gone, but he couldn’t very well navigate Manila with a handgun out in broad daylight. There wasn’t any good solution to the problem, but the longer he stood here trying to think through it, the worse off Wren would be. Stone gathered the dropped bills, shoved them back into his pocket, and gestured with the barrel of his pistol.

“Go,” he grunted. “Show me. And don’t think I won’t shoot you if you try to run.”

“You pind da girl, den what? Dey won’ let you go wit’ her.”

“Let me worry about that. Just take me to her.”

“Okay, dead man.”

Stone followed him out of the apartment, down the stairs and onto the street, back onto the bus, returning the way they’d come. Stone kept close to his guide, his pistol tucked into the front of his jeans, wedged uncomfortably and not entirely safely, but within easy reach.
 

As the built-up, modern downtown faded into tumbledown shanties and the wasteland of poverty, Stone felt his gnawing unease ratchet into outright fear. His guide was constantly turning his head around to grin at him, shaking his head and laughing at if at some private joke.

The joke, Stone knew, was on him. He was walking alone into the lion’s den, basically unarmed. A couple of 9mm pistols weren’t going to do much good against a criminal organization that had all of Manila quaking.
 

Off the bus and into the maze of sheds and crates and garbage and stench and human suffering, left and right and left and right until Stone was thoroughly lost. People hung their heads out of windows and watched, stared, listless and uninterested, as Stone and the other man passed through, squeezing between buildings, avoiding packs of snarling dogs fighting over scraps, burning heaps of trash, open doorways echoing with the sounds of sex, acrid clouds of drug fumes. Shouting voices, arguments, fights. The sound of a hand smacking flesh and a small voice crying. Rot, the miasma of death and sickness. Puddles of muddy water underfoot, raw sewage. Clothes hanging from wires overhead like multi-colored flags all in a row.
 

And then, the faces began to vanish. Windows were closed. No one watched. The scent of fear was palpable. Even his guide had slowed and was scanning the rooftops, the narrow alleys, the street behind them.