Andy McNab - Zero hour

'Where do they end up?'

She shrugged. 'All over. The Balkans were the big destination until about ten years ago. Now it's Russia, Turkey, Israel, Dubai, any European city… The methods have changed, too. Traffickers have become smarter. Like I said, nowadays it's mostly happy trafficking. Victims are only allowed to go home when they've worked off "debts" and "fines" invented by their pimps or, like Irina's friend, if they undertake to send back one or two replacements.'

'What about the authorities? Supposing a girl is reported missing, what happens? Do the parents go to the police?'

She shook her head, and for a moment I thought she was going to burst out laughing. 'No. Nobody goes to the police. We never share information with them. The most powerful gangsters are nearly always former cops – and so are their kryshy…' She looked at Anna, lost for the right word – the first time in an hour.

'Roofs.'

'Yes, their roofs – their protectors. These men are at the highest level of the police and the Ministry of the Interior. Before they'll even open a case they demand sex or money.'

A phone rang, and stopped. Irina went over to the fax machine. She had to bend down to read the first few lines as the paper curled back on itself. 'From Spain…'

Lena's mobile rang. She picked it up and signalled for quiet. She listened, then spoke quickly and urgently into the mouthpiece.

She looked at me. 'I'm sorry. I have to go.'

Irina handed her the sheet.

'A girl has just been found during a raid in Barcelona. I have to speak to her mother.'

I snatched a glimpse of the picture. The face was bruised, but the girl it belonged to wasn't Lilian.

Str A Mateevici 15.15 hrs We were parked on the wide avenue that divided the university from the park in the north-west of the city. The university was Lilian's last known location, which made it a good place to start.

The trams had looked tired and their wires had sagged across the cobblestoned streets as we drove out of the centre, but my first impressions of the city had been wide of the mark. It might have been in shit state, and there was quite a bit of rust about, but there was also a lot of civic pride. Mateevici was clean. The trees both sides were well tended. At first glance we could have been in any town in Connecticut, had it not been for the US embassy building about six hundred metres down the road.

The State University campus was a sprawl of trees, grass and concrete paths. Most of the buildings were ugly lumps of post-war concrete, part of Stalin's rebuild after the annihilation. A couple of grand Hapsburg Empire-type buildings had survived. They looked like giant Battenberg cakes.

The students walking past the car had come straight from Central Casting. Some were lanky; some were overweight. Most were scruffily dressed. Their day sacks were stuffed with books. Some shared jokes; some walked on their own with headphones or mobiles stuck to their ears.

'Hard to think that only in April last year these kids were rioting on the streets.'

I'd been away on a job at the time and must have missed the coverage. 'What about?'

'Moscow. Young Moldovans didn't like their leaders embracing the Kremlin. The president, Vladimir Voronin, was a Communist, very pro-Russia. For the past four years the Kremlin had mounted a charm offensive to woo him away from the EU and NATO with offers of subsidized gas and closer economic ties. It paid off. Voronin refused to join Brussels's Eastern Partnership programme. He called it "a plot to surround Russia".

'Then came the elections. The trouble started as soon as the result was announced. The Communist Party had won a suspiciously large proportion of the vote.

'Ten thousand demonstrators massed in the city centre, most of them students. They carried Moldovan and European flags and shouted anti-Communist slogans. They gathered outside the government building and made their way down the main boulevard to the president's office. The police used tear gas and water cannon but they couldn't stop the crowd breaking in. Windows were smashed on two floors and fires started.

'Voronin called it an attempted coup d'etat and pointed the finger at Romania, a NATO and EU member. Moscow backed him up. The Kremlin were shitting themselves. Imagine – protesters overrunning Moldova's parliament and ransacking its president's office. The scenes must have been horribly familiar to them. It's only five years since young pro-Western protesters toppled Moscow-friendly regimes in Georgia and Ukraine.'

I nodded. I'd been to both after their 'colour' revolutions. Russia's power in the region was at an all-time low. At home, the Kremlin kicked back by stamping out foreign-funded NGOs, abolishing local elections and setting up special 'youth groups' so they could keep an eye out for anything similar happening inside Russia. Abroad, the Kremlin's new priority was to assert its influence and fight against increasing Westernization. Moldova's unrest would have been a test of Russia's ability to project power and protect friends.

'What happened?'

'What always happens when the people take on the state. The police came in mob-handed and arrested more than two hundred.'

'Could Lilian have been involved?'

'A sociology student? Does a bear shit in the woods?'

'Russian bears shit wherever they want to.'

She grinned. I liked it when she did that. 'Ready?'

I nodded. I was in her hands. I didn't speak the language, and I wasn't the world's leading expert on universities.

'They'll think we're parents visiting, or here to find out about evening classes or something. We'll just wander round a bit, try to find out what bars she went to or groups she hung out with. Then we'll take it from there.'

We left Mateevici and followed one of the concrete paths that snaked through the grass. Anna had been on Google in the car. There were twenty thousand students, spread across twelve faculties.

We stopped at a blue and white signpost that must have been really useful if you could read Cyrillic.

'OK. Philosophy's in that direction. Sociology must be close by.'

She put her arm through mine as we followed her hunch. 'These kids are hungry for knowledge, Nicholas. They know it's the way out of poverty. You people in the West, you have it so easy. You think education is a right, not a privilege that must be earned. You have a welfare system to catch you if you fall, or if you just don't give a shit. These people have no safety net. They have nothing without an education.'

I could see through the windows that every lecture room was packed. We came to a newer building, lots of brick and glass. I held the door for her. Wherever you are in the world, an institution smells like an institution: a blend of body odour, wood polish, boiled cabbage and bleach.

She led me down a wide corridor lined with posters, wall charts and notice boards. My boots squeaked on the tiles. Students young and old leant against walls and talked sociology shit, or maybe just shit.

Anna stopped an older guy in a brown and grey patterned sweater. He looked Scandinavian rather than Russian. He pointed in the direction we were already heading. I smiled my thanks and got a very dark look in return. Maybe my jacket didn't have enough herring-bones and snowflakes.

'Where are we going?'

'I thought we'd start at the administration offices. Maybe I'll say I'm an aunt on a surprise visit from Moscow, hoping to pick up her phone number or address.'

We came to a line of benches that would have been more at home in a park.

'Wait here, Nicholas. It might be better, just a woman on her own. And we'll have a problem explaining the fact you don't speak your niece's language.'

It sounded fine to me. I took a seat as she disappeared into the office.