Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

He drank the rest of his Feuergeist to steel himself, then began to speak.

It didn’t take long, and when he was finished he didn’t wait for her to end the conversation. He simply stood and walked out past Hans Kuhn, who waited for some sign from Erika. She gave none. She couldn’t move from her seat, could only stare ahead into the empty distance, thinking what a truly miserable world she lived in. She flagged down the waiter and ordered a double shot of Feuergeist. Sometimes the world hardly seemed worth saving at all.

She and Oskar were on the A9 again, heading back to Munich, the winter sun setting off to their right. She’d told Mihai’s story once, a quick summation, and Oskar’s foot had weakened noticeably, so that now they were crawling in the passing lane. She suggested he speed up or move, so he switched to the right lane and even used his signal, which was in her memory unprecedented.

“Tell me again,” he said.

She took a breath, the Feuergeist making a small fire in her gut. “Adriana came to Germany four years ago, two years before she arrived with her parents. She was eleven at the time. Mihai wanted me to understand, so he described the poor little village they came from, that it’s riddled with despair and alcoholics and for a teenager it’s a curse of nothingness. He attributed Adriana’s stupidity to optimism, and I suppose that’s right. A modeling agency came to town. They said they were from Hamburg, but there’s no telling. They were looking for new talent, fresh faces. They told the girls that if they were chosen to work for them, there would be an official contract, and the company would take care of the passport and visa paperwork. Adriana didn’t tell her parents-she knew what they would say. They, unlike her, were patriots. They had no desire to leave or see their daughter leave Moldova. So she went with a girlfriend to the audition, in a rented warehouse on the edge of town. Two days later, she returned to find out she was one of five or so girls who’d been chosen. Her girlfriend, Mihai explained, was sick with jealousy.”

They passed a sign for a gas station, and Erika asked him to pull over. As soon as he’d parked, she was out the door, lumbering toward the station’s clean, modern store. Oskar considered following, but instead stared through the windshield at the barren fields beyond the highway. What was most unbearable about these stories was that they always began the same way-a modeling agency, a scout for secretarial work, a company finding nannies for rich Western children-and very soon you knew where they would end up. Yet despite the repetition, no one ever learned.

She returned with a bottle of cheap white wine with a screw top, but no Snickers-he suspected the story had killed her appetite. She settled into her seat, gasping for air, and said, “Sorry-did you want something?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Good.”

He merged onto the highway but returned to the passing lane. His foot was working better, and he wanted to get back to Munich as soon as possible.

“Where was I?” she said.

“She’d gotten the modeling job.”

“Yes,” Erika said as she unscrewed the wine, the cap’s aluminum seam popping. “All the successful contestants sat for photographs, gave their names and addresses, and then the agency left town. A week later, they returned with fresh passports and told the girls they had five hours to collect their stuff and get to a bus in the center of town.

“There were other girls already on the bus, girls from nearby villages. By the time they reached the border with Romania, there were probably a total of thirty or forty. Though Adriana couldn’t have known this part, you and I and Mihai all know that their long border stop was for bribes. They crossed Romania, stopped again, crossed Hungary. They reached the Austrian border.”

She took a long draft from the wine bottle. Oskar waited.

“You know, we like to think we’re better than those easterners, but all it takes is a little money. Money is the great equalizer, don’t you think?”

“I suppose it is.”

After another sip, she said, “They arrived in Hamburg two days later. They were herded off the bus into a warehouse in the more dangerous part of St. Pauli, gave up their passports, and were told that a lot of money had been invested in them. As soon as they paid it back, they would be free to start their modeling careers. Then, one by one, they were raped.”

She took another swallow and spoke to the road ahead.

“There was a man and a woman who worked together, looking over the girls and making notes on a clipboard. They were deciding which girls would go where. Adriana was shipped to a whorehouse outside Berlin. This, according to Mihai, was a sign that they liked her looks. The occasional government functionary made it to their establishment and would pay well for an eleven-year-old as pretty as she was. Not so fast.”

Though on this stretch of the A9 there was no speed limit, Oskar hadn’t realized he had slowly accelerated to something far above any safe speed. He let off the gas and glanced at her. “Sorry,” he said, then noticed she was already halfway through her bottle. “Maybe you should slow down, too.”

Erika followed his gaze. She wedged the bottle between her thighs and rested her hands on her knees. “One of the worst curses for anyone in our profession is imagination. We should all be born without it.”

“Go on.”

“Is there any need?” she asked. “You know what happened next. Five to ten men a night, and if they paid enough-and most did-they could do with her what they liked. Adriana was checked after each visit, because a bruise would cost the visitor extra. Adriana made a lot of money for them. But then…” Unconsciously, she removed the bottle from between her thighs and held it near her lips. “She was lucky, wasn’t she? She had an uncle who had been in Germany for years, a man who was familiar with the criminal classes. He got a call from his brother, that Adriana had gone missing. He’d learned from her jealous girlfriend that she was modeling in Germany. And while Andrei was too much of a villager to understand a thing, Mihai immediately understood. He did his homework. Among the immigrants he helped out, some had contact with the flesh road. They tracked her to Hamburg, and then to Berlin. And then…” She paused again, ignoring the bottle. “I didn’t ask him why he didn’t just call the police. I think I know why, but it would have been good to hear it directly from him.”

“He doesn’t trust cops.”

“Yes, but that’s not it. It’s his brother. Adriana’s father is a dunce, and if the police raided the place and sent her back to Moldova with an escort, then he would learn what had happened to his daughter. Mihai wanted his brother to remain in blissful ignorance. He still wants it-that’s why he demanded silence from me. It’s why he took matters into his own hands four years ago. He approached the men who ran the Berlin house and made them an offer. If they gave up this one girl, then he would give them the use of his bakery to launder money. They thought he was crazy and suggested a counteroffer. They would give him the girl if he gave them his shop. He would continue to run it, but for a salary, and all profits would be deposited into their bank.”

These were the details she’d skipped on her initial telling, and Oskar waited impatiently for Mihai’s reply. “Well?”

“What could he do? He signed the ownership papers over to them, then took Adriana back to Berlin. He nursed her until she was fit enough, then smuggled her back into Moldova. It was a secret between them-her parents would continue to believe she’d been pursuing a modeling career.”