Марк Грини - One Minute Out

SIXTEEN

At five p.m. Talyssa Corbu stepped through the doors of the main police headquarters, showed her credos at the front desk, and asked to speak to the highest-ranking person in the building. A smiling middle-aged and heavyset woman appeared and shook her hand, then ushered her into an office.

Even though the Romanian couldn’t read the citations on the wall, she got a pretty good idea that this lady was, in fact, the top cop here in town.

This meant that either someone lower on the totem pole was involved with the trafficking ring, no one in the police department here was involved in the pipeline, or this middle-aged female with an easy smile was, herself, involved in ferrying female sex slaves from the East to the West.

Talyssa didn’t see much likelihood in the last option at all.

In English the captain asked, “How can I help you, Miss Corbu?”

“Thank you for seeing me. I’m here in town looking into allegations that women are being trafficked through Dubrovnik for the purposes of sexual slavery.”

The woman blinked, but this gave away nothing to Talyssa, because Talyssa had no training to hunt for facial cues or body language that would tip her off as to whether the person she was speaking with was attempting to deceive her.

“This is an investigation being overseen by Europol?”

“Correct.”

The captain looked again at Corbu’s credentials. “It says you are involved in economic crimes.”

“That is true. I’m following the money, and it leads to traffickers, and it has led me, ultimately, to Dubrovnik.”

“I haven’t heard anything about this investigation. Who are you working with on the ground here? Our federal authorities?”

“I am here in advance of a formal investigation in Croatia. This is preliminary, more of a fact-finding mission.”

“You aren’t coordinating with anyone? That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“Unusual, yes. Unprecedented, no.”

“May I see some of your evidence?”

Talyssa had been expecting this. She rubbed her sweaty palms together between her knees, out of the captain’s view, and she measured her breathing as well as possible. “The police chief in Mostar was kidnapped yesterday. I’m sure you heard about it.”

The chief replied, “Yes. Terrible, terrible thing.” And then she said, “His body was found in his home just a few hours ago.”

Talyssa Corbu was poleaxed by this news, and she did a poor job of hiding her shock now. “Oh . . . I . . . I just understood he was missing.”

The police chief regarded the Europol analyst curiously. “Europol is not terribly well informed, then.”

“I . . . I’ve been working, haven’t checked in with the office in several hours.”

“Well, let me bring you up to date. Apparently, Captain Vukovic was recovered alive yesterday, but then was killed sometime overnight along with two other police officers staying in his flat with him.”

“I see,” Corbu said.

“I’m sorry, what does this have to do with us down here in Dubrovnik?”

Talyssa struggled to keep her voice as dispassionate as possible. “We . . . we have reason to believe Captain Vukovic was involved in the trafficking concern. There was a home where girls were kept, it was in his jurisdiction, and our investigations indicate Dubrovnik was the next stop along the pipeline.”

“The pipeline ?”

“This is the name we are hearing. It begins as far east as Moldova or even Ukraine. Who knows? Russia, perhaps. And it leads as far west as Dubrovnik. After that . . . we don’t know. We’d appreciate any help you could provide about the movement of exploited women through this area.”

The captain wasn’t smiling any longer. “You think the chief of police of Mostar, our neighbor, was tainted by this crime? Is it really help you want from me, or did you come to question me as a suspect?”

“I am making no allegations at all. I am an analyst, not an investigator. I am merely asking for help from your office, Captain.”

The older woman leaned back in her chair and waved a hand. “Well . . . I for one know nothing of the matter. Of course, we’ve broken up rings of traffickers in the past. Albanians, mostly. Some Turks. Horrible people, horrible crimes. But nothing recently, and nothing that came through Bosnia. I’ve never even met Captain Vukovic, personally, but he was well regarded, as I understand.”

Talyssa felt her trembling mouth, pinched it shut quickly, then asked, “Have you heard of something referred to as the Consortium?”

Again, the police chief blinked, but Talyssa didn’t register the gesture as significant.

“In what context? I mean, there are all sorts of consortiums, aren’t there? It simply means a group of people or organizations affiliated to perform some sort of transaction or business.”

With this last sentence Talyssa Corbu began to notice a definite defensiveness in the police captain. She raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry. I thought I was being clear. I am speaking in the context of the trafficking of human beings.”

The woman just stared at Corbu now, then looked back down at her credentials. “Again, as you said, you are a criminal analyst. And clearly quite junior. Help me, please, because I don’t understand your interest or your mandate.”

This was just the suspicion Talyssa and the American hoped to elicit from the captain. Still, she swallowed hard, fear welling within her.

“You can check it out with The Hague. I’m on a fact-finding trip. Very preliminary.”

“Yes. I will be checking this out.” She looked up at Corbu. “Are you alone here in our city?”

The Romanian’s heart began to pound even harder, and she squeezed the armrests of the chair. Harry had warned her not to oversell her power, because in order to serve as bait, she had to appear vulnerable.

She answered, “I’m in contact with colleagues back at the office, but I came alone.”

“Where are you from?” the captain asked.

“I live in the Netherlands.”

The policewoman leaned her forearms on her desk, her eyes narrowing. “Not what I meant. Where were you born?”

There was a faint air of menace in the woman’s voice now.

“I . . . I am Romanian. But I am here in my capacity as a Europol—”

“These trafficked girls. Any of them coming from Romania?”

Corbu fought the urge to leap to her feet and run out of the room. The captain was sensing something, picking her story apart before even checking with anyone back in The Hague. This was a dangerous dance, because the Romanian woman couldn’t appear like she really did have the pipeline figured out; that would mean Europol would have this information, too. No, she needed to give the police here the impression she was doing this on her own, but she also needed to cast enough uncertainty on this that they would let her leave the building to give them time to sort her story out.

Corbu said, “I would imagine that women have been trafficked from Romania. They have a lot of missing-person cases. Young, impressionable girls. Girls who, quite simply, have vanished from our streets.”

“So . . . this is personal to you in some way, isn’t it?”

There was no empathy in the captain’s words, no concern about trafficked women or the investigator claiming to be looking for them. No, she was darkening by the minute, reaching a tone and demeanor that conveyed outright malevolence.

Talyssa Corbu looked into the woman’s eyes and felt certain now this Croatian knew all about the pipeline, and she saw Corbu as a potential threat.

The Romanian kept control of her voice. “It’s my job, Captain. Just as keeping people safe here in Dubrovnik is yours.” She took a pen and a notepad from her purse and jotted down the address of her room, well aware of a tremor in her hand. “Here is where I’m staying. I’ll be here for several days, I imagine.”