Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

“For obvious reasons, my friend, this is impossible.”

Knox whispers, “For this much cash, nothing is impossible.”

“You wanted samples. I have brought you samples. Third stack, rugs two through five.” He points, his fingertip yellowed by years of cigarettes.

Gerhardt is being far too smart about this. Knox had hoped for incompetence.

Knox peels back the top rug from the waist-high stack of rugs. It’s like looking at high-def television: an eye-popping clarity with wonderful dye-lot imperfections and gorgeous symmetry to the traditional design. Knox has run himself through a crash course and he’s shocked by the quality. He’d expected something passable; he’s looking at floor and wall art. He realizes Gerhardt had no idea of a price range when they’d spoken earlier. These have five to ten times the value Knox had expected.

“Remarkable work,” he says, moving slowly back and forth among the five samples.

“It is,” says the store manager, trying to worm his way into the conversation. “Oushak, for the region in Turkey. Vegetable dye. Hand-knotted. Two hundred fifty thousand per square meter. Persian tea rug design.”

The number swims around in Knox’s head. His jaw locks. He pictures Berna and her friends in leg irons circled around a rug tying all those knots. Each rug several meters. Enough rugs to fill a shipping container. It’s like looking at the Great Wall. It’s slavery at any wage.

As he speaks his voice cracks. “Gorgeous. But are you sure it’s not Chinese?”

The man approaches the stack. He ignites a cigarette lighter and places it close to the wool. If synthetic or plastic, the fibers melt quickly in a tiny puff of black smoke. Nothing happens. Natural fibers. He pockets the lighter and inspects the jute backing. “Turkish,” he declares.

Knox and Gerhardt know otherwise—this is a product of the sweatshop. That it convinces the merchant of its Turkish origin is impressive.

“I am sure you are right,” Knox says. He eyes Gerhardt, who arches his eyebrows declaratively. Knox thanks the merchant and moves to the door, Gerhardt alongside him like a dog heeling.

“Nothing is impossible,” Knox repeats. “Call me when it’s arranged.”

—

THE MOMENT THE TEACHER’S EYESfall upon her, Maja knows the man—her “father”—is waiting at the classroom door. As the teacher heads to the door, Maja slides out of her desk chair like every bone has gone to jelly. On hands and knees, she gathers her books and looks to the window. The steel-framed half windows hinge at the top and open out. She steals across the room to the jeers of her seldom seen classmates and opens a window. It comes open only fifty centimeters, forcing her to throw a leg over the frame and wiggle to get through. When no one else comes to Maja’s aid, a girl finally jumps up and helps get her books out the window. This child then leaps back into her chair as the door opens and the teacher turns around.

The visitor wears a heavy one-day beard. His face is florid and his eyes are glassy with rage. Many of the children stiffen, knowing such expressions well from home. Their teacher’s wide eyes and the sharp cry of Maja’s name are followed by her hurried approach to the window, from where she sees only the empty asphalt playground.

Maja wisely holds to the exterior wall, ducking beneath windows, racing to the end of the long building. Her first concern is for her mother.

She knows the shortest route through the streets, which bridges to take.

Maja won’t know until she gets home how bad it will be for her. She can stay into the evening if she chooses, making up for most of the lost money—two euros a day.

She has been betrayed. Either her shop boss contacted her father, or someone at school reported her. Neither of her parents owns a phone. The likelihood the shop would bother to contact them is slim, and then it would be her mother not her father, who is rarely at home. So who and why? Whoever it was has earned Maja’s mother a beating. Her own sentence is unknown.

Tension grips her tummy as she nears the shop, unsure if they’ll take her in. If they’ve reached their quota for the day, there will be no space for her. What then?

Home is not an option.

—

GRACE PLAYS THE EU CARD AGAIN,trying to speak with a health clinic nurse about Kahil Fahiz. But it’s soon clear the daily volume of walk-in patients results in a bleary-eyed anonymity. No one remembers him, or if they do, they don’t want to get involved. She abandons her effort after fifteen minutes of being annoying, having lighted on a better idea.

Dulwich drives her to the southern boundary of the Oud-West neighborhood, to the health clinic where Berna was treated. She requests a stop at a computer store on the way.

At the clinic, she asks for Dulwich to remain in the car. “It could be a while.” She enters a crowded waiting area. She could stay in here an hour or two without sticking out. She may need to.

Vinyl flooring and overhead fluorescent tube lighting. Parents with kids. Adults with casts, or walkers, or their hands gripped tightly on the arms of the contemporary stainless-steel furniture. Flu and STD posters line the wall alongside Elmo and Tinker Bell. A TV running a cooking show hangs in the corner above the fire alarm and a water dispenser.

No EU card this time. The Great Wall of corporate IT is passwords. Sophisticated high-bit encryption schemes have made hacking more difficult and time consuming. Cracking a password can take weeks, not hours.

Grace comes prepared, having anticipated certain impossibilities: she won’t be able to get a video camera in place to watch a keyboard; she can’t install key tracking software without the password.

The Achilles’ heel of such systems is complacency. Working a computer terminal has become second nature. Employees are accustomed to the look and feel of the terminal—to switch out a keyboard might sound an alarm or win an inquiry. Conversely, they pay no attention whatsoever to the snarl of wires and blinking lights at the back of the machine, and Grace knows this. This is where she has been trained to attack. She will need thirty seconds.

Phase one is simple enough: a prescription bottle with a small amount of lighter fluid and a cotton wick lit as it’s placed into a trash can. This goes off smoothly. Grace steps up to the counter, her purse open. Inside her head the clock is running.

“Name, please?” the nurse asks.

Grace explains she’s waiting for a friend who asked to meet her here.

Poof. The trash can ignites: her cue.

Grace, alarmed by the sight, knocks her purse across the counter, its contents spilling onto the desktop and the floor. The nurses rush the fire as a team. Grace comes around behind the counter and begins collecting her spilled items. On hands and knees, she scrambles under the desk’s ledge and, locating the body of the PC terminal, pulls the keyboard’s USB connector. In her hand is a thumb drive, a USB passthrough. One end of the device plugs into the terminal; the keyboard plugs into its opposite end. It’s a Wi-Fi memory stick tweaked to record and transmit each keystroke. She hears the discharge of a fire extinguisher.

“May I help you?” comes a voice from above. “Excuse me, please!” Irritation.

“My purse,” Grace says. “I apologize. The fire . . . I bumped my purse.” She motions to the Tampax on the desk and the lipstick, wallet and change on the floor beside her.

“No problem. May I be of help?” A nurse, by nature, is more kind than suspicious. She’s alongside Grace collecting her personal effects.

“The fire,” Grace says, “it rattled me.”

“Did me the first time as well.”