Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

“Gerhardt?”

Kreiger pretends he doesn’t hear.

Knox takes a stapler off the desk, bends Kreiger’s head back while cuffing the man’s mouth. He punches a staple into the man’s forehead.

Kreiger’s cry sounds like a cough.

“Nod,” Knox says, placing the stapler to the man’s nose.

Kreiger nods vehemently.

“Better?”

Kreiger nods again.

Knox settles, straddling the ladder-back chair. Kreiger is crying.

“Oh, please,” Knox says. “Let’s skip the good parts, shall we?”

Kreiger nods obediently.

“You recruit some of your girls from the pot shops. The good-looking ones who are out of money.”

Kreiger hesitates. Knox reaches for the stapler.

“Yes,” Kreiger says.

“Provide them work.”

“Yes.”

“Get them off the streets.”

“Exactly!”

Knox is no stranger to such interrogations. A graduate of the Navy’s SERE course—Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape—one of just a handful of civilians to take the course, he knows both sides of the chair. He works to loosen up Kreiger by establishing a rapport. Surprisingly, even though this man knows what Knox is up to, the offer of camaraderie will overpower other instincts.

“What benefits one, benefits all,” Knox says.

“I couldn’t have said it better.”

“The man who runs the knot shop . . . the rugs . . .” Knox waits for Kreiger to supply the name. Allows his eyes to wander to the stapler.

“Berker Polat,” Kreiger says.

“Spelled?”

Kreiger spells it out for Knox.

“You . . . what? . . . Agent his goods.” It’s a statement.

Kreiger nods.

“You ship his rugs. You agent them, and ship them.”

“Correct.”

Knox weaves his fingers together to keep himself from using his fists. Feels his throat dry. “Polat uses child labor.”

“I don’t ask. Never have. Don’t want to know.”

“Of course you know,” Knox says. He seizes the stapler and sinks two staples into the man’s thigh. The sound of Kreiger screaming brings Rudolf-the-red-nosed bouncer banging on the office door. A perspiring and terrified Kreiger tells his man to go away and stay away.

Knox is feeling insanely good. He cautions himself, wondering if it’s the pot smoke hanging in the air. Knowing better.

“The girls, yes,” Kreiger says. “I have never been inside his shop. I have no knowledge of the conditions or the—”

“You sell the girls for him.”

Knox hadn’t noticed the ceiling fan, but the resulting silence emphasizes its lazy rotation, suspended from the overhead ridgepole.

“Careful,” Knox says, withdrawing the gun from the small of his back. “No more stapler.”

Kreiger tries to swallow. Between the marijuana and terror he doesn’t have a drop of saliva. He sounds like a toilet refusing to flush.

He nods.

“As sex slaves,” Knox says, his finger absentmindedly finding the trigger.

Kreiger’s shock is authentic. Knox knows this by how quickly it transforms into wide-eyed alarm.

“Is that what you think?” Kreiger would have spit if his mouth wasn’t so dry. “Sex? No! No!”

“You’re a charitable organization, I suppose. Putting those girls onto the ship so they can pursue higher education.”

The first takeaway is that Kreiger is surprised at the depth of Knox’s information. The second is that he’s determined to resist any admission of guilt given the gun in Knox’s hand.

“I’m a little short on time,” Knox says.

“I abhor child pornography, the kiddie sex trade. Berker does as well. In this we are together, he and I. It is true: some of the girls he takes against their will. I do not deny this. Others, many others, are recruited with their parents’ agreement. He runs a business. I do not deny this. I do not ask. But as to the girls—”

“The auctioning to Asian buyers.”

Kreiger’s astonishment is manifest by his sudden hyperventilating.

Knox is a glutton. Loves shocking him like this. Wishes Grace were here to share it with him. Thoughts of her and Dulwich remind him of the clock. He must keep a step ahead of Fahiz or the man will flee the city.

Knox makes a buzzing sound. “Time’s up.”

Kreiger rushes his words. “The girls who come of age, the girls who menstruate—Polat can’t abide them. He weeds them out—I don’t know how! I swear!—and removes them from his shop. Says the hormones and the mess are bad for business. Ten-to-twelve-year-olds—that’s his stable. The castoffs . . . Yes, it’s true. I auction them. Asian buyers. Yes. How you can possibly know this . . . but yes. But not for what you think! These buyers have been carefully vetted! It’s a very, very small list. The girls go into work as laborers, with the caveat they will never be sold into the sex trade.”

“That’s horseshit.”

“I swear it.”

“You can’t possibly know what becomes of them. You, of all people! You’re in the business.”

“Not children, not ever.”

“You sack of shit. This is how you justify it? Do you seriously have yourself fooled into believing this?”

“I vet these—”

“How? You follow up, I suppose. Visit Indonesia often, do you?” Knox realizes it doesn’t matter: inmates take a dim view of crimes against children.

“You have much of it right, Knox. I swear you do. But not this part!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not the girls.”

“Right.”

“They leave here as skilled laborers. They are moved to the sewing shops. Athletics. Knockoffs. Good positions. Decent treatment!” He sucks in a lungful of air.

“The saddest part,” Knox says, “is if you actually believe that.”

In attempting to match addresses from the stolen GPS to the area to which Kreiger’s message was sent, Knox has two possibilities. He conducts drive-bys of both. Amsterdam’s homogeneity doesn’t help any: both are nearly identical four-story brick apartment buildings that make up the thousand city blocks west of Singelgracht canal.

Knox must pick one. He selects the second property, for no other reason than this address is the farthest out of the addresses on the GPS, and is well located near a bus and train station.

Concerned there may be hidden cameras, he stays away from the building. He parks the bike around the corner from which he takes a long hard look at the four yellow doors. He counts eight mail slots alongside each of the four yellow doors. The red doors separating the yellow appear to be ground-level storage or a shared laundry room. Residents of thirty-one of the thirty-two apartments are innocent bystanders. Fahiz is, in effect, using human shields.

He could call in Brower and his men. Would information alone be enough to win his colleagues’ release? But the reason firms like Rutherford Risk exist is in part due to law enforcement’s ineptitude in hostage situations. He can picture a SWAT team charging through corridors. Fahiz will have countermeasures in place—an escape route at the very least.

He anticipates no fewer than two men with Fahiz, possibly several times that. He’s tired and hurt, his shoulder wounded. He likes the odds.

He considers smoking them out, but abhors the risk of innocent casualties. The most effective means would be to ask a resident, but that’s a crapshoot at best; if Fahiz has ingratiated himself with his neighbors, it’s suicidal.

He circles back around to consulting Brower. Denies himself again the easy out.

He collects himself; thinks it through. How would he and Dulwich do it? Where’s the point of egress? Given a raid, where’s the out? Leans around the corner and studies the building again.