Old Growth & Ivy (The Spook Hills Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

“It may give us some pointers. 
Shortcut our time here.  And the physical files?”

“All electronic. 
PDFs
.”

“Notes from your team there too?”

Ivy rolled her eyes at him. 
“Yes.”

“I want your workpapers, reports and
so on.  Give me anything on these banks that will tell us what your staff
has found.”

“The court order only specifies data
and files from the banks.  Provided I receive the clearance from our
counsel that is exactly what we will give you.”

The big agent regarded her steadily,
as if assessing her character.  He went to speak, then stopped.  He
tilted his head to one side and then the other, as if debating with
himself.  After a few moments he said, “Let me tell you a little more
about this case and maybe you will understand why time is so important.”

Ivy nodded.  While she did not
expect what he had to say would change her stance, she was curious.

“The humans trafficked in this case
are children sold into sexual slavery. From what we have learned so far, they
range in age from five to fifteen and are from Eastern Europe, the former
Soviet Union and Turkey.  Boys and girls.  Every day that goes by,
more kids are abducted, sold, and then go through disgusting experiences that
ruin their lives.  Every day the kids already sold are going through
terrors you and I can only begin to imagine – they are drugged and abused in
every way possible.” 

Ivy knew her faced registered her
horror.  She had an expressive face and her emotions could sneak up on
her.  Agent Nielsen was focused and intent.  Even though she might
disagree with his approach, she could see that he was a good man -- a demanding
man who was driven to fulfill the FBI’s role.

“How many children are involved?”

“The operations are veiled in
secrecy.  We only know what we have found from two places here in the
States that local police shut down.  We think the operation is big and
runs on an international scale.  That’s why I have the case.  My
teams and I only pursue complex, high-impact multinational matters.”

“Are there really that many men who
are so twisted they want,” she hesitated to say it.

“Children.  Yeah.  And not
only men.  Women can be twisted in that way too.  There are likely
many of these places in major cities in the U.S. and in Europe.  We have
inquiries out to all our counterparts around the world and to local police in
the U.S., searching for more information – anything that will lead us to the
perps who supply the children.”

He leaned closer to her again, his
eyes fastened on hers.  “Ms. Littleton, we have to stop this travesty. We
need your help.  So if your team has found anything at all that could move
this case along faster and help us to identify the perps, we want it.  We
will find the information anyway, but you might be able to speed this process
along.”

She moved back behind her desk, turned
her back to the agent and gazed out her window at the sunny October day. 
Way down below, the Willamette River reflected the morning light, forming a
silvery blue strip that flowed serenely, cutting the city down the middle and
crossed by the many bridges of Portland.  All around the city, children
were on their way to school, living in relative safety and freedom.  The
very thought of children enslaved as Agent Nielsen described was chillingly
disturbing.  Her priorities were always clear – do what is in the best
interests of the Company, their clients, and their employees and do it in a
legal and ethical manner.  They would have to comply with the court order,
sooner or later.  However, what Agent Nielsen was asking for now went
beyond that.  Still the disclosure of her team’s preliminary findings
would cause no direct harm to her Company or its employees, even if any issues
were there to be found.  At some point, any problems that surfaced would
have to be disclosed to the bank owning the data or documents.  Despite
her misgivings, she felt she had an obligation to act in a way that was best
for the larger community.  She turned to face the big agent.

 “If you find anything based on
my staff’s notes or work papers, I want to review it.”

“And you won’t tip the banks off.”

“If we find something suspicious, we
have to include it in our report.”

“How long can you give us?”

“The reports are due out in November
on a staggered basis, however for any major finding, we typically give a
heads-up as we go along.”

“Look, we’re not after the banks here,
not unless their involvement is egregious.  Let me know a few days before
any issues related to this case are disclosed to the banks.  Agreed?”

“Yes, but Agent Nielsen,” Ivy began.

“Call me Steve.”

 She regarded at him for a
moment, uncertain if she wanted to drop formality in their
communications.  The aggressive posturing was no longer in his body
language or in his expression.  “Okay Steve, I still do not understand why
you are here and not going directly to the banks.”

“We think someone at one or more banks
may be involved in the money movement from the child brothels to the mastermind
behind this operation.  A person in some position of authority at each
bank is doing the approvals and keeping the transactions of sizeable amounts of
cash from coming under scrutiny.  We don’t want to sound any alarms that
could tip off the perps.”

“How do you know it is these banks
that we have as clients?”

“Certain records from the two
operations in the U.S. that were shut down indicated doing business with those three
banks.”

“How did you find out about us?” 
Ivy knew she was grilling the big agent, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“You can thank another agent on my
team, Harvard,
er
, Mathew Heylen for that.  He
searched for other companies that could have access to bank data.  He
found your website and then made a few calls.”

“Why not go to the Federal
Reserve?  That data is in their Fed Wire System, right?  Or in the
private banking CHIPS system?”

Steve shook his head.  “They each
move with the speed of a dung beetle.  We have the requests out.  Our
pace of haste is not in their vocabulary.  We have been shaking them up,
but no results so far.  Besides they only have the electronic files. 
You have copies of the supporting documents.”

“My clients can’t learn that we are
the source of your findings. It will end our business. If you go after the
banks in addition to this perp, you must get the data from another source.”

“Understand.  We can handle it
without reference to your company.”

Her assistant interrupted with a call
from their internal counsel.  Ivy smiled at Steve, who for the first time
that morning smiled back, just a little smile that curled up the edges of his
lips.  Ivy noticed that his eyes had lost that piercing hard gray-blue. 
She liked the changes. 

***

That evening at home, Ivy Littleton
reclined on a couch in her living room for a few minutes, enjoying a cold glass
of spring water with a translucently thin slice of lemon. While it was already
dark outside, the air was unseasonably warm for October in Portland, and Ivy
was enjoying a little breeze that came in through the long casement
windows.  Her two corgis were nearby, with her tri-colored Harry dog
stretched out flat on his side.  The other corgi, Cleo, had tucked her
plump yet still elegant body up against the couch to enjoy having Ivy reach
down and cuddle her ears.  Druid, her aging grey-striped cat, was taking
his after dinner bath on the corner of the dining room carpet.   Her
pets were her guardians -- little fluffs of soldiers faithfully on duty, even
at rest.

Ivy felt tiredness hovering over her
like a specter pressing on her chest, weighing her down.  She breathed
deeply and concentrated on thinking about her life and her future. 
Sometimes Ivy viewed her world as a farce -- all gilded success and happiness
on the outside; parched and barren within.  If she had to pick a color for
her life, it would be a dull brown, the color of dried mud, at least as she saw
it these days.  While retirement would be a welcome change for her after
all the stress at the office, she worried about filling the hours.  She
needed to dramatically change her life, regain a sound degree of physical
fitness, find some fascinating new challenges and soar off the cliff that
marked retirement.  Most importantly, she wanted to avoid the safe path
down to obscurity.

Her mind wandered on the breeze in the
way it did these days, scuttling away from serious thoughts.  Her days at
work had so many demands that her ability to concentrate had waned.  While
she still loved her career and its challenges, her nervous system was sidling
towards breakdown territory.

A few years before, Ivy sublimated all
her energies into work, putting up walls of no interest with prospective
suitors.  Two failed marriages, along with too many affairs and dates, had
led her to that decision.  Now with retirement looming, she would have
time for a relationship.  How would she find someone different and yet
suitable?  She used to be attracted to the delusionary charms of
dreamers.  Now more mature and independent, she wanted a man who would
make good on his dreams.  She thought then about Agent Nielsen.  He
was a man of action and she was attracted to him.  At the same time, he
was at the extreme end of the spectrum.  She could not imagine how any
romantic liaison could work with him, given his demanding nature.  She
needed to find a middle ground between a man like him and men who were
dreamers.

He had woken something in her.
 She had to acknowledge that.  While annoyed with his manner and
demands, she had been challenged in good ways too.  She found herself
disappointed when he told her late in the afternoon that he was flying out that
night to work on a different case, leaving the other two agents there – Brian
with the nice manners and smile and the offbeat agent called Moll. 
Steve’s eyes lingered on hers when he added that he would return at the end of
the week for a briefing.

With her retirement date set, Ivy
wanted to consider dating again, although dating at 62 sounded
ridiculous.  How would she have the patience to sift through all the
misfits, the losers, the bores, the men with peculiar habits, or the fellows
who only wanted a share of her comfortable retirement?  At a gathering
last week after work, one woman talked about having 85 Internet first dates,
which seemed like an excessive number of cups of coffee to find one man. 
Ivy doubted she would have the patience, much less the fortitude.

The timing was premature anyway. 
The overload of her nervous system made her question her ability to handle the
complexities of a relationship.  Ivy was a driven achiever and a leader,
pulling away from a mediocre upbringing to define herself and her life. 
Her ambition gave her success.  On the flip side, it also over-stressed
her.  Meeting client expectations, the financial pressures from Corporate
and the demands of her staff combined to leave her spirit sapped of its
characteristic spunk.  Without a balanced personal life, not enough tipped
the scales in her favor.  The root problem went on with each passing week,
month and year, leaving her less and less of herself. 

Her work cell rang.  Years of
habit had her check who was calling.  It was her boss at Corporate. 
If he was calling at this hour, it could not be good.

"Hello, David," she said,
trying to inject some cheer into her voice.

"Hi, Ivy," he said in a
voice shaky with fatigue. “I heard you had an interesting day.  Were you
able to meet the FBI’s demands and comply with the Court Order?”

“Yes, though likely they will be
on-site all week.”

"Lucky you.  Let us know if
they become unreasonably demanding.  Well, I have yet another favor to ask
of you.  The guy we tagged as your replacement took another job where he
lives in Chicago."

She listened, her mouth turning down
at the corners while her shoulders rose another inch as the muscles tightened
in self-defense. 

"He what?" Long years of
practice allowed Ivy to keep her voice level, even when she wanted to scream
the words out.

"Yeah.  Just called
me.  Claims he got more money.  Wouldn't listen to a counter offer
from us.  Between you and me, I think our job was going to be a
filler.  He needed income and never planned to move to Portland."

"That just sucks." Ivy tried
not to swear very often, but sometimes cursing was the best shorthand around.

"Almost my precise words. 
Look, I appreciate that you want to retire but we need you to stay on.  We
have no one we can patch in until we find a new replacement.

"Let me think about it," Ivy
said.  "I really was planning to retire."

They talked a little longer and then
Ivy clicked her cell phone off.  The calm she maintained on the call
vanished.  She fought the urge to scream out her frustration.  She
imagined herself chained to a boat that was pulled deeper and deeper into a wide,
bottomless vortex.   She bowed her head and let out a low moan. 
Her Harry dog came over to lick her hand out of concern.  Cleo stirred
near her feet and pressed against her legs.  Old Druid jumped up on her
lap, instantly purring when she stroked his back.  Each of her little
protectors rallied to comfort her.