“I don't know what you're feeling,” I said, after another couple of miles. “I can imagine it, but I don't know, not really. But I've lost people I love, Tiasa, had them taken from me, and there have been times when I didn't want to go on without them. And it's hard, and it is going to
be
hard for you for a long time. But you will survive this. You will survive this, and someday it won't hurt quite so much, and one day you'll smile again. One day you'll laugh again.
“And then you'll want to dance again.”
Her voice was thick. “Yeva told me to be strong. That she knew I was strong.”
“Yeva knows what she's talking about. Yeva's stronger than I'll ever be.” I took another glance at her, saw that she was as before, but had shut her eyes. I looked back to the road. “Yeva's going to have a baby.”
“Yeva is?” Tiasa asked, slowly.
I nodded.
“You're going to have a baby?”
“Yeah.”
She thought about that.
“I hope you have a boy,” Tiasa said.
The New York Times
had the full story on the front page the next morning, below the fold, listed as part one of a series. The article seemed to work extensively from the material I had sent anonymously to the paper, supplementing it with information from the State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons report. It began with a description of the house in New Paradise, what it had been used for, the people who had maintained and managed the location.
Then it went on to talk about the girls who had been held there, where they were from, and how they had come to the United States, to the Land of Opportunity. It described the supply chain, how a girl in Ukraine would be sold to a man in Turkey; how that man in Turkey would offer that girl for sale; how, upon receiving payment for her, a “coyote,” or middleman, in Amsterdam would bring her to the U.S.
The article pointed out that, according to the International Labor Organization of the United Nations, 12.7 million people were, at this moment, bound in one form of slavery or another
around the world. Either in forced or bonded labor, or in sexual servitude. The majority of these slaves were women and children.
Some NGOs, the article stated, claimed the ILO estimate was exaggerated, that the number was closer to 4 million slaves. As if that made it better.
The piece concluded by saying that other organizations put the estimate as high as 27 million.
Three days after leaving New Paradise, Tiasa and I met Sister Cashel Logan in a park on the southeast edge of the Bronx, a place called the Half Moon Overlook in the Spuyten Duyvil neighborhood. It was the last Wednesday of July, hot and humid, and the sun was bright off the water where the Hudson and Harlem rivers met.
She was already waiting for us when we arrived, sitting on a bench near the wrought-iron fence marking the border of the park, and when she saw us coming, she rose to her feet, smiling. She was wearing a cream-colored blouse and black pants, and as ever, the pin of her holy order was in place on her lapel.
“Hello, Tiasa,” Sister Cashel said in practiced and poorly accented Georgian. “My name is Sister Cashel.”
Tiasa, walking at my side and not touching me, stopped, so I stopped with her. Cashel's presence wasn't a surprise; I'd told her who we were meeting and why, and Tiasa had nodded and kept her silence. Now, it seemed, the silence wasn't going to be enough.
“I have English,” she told Cashel, in an accent as bad as Cashel's had been in Georgian.
“Atticus told you about me?” Cashel hadn't moved, still smiling, still calm and reassuring.
Tiasa's brow creased, trying to translate, and after a second, I did it for her, adding, “She calls me Atticus.”
“Why?”
I debated, then said, “It's my name.”
“Your name is David.”
“David was my name in Kobuleti.”
“I don't understand.”
“It's all right. It's complicated. I promise I'll tell you about it sometime.”
Tiasa looked at me, then to Cashel. “Yes, he tells me.”
“I think I can help you,” Cashel said. “I want to help you.”
“Yes. He says this.”
“Do you want my help?”
Tiasa nodded, just barely.
“I'm glad,” Cashel said. “I'd like it if you would stay with me for a little while. I'd like you to meet some people, maybe have a chance to make some new friends. Some of them are your age. Some of them have been through bad times, the way you have. They might understand some of what you're feeling.”
Tiasa looked confused, and again I translated.
“How long?” Tiasa asked me. “How long will I stay with her?”
“Only as long as you want,” I said.
“I don't want to. I want to stay with you. I want to see Yeva.”
“Yeva and I can't give you what you need right now, Tiasa. Sister Cashel can.”
“I don't want you to leave.”
“I'm going to come back,” I said.
“What if you don't?” The question came quickly, as if she had been waiting to ask it, as if desperate to be let out. “You can't promise, you don't know what will happen. What if you don't come back? If you go away and you never come back? If you go away, like Papa and Mama and Koba?”
“You're right,” I said. “I can't make you a promise and guarantee that I'll keep it. You're smart enough to know that. You're smart enough to know that no one can. I don't know what will happen, Tiasa, not tomorrow or next week or next year. All I know is what I will try to do. I followed you all the way from Kobuleti to find you. You know I mean what I say.”
She closed her eyes, pained, nodded. Then, to my surprise, she threw her arms around my middle, pushing her face into my chest, the hug tight enough to hurt where the wound on my side was still struggling to heal. I didn't move for a moment, and then, very carefully, very lightly, I returned the hug.
When she let me go, she wiped her nose with her fingers, then turned to Cashel.
“Okay,” she said in her fractured English. “I go with you.”
CHAPTER
Thirty-six
I was in New York another two days, and saw Tiasa on
each of them. Cashel had arranged for her to stay at a shelter for abused and battered girls in the North Bronx, one of three her order ministered to. It was the kind of place that didn't advertise itself and relied on anonymity and secrecy for security, rather than guards and alarms, which was a good thing. Guards and alarms were likely to bring back bad memories for Tiasa.
The first day, I went with her and Cashel to visit a doctor. Cashel had prepared her for the visit as best she could, but Tiasa was miserable all the same; she knew why the examination was necessary, but honestly understanding the need for it didn't diminish the fact that she was being asked to, quite literally, open her legs to another stranger, even if the reason for it
this time was quite different. Cashel hadn't yet been able to arrange for a translator, and as a result, I had to remain nearby, which I'm sure didn't help things.
The initial results came back quickly, and were as good as could be expected. She wasn't pregnant, and had scored negative on a broad spectrum of tests for venereal diseases. Blood had been drawn for an AIDS test, as well, but it would be another day at least before we knew anything there. The doctor confirmed that Tiasa had been abused, physically and sexually, and while all the news was delivered with clinical precision and professional compassion, it was very hard for me to hear. Somehow, Cashel didn't seem to have the same problem, and I envied her practiced serenity.
The next day, in the afternoon, I took them to lunch at a Chinese restaurant Cashel suggested, near the shelter. Tiasa ate some rice, and a lone steamed dumpling, and that was all. She didn't offer much in conversation, so I did most of the talking, alternating between Georgian and English, trying to keep Cashel in the loop.
Cashel told me that they'd located someone to help with translation, a woman who would be coming by later in the afternoon. I shared that information with Tiasa, and she shrugged. The only emotion I was reading off her was anger, and that just barely.
Men weren't allowed inside the shelter, so after the meal I drove them both back to the house, and made my goodbyes in the car.
“I'm leaving tonight,” I told Tiasa. “To check on Yeva and Cashel's sister.”
Tiasa stared at me, and I saw that the anger I'd sensed was now, at least for the moment, being directed my way. She unfastened her seatbelt and got out of the Jetta.
“Fine,” Tiasa said, and then she slammed the door.
Cashel, in the backseat, leaned forward slightly. “It's going to take time.”
“She thinks I'm abandoning her.”
“I think she knows you're not. She hasn't even begun to talk about what happened to her. As I said, Atticus, it's going to take time.”
I sighed. It wasn't that I didn't believe her. In addition to her holy vows, Cashel had a degree in social work, and far more experience dealing with the survivors of abuse and addiction than I. It was one of the things that had drawn her to become a nun, a calling that had come about as a direct result of witnessing the damage caused by her sister's addiction to heroin back when Bridgett was a teen. I trusted that she knew what she was talking about.
“You have to tell me,” I said. “Is visiting going to do more harm than good?”
“I think it would be wise if you stayed away for a little while,” Cashel replied, carefully. “You have confusing associations for her, and it may complicate things.”
“Great.”
“Keep in touch. And tell Bridgett to call when she gets back in town.”
“I will,” I said. “Thank you, Sister.”
“You're a good man,” she told me, then got out of the car and followed Tiasa into the house.
I sold the car at a lot in Jersey City, got maybe a quarter of what I paid for it back, and used some of my new cash to take a cab out to Newark Airport, where Matthew Twigg was booked on a Lufthansa flight to Dublin via Frankfurt that evening. I'd made a point of divesting myself of anything incriminating earlier in
the day, sending the weapons I'd collected into the Hudson River along with the keys and radios I'd taken from the New Paradise PD. After a moment's deliberation, I'd sunk Vladek Karataev's BlackBerry, too.
It had confusing associations for me.
Before the flight, I used an international calling card to reach Bridgett and Alena in Ballygar. I gave them my flight details, told them they could expect me the following evening. Both were happy to hear the news, I thought, each for her own, separate, reasons.
The flight was long and uncomfortable, and the connection through Germany only made it worse. I tried sleeping, couldn't much manage it, and after three hours the battery on my battered and much-abused laptop gave up, leaving me alone with the in-flight entertainment and my thoughts. Mostly, I was worried for Tiasa, if I was doing right by her.
It was just past five in Dublin when we touched down, and by the time I'd cleared customs it was a quarter to seven and already dark. When I emerged into the baggage claim, I was surprised to see both Alena and Bridgett waiting for me.
“She thought we should come to get you,” Bridgett said as I approached.
I made a beeline for Alena, feeling the smile come onto my face unbidden. She looked, to my eyes, great, better than when I'd finally caught up to her in Odessa. Maybe it was just the light, but I thought that the cliché about how pregnant women glow had to have some merit to it, because she certainly seemed to be doing so to me. She was also beginning to show, and my reaction to the sight of the slight bump at her belly took me by surprise, delighted me.
“Hello,” Alena said.
I didn't bother to drop my bags, just wrapped my arms around her and kissed her.
“Oh Christ,” Bridgett muttered. “Should I get you two a room?”
I ignored her, told Alena, “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” she said, and actually smiled at me, then followed it with another kiss, this one even sweeter than the first.
“Please, please, please stop doing that where I can see it,” Bridgett begged. “For the sake of my stomach if not my sanity.”
“One wonders what she would do if forced to watch us fuck,” Alena murmured.
“Gouge my eyes out, to start. The car's this way, come on,” Bridgett said, then turned and began threading her way out of the airport. I took Alena's hand, held it as we followed her to where their rental was parked, the same Ford Focus that Bridgett had been driving last time. We shoved my bags in the trunk, and Alena insisted on my taking the front passenger seat, I think mostly because she didn't want to be that close to Bridgett.
It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Ballygar, and the first half was spent with me relating what had happened since I'd left Ireland. For once, I didn't feel the need to spare any details. When I told them about the drop site in the desert, the concrete building with its jerry can and galvanized bucket, each of them swore under their breath, muttering the same curse, but in different languages.
By the time I was finished, we'd reached the N61, the road all but empty, the night sky clear and full of stars. For a while, none of us said anything, and there was only the expanse of Ireland's fields and the sound of the road and the engine.
Then Bridgett asked, “So am I finished here?”
“You could head home tomorrow,” I said. “Cashel wants you to call when you get back into town, by the way.”
“Of course she does. Tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“You don't need me around for another day or two?”
“I'd welcome the company,” I said.
