Corcovado, Or Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

And Elizabeth, being a rather quiet, even a staid product of upstate Vermont, found herself ill-prepared for what came next...to handle the information she learned about these forgotten human beings. She found that, when asked, one or two offered to translate, though there was another, one girl in particular, who seemed to be quite fluent - but viciously uncooperative. This girl was not simply well-dressed, she was haughty and consciously indifferent, and Elizabeth assumed this girl was on the inside of the operation, maybe part of the "family," and she had this girl sequestered from the others. Then, once she talked with one of the girls willing to interpret, she began her interviews with the all of these girls, these children - one by one...

They were bound for New York City, they said, and most of them already had "owners" lined up, though a few of the younger, more attractive children, she soon learned, were here more as speculative ventures. Young virgins, for the most part, these girls would show up "to work at restaurants on the East Side" one day, but they would be snatched up within hours by their new owners, destined to work as "housekeepers" - though, Elizabeth soon learned, these as yet unattached waifs rarely did housework. No, these girls were part of a steady stream of children being imported into the US, allegedly to work as domestics, but the truth of their existence, Elizabeth soon understood, was to be part of a far darker world. All would work in the sex trade, either as domestic sex slaves or as "actresses" in brutally sadistic S&M films. One of the girls she talked with had a friend who had reportedly been killed - for the film, such as it was, was all about killing very young virgins. Or so this girl said...

But the truth, Elizabeth soon learned, was darker still.

+

Ted heard an aircraft overhead and went topsides to look for it; he saw an ungainly looking beast through the trees that lined the cove, and he watched as it flared and settled on the water on the far side of the inlet. Then, with a wary eye, he watched as it taxied through the inlet and he found himself wondering, and not for the first time in his life, what it was like to fly something like that. To be a pilot landing on water. To do the other things his father had done, and he wondered if he hadn't missed his first best destiny.

'That's odd,' he thought as he watched the beast approach. 'I've been surrounded by pilots and aircraft my whole life, yet never once have I thought that...'

"Is that the plane?" he heard Tracy ask, and so, biting his tongue, he turned to her and nodded. "What took it so long?" she asked, and again, he fought back the urge to lash out at her inane question and simply shrugged.

He watched the aircraft pass an anchored boat, their owners now very curious indeed and pointing at the floats as it passed. Then, as beast drew near, he saw the pilot and a nurse onboard and, oddly enough, they waved at him, and smiled - which seemed odder still. He waved away his fear and tried to bravely meet their smiles, then he thought about Melissa - and about the things she'd told him down below.

Drawn to his father. By God. Never had an interest in Canada, nor even heard of Desolation Sound, but for weeks she had felt a need to be here - today. Her description of seeing his father on the fuel dock had rattled him, too. He looked god-like, she said, wreathed in an aura of golden flame, and she said she knew right then that her destiny had been altered, and that God was waiting for a decision. She had been waiting for him all her life.

He'd tried to measure her words against his own experience of God - and he'd come up short. God didn't do things like this, did He?

Or did He?

Or...was her being here really nothing more or less than chance, a mere coincidence? A simple statistical anomaly, a chain of unrelated events leading to a new outcome, like intricate lines of dominoes set to fall along predictable paths, only - interrupted, perhaps, by an earthquake. Destin and his grandfather - in Destin. Sailboats a common denominator. Her ex-husband, a pilot with Delta who had known his father. How many coincidences must there be, he sighed as these varied images came to mind, before things just didn't add up any longer?

"Why Destin?" he asked himself again.

The pilot maneuvered his aircraft through the water in a tight arc, swinging the loading doors right up to Altair's swim platform, and he grabbed hold and held the plane's elevators off the backstay while the pilot hopped out onto a float and secured the floats to Altair. After his father was lifted aboard the aircraft he grabbed their duffels and hopped aboard, but then, before he went further inside he turned and looked at Melissa.

Her eyes were full of tears, yet he felt a reserve of strength lurking, too.

'So many contradictory impulses,' he said, if only to himself, then he smiled at her - as the pilot let slip the lines and pushed his airplane away from Altair's navy blue hull.

"You'll need to sit up front with me," the pilot said. "No room aft, I'm afraid."

"Right." He looked at Melissa after he clambered up into the right seat, looked at her - standing on his father's home - as the airplane taxied out the inlet and into open water. He looked down at Altair after they took off and circled the cove, lost inside all the implications of her last words to him.

"He's in God's hands now, Ted. Have faith in Him."

Then, quite suddenly, he knew just what it was she was doing - and in his mind's eye he saw darkness - like sudden dark clouds building ahead of a dangerous storm, blotting out the sun.

+

She'd never imagined worlds like this existed. That one's life could be so utterly, so wantonly castrated of meaning, of purpose, of even the simplest joy. It was as if these girls, these children, she reminded herself, had been wiped clean from the book of life. Erased, in silence, and no one would bear witness to their suffering save the warped souls who would torment them on their way to an early death. These girls, all of them unwanted in their homeland and considered by some lucky to even be alive, had been cast adrift soon after birth, only to be raised almost as domestic animals, kept alive for their potential worth once they reached a certain age. Kept alive for men in America and Europe - so they could be consumed again and again, out of sight, out of mind.

After Elizabeth finished her first dozen interviews she went to talk with the haughtily indifferent girl she suspected of being on the inside. She had no name, she said, and her resilient silence implied she had no existence in this little room.

"Where are you from?" asked Elizabeth.

No answer, only an insipid, almost vapid shrug.

"You should answer me, you know? If you don't, well, you'll simply go to jail until you do."

Again, the quiet, defiant shrug.

"You think your people in New York will come for you?"

A slight smirk, a quick, sidelong glance of the eye.

"That maybe they'll get you out so you won't have to talk to me?"

"You don't know who you're dealing with," the girl said, her English clear, utterly perfect.

"Oh? Enlighten me?"

"Let me go now and we may let you live. Keep me and you'll be dead by nightfall."

"Oh? And who do you think will pull that off?"

The insolence on the girl's face was almost too much for Elizabeth, but she looked into the girl's eyes, tried to feel her way inside this lost soul, yet she found nothing there - only a darkening void.

"So, you take these girls down to the Village? They already have masters, is that it?"

"And your life is at an end."

"No, Mai Ling, I am very much alive and, actually, I have your Passport. The FBI is en route, as is a representative of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And, as you are in a world of trouble I thought I'd give you one last opportunity to tell me what you know before the, uh, well, the professionals start in on you..."

A rattled veneer now, a sudden, tectonic shift deep within the girl's magmatic core.

"The truck driver? Your brother? You do know he's dead, don't you? Are you sure you don't want to talk to me before the FBI gets here? You do realize the danger you are in, don't you? Your family? What they'll do to you now that we have these girls?"

Deeper cracks in her veneer, sudden tremors passing across her face like shadows of clouds.

"Your family in Queens? And in Kowloon? All that is in jeopardy now. Unless you talk. I can help, you know?"

"You?" the girl cried, the word full of mocking scorn. "You have no idea what you've stumbled on, do you? This is just the tip of the iceberg..."

Then the girl spit in her face. Elizabeth didn't flinch, didn't let up, did not even wipe the spittle from her clothes.

"Really? And what if you're just a frightened little girl, a girl afraid of the dark. Afraid, because you know what comes next."

They talked for hours after that - while two detectives from the Vermont State Police took notes.

+

Melissa sat in Altair's cockpit after Ted left, looking past the bow into the trees that lined the cove, but she appeared at ease now. No longer lost and vulnerable - yet all she could see in her mind's eye was the spreading disease within Jim's leg. Black streaks, like lightning gone terribly wrong, and hot to the touch. She'd never seen anything like it but she knew it was evil, that something was coiled up inside of him waiting to strike, and she was afraid because she knew he was going to die. So much was riding on him now - and he was going to die. And just then, and quite suddenly, she felt helpless to stop this runaway train. To come so far, to get this close...only for him to get sick...

Then she heard Tracy coming up the companionway ladder and she tensed.

"Think you could run me across to the store?" Tracy asked.

"Sure, but there's no bus service over there. Only seaplanes. Kind of expensive, if you know what I mean."

"Oh," the girl said, lost now, and not a little confused that this woman had read her mind.

"So. Who are you running from?"

"Excuse me?"

"Running? Who from? Daddy? A boyfriend? Who?"

The girl turned away, shrugged.

"It's worse than that, isn't it? These people are mean, right?"

And Tracy looked at Melissa now, very unsure of her ground.

"And? What happens when they find you?" Melissa added. "You know they're close, don't you?"

Tracy shrugged again, then sighed - as really, there was no point in lying now. "I guess they kill me."

"You know their distribution network, I assume?"

Again the girl nodded, only now she turned and looked at Melissa. "How'd you know?"

"Oh, I've been on your ass for months. Following you. From New Orleans, as a matter of fact. You're caught in a trap, aren't you? With no place to turn, no one to run to."

"Dime a dozen, huh?"

"Something like that. Do you want to go home?"

"I don't know."

"Did he abuse you?"

She nodded her head a little, a barely perceived, mouselike little motion, almost a denial, yet not quite.

"What about your mum?"

"She was always too afraid to say anything."

"I know, but there's no need to blame her, you know?" Melissa shrugged just then. "Caught in the same trap, I guess. But I can help."

"You too?" Tracy asked.

And now Melissa shrugged. "Not really, but yeah, I know where you're coming from."

"Do you?"

"I've helped a few girls in your shoes."

"Oh, have you?" Tracy said, but there was a layer of scorn in her voice that hung over them both.

"I'd like to think so, yes."

"Yes, I rather imagine you might like that. Who are you running from, by the way? Boyfriend, or husband?"

"Not that simple, Tracy."

"It never is, luv. Until it is."

"When was the last time you thought you were made? Before this week, I mean."

"About a year ago, in San Francisco. The people running me are tied to the cartels now."

"No way out in California, was there?"

"No. I always thought I could hide there, but..."

"There's always someone coming around the next corner, isn't there?"

"That's right. Always."

"Did you tell Ted this part?"

"No, course not. I knew someone was on to me last week, and it was like, ya know, it was time to move again..."

"And along comes Ted."

"And Jim," Tracy added.

"Ah, so it's him that interested you?"

"Until you fuckin' came along, yeah."

"Funny how things turn out, isn't it?"

"Do you know how to sail this thing?"

"Sort of, but not really," Melissa lied, suddenly realizing she was in imminent mortal danger. "The systems on this boat are...well, I have no idea how to run a boat this complex."

The girl looked towards the seaplane base across the way. "I wonder where they fly to?"

"Up and down the coast, small fishing towns for the most part. Think you could hide out someplace like that?"

"Maybe. Got any cash?"

"A few hundred. I could buy your ticket, though. Give you what I've got on hand. It might be enough to get you a start."

That seemed to make up the girl's mind. "Let me get my kit, then. I want to be out of here before dark."

"Did you see someone this morning?"

She nodded her head. "Maybe. At that bakery. Someone I remember from Vancouver."

Melissa thought about that now. Someone looking for Tracy here - if that was really her name - out here on the sound? And now - if they knew she was on this boat?

Would she be safe out here by herself, she wondered? And, when would Ted be back?

She was in the Zodiac, waiting, when Tracy came up with her duffel, and they rode across the cove in silence. She tied up at the store and they walked up to the store together and bought her a ticket to Campbell River, then gave Tracy a few hundred dollars before she hurried back to the inflatable - before the girl changed her mind and tried something stupid.

She motored away in the evening, tied-off on a cleat and climbed up to the aft deck, then went below to her duffel and pulled out an Inmarsat phone and flipped it on. She entered the encryption key and waited for the green light, then dialed a one-time number and waited for the connection.

"Go," she heard the man's voice on the other end.

"She's on the evening flight, from Squirrel Cove to Campbell River. She says someone's on her tail, but I didn't see anyone."

"Your next move?"

"Stay here on the boat, for a few days, at least," then she explained why.

She pulled a Beretta from her duffel and screwed on the silencer, then put on a sweater and started cooking dinner - wishing she'd stayed in Vancouver.

Chapter 6

He heard voices again, voices far away - as if on the far side of a scream.

The snake was there - by his ankle - coiling up to strike, again. Then - out of the corner of his eye - a big fucking cat...a leopard? - and he was groping for his sidearm in the dark with his right hand when the snake struck. He felt searing pain on the top of his hand but he held onto the Colt and pulled it free, squeezed off one round at the cat, striking it in the gut...

Then that new pain again, this time throughout his right leg. Unreal thirst burned his throat, too, and in his mind's eye he thought he saw a helicopter, heard rotors beating the night, then there were men all around, lifting him, carrying him...

And he opened his eyes, saw he was in a hospital room.

He looked out a window across the room and saw the Vancouver skyline on the far side of the glass - and he wondered what'd happened, how he'd gotten here.

'My leg,' he thought. 'It came back for me. Again...'

But...where was Ted? And that woman? Melissa? Where were they?

The lights were off but there was a bank of instrument beating away beside his bed, the various screens taking stock of the ebbs and flows of his life...and he saw a call button on a table by his bed. He reached for it, winced in pain as something flared deep inside his leg, but he reached for the button and pushed - as he gasped for breath. Nothing...so he pushed the button again.

Then...he heard running, people running towards his room, and voices. Like voices from a dream.

Two women burst in and looked at him, then one turned and ran back out the door.

Running. Fast. What does that mean?

"You're awake," the remaining girl said as she came to the side of the bed.

"So it would appear. Mind telling me where I am, perhaps what I'm doing here?"

"We've just gone to get Doctor Sutton. We've been wanting to talk to you."

"Oh, we have? So, where 'we' are is a state secret, I take it?"

"Oh, heavens," the girl said, thrusting a probe of some kind in his mouth. "Under the tongue, now. And no, you're at Vancouver General, and you've been here a while."

"Define for me, if you please, 'a while?'"

"We'll let Doctor Sutton do that...but as soon as she gets here I must go and call your son."

"Ted? Is he here?"

"Heavens no. He hasn't been here in weeks."

"Weeks?" But he saw she was ignoring him now, busily writing away on an inch-thick clipboard, one of those fat aluminum jobs, then the door opened again and a harried-looking middle-aged woman slouched into the room - though her eyes brightened a bit when she saw him.

"Ah, so you are awake! Wonderful!"

"That seems to be the consensus opinion, yes."

"Pardon?"

"That I am, in fact, awake. And that seems to be all anyone will tell me, too."

"Ah. Well, yes. I wanted to talk to you about that."

"I'm glad."

"Are you always so sarcastic?"

"Only when the situation seems to warrant it."

"Ah. Well, yes, well, you see..."

"Doc? Straight talk would be much appreciated right about now."

"Ah. Yes, I see. Well, that bug you carried home from Iraq has turned into a super-antibiotic resistant little critter, and, well, gangrene set in before the antibiotic cocktail we devised could take hold. The good news is that the cocktail worked; the bad news is that you've lost your right leg, just above the knee."

"And how long have I been here?"

"Not quite six weeks," Sutton said.

"Your son has been here night and day almost all that time," the nurse added, "and he's only just gone back to Seattle. He's on his way up, as we speak, and you've had people from work here too."

"Work?"

"Some pilots from Delta, a few corporate types, too. Insurance, benefits, those kinds of people."

He looked at the foot of the bed, saw his left foot sticking up - then the vague contours of a shadow where his life used to be, and he swallowed hard as implications swept through the room on this sudden ill-borne wind.

"We'll want to get you started on physical therapy now that you're up and about..."

"Up and about?"

"Ah, yes. Well..."

"The whole bedside manner thing, Doc? You need to work on that."

"Ah, yes, well, you see, I've never been much of a people person."

"Really?"

"No, not ever, as a matter of fact."

"Pity. You're more the white lab coat kind of doc?"

"Ah, look, might I have someone from psychiatry drop by..."

"Why? Do I sound mentally ill?"

"No, I just thought that, well, uh, you know, you might like someone to talk to."

"At five hundred an hour? Gee, no thanks Doc. I think I'll take a pass on that."

"You forget, we have nationalized medicine here."

"For American-nationals? Really? How nice."

"Oh yes, I forgot."

"Well, doc. Thanks for hacking my leg off. I appreciate it, really, I do. Now, if you don't mind, I think I'd like to get out of here."

When Ted arrived, perhaps five hours later, he seemed relieved to see his father again...and tried to set him straight about what had happened.

"Was it that bad?" Jim asked.

"You have no idea, Dad. Docs from everywhere, and I mean as far away as London, were called to consult on this. For about three days they told me you weren't going to make it, then your leg turned black. I mean black, like coal. Started at the foot and streaks started shooting up your leg..."