Game Time Pt. 02

I also had Steven signed up for Coach-Pitch Baseball. Around where we were staying, the locals were upset at how 'Politically Correct' the organization known as Little League Baseball had become. Thus, they organized their baseball efforts within the guidelines of an organization known as Dixie Youth Baseball. The same applied to the girls who were playing fast-pitch softball for Dixie Softball--these girls gave up slow-pitch as soon as they were nine years old around here; and I discovered that a couple of local girls had rifle arms and explosive bats and had gotten full-ride softball scholarships to Florida State University and University of Louisiana-Monroe.

Meanwhile, apartment living, while only temporary, was beginning to cause me to feel the walls closing in on me. I tried to get out with Steven as often as possible; only being at home when we needed to detox from the day, eat, do the evening activities leading up to bedtime, and sleep. My son and I were partnering in this 'man's world' environment and helping each other endure the empty spots in our hearts at the absence of my wife and his mother in our lives.

And then, one evening when we had been living in the apartment for about four-and-a-half months, with about a month to go before we could move into our soon-to-be-newly-completed house, Steven made his profound two-word announcement.

"Mom's home."

Which brings us back to where this story began; with Steven and me standing in the doorway to our apartment, seeing my wife--and Steven's mother--for the first time in three years.

****

Steven finally moved out the door tentatively at first, and then scooting around Fife, and stopping in front of Lana. He did not reach for her at first, choosing simply to look up at her face. Then he smiled and his arms came up.

Lana dropped to her knees and hugged him to her. She began to cry as she held our son for the first time since her disappearance. I heard her sob out loud and begin to say through her tears, "Steven, my baby ... Steven, oh, my baby boy ... you have gotten so big ..."

Special Agent Fife looked at me and said, "Hello, Maddux." Then he looked sort of apologetic as he said, "As you can see, just as I promised you that we would; we found your wife." He was sort of tentative with me, since I had been rather angry during the last few times we had spoken; the last time having been over four months before. That was when I was reporting my move and letting Fife and the Bureau know how to get in touch with me after I had pulled out of Rosslyn and had moved down here.

"I just brought her by to see you and Steven for a little while," said Fife.

"What do you mean; 'a little while?'" I asked, now that I had found my tongue. I was beginning to get uncomfortable and a bit angry again.

"She has been through a lot, Mr. Brodie," said the female FBI Agent standing next to Lana. "She is not ready to come home to stay yet, as she will require therapy. Thankfully, we have a really good clinic available to her just up the road in Riverdale, near the Atlanta Airport, where she will receive the best of care. They will treat her physically and emotionally in order to prepare for her permanent return to society; and her family. We simply brought her by here today in order for you all to see each other and for her to make first contact with her son."

"Her son?" I asked; now I was getting a bit indignant. "You mean OUR son; and what about me--her husband? Don't I count?"

Fife had his hands up to placate me. "Hey, Maddux; look. She has had a rough time for the past few years. She was taken forcibly against her will from her work place during a raid by gangsters; she was transported to a place where they repeatedly raped and otherwise abused her; then she was kept in an environment where she was beaten and forced to perform sex acts on demand on a regular basis. And she even gave birth twice during her captivity."

I was now reeling at the onslaught of images of my lovely wife being abused at the hands of such ... animals. Fife lowered his voice in an attempt at letting me be the only one to hear what he said next. "Maddux; she was used as a breeder; they got her pregnant in order to produce children whom they could sell on the black market."

The horror of Lana's recent existence did not hit me fully until later, but I was stunned at these revelations nonetheless.

"She can have some negative reactions to the touch or even the close proximity of men right now. Ya know?" Fife looked at me as he said this. I truly believe that he would have used martial arts on me if I were to attempt to move toward Lana to get at least a hug after so long a separation.

I resisted temptation as my brain began to regain control of my emotions. Sure, I loved Lana, and I wanted her back, but I wanted her back whole; and without any fear of her own husband.

"Okay, Barney," I said, causing him to relax a bit. "Do you folks want to come in for a few minutes?"

They declined, simply choosing to wind up this initial conversation right there on the front stoop.

Lana appeared to be placating Steven, who was now smiling brightly at the prospect of having his mother back. I heard her tell my son ... our son ... that she was not back for good yet, but she would be staying nearby and would be back for good within a few weeks. Steven expressed his displeasure by hugging Lana's legs as if he would not let her go.

Lana stood there and looked at me with an expression of combined longing and fear. My heart was breaking as I resisted simply charging outside, taking her in my arms, and swinging her around. But, after hearing what Barney had said, I refrained from doing so.

We concluded the rest of our initial conversation there in front of my apartment as the light of the afternoon began to fade to the evening. Supper was forgotten in the raised anxiety and other emotions of the moment.

Fife reaffirmed that I had his cell number. He told me that I could call him at any time for assistance with getting through the red tape involved with seeing Lana once my visitation was approved within her treatment regimen.

When I asked about the cases she had working been on before her abduction and whether everything was over, Fife tightened his lips into a line.

"Maddux," Fife said, "I won't lie to you. The cases in Maryland that she was working on are definitely complete. But, we will periodically be checking with her on the cases arising from her being a victim of sex slavery and human trafficking by Russian-American organized crime groups."

"What do you mean, 'checking with?'" I asked.

"Well, as a result of the raids that served to free Lana from the hands of her abusers," Fife went on, "we have many new leads that can serve to free many hundreds more women, girls, and even children from the hands of those monsters. We may need information that she does not even realize that she has in order to confirm details about those leads."

"Will she be required to testify any?" I asked, suddenly apprehensive about the safety of all of us if we were potentially threatened into silence by criminal organizations.

Fife smiled grimly and said, "I don't think there is any threat involved, even if we do need her testimony. After all, the majority of the men involved with her incarceration at the location where she was rescued went down fighting instead of surrendering."

"You mean you killed them all?" I asked.

"Let's just say that none of them is expected to go to trial," Fife said with a satisfied smile on his face. But then his eyebrows came down a bit.

"We got almost all of Vasily's inner circle--either killed or captured," Fife went on. "We only missed one major player, a guy named Gennady Sokolski; the rest that we missed were just minor participants who did not know enough about the overall operation even to make an attempt at getting it back up and running for years; especially with the loss of the knowledge about overseas contacts and the locations of the funds. Those connections were broken with the deaths of Vasily and his three closest associates. His disparate criminal operational facilities are still out there, and we are tracking them down as we speak; but the leadership has been pretty much decimated."

"As far as you know," I said, trying to interject a little reality into this conversation. Fife had fallen prey to the temptation to talk to me in 'Bureau-Speak' and I wanted him to know that I wasn't buying the party line without question.

Fife paused and then nodded. "Yeah; I guess you are right. It IS as far as we know, after all." Then he grinned at me and said, "But a lot of those Russian sons-a-bitches went down permanently. And that is a good thing. Honest, Maddux; I truly do not believe that you, Lana, or any of your family need worry about any reprisals out of all of this. We are pretty sure that we have made enough of a dent in their operation to keep them busy in other endeavors far removed from thinking about any of you for the time being."

I nodded at him to make Fife believe that I had accepted his assurance, but secretly reminded myself mentally to be sure to keep my handgun close by and to practice regularly with it.

We said our goodbyes, and I only went so far as to hold out a hand in order to attempt to shake Lana's hand--I did not want to spook her. She looked at it, her eyes widened in brief apprehension, and then she looked into my face and saw my pain and longing, I guess. Because she extended both her dainty hands to touch mine tentatively. I felt a gentle squeeze and then she turned away, taking the small child from the other woman and moving to the black Suburban parked at the curb.

Fife, the female Special Agent, and the other woman nodded and turned to go as well. Steven moved to me with a confused look on his face as his mother got into the car to leave him again. But he did not cry; he simply leaned into me and held my legs.

I waited quietly and held my son to me as the Suburban made the turn out of the lot for the apartment complex and onto the highway. The tears I was shedding now were more those of relief at her being back rather than the pain of her having to continue to be apart from us for a while, even just briefly. But I knew intellectually that this would be a separation of relatively short duration, determined by how rapidly she could heal mentally and emotionally from all that had happened to her.

I thought about the baby bump that was showing at Lana's midsection. I knew that I would also have some personal emotional disruption as I learned to deal with the fact that my wife was carrying the child of another man; and, from what I had seen today, already had a child from the sexual union she'd had with someone else besides me, given the age of the child that I had seen with her. Could I deal with that?

I had not found a therapist here in the area to deal with any emotional issues that I might still have concerning her being missing, as I had believed when I had moved down here that my emotional state had stabilized. But, I would have to do a lot of self-examination, now that the picture had changed so drastically.

The first thing Monday, I told my new boss about the return of my wife and about our troubles up in Virginia before moving down here. He was naturally concerned about the disruption of his plans for the new working dynamics that had been put in place by hiring me at Jacobson Controls, but he was willing to try to help. He offered me liberal flexibility in my hours of work in order to look after Lana and Steven, giving me VPN access to his office server in order to do some of my work remotely from home or from wherever I might need to be during Lana's recovery.

I was still pissed that the Bureau had found Lana a couple of weeks before notifying me. But I calmed down a bit when they told me that Lana would not have been responsive to me at the time of her rescue from the abysmal conditions in which she had been living. What they had learned from her during the first few days after she was back from her ordeal had led the FBI to be able to rescue as many as a hundred and thirty other women, teenage girls, babies, and other small children from two different locations that were being operated by Russian human traffickers--one in Virginia and one in North Carolina.

****

CHAPTER 5

Surprisingly, it was only two weeks after Lana's placement in institutional care nearby that she was released to go home with us. She still had twice-a-week appointments with a therapist up in Riverdale who was on the list of those counselors and therapists approved by the Human Smuggling Trafficking Center (HSTC), an outfit created in July 2004 by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General.

Everyone involved in her treatment wanted to be assured that there were no lingering adverse 'ghost' effects in her psyche that could possibly lead to abnormal emotional responses or problems in her relationships with her family or friends following her ordeal. And they were finally assured; in fact, the reports indicated that Lana was surprisingly on the stronger side of their scale of measure, mentally and emotionally, compared to most of the victims they had treated.

Our family existed in a rather chaotic time for a while. I mean with Lana's eventual return, and with a toddler in tow. The FBI was remaining in contact with us through Special Agent Fife, since they needed to continue their debrief of Lana about things that they were uncovering through their methodical examination of all the evidence they had collected on Vasily Radkevich's operation.

We had seen the news, and learned from Special Agent Fife, that Vasily himself had indeed died shortly after the raid on the house where they were holding Lana that last time. Fife had given us the details of how Vasily was killed in a gunfight at New Castle Airport, just outside of Wilmington, Delaware, where he had been attempting to flee the country on a private jet, along with several of his principal lieutenants. Later, Special Agent Fife verified what he had told me earlier, that they had accounted for the death or capture of all the primary players in Vasily's organization except for the man who had evidently directed the child-breeding-and-selling and prostitution operations--Gennady Sokolski.

Alexei and Sonja Savin came down to Newnan to visit us, flying first to Atlanta and driving the relatively short distance out to us from there. They were overjoyed at the return of their daughter--from what they had been sure in their own minds was certain death at the time of her disappearance.

Alexei had been forced to return to Washington shortly after his arrival and a brief three-day visit, but Sonja remained with us for almost another two weeks in order to be with Lana while I was at work, so that Lana was not left alone, and so that Sonja could become acquainted with her new granddaughter. After that, Lana's therapist had said that she believed that it was okay for Lana to be at home alone for short periods (no longer than about 6 hours at first) for the following couple of weeks, and then okay for the whole day after that.

There was not a lot of room in the apartment while we awaited the move to the new house, but we made do. Then, after only a few more weeks, we were able to move into our new house. The GC satisfied me that the punch list items were finished, and Coweta County issued me a CO so that we could move in officially.

Contributing to the chaos of our lives now for a while were the details involved in the move from our apartment in Newnan to the newly-constructed house near Sharpsburg. We had arranged for the movers to deliver our furniture and that is when we realized that we were woefully short of furnishings to account for Lana's reunification with the family and the addition of a daughter. And now we also had to plan for the arrival of the baby that Lana was carrying.

When the level of activity finally began to subside to a manageable level, I was somewhat relieved. Lana and I were still getting used to the idea of being back together, although in separate bedrooms for a while. Steven was reestablishing his relationship with his mother. Steven and I BOTH were establishing our initial relationship with the new addition to our family, Lana's little daughter and Steven's new little sister, whose name was Angela. All the signs seemed to point to our being well on our way to better times together eventually.

Except that I would walk in at various times and find Lana crying quietly. When I asked her about it, she just kept saying that she would tell me later; just to hold her for a while. I eventually got Lana to tell me, when I went with her to her therapy appointment--the doctor had suggested that I come along for some of them--that she missed her son--OUR son; who had been taken from her--and us--the one I never knew about before her return and had never met.

You see, unbeknownst to either of us at the time Lana had been taken, she was pregnant with our second son. He had been born during Lana's captivity and had been taken from her--from us.

The Bureau had taken bodily samples from Lana and me, in order to put their huge computer database containing tons of DNA data on missing persons, especially children, to work in locating our missing son. After all, ever since the Lindbergh kidnapping way back in the last century, the FBI had been the pre-eminent law enforcement agency to handle kidnapping cases.

I got hold of Barney Fife and pleaded with him to use any and all reasonable and available means to locate Lana's and my missing son. He assured me that he already had that in motion--I mean, he already had the DNA data guys working on it as much as possible; but I had to understand that there were more than a hundred children that Federal assets were busily attempting to track down after review of documents they had collected in their investigation of Valisy's enterprise alone. And that was just a drop in the bucket with respect to the huge number of other unsolved kidnapping and child disappearance cases the Bureau had open.

Needless to say, Lana and I were not yet sexually intimate--nowhere near--but she was at least at a point where she would let me hug her for extended amounts of time, and we were kissing, at least.

We had gotten her lined up with a local OB/GYN and had advised that female doctor of the situation. Her doctor verified that Lana was approximately 4 months along in her current pregnancy; 18 weeks, according to some type of chart they go by. The primary focus, as far as the OB/GYN was concerned, was Lana's diet, prenatal vitamin supplements, and getting her own body into shape to ensure proper overall prenatal care for the unborn child.

****

Being included as an active part of the move of our family and our household goods into the new house had aided enormously in Lana's reintegration into 'civilization' and family life. She had gotten to be in on picking out the window treatments and all of the rugs to go on the hardwood floors that predominated in the house--except for the tile floors in the kitchen and bathrooms.

The sod for the front lawn and the areas next to the house arrived and the team from the nursery that delivered it got all of the pieces in place within two days. I had had irrigation lines buried for underground sprinklers in the front--but not too deep, thanks to that accursed underground rock formation--in order to make things easy for yard maintenance in the coming years.

When the well-drilling guy I had hired came out to drill through that damned rock layer to find water for a well for a potable water supply for my house, I had also had him drill another hole in the rock to provide for another well specifically for watering my yard, and possibly a garden or a vineyard--or both--out back of the house.