He shook his head. “Truth is, they were all just going through the motions. The K-R-and-R insurance and our fees and the rest of it was budgeted from the start, assessed within two or three percent by some math whiz wearing Coke-bottle glasses sitting in a Manhattan office and crunching numbers. It was all just the cost of doing business.”
“Pretty pragmatic,” Erin said.
“Hell, yes,” Jerrod agreed. “A few years later, the locals find a way to live with the pipeline and the guys who were running around the jungle kidnapping people are running for office, talking about how they fought for the people, and how they’re going to reform the government and end corruption. But by then, they’ve made so much money from the Globo-Corps of the world that they’re as corrupt as the rest.”
He paused. “And if they weren’t, if they were really serious about protecting their native land and culture…well, then they’ve gotta go. We send in one of my former colleagues to plant a car bomb or, even better, to set it up so the local cops or army can do it. Some lieutenant in the godforsaken army gets a medal, and good ol’GloboCorp keeps racking up the profits. The Dow Jones Index goes up, and all is right with the world.”
In the silence that followed, Jerrod realized he’d said way too much. He tried not to let himself think about those days. And this was why.
“And I thought I was a cynic,” Erin said. Her eyes were neither approving nor judgmental. There was something else there, something he couldn’t quite read. “So what really happened, Special Agent Westlake?”
He shook his head. “Another time. Or…not.”
He expected her to fire back another question. But this time she did seem to take “No” for an answer. He turned on the TV to a low volume, some program about global warming. He stared at the scenes of disappearing glaciers, while Erin dozed off. Meltwater running down through moulins, cutting loose the Ross Ice Shelf. The world coming apart.
But the scenes of dying glaciers merely provided a backdrop to his thoughts. White slavery. It existed. Law enforcement knew that without a doubt. But it was rare to find anyone involved who wasn’t beyond reach. Or to be able to prove the case once they were caught. The Dutch, a few years ago, had managed to crush some powerful white slavers who were bringing women out of Russia, promising them good jobs and then throwing them into brothels, where threats of violence against their families held them silent.
But there was another, even dirtier, side to that kind of operation. A much more clandestine one. The kind where individual children were snatched off the streets, young girls and boys, and sold to the twisted wealthy and powerful in other countries.
Those were the ones almost impossible to trace. The scumbags law enforcement found too slippery to grab. Somehow when Erin said that Mercator, a huge defense contractor, was involved in white slavery, he didn’t think she meant the kind of rings the Dutch had broken. There would be no advantage to Mercator in such a thing.
He closed his eyes against the doom portended by rapidly calving and melting glaciers, and turned inward to dark places he had to visit too often in his job. Places where innocent children were nothing but things to be used by someone with sick desires. Places where Elena lurked even yet.
If those were the kinds of things Erin was uncovering, then he wasn’t going to tell another soul. Not if Mercator was involved. That company had too much power and too much influence, and all too often he had seen where that could lead. They might take a hit on a penny-ante corruption case, but on something like this, they would be covered nine ways to Sunday.
The Mercators of the world didn’t get caught for things like white slavery.
Emotions he didn’t allow himself to have any longer tried to wedge their way up to his heart and mind like those moulins melting their way through the glaciers. They would have their day, but their day would be destructive. He forced them down again, and instead focused on the cool anger and determination that had proved his best friends for many years.
No heat. No passion to interfere with reason. He might be propelled by passion, but he steered by cold reason. Passion must be kept in the background, simmering and providing energy, but never dined on. Never indulged.
He opened his eyes again to discover that the very place he was sitting would probably be underwater in a hundred years. He supposed the global scale of the impending climate crisis might cast his obsession with the missing into obscurity, at least to some, but he felt differently.
That was why he climbed out of bed every morning.
Erin stirred, murmuring something in her sleep, and he took that as a good sign. She hadn’t sunk into a sleep so deep it meant the concussion was creating a problem.
He needed more information from her. Much more. Then he could decide a course of action. Although if she was right about what she claimed, then only one course lay ahead of him.
On the television, the narrator’s focus had shifted from glacial flooding to mega hurricanes. Erin spoke without opening her eyes. “Rita was a rush.”
“What?”
“Hurricane Rita. I covered it. Can’t say it was a happy rush.” Her eyes opened, as blue as gas flames.
“It hit us hard. It kind of got lost in the wake of Katrina. It wasn’t as bad because there were no levees left to break.” She stretched and yawned, then winced a little. “My neck is getting stiff.”
“Not surprising. You took a pretty hard blow.”
She stretched again, more cautiously, and curled up in the other direction. The TV commentator was now talking about desertification. Erin indicated the TV with a slight wave of her hand. “You listen to too much of that, you might get depressed.”
“It’s background noise. I already know about it.”
“Yeah? Do you do anything about it?”
He tilted his head a little to one side. “Do you?”
“Parry,” she said, with a smile that barely creased the corners of her eyes. “You’re as good as I am at dodging questions. Ever consider becoming a politician?”
“I’d have to sell my soul. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“That’s a two-way street. But yes, I try to do my part. I walk or take public transportation. I’ve replaced all my incandescent bulbs with those compact fluorescent ones. I don’t turn on my heat unless my fingers turn blue, and I do without air-conditioning unless it’s night and I can’t sleep. I also try not to buy anything that had to come from far away. You can’t always tell, but ‘grown in Chile’ or ‘made in China’ are good indicators.”
“You’re doing better than I am, then.”
“Aha.”
But the reaction lacked spirit. They were walking around the edges of a peril that could destroy them both, trying to reach for some level of normalcy and banter.
He knew all about that, and he suspected she did, too, from the way she was behaving. Sometimes you just had to ignore the elephant in the room, especially when you couldn’t deal with it right that instant. The other elephant, the one unfolding before them on TV, seemed more like a parable than a science program.
Finally Erin spoke. “I guess I’m going to have to trust you.”
He looked at her. “That’s another two-way street.”
“Is it?” She appeared dubious.
“Yes. I could get fired, too. I could get killed, too.”
“Then why?”
He returned his gaze to the TV, knowing he had to offer an answer, but unwilling to get too personal.
Finally he found a way. “I’ve spent my entire career in the Bureau trying to nail white slavers. I spend my personal time on it. It’s