Chapter 16
A Little Night Music
BECAUSE STIRLING loved Josh but also worked well in quiet (Liam assumed), Stirling was the one who brought Josh his laptop and the results of the briefing the day before.
Liam sat next to Josh as he got his infusion of plasma and saline, working on his own laptop and occasionally glancing up to stare at Stirling in surprise.
He’d loathed meetings and briefings his entire professional life. This sounded like, of all the goddamned briefings he’d daydreamed his way through, this was the one he’d wanted to attend.
“Really?” Josh asked, pausing in whatever search he was about to initialize. “Marco’s working at Kadjic’s hotel?”
“Yes,” Stirling said, not pausing, which was what made Stirling a prodigy while Josh was simply brilliant. “It really was fortuitous.”
“Good word,” Josh murmured, his fingers resuming their tapping. “So what’s the plan after that?”
Stirling grunted. “Well, first you and I perform magic and figure out exactly where the girls are being trafficked.”
“Not magic,” Josh said with a smile. “Logic.”
“I don’t see the difference,” Liam interjected, because he wanted to be part of their rhythm.
“We swapped out ma for lo. But it’s the same ic,” Stirling replied, straight faced.
Liam chuckled, and Josh shot him a grin.
“And after the magic?” Liam asked.
“The fun part,” Stirling said. “We organize the op to set the trafficking victims free, and it’s going to be a big one.” He glanced up. “Expect Felix and Danny to call upon your mighty law enforcement powers for that.”
Liam nodded soberly. “So noted.”
“Mostly for help placing the victims,” Josh said, thinking. “I mean, we can set them free, I hope, but free isn’t ‘rescued’ when you’re in a foreign country without knowledge of the language or a passport. That’s seriously going to be something involving the Czech government and Interpol.”
Liam frowned. “They might have passports,” he said.
“Many sex workers are trafficked by scam artists. They get their passports expecting to be taken to another country to work legitimately, and then their passports are taken from them, and they’re forced to go along.
Maybe I should go on the op—I can search for the passports while everybody else is subduing the guards and freeing the victims.”
Josh glanced up, suddenly stricken. “Without me?” he said, and it was one of the few times Liam had ever actually heard him sound like the boy Liam teased him for being.
Just that quickly, Josh shook his head. “Ignore that,” he said, giving a bright smile.
“Momentary lapse. Of course. I’ll tell Felix right now. ”
But before he could pull up the text function to do that, Liam settled a hand on the inside of his arm, careful not to dislodge the IV needle taped there, giving him lifeblood and strength.
“This,” he said softly, “is how we get angry. I get we’re working now, but you be sure to rage at me a little when we’re alone.”
Josh shot him a relieved, tired smile. “I can do that,” he said, winking. Then he went back to work.
“So,” Liam resumed, after Josh and Stirling had used the moment to communicate the new wrinkle, “what’s the Lightfingers job? If the big half is freeing trafficked prisoners, what’s the arts-and-crafts plan to tweak Kadjic?”
Stirling grinned, a startling expression on such a stolid young man’s face.
“They already have Kadjic’s room number,” he whispered.
“Grace has broken into his room twice to move stuff around. Last night, while Kadjic was at the theater and hiring a rent boy, Grace stole all his silk pocket squares, the ones that match his ties. Molly’s busy sewing them together into a miniskirt. ”
Liam and Josh both snickered, and then Josh glanced up. “She’s not going to wear it, is she? When he can see her?”
Stirling frowned. “Not willy-nilly,” he said. “We’ve had a blond at every op—I think she’s going to touch up her roots when it’s appropriate and shake her booty in public when it makes him froth at the mouth.”
Liam heard Josh’s sigh of relief.
“Afraid they’ll bollix it up without you, boy-o?”
“Or worried for my friend’s safety!” he protested. Then, to Stirling, “So is our endgame the same?”
“Well, first we’re going to break through his protections at the Czech Port Authority,” Stirling murmured, and then he and Josh both let out twin breaths of appreciation.
“Okay, then,” Josh said. “We’ve got it.”
“Got what?” Liam asked.
“Our route,” Stirling said frankly. “See, we knew Kadjic had a hard-on for Prague, which, you know….”
“Nice city,” Liam said, because there was no denying that the jewel of Czechia was very pretty—the old-style architecture, the bridge and the lights spanning the river. Almost every window held a view of old-world charm mixed with modern amenities.
“Really pretty,” Josh said, nodding. “I hadn’t been to Prague before. What I’ve seen so far? I can see why Danny loves it.”
Liam listened carefully for any bitterness or any anger when Josh mentioned Danny’s name.
It wasn’t like he’d heard any before—apparently Josh had been masking his real feelings of hurt even from himself—but now there was an appreciation of the man and what he’d done with his time while he’d been gone from his family.
“I want to come back,” Stirling confided. “Tienne is in love with it here. He’s been parkouring all over the place, and then he’s found a studio where he can rent time, and he paints by the hour. It’s really fun to watch.”
Liam grinned at him. “Good plans to make,” he said, and it occurred to him that the crew—all the crew—seemed to have a handle on things.
This was a big project, but it was not the only project or their last project.
There would be after the project, and since all of the crew seemed to have found their match, that after would come with happy romantic adventures.
The thought cheered him. The infusion room was an atrium, full of natural light, with a view overlooking the Charles Bridge.
While not a port, the graceful stone arch was a landmark, and underneath it swanned the riverboat cruises that seemed to showcase so much of the charm of eastern Europe.
Watching the riverboats come and go was a particularly stately pastime, so it wasn’t like the place was dreary.
But the sun sparkling off the water and the promise of a crisp nearly autumn day seemed beyond Josh’s fingertips today, and Liam knew that had to be bringing him down.
“So we all agree, Prague is wonderful, and between Danny’s apartment and the Mozart, we’re being spoiled rotten,” Josh said primly. “So do you want to hear about Hamburg?”
“Sure,” Liam said. “You can wow me about Germany anytime.”
“Well, to start with,” Josh said, “we thought we’d be searching one of the major ports—Praha Smichov or Praha Radotin.
But those ports are so big, they all have their own police units, and while human trafficking takes place through the big ports, there’s a lot of big busts.
And Kadjic doesn’t traffic droves of people.
He tends to traffic….” He swallowed, looking uncomfortable.
“High-value sex workers,” Stirling filled in for him without inflection. “Boys and girls—and yes, I mean boys and girls. The average age of the workers under Kadjic’s men in America is fifteen, which means….”
“Oh God,” Liam muttered, feeling sick. “Yes. We’ve known this, but also that they are… well, pretty.” Kadjic’s people recruited for classic Eastern European beauty—and apparently for youth.
“Until they get hooked on drugs or get murdered or jump into a river on purpose,” Josh said grimly. Well, his friend Nick wouldn’t have spared Josh the details as they’d been rooting through Kadjic’s activities in the States.
Liam wouldn’t have either, but that didn’t make him hate Nick any less.
“So we’re not looking at the major ports?” Liam asked, going back to their main points.
“D??in,” Josh said decisively.
“D??in?” Liam was surprised. The port of D??in was a resort of sorts, attracting close to a million tourists of the yacht and sport boat variety a year.
When one thought of human trafficking, they thought of miserable filthy conditions in packing containers with the inhabitants freezing or suffocating or otherwise dying of exposure.
One did not think of D??in, where the rich and beautiful kited about on yachts, thousand-dollar sunglasses in place and silk scarves streaming behind them in the wind.
“Think about it,” Josh murmured. “Leon’s yacht in the Caribbean.
It’s large—it accommodated twenty passengers, twelve crew easily—but it was small compared to some of the yachts in D??in.
Take one yacht that size and super-stuff it with…
well, human beings. That’s easily eighty passengers, and they would only need the boat crew and maybe ten or twelve overseers with weapons.
And….” He looked sick. “I understand the training is… uhm….”
“Yeah,” Liam said. He’d worked a case involving large-scale trafficking six or so years ago.
The victims were repeatedly assaulted in the name of making them numb to whatever a client would do.
“It’s fucking brutal. So you think the training is accomplished on the yachts between D??in and Hamburg? ” Because that wasn’t very far.
“No,” Stirling said. “They’re funneled through D??in and Rotterdam and a couple of other ports, and they consolidate in Hamburg, and then they’re on for a twenty-five-day ocean voyage to New York or New Jersey or Florida.”
“You tracked all this?” Liam asked, and he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Stirling gave him a beleaguered glare. “What do you think Danny and I have been doing as you two have been throwing Lightfingers shade all over Europe?”
“Paris and Stuttgart,” Josh said. “Not all over. Anything beyond that was Tor and Marco and you and Tienne.”
Stirling chuckled. “Yeah, well, we did PR. You two did the actual theft/replacement things.”