6. The UN Lie #2
The room smells of cardboard, dust, and old toner. Metal shelves line three walls, stacked with labeled boxes and plastic tubs. Eleni goes to the rear shelf, pulls down a folder marked outreach materials, and opens it on a stack of bottled water.
Inside aren’t outreach materials.
Population summaries. Transfer logs. Departure records. Printed spreadsheets with internal case numbers and names partially redacted by hand.
My attention moves over the columns. Date. Age. Nationality. Assigned section. Departure status. Forwarding address. Family notification.
Too many blanks.
Eleni’s voice drops. “I copied what I could without triggering an export alert.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-three women in six months.”
The number sits between us, brutal because it’s so specific.
I turn the first page slowly. Syrian. Afghan. Iraqi. Palestinian. Eritrean. Mostly travelling alone. Several marked as relocated to supported accommodation. Others transferred to employment placement or external partner housing.
No destination listed.
No receiving agency.
No family notification completed.
No forwarding caseworker.
Just closed files and missing women.
“South section?” I ask.
“All of them.”
Of course. Those fucking fuckers.
I photograph each page with my phone, angling the screen so the camera looks like part of my notes. Steve appears in the doorway a few seconds later, blocking the view from the yard without making it obvious.
Eleni watches me work, color high in her cheeks. “I told myself maybe the partner agencies had separate records. Maybe the system wasn’t updating properly.”
“Twenty-three times?”
Her mouth presses tight.
No answer. She doesn’t need one.
“You did the right thing here,” I say quietly. “Thank you.”
Eleni looks down, blinking hard.
I finish the last page and hand the folder back exactly as she gave it to me.
“Did Solace see this?”
“She saw part of it,” Eleni says. “She had more from transport. Vehicle registrations. Night movements. Names from the women’s shelters.”
“And Petrakis knew.”
“Yes.” Her voice thins around the word.
“Complicit. He was waiting for Solace to show him exactly how much evidence she had.”
Outside, a vehicle door closes.
Steve shifts slightly in the doorway.
“Petrakis is coming,” he says, casual enough that it sounds like a note about the lighting.
Eleni snaps the folder shut, slides it back inside the box, and locks the cabinet.
When Petrakis appears at the door, Eleni is holding a stack of media consent forms and I’m writing a very boring note about donor visibility.
His smile moves from Eleni to me.
“Got everything you need, Ms. Jacobsen?”
I smile politely and close the notebook.
“For now, thank you.”
He steps aside to let us pass.
Steve falls in beside me as we cross the yard, his camera still hanging from his neck, and neither of us speaks until the compound gates close behind us.
Petrakis has no idea what just left the compound with me.
UN Compound Road, Lesbos, Greece. 1115 hours
I don’t trust myself to speak until the UN compound is behind us.
Steve drives with one hand on the wheel and the other resting near the gear shift, quiet in that way he gets when he knows noise won’t help. The SLR camera sits between us, full of photographs that look like clinic doors, distribution lines, and media consent forms.
Beneath those harmless images are the records Eleni gave us.
Twenty-three women in six months.
No forwarding addresses.
No family notifications.
No receiving agencies.
Get fucked.
It’s just not on.
I stare down at the copies on my phone until the columns blur into one ugly pattern.
Age. Nationality. Section. Departure status.
Nothing after that. Women who crossed seas, borders, deserts, detention centers, and bureaucratic nightmares to reach a place that was supposed to be safer than where they started.
Instead, predators put on aid badges and waited at the gate.
“Jan,” Steve says quietly.
“I know.”
He doesn’t tell me to breathe. He doesn’t tell me to calm down. Smart man. I’m breathing fine, and calm has nothing to do with this.
“The clinic was real,” I say. “The food lines were real. Eleni is real. Those nurses in there are changing dressings, treating fevers, checking children for dehydration. Most of those people are working themselves into the ground trying to keep families alive.”
Steve’s jaw shifts. “And Petrakis uses that to hide behind.”
“That’s what makes it worse.” I turn the phone slightly, even though he can’t look while driving. “Twenty-three. And that’s only from one section, in one camp, across six months. How many camps? How many ports? How many fucking closed files?”
He turns onto the road toward town, the sea flashing between buildings in hard blue strips.
“We’re going to find out.”
The certainty in his voice steadies the edge of my temper enough to sharpen it.
We stop ten minutes later outside a small family restaurant tucked between a pharmacy and a souvenir shop. Steve ordered ahead before we left the hotel because apparently even trafficking investigations require lunch logistics.
The sign over the door is hand-painted, the windows fogged slightly from the kitchen, and the smell hits the second Steve opens the restaurant door. Grilled meat, lemon, garlic, oregano, and warm bread.
Greek heaven.
Normal life, carrying on with a vengeance.
Steve returns with two large paper bags and a foil tray balanced carefully in both hands.
“Grilled meze,” he says, sliding everything onto the back seat. “Slow-cooked lamb, stuffed grape leaves, dips, bread, and something the old lady behind the counter insisted we needed because I looked hungry.”
“You always look hungry.”
“I’m a growing boy.”
“You’re thirty-six.”
“Still growing emotionally,” he says, and for some ridiculous reason I picture him as a cheeky little brat of a child.
Despite myself, a laugh slips out, small and tired. He gives me the faintest smile, then reaches across and squeezes my hand once before pulling back into traffic.
By the time the hotel comes into view, the food has filled the car with warmth I don’t know what to do with. My phone still rests in my lap, the documents open, the number sitting there like a wound that refuses to close.
Twenty-three women.
Refugees who came seeking safety and found predators wearing aid badges.
I look at the hotel entrance, where the team is waiting, where Solace’s recorded testimony, Eleni’s documents, and the wall she carved are about to become one plan.
“How much more evil can this world produce?” I ask.
Steve parks, kills the engine, and looks at me.
“As much as it wants,” he says.
“Then we produce more trouble.”
I pick up the phone and the food bags.
Trouble I can do.