Traffick Stop, an American Assassin's Story (Paladine Political Thriller Series Book 3) Read online

  All three of the girls were from Russia, and the blonde reminded him of a girl he had met while on a trip to Moscow. It was a relationship that had never developed and never could have. This girl, Lyuba, had blue eyes, just like Lana. She was beautiful and her smell intoxicating, but there was no way he would be taking her home.

  Too similar. Too confusing for the brain, too cruel for the heart.

  He needed a fantasy, a complete break from the reality of his life. The redhead’s name was Maria. Her compelling green eyes attempted to bore a path into Robert’s. Their regard said it all, “Take me.” The brunette, Yana, had porcelain skin and steel-grey eyes. Robert could feel the warmth of her leg as she cuddled close to him, slipping her tender, warm hand into the crook of his elbow. She was the only one who spoke English. Robert used his rusty Greek for the others. All the girls were pretty intelligent and he was pleasantly surprised that none of them seemed like the typical working girl he had expected to meet there.

  Maybe the prostitutes are just different in Europe.

  The exotic sound of Middle Eastern music filled the club as the announcer called out the next dancer. “And now, gentlemen, from the white sands of Arabia, Emmanuelle Gentlemen’s Club is pleased to present the incomparable Joelle!”

  A lovely creature sensually gyrated her hips onto the stage, scantily covered in a pink harem costume and wearing a matching pink silk headdress. She caught Robert’s attention immediately, unlike the other girls before her, with belly dance moves to the tantalizing rhythm of a Moroccan oboe and an Arabic oud, shaking a tambourine as she undulated before the gawkers. Then she set down her tambourine, turned her back to the audience and, not missing a movement of her shapely hips, untied her top, a foulard she flung above her bare shoulders, which caught the air and slowly drifted to the floor like a feather. She pivoted, with arms crossed against her chest and then, compelled by the music, stretched them to her sides, exposing her creamy breasts as she tapped a tiny pair of finger cymbals. Robert’s awareness of his tender companions was momentarily suspended. He waved for the manager, who came over immediately.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Robert motioned with his head toward the stage. “I’d like to invite her to my table.”

  “Who, sir?”

  “The girl on stage.”

  “Joelle?”

  “Yes, yes, please send her over.”

  “Yes, sir. Right after her dance.”

  Robert tried to divide his awareness between the feminine occupants of his booth and the girl on stage, who had captivated his attention. She had stripped down completely, except for the headdress, for her final number, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for Robert not to abandon his table guests. She peeled off the hijab, letting it loose to the floor as she continued her belly dance, and then exited the stage at the end of her song, dragging it behind her.

  “Let’s hear it for the gorgeous Joelle!”

  There was sporadic applause as Joelle came back and tenderly bent over to pick up her tips, raising the noses and eyes of the spectators. Yana stood up and excused herself.

  “Well, it’s my dance next. I hope to see you after.”

  Robert stood and gave her a hug. “Good to meet you.”

  The girl locked her eyes on Robert’s and smiled. “I hope to see you again tonight.” She turned, glancing back over her shoulder one more time.

  Joelle approached the table wearing a pair of silky green shorts with high heeled stilettos and a green silk blouse. No hijab this time. The manager introduced her to Robert.

  “Sir, this is our lovely Joelle.”

  Robert stood and Joelle extended a silky hand, which Robert kissed.

  “You are indeed. It’s my pleasure to meet you, Joelle.”

  Joelle slid into the place that had been vacated by Yana and immediately dominated Robert’s perception.

  “Where are you from, Joelle?”

  “I’m from Beirut.”

  Robert switched to Arabic and tears began to well up in her eyes.

  “Are you crying?”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t, but it’s just that I haven’t heard my language in so long.”

  Robert was compelled to ask the cliché question: What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? But he didn’t have to. He could see she didn’t belong there and there must be more to her story, and he allowed the fact that they spoke a common language nobody else could understand to be the medium for telling it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The courtesy car for the club, a black Mercedes, dropped them at the docks, and the driver reiterated Robert’s agreement to deliver her back there at exactly noon the next day. Robert opened the door for Joelle and offered her his hand. She smiled and looked around as he helped her out of the car. He led her by the hand toward the Lana.

  “We’re taking a boat?”

  “Yes, my boat.”

  Robert paid the dock master the extra 50 he had promised, and helped Joelle on board. He fired up the engine and cast the mooring lines and they were off.

  “We have all night. Where would you like to go?”

  “I don’t know. Surprise me.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  Joelle nodded, and Robert set a course for his island of Spetses.

  The boat docked at the floating patio of the Mourayo, a restaurant in the old harbor whose main dining room had been built from blocks of stone right on the beach. The maître d’ offered Joelle his hand, as she stepped from the boat right onto the restaurant’s patio. He seated them right on the edge of the water where they could see the twinkling lights of Porto Heli. Robert ordered a bottle of champagne. When it was poured, he lifted his flute of bubbly to her.

  “To our meeting.”

  Joelle looked down shyly as she held her glass up. “You know I’m already yours. You don’t have to seduce me.”

  Robert smiled. “What fun would it be if I didn’t?”

  She looked up, beaming, and clicked his glass, then put her luscious lips to the rim of it and sipped the bubbles.

  “It looks so pretty from here.”

  “Porto Heli?”

  She sighed. “Yes, all those beautiful lights hide the dark side of it.”

  She didn’t expound and Robert didn’t pry. They continued the small talk through their grilled squid and mussels in tomato sauce.

  “So where is it you live exactly?”

  “No place in particular.”

  Joelle’s eyes widened. “What does that mean?”

  “I just float around on my boat and dock wherever I feel like it. So, right now, I live right here, on Spetses.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you do here? I mean to keep busy? It looks pretty quiet.” She sipped the last drop from her glass, set it down, and Robert refilled it.

  “It is, but I’m retired and that’s the way I like it. I mostly fish. I love to just throw the lines off my boat and sail away whenever I want.”

  “It must be nice to be that free.”

  “Freedom is the greatest luxury.”

  After dinner, they cruised back to Robert’s stall and tied up there. As Joelle cuddled next to him on a bench on the deck of the boat, the animal inside him was straining itself at bay. Her smell was more intoxicating than the alcohol he had consumed, and the feel of her skin made his fingers burn with pleasure and anticipation as he caressed her cheek while they kissed. Passion mounted as their lips remained locked and Robert’s hand moved down with no resistance, exploring, as hers did the same. He felt like a teenager on a petting date.

  “Let’s go inside.”

  Joelle nodded. Robert took her by the hand into the cabin.

  “It’s straight ahead.”

  The mattress took up almost the entire bow from port to starboard. Joelle lay her silky body on top of it, Robert slipped in next to her and they continued to kiss, while peeling off each other’s clothes with the devilish impatience of one teari
ng the peel off a piece of luscious fruit. When Joelle’s garments were dangling off the bed in streams, Robert caressed and kissed her entire body, sending mutual waves of pleasure through both of them, and prompting her to do the same, taking him with her mouth.

  They made love until exhaustion, ending up facing each other, both of them out of breath. In that moment, there was no past and no future, no end and no beginning. There was only now. He gazed into her sparkling eyes until his eyelids fell, slowly but heavily. The waves lapped against the hull and the rigging clacked against the masts as he dozed off.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The sounds that lulled Robert to sleep were the same ones that woke him up. Those, and the smell of freshly grilled bacon. He peeked out of the bow cabin and saw Joelle busy in the galley, looking fresh, rested, and as beautiful by day as she was by night. He watched her work at the grill and, sensing someone was observing, she turned her head toward him.

  “Oh, you’re up. I hope you don’t mind that I fixed us breakfast.”

  Of course I don’t mind, jeez.

  “No, it’s great. Looks like you know your way around a boat.”

  He staggered into the main cabin in an early-morning stupor as Joelle scraped the bacon out of the pan with a spatula onto a plate and smiled.

  “I just looked around and figured everything out.”

  Joelle wiped out the pan, all the time looking at Robert. The whole thing for him was becoming stranger by the minute. He had heard of the “girlfriend experience” with a prostitute before but this was like a speed-date that was turning into a relationship.

  “You’ve got to get back soon.”

  “I’m yours until noon. What would you like to do?”

  She poured eggs into the pan and scrambled them with the spatula.

  “I hope you like scrambled.”

  “Fine.”

  Robert shuffled off into the bathroom to tidy up. His morning look was not something he was used to anyone seeing – working girl or not.

  When he came out of the shower, toweling his hair dry, he found the table had been set with a breakfast feast. He chided himself for being so relaxed. He was never a heavy sleeper because he was always wary of protecting himself. There was always the chance that his newfound peace could be broken at any time, whether it was by the company, an old enemy, or a new one.

  Robert’s nightmares were real. There were no make-believe monsters hiding under his bed. There were real monsters, lurking around, any number of them with a reason to do him harm. He sat at the table across from her, like they had been a couple for years, and put a forkful of eggs in his mouth.

  “How did you come to speak Arabic so well?”

  “My mother was Lebanese, like you.”

  Joelle reminded him of his mother, whom he had lost at an early age. Her tender touch and her caring eyes had broken him down. His mother was a beautiful Lebanese woman with porcelain, “doll-like” skin, just like Joelle. Robert’s father was in the military, so he was always moving around. Every new hometown was a new school for Robert, which also meant he had to prove himself all over again. That was extra difficult for Robert because, being the product of an interracial marriage, not only was he the new kid, he was also the “nigger”, because his father was black, and his mother was the “Muslim nigger lover.” Every bully who dared use the “N” word to refer to either one of them wound up with his ass on the ground, and anyone who made any nasty remarks about his mother lost a couple of teeth.

  The first time Robert was suspended from school for fighting, his father came to the principal’s office to back him up. He believed in meeting violence with the same, and that, if you never beat a bully, he would always continue to beat on you. Robert had seen it for himself when some idiot remarked how he’d like to “hit that piece of Arab ass” and his father coldcocked the guy. When he was in high school, his father was finally stationed in the same place for a while, so Robert joined the school’s wrestling team and played football. The school thought the physical activity would help him channel his aggressiveness.

  Robert bit his lip and scolded himself for straying from his legend – that prepackaged history of a person who never existed. That was the backstory he was supposed to give to strangers. He immediately changed the subject.

  “I’m a pretty private person, so I make it a rule never to pry in anyone’s business, but why did you choose this life for yourself? You don’t seem the type.”

  She looked hurt. “What type are you talking about?”

  Robert put down his fork. “Look, I didn’t mean any offense. I just meant you seem like a really nice girl.”

  “I was a nice girl. That’s over now.” She hung her head with shame.

  Robert reached across the table, lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. He himself had done many things not to be proud of. He was no one to judge.

  “I’m sorry – it’s none of my business.”

  She turned her head away. “Please, eat your breakfast. It was made for your pleasure.”

  “Thank you.” Robert shoveled in a few more bites. “It’s really good!”

  She looked back and him and smiled, as Robert kept eating, and picked at her own plate with a depressed appetite.

  “This may sound weird, but how long do you plan on being here? Maybe I could see you again?”

  “I don’t know how long they’ll keep me here.”

  He looked up, surprised. “Keep you here?”

  “Before they ship me off to Syria.”

  “Syria?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must have some money saved up. Why don’t you just leave?”

  “They don’t pay me much – nothing really.”

  ‘Nothing?”

  “They keep most of it. I don’t even know what they get. And I can’t leave. Some of the girls can leave after a year, but I’m going to Syria eventually.”

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t you leave?”

  “They have my passport.”

  Robert waved his hand. “Ask for it back. Do you want me to ask?”

  “No! These are dangerous people.” She looked away again.

  “Joelle, are you there against your will?”

  She looked back at him and nodded, a tear dripping down her cheek. “But I can’t make any trouble. They’ll kill my mother, my father and my sister.”

  Then the floodgates opened. “The girls who are not Arabs – the Russians, the Romanians – they take their passports too, but they get to go back home after a year. Most of the Arabs like me get sent to Syria right away. But they keep the light-skinned ones in Europe to make money before they send them to the jihadists.”

  Robert’s first reaction was rage. He had spent most of his career killing jihadis, and, despite his need for privacy, had become famous for it back home in America. He put that emotion in check. The last thing he needed was to call attention to himself and this was not his fight.

  “Have you gone to the police?”

  “I can’t. They keep us locked up. Inside all day and in the club all night.”

  “They let you go with me.”

  “That doesn’t happen often. You must have paid them a lot of money.”

  “You can go to the police right now.”

  “No. I’m sure they would kill my family. You don’t know what these people are capable of.”

  Robert clenched his teeth. Not only did he know what they were capable of, but he had seen it with his own eyes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As the little sailboat drifted up to the dock, Robert noticed two bodyguards, not unlike the ones he had beat up at the nightclub the night before, waiting, obviously for Joelle, whose fantasy was about to come to an end. The smile that had been on her face for most of the morning had faded away.

  “I’m sad.”

  Robert put his arm around her. He wanted to comfort Joelle, but didn’t know how. He said good-bye to her and helped her off the boat into the waiting hands of her capt
ors as his blood began to heat up. It was one thing if a girl chose the life of a concubine, and another entirely if she was forced into it as a sex slave. Robert had relaxed moral principles, but he did operate by a code, and one of its tenets was that anyone who hurt women or children deserved the death penalty. He played out a scene in his mind – killing all of the jihadist pigs and releasing the girls, but it wasn’t his battle to wage, plus it would leave him exposed. He stood on the deck, watching the car disappear.

  ***

  When Robert trolled back into home port, he saw an old man standing near his empty slip next to a big, ugly dog with floppy ears. As the boat came closer, the man threw him a line and the dog began to howl and wag its scruffy tail. Robert tied down the boat, jumped off, and was almost knocked over by the dog before he could greet the man. It cried and whimpered and licked his face with long, sloppy strokes of its tongue.

  “Okay, boy, okay, you’re home!”

  He knelt and petted the dog with his left hand and reached out with his right to shake the man’s calloused hand. The old man held on to it as he locked eyes with Robert.

  “It’s good to see you, malaka.”

  His gruff voice was all too familiar to Robert from the many hours he had spent in his company. “You, too Dimitri. Are you sure nobody followed you?’

  “The only thing that has been followed were your instructions. I’m one hundred percent sure.”

  “Good. Come aboard. Let’s go drown some worms!”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Robert hoisted the dog onto the deck of the boat with both hands and set him down. The dog began to explore every part of the boat, nose down, sniffing and wagging.

  “Don’t even think about marking your territory, boss.”

  He reached out his hand to Dimitri and helped the old man on board and they cast off with the goal of suspending time and catching dinner.

  “Thanks for taking care of him for me.”

  “He’s not your property, malaka. I was happy to have him as my guest.”

  “But he is my responsibility.”