Page 54 of Gates of Tartarus

“That’s what you know.” I slide the mug over to him. “Go on, have a taste.”

He looks doubtful, that eyebrow creeping up again, but dutifully takes a sip and gags. “How much syrup did they put in?” he asks Emlyn.

“Seemed to be at least four shots. I stopped counting.”

Jorge pushes the mug to him. “Have a taste. I don’t want to be alone in my misery.”

I watch as Emlyn raises the mug to his mouth and grimaces. “Dear God, that’s foul,” he exclaims, hastily handing it back to me.

“You have no taste,” I shake my head at him in mock-despair.

“On the contrary, I have too much. And now that you’ve permanently killed off a few of my taste buds, we were talking about the latest development when you came in.” He tells me that the gang member they re-interrogated that morning was finally starting to talk. As suspected, the gang was relatively small, and most of them scattered when Ratko was killed. The gang trafficked in drugs, weapons, and young women. The gang member’s job, along with two others, was to find women off the street – prostitutes, drug users, those loitering outside homeless shelters – and bring them to Vlado and Bojan. Most of the women had British accents, a few Moldovan, Bulgarian, and Romanian. The gang member didn’t know what happened to the women; he guessed they went into brothels. No, he hadn’t seen a tattoo of a snake, or an hourglass, or a sickle on the women, though one of them had a rose vine twining round her leg. He was telling the truth, there, Jorge says; hoping, undoubtedly, Emlyn continues, for some clemency in sentencing.

“We know from your visions,” Emlyn muses, “that Magda was shipping contraband to Tennireef. We assumed it was drugs. And that victims of human trafficking were likely held in the warehouse Ratko burned down. At the time, it made more sense to think that people were being brought into the country. Modern slavery is a serious problem. Now we know that women were being taken off the street by Ratko’s gang, presumably for Kronos. That most of them were British, and we can start combing through the missing-persons records to see if that piece of filth in the cells can identify any of them. Seef tells me that the US team is following up on reports that women were being taken off the streets of Seattle. Now it looks like British and European women were also being shipped over. And then sold on – somewhere – by Kronos?” He shakes his head. “Christ! We better start looking to see if any missing American women are ending up here! Even if we can only identify their bodies,” he says bitterly, “it will give their families closure.”

Jorge looks grave: “It’s a bad business.”

“At least it doesn’t look like the women are being forced into sex work. The Americans say there’s no sign of that sort of abuse on the bodies they’ve found. Forced labor? Organ trafficking? Seef didn’t mention it; I’ll ask him to check. But their arms and legs are tracked to hell and back. Whatever it is, it’s not pretty.”

I feel moved to say, “We’ll get to the bottom of it. I can see both Magda and Tennireef now, well, sort of. Magda at any rate. Sooner or later, one of them’s got to say something we can use.”

Emlyn looks somberly at me: “Thank God for you and Reed. Without you, we wouldn’t even know about Kronos.”

???

Thinking about the trafficked women, and what Kronos might be doing to them, has me in knots when I meet up with Emlyn and Seef later that afternoon. And I was right: they don’t take the news of Tennireef’s trip to DC at all well. Emlyn utters a heartfelt “fuck”, and Seef bites out something which I’m sure is extremely rude in Afrikaans. I’m on edge, knowing that I need to perform, wondering if I can. Tuning my mind to Tennireef takes forever, and at one point, I don’t think I’ll manage to latch on to him, but he finally comes into view, fuzzy, but he’s there, in a plush office… with a group of old, white, well-heeled men. Judging by the conversation, the Finance Committee. Oh. Dear. Heaven. Well, this is no good. He’s hardly likely to spill anything useful here.

I slide partway down the rope, then back up again, seeking Magda… and nearly vomit. We’re in a first-class cabin. On a plane. It’s small, but I can tell the seats are bigger than midget-sized, and there’s a curtain after the first six rows. Guess Magda insists on luxury even on an island-hopper. It’s disconcerting, to say the least, coming upon her mid-flight. I feel like I’m floating in the plane, which is floating in the air, and I’m still but moving all the same. I get a little queasy just watching her and wish I could grab onto something to anchor myself.

Magda’s dressed in a white linen shift, which sets off her newly acquired tan, the bracelet Ratko gave her winking around one slim wrist. Her hair is back in a smooth French twist, and she’s looking cool and elegant. She’s sipping on champagne – from arealglass and not the plastic cup we plebs get in economy – and flipping through a fashion magazine. Even reading she manages to exude sex appeal, and the businessman in the seat opposite is practically drooling.

I glance out the windows but only see clouds. Not that I’d recognize anything anyway; I’m hardly likely to identify her location from thirty-thousand feet, even if I did spot land below. Still, I think I’ll wait and see if the stewardess says anything. You never know: she might ask Magda to put up her seat in preparation for landing at x–y–z airport, and then we could alert the police. I decide to get comfy and look around the cabin, but there isn’t an empty seat, so I end up leaning against the wall by the galley. It would be too weird trying to perch on someone’s lap.

Several minutes pass, and I’m starting to doze off, when the stewardess approaches the galley. I shrink back and let her pass, then poke my head around. Wonder what first class get with their champagne? Not a plastic sandwich, I’m betting. Ooh, that’s nice. Looks like they’re going to have a selection of canapés to start, on real china plates with real cloth napkins. I’m so impressed that I don’t realize at first that the stewardess is now pushing the trolley forward, and when I do, I scramble. I really, really don’t want it to hit me. I’m already feeling unsteady, and I remember how peculiar it felt when Magda reached through me, all those weeks ago. Unfortunately, someone’s stood up behind me to pull something out of the overhead compartment, and I’m trapped.Come on!I tut.Get out of the way, you overprivileged oaf! The trolley pushes nearer, and I panic; it looks like it’s going to go right through me. I can see the edge pressing up against my thighs and gag as it starts to disappear. My stomach gripes, and then I’m tumbling out of the vision, head over heels, and feel like I’m going to pass out.

I come to in the familiar green armchair, and,Oh God, I’m going to be sick. I lean forward and put my head in my lap, waiting for the clamminess to subside.

“Sorry! Sorry,” I gasp. “It was just really weird being on a plane, and then the trolley started to push through me, and I lost control of the vision and was falling from the sky.”

The news that Magda’s on the move elicits another “fuck” from Emlyn and a, well, another something from Seef. It feels like we’re coming up against dead ends, just when we thought we were getting somewhere, what with my finally seeing Tennireef.

“I think I should try to step up my visions,” I proffer timidly. “You know, maybe three or four times a day, first thing in the morning and then late at night? And I could set my alarm for after midnight to see if anything’s happening then. Switch things up a bit? Since I’ve started being able to channel during the day, the random flashes and dreams have dropped off, which is annoying.”

Emlyn’s shaking his head. “You’ve only just learned how to enter and leave at will. It’s too dangerous. What if you got caught up in a bad vision and couldn’t get out?”

“Kavi and Jorge could help monitor me.”

“They haven’t had the training.”

“Training! How much training does it take to shake someone awake?”

“I’ll think about it. You could go into shock.”

“I haven’t yet.”

Even to my ears, that sounds remarkably feeble, and Emlyn levels a heavy stare at me. “You’re exhausted and getting headaches just from attempting to see Magda and Tennireef once a day.”

“Quick dips, in and out,” I coax.

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