“As quietly as possible,” Lily replied, this time with a smile.
“Not telling, huh?”
Brad finally spoke up. “We’ve agreed not to go into Ludmilla’s and Anna’s activities because it could jeopardize what they do, David. Your story is going to be on the girls’ plight.”
“The ladies’ cause would make a great angle to the story,” David pointed out.
“No, their operation must be kept as quiet as possible or this interview won’t do us any good, gentlemen,” Brad said firmly. “Stick to our agreement.”
“Okay, okay,” David said, “but you have to agree that showing how these girls were saved would add an exciting element to the story.”
Amber sat up. “Exciting?” She recalled the girl being raped by a group of men in front of thekafena. Anger seized her insides. “Do you know how exciting it is for these girls to be used by ten or twelve men a day? That they are chained to beds or fed drugs or even beaten if they don’t please their owners? I have several girls upstairs who can’t walk because of their injuries. Do you think their stories would be exciting enough for your article?”
Thomas held up a hand. “Bad word choice,” he conceded, shooting a warning glance at David. “We’ll do this right, Miss Anna.” He looked at the girls on the couch. “Tell us about the clients. Tell us the things done to you so we can report it in your words.”
Amber willed herself to relax. If this was tough on her, how much more difficult it must be for the girls to do this. Yet, she noted, it was she and Lily who were expressing anger and bitterness, not Michela or Judi Kay.
“Our clients are mostly NATO.”
Thomas’s head jerked sharply. “NATO? As in peacekeepers?”
The girls nodded. “Yes,” Lily answered for them, sarcasm evident in her flashing eyes. “They are the brothels’ main clientele.”
“A lot of them?” David asked.
“Seven out of ten,” Hawk replied from behind them. Like Brad, he had been quietly playing observer. “I know this from being inside thekafenas.”
David expelled a long breath. “Wow.”
Lily cocked her head. “Surely you don’t think a uniform or a title would stop a man from going to a whorehouse? They’re the ones with money and a lot of time on their hands.”
“And NATO officers are from all over, as you know, so you want to add that this is an international problem,” Brad added. “By the time my department goes off to raid thesekafenas,they are mostly empty because the pimps have been warned in advance.”
Thomas nodded again. “We’ll have to be extra careful when we go to akafena.” He stood up. “I don’t know how to say it without being blunt, but a firsthand account of the business will make the story even more marketable. Michela’s and Judi Kay’s stories are very touching, but even if I took photos of them here in this room, it won’t quite bring across the horror of what happened to them.”
“You want pictures of battered women, then? Bruises and welts from beatings?” Amber asked. She wanted to shake these two men and yell at them, but part of her understood that they needed the tactile experience to make their story different from a World Health Organization report. The latter had been reporting on these activities for a few years now, but no one had really paid any attention; reports were just that—reports. The emotional pain suffered by these women, the horrific surroundings of their imprisonment, the groups of rowdy men crowding around a naked woman—these things weren’t conveyed through the cold hard facts and numbers.
“Why don’t you get Tatiana to show them her injuries?” Hawk suddenly said.
Lily breathed in sharply. “No!”
“Why not?”
“Tatiana hasn’t spoken a word since she was brought here,” Amber said, shaking her head at Hawk. “She’s not…exactly friendly to men.”
“What happened to her?” David asked.
“She was very, very unlucky,” Judi Kay said. “She fought back and Papa was in a bad mood. He stripped her and made her his personal slave and kept beating her if she didn’t do what he wanted. One time, I saw him give her to a dozen men, who raped her on the pool table. And after that she had to crawl on the floor all night naked because she screamed once.”
Judi Kay shuddered, closing her eyes. Thomas swallowed hard, taking off his glasses to wipe them.
“Is Papa the pimp?” David asked.
“Yes, and his favorite is called Mama. She reports to him. Our Mama was only fourteen years old, but the bitch already knew how to suck up and get favors. That way she gets her own room and cell phone, and she gets to eat three meals a day.”
David muttered an expletive. “Where the hell is this place? I want to burn it down.”
“Tetovo,” Judi Kay supplied the name. “Please do it. Kill them all. Help us.”
