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“Now what?” Oleander muttered.
I followed her to find out.
“The site has been taken down,” he said when we entered the room, “and sixteen million pounds moved in, then out of the AMPS account in the last twenty-four hours.”
“We’ve been monitoring the site. The auction was still delayed,” said O.
“They must’ve set up an alternate site,” I suggested.
Poseidon got up and stormed out of the room. Oleander followed.
19
JAICON
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
While we’d continued to monitor the dark web, months had gone by with little to no activity on the AMPS investigation. Our working theory was the human traffickers responsible for the sex-slave auctions were intentionally lying low.
Each of the five task forces had other inquiries running concurrently. The US and UK teams were focusing the majority of our efforts on the ten shipping containers that arrived in the port of Felixstowe.
We were divided into smaller teams. One was focused on who’d abducted the victims in the first place and whether it was one trafficking organization or multiple. Since I’d interviewed most of the victims, I was assigned to this one.
A second’s mandate was determining who owned the ten containers. As anticipated, all ten were registered to shell corps.
A third group dove deeper into the intended destinations of the ten containers. The initial investigation into this hadn’t gone anywhere. Like the containers themselves, the abandoned warehouses and industrial parks shown on the manifests were also owned by shell corps.
If there was a connection between those shell corps and AMPS, it would give us a lot to go on.
“What if there was more than one trafficking ring with containers on that ship?” I said to O when we took a short break and went outside. I wasn’t working with that particular team, but it seemed worth looking into. Meaning, if we found the true owner of one, it wouldn’t necessarily imply they owned them all.
“We’re working that angle.”
Oleander didn’t seem herself. Maybe the world of play-by-the-rules intelligence was getting to her.
“What’s going on with you? Need to assassinate some evil-doer?”
At least, that got a smile out of her. “Assassination, yes. Evil-doer, not necessarily.”
I raised a brow.
“Poseidon.”
“I see. Not playing nicely in the sandbox?” I asked.
“It isn’t that, but he doesn’t believe we should focus so much of our efforts on searching for Pharaoh. He believes once the other questions are answered, we’ll have what we need to find her. I believe once we find her, our questions will be answered.”
“Couldn’t you approach it from opposite directions and hope to meet in the middle?”
She shook her head. “With a reasonable person.”
“You don’t work for him, O. Go above his head.”
In a very unlike-Oleander move, she shrugged her shoulder. “What about you?”
“Me? How am I involved?”
“Not what I’m referring to.” She leveled her gaze at me.
