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“Sometime this evening. What about yours?”
“Puck will be here by thirteen hundred hours. I’m not certain about Wren and Wilder. I also understand Zeppelin and Magnum are on my team even though they’ve worked with you in the past.”
“Magnet.”
Nem cocked her head. “Sorry?”
“You said Magnum.”
“Right,” she mumbled, distracted by something on her cell.
Rather than ask, I waited to see if she’d tell me. Instead, she pulled out a chair and took a seat. When she propped her head on her hand, I sat beside her.
“Marko Mitskovski, the owner of the lorries used to pick up the containers in Purfleet, was found murdered.”
“Where?”
She set her phone on the table. “Edirne.”
The city was in Northwest Turkey, twelve miles from the Bulgarian border and four miles from the Greek border. “Yesterday, when I was waiting for you to arrive at the hotel, I gave some thought to who might be responsible for the victims’ deaths. Meaning, with that amount of money on the line, it had to have been unintentional.”
“If trafficked, the victims would’ve brought in as much as four hundred thousand pounds.”
“Exactly. So then I figured whoever was responsible had to have a significant bounty on his or her head.”
“Right,” Nem repeated, reaching over to pull a notepad and pen from one of her bags. She proceeded to sketch the shape of Eurasia and the Middle East, along with fairly accurate geographical boundaries. “One container came through Turkey. The other, from either Moldova or Belarus.”
I agreed.
“The victims died somewhere between Edirne and Skopje.”
I agreed with her on that theory too. Rather than use her sketch, I pulled up Puck’s brief and the map of the containers’ reported route on my laptop. “They went from Skopje to Montenegro, then up through Croatia. The next official stop was Belgium, which means they had to have traveled through Austria, Germany, and Luxembourg.”
Nem nodded. “As we know, once in Belgium, they were loaded onto a container ship in the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, most likely. Then, rather than arrange for over-the-road transport from a bigger port, the ship went to Purfleet.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Mitskovski knew the victims were dead. The UK was likely their final destination, in which case Purfleet made the most sense.” Nem scooted closer in order to see my laptop screen. “Zoom in south. The industrial complex where we intercepted them was near Godstone.”
“They were on their way to Southampton,” I said, studying the map like she was.
“Precisely. Once loaded on another container ship, they’d dump the bodies—probably both containers—somewhere in the Atlantic.”
“Why did Mitskovski go to Edirne?”
She shrugged. “To cover his bases. Perhaps damage control. Do we have anyone looking into Mitskovski’s financials?”
“On it,” said Cayman, walking past the smaller dining room. “Oh, and Puck, Zep, and Magnet just pulled through the gate.”
“Excellent. We’ll have one or two of them start tracking Mitskovski’s movement in Turkey.”
“Good morning,” said Zeppelin, walking in with the other two.
“Hello. Once you’re settled, there’s something I’d like you to get started on.” Nem looked over her shoulder. “Cayman, could you please review their options for lodging?”
“I’d prefer to just get started on whatever it is,” said Magnet. “We can figure out where we’ll bunk later.”
“I agree,” said Puck.
