Trafficked

Sophia was making clacking hoof noises and Princess Pony was trotting across the table when the door opened.

The security guard stepped aside to allow Reese through. He didn’t get frisked like everyone else, none of the Fields’ VIPS did. The strict ‘no weapons’ policy all around Angeles City did not apply to them. Brandon walked in behind Reese.

The four young black guys playing pool looked up and watched as the two men entered. One of them nodded in their direction. Laurence also worked for the Colonel and had the job of looking after four of the Colonel’s clubs. The Colonel had taken him under his wing as ex-US army; he had felt a bond with him.

Reese and Brandon picked themselves up a drink, and then went straight over to sit with Terry and Sophia. Sophia looked up from her colouring. She knew them both but she never bothered to talk to them because they did not acknowledge her. Only Reese talked to her sometimes, when her daddy wasn’t around.

Laurence finished up his game of pool and came over to join them. He sat down and checked his watch.

‘Five to eight…same old fuckin’ bullshit. We have to be early, but he rocks up when he fuckin’ feels like it. Then he’s gonna turn up with all that “time of reckoning” shit, spoutin’ stuff from the Bible.’ He looked at the others for support. Only Reese sniggered. The Colonel had a Bostonian accent that Laurence could mimic very well. Terry stared back, expressionless, and Brandon just looked around the bar. He could not afford the luxury of a gripe.

Terry looped his arm around the back of Sophia’s seat. At fifty-six he was the oldest member here. He had been in the Philippines for eighteen years. He’d come as a backpacker and an opportunist and stayed. He had married a local widow with several young children and he had fathered one of his own—Sophia. Terry knew how to keep everything low-profile. He went about doing his work unhindered. He bought houses and then offered them for tailor-made paedophile holidays to people from all around the world. Terry was the Internet king. People contacted him from all over the world and he got them what they wanted. He found them a house, he even arranged for a child to be waiting in their bed when they got there. Not just any old child: one to order, one handpicked and pre-seasoned. Now, with his new contacts, Terry was able to have a bigger hand in child recruitment. He had control of a new gang who were delivering on time and on target. No longer did he have to rely on the small-minded gangs of feuding triads to recruit the girls, he was now in control of a slick team that could locate and capture any number of young girls. Terry was a happy man.

Reese tapped away with his cigarette packet, turning it over and over. He did not have room to cross his legs so instead he jiggled his left foot incessantly. Reese was Terry’s ‘gofer’. He did all the day-to-day stuff. He kept the customers happy. Reese didn’t make a fortune from it, but it kept him in a lifestyle he loved. He got to lie on a beach, smoke weed and have lots of sex. Reese had spent his childhood in care. As the boy with the golden curls, Reese had had a lot of attention from the other boys and the wardens. Now he had finally found peace and tranquillity in the laid-back smiling arms of the Filipinos he didn’t want to lose it and he was worried that he would: tension was creeping in everywhere. The Teacher had brought it with him and Reese felt that panic inside him just like when he was a child in the orphanage. He felt he was about to get shafted.

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‘He didn’t have to hit me.’ Amy’s sobs broke through her words. ‘I was only looking outside.’ She touched her mouth; it was sore from where the rough Hong Kong man, who she now knew was called Tony, had hit her. She could taste the rawness where her brace had cut into the inside of her cheek. She couldn’t stop shivering.

Lenny gave Amy a tissue and she wiped her nose.

‘You are not allowed to look outside. There is no point in banging on the window anyway, the windows are double-glazed and there is an anti-glare film on them, so no one can hear or see you.’

‘Why did he hit me then?’

‘He hit you because he and Sunny’, he gestured towards the lounge, ‘are very angry with your father. You have to be quiet and do as you’re told or they will hurt you.’

‘Why did you bring me here?’ She blinked tears from behind the pebble-thick glass of her spectacles. ‘I don’t want to stay here. I need to go back to school now.’

‘You cannot go anywhere until your father pays up. Now, eat this…’ He handed her a Pot Noodle.

She stared at it. She was really hungry. She had not had anything to eat since she got there. She took the carton from him.

‘Can I have my bag please, Lenny?’

‘You can have your bag but not your phone. You won’t be talking to anyone for a long while. Play by the rules here and you’ll be okay—make trouble and you will suffer…Understand?’

Amy nodded, her lip starting to quiver again. ‘Thank you for the food, Lenny.’ She stared at the Pot Noodle but it was no longer in focus as tears filled her eyes. ‘Thank you very much.’

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The Colonel walked down the street, surveying his kingdom. For most people it was difficult to negotiate the cracked and uneven pavement, but the Colonel knew every inch of it and never needed to look down to know what was there. The Shabu did that to him. The methamphetamine speeded up his reactions, made him super alert and gave him a feeling of elation and euphoria. It also heightened his perception of the world, peeling away the layers of reality like skins from an onion. He could take in and analyse every movement on the periphery of his vision. He floated along the street, watching everything and knowing all around him from the cockroach hiding behind the pipes in his bathroom, to the bartender stealing money from his till.

An old beggar woman, ghostly and barely more than a skeleton, stepped out of the Viagra sellers doorway where she lived, one arm outstretched and her hand open. She was swaying with the effort of keeping herself upright. She did not see that it was the Colonel until it was too late. For a minute he poised, hand raised to hit her as he had so many times, push her back into the alleyway to rot amongst the starving kittens and rat-bitten puppies, but, as she gasped, waiting for the blow, he didn’t do it because he saw that today she wanted it. She was hoping today would be her last. He stayed his hand, lowered his arm and dipped into his pocket. He threw some coins on the ground beside her. If the Colonel wanted her alive, alive she must stay. He was God on Fields Avenue.

He stepped over the pile of dog excrement and passed the schoolgirls touting outside The Honey Pot. Two girls were being measured for their GRO outfits. The girls rolled their eyes towards the mosquito drivers and giggled suggestively at the tailor, who was taking their measurements from waist to crotch.

The Colonel stopped outside the shop. The tailor bowed respectfully, the mosquito riders pretended to clean their bikes and the girls smiled sweetly.

‘Evening, sir,’ they chorused. He didn’t answer.

He walked on into the Tequila Station. He looked around. He was reassured all was as it should be—no unwelcome surprises, not for him anyway. Sophia looked up as he approached the table and smiled, but it wasn’t at the Colonel, she had learned not to look at him at all. He scared her with his red eyes and angry face. She was smiling because her favourite song had come back on the jukebox and now she could happily take no notice of the men whatsoever.

‘La La La. Love Love Love. Kiss Kiss Kiss Me.’

The Colonel always sat in the same place. He had the biggest vantage point. He sat facing his men, back to the wall, with a view to the bar and the street beyond. Nothing happened that he did not see. He looked around his assembled men and smiled.

He splayed his fingers out and rested the palms of his large hands on the table. They trembled without him realising. Almost as if he were a psychic about to go into a trance, his breathing was laboured. He sucked the air noisily in through his mouth and blew it dramatically out. Ever since he was a child he had been aware of his breathing. He had been a tall and gangly child and soon outgrew the cupboards where he hid from his daddy on a Saturday night when he heard him coming back from the bars—all fuelled up and no one to stop him hurting his son. Then, as the child squeezed into the small spaces, his knees pressed up against his chest, listening in the darkness for heavy footsteps, his breaths were quick and short and shallow. There was never enough room in the cupboards for him to breathe properly. So now, whenever he felt under stress, he filled his lungs right up; felt them expand as he opened out his rib cage, straightened his back, sat up erect: tall, strong and proud. But no matter how hard he tried, he could never fill them right up. They were always a bit squashed, a bit stuck together. The more he thought about it, the more obsessed he became and so the noisier was his breathing. Terry knew it. He’d seen the Colonel this way many times. At the moment, with all the stress and excitement, the Colonel was fully wound up and on the edge of exhaustion. He was continually hyperventilating. The Shabu wouldn’t let him rest. The more hyper he was, the more Shabu he snorted.

‘I have gathered you here because I have news on the shape of things to come: changes that will affect us all here in Angeles, in our world. In the kingdom that I created. Christ!’ He banged his palms on the table. Sophia tutted as her crayons rolled off onto the floor. She scrambled under the table to pick them up. ‘I shaped this place. From a scruffy little nothing that provided comfort to servicemen on the Clark military base, I turned it into a world-famous sex resort.’ He looked at the men around the table. They stared back. Nobody was going to disagree with the Colonel, especially when he was in psycho mode. His face was rubbery and feverish. His eyes were the colour of a raspberry split. He licked his dry lips continually. He was as jittery as a fly.

‘For some time I have been telling you about a man who will change things around here; a man who is going to help us turn this place into a five-star paradise. Blanco is coming. Today he sent us a show of faith.’

There was a general look of confusion and concern around the table. The Colonel’s surprises were seldom nice.

‘He has proved to me that he is committed to us. Now, this man wants you all to join him. This is our chance to go global. We can take our empire to the four corners of the world and make millions, or we can stay here in our small kingdom and count our pennies. He offers you the hand of friendship.’

‘He can stick his hand up his own arse,’ said Laurence, and looked at the others for support. Reese sniggered whilst Brandon sat stony-faced, watching and waiting. Laurence grinned and gave a deep chuckle. Terry glared at Reese. Reese, feeling suitably chastised for sniggering, went back to flicking his cigarette packet.

‘We ain’t givin’ up nuttin’,’ said Laurence. ‘We got a good thing goin’ here, don’t we?’

The Colonel swivelled his head round towards Laurence and smiled his ‘nearly smile’.

‘Pro-tec-tion,’ he over-enunciated. ‘Should this world of ours need defending we will have a mighty army at our disposal. We have the government, for Christ’s sake—you can’t get much bigger than that.’

Laurence gave a snort of derision. Brandon stared at him. Terry couldn’t believe that the big guy wasn’t going to shut up. Reese stopped his twirling. Even he knew that the Colonel wanted an audience and wasn’t asking for feedback.

‘We don’t need no fuckin’ protection. Who’s gonna fuck wid us here?’ Laurence tried to redeem himself. ‘In our own fuckin’ country? We own Angeles.’

Terry looked at the Colonel, who merely stared at Laurence and waited for him to dig himself a bigger hole.

‘Excuse me, boss, I mean you own Angeles, and we work for you,’ he said, backtracking as fast as he could.

The Colonel always prized himself on being a good judge of character. He trusted these men in so far as he knew their limits and knew their price. Reese was stupid but predictable. Brandon was a thug. Terry was clever. But Laurence was sneaky. He had become a little pre mature in his ambitions. Laurence was not to be trusted—the worst of all sins.

Terry spoke up. ‘Get smart here. This is no minor league. Blanco heads a syndicate so powerful that it will wipe all others off the board and we’ll be part of it. Not just a part—we are key to its success, right, Colonel? We have been offered the chance of running the whole of Angeles, Olongapo, Cebu and Puerto Galera just the way we want. We will take out all opposition; wipe it off the board. We will set up new trafficking routes, build hotels and bars up and down the islands. The whole of the Philippines will be controlled by one syndicate and…’

‘AND…’ The Colonel turned back to Laurence with not even a nearly smile on his face. His eyes were piercing. ‘If you are not for Blanco, you are against him and us.’

‘Colonel, I didn’t mean…’

The Colonel silenced him with his raised hand.

‘I know what you meant. I know everything. When you came here you were a bum with nothing but pussy and beer on your mind. I gave you all that you wanted. You sit here in your fancy clothes that I paid for and you question my authority?’

The Colonel was spraying the table with spit. Sophia had stopped her crayoning to watch the patterns it made as it landed on the table.

Laurence shrugged and shook his head. He looked hastily around the table and realised he was on his own.