found himself stammering: “Ma’am, it’s about my sister, ma’am. Marivic Valencia is her name. She came to Manila on a bus. We know that she arrived. But we have heard nothing more from her; it’s one week now. Oh, ma’am, my mother is so worried.”
“I recall the name,” she said. “Your mother or someone was in the Tacloban office, inquiring.”
“My mother, yes.”
“And she got an answer, did she not?”
“Yes, but, ma’am—”
“The answer is the same. You came all the way here from Leyte, disturbing my office, just to hear it again? Fine. I’ll say it one more time. The girl took the ticket and expense money, but she wasn’t on the bus when it arrived. I should be upset about that, because she breached her contract; but as a gesture of maternal sympathy for your mother, I won’t pursue it.”
“Thank you, but—”
“And before you doubt that account, you should know that I am one hundred percent certain that your sister was not on the bus when it arrived at the terminal. Do you know how I can be so sure? Because I was there! Yes. I myself went to the terminal that night. Three o’clock in the morning. Just because I wanted to be certain that the girl saw a friendly face when she stepped off the bus.
“So to say that she was on the bus when it arrived in Manila is to say that I am a liar. I hope you’re not calling me a liar. Now go. You have your answer for a second time, the final time. I hope you won’t force me to have you thrown out. Your mother would be ashamed, I’m sure.”
She turned and started back through the door.
“I’m sorry to say it, ma’am, but I do know that my sister arrived in Manila. I have proof.”
She stopped, paused, turned slowly back to Ronnie.
She said, “Proof? How is this possible?”
“Because she told me,” he said. He dug out the cell phone from his pocket, paged down through the stored text messages, and found the last one from Marivic:
arrived
He raised the phone to show her, turning the screen outward, holding it out at the end of his outstretched arm. She took the phone from him to see it closer.
“That’s her phone number,” Ronnie said. “You see the date and the time.”
At first he didn’t notice her wrist, what she wore there. He was focused on her face, watching her expression as she squinted at the screen. But as she pushed the phone back at him, Ronnie caught the flash of gold at her wrist. It was a bracelet. Herringbone gold. A circle of diamonds. Red rubies that formed the letter “M.”
He roared with rage.
Five Russians, including Ilya Andropov, lived in the compound on Amorsolo Street. At the moment that Ronnie spotted his sister’s bracelet on the matrona’s wrist, one was sleeping in his quarters and the other four were in the big front room that served as the ops room and informal lounge. Andropov was at a table, discussing business with Totoy Ribera. Two others were playing cards through a curtain of cigarette smoke.
Anatoly Markov, the last of the group, was working his regular shift at the bank of video screens showing the feeds from sixteen surveillance cameras throughout the compound and the building next door. Markov was forty-eight years old, squat, and burly. He was sitting back in a swivel chair, feet propped up on the desk in front of him, when he spotted unusual movement on the camera that covered the offices above Impierno.
It was the hag, Magdalena. She was on her back, arms and legs thrashing. A man had pinned her down and appeared to be choking the life out of her.
“Boss, trouble next door,” Markov said. Andropov stood up and came over, with Ribera following.
“Totoy, handle this,” Andropov said.
Ribera was already headed for the door. He knew this was his job. The division of labor in this deal was clear-cut. The operation belonged to the Russians; they called the shots but remained inside the compound as much as possible. Any tasks outside the walls were performed by locals: Totoy and Magda and the crew of Filipinos who worked beneath them, doing jobs that were never explained. Totoy alone was granted access to the residence, but he got only glimpses of what happened in there. He knew even less about what happened to the drugged young men and women he and Magda took out of the bus terminals. He didn’t even bother