I timed it so that Shauna got the text from Roger while I was training with Paul and Sifu Zhang. It was a simple text message. ‘Cabin 15. Drugs will wear off in a few hours.’ I’d left the girls there in L2 and only brought them back just before my workout. The girls had been in L2 stasis since last night and so the effects of the drugs hadn’t diminished in that time. It would be a few hours until they woke up. That gave me enough time to finish my workout and get in some VR surgery time before all the excitement.
Edna was an emotional wreck, alternating between crying and laughing. The joy she radiated was infectious and all of us that were there to watch her reunion with Ana did so with goofy grins on our faces and tears in our eyes. Mom hugged me and whispered how proud she was of me.
Mom and Diane went to work and got the girls settled in, while Shauna notified Kevin of the rescue, leaving the red tape of updating the various authorities up to him. He thanked her and said that he’d be over shortly to finish our discussion from yesterday. With the official business out the way, Shauna helped each of the girls notify their families that they were safe and of their location. More crying and laughing followed with facetime reunions. After the joy came practical matters and the foundation arranged and paid for the families of the girls to come see them as quickly as possible. The girls were then brought to the Sister Clara’s clinic and given a complete physical and Sister Clara started treatment for malnutrition.
Despite living the farthest, Ana’s parents and siblings, along with Thomas and Denise Carver arrived first. He’d charted a plane the moment he found out and filled the plane with family members who couldn’t wait to see their lost Ana. I was briefly introduced to the now infamous Isaiah and I could see why Jake felt he had to call dibs on me. Isaiah was very easy on the eyes. It was chaos in cabin 15 and we had to move the reunion outside so as not to overwhelm the other girls. Ana was showered with love and attention and Thomas ordered up a feast from several local restaurants. We offered to have our chef prepare some food but he refused, stating that he didn’t want to use up our resources. As the other families arrived, the reunion morphed into a large outdoor barbecue and the other survivors that were staying with us joined in the celebration.
I missed an hour of the celebration when Kevin showed up and Shauna and I led him back to the conference room to finish our discussion.
“Thank you, Abby, for getting Roger involved. I keep forgetting just how effective he is. I still can’t believe how fast it all happened.”
“Try to remember that the next time someone decides that letting girls get raped is an acceptable price to pay in achieving your higher-ups' long-term goals. It’s easy for them to do that because they’re not paying the price. It’s not their daughters being forced in sexual slavery. If it happens again, I’ll do everything I can to make sure that Roger never works with the FBI again. You’ll never get another lead from him.” Apparently, I had not worked through all my anger just yet.
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“I will pass that message on to the director. Also, I promise you that if we’re ever short of manpower like this again, I’ll ask you for Roger’s help. He has shown a lot of restraint since the Serpentine rescue.”
At a nod from me, he continued, “As I was starting to explain yesterday, one of the interesting points to arresting high profile people, is that some of them will do or say anything to save their reputation. The mere threat of making the arrest public and turning the world against them is like torture to them. One of the actors actually agreed to tell us everything we wanted to know, just for agreeing to hold off our arrest announcement until after the awards season was over. He believes one of his movies is a strong contender this year and he sees it as his last chance at immortality.”
“My point is, the ones we’ve arrested are talking and they aren’t holding anything back. The disturbing thing is that a few of them have made mention of being told not to worry about being caught, because politicians will force the authorities to have them released. They don’t know which politicians or how they’ll force their release, only that it’s real because they were given proof. Each of them explained how they got a tip that a politician would change his vote on a key bill at the last minute or retire to ‘spend more time with his or her family’, weeks or months before those things were announced. We tracked down a few of those stories and we think there might be something to it.”
“Do I need to worry about these guys being released?”
“No. The director has enough clout to ignore any pressure put on him, except by the President himself and if the President is controllable, then we are completely screwed.” Kevin was right on that one. If the President could be controlled by human traffickers, the country was in deep trouble. I really hoped that wasn’t the case.
“What kind of help are you looking to get from Roger?”
“We need to find out if and how the politicians are being controlled. Given Roger’s ability to get into anywhere and copy any computer system, we’d like him to see if he can find anything of use in proving that certain politicians are compromised.”
“This seems more like a job for the NSA.” Shauna said.
“Yes, it is, but all we have is a few whispers. It’s not enough to get them to spy on sitting or ex-members of Congress.”
“You many not believe this, but Roger has higher standards than the NSA. Why would he spy for you? It’s not like you’ve covered yourselves in glory recently.”
“Look, we don’t want him to download the information on their computers and send it to us. All we want is some sort of confirmation. Something we can start an investigation with. If there’s nothing, then that’s it. We’ll leave it at that. No harm done.”
“If he were to agree, where would he even start? There’s are hundreds of politicians in congress alone. Add in governors, state legislatures and municipal councils and there are thousands of potential politicians that could be blackmailed.”
“That’s true, but the people we’ve arrested were able to give us three names to verify. Also, since the arrests, the aides of two politicians have called us requesting more information on the arrest of a few of the high-profile individuals. What’s interesting is that we’ve made no formal or informal announcements yet of their arrest. How would they even know about them?”
“Get me the names and I’ll talk with Roger. No guarantees though. He may not want to do this.”
“That’s all I can ask. Thank you, Abby.”
The barbecue was still going on when I got back, but Kevin’s news had put a damper on my partying mood. The Serpentine and Basilisk groups had both been taken down. Now there was evidence, slight as it was, that a third group was also involved. Maybe it was part of the MTC from Len’s notes. If it wasn’t, then that meant that there were now two trafficking groups out there for me to deal with.