The recruiter a thriller, p.16
The Recruiter: A Thriller, page 16
He suppressed the many open question marks in his mind, in order to concentrate once again on the image of his recent obsessive thought.
19
The sun was setting on a beautiful sunny afternoon.
The small group, which numbered seven women, finely dressed in the best and most current fashion trends, slowly made its way from the incoming passenger terminal of the Ben Gurion International Airport to the VIP parking lot which was located on the opposite side of the terminal access road.
Each of the slender figured women, with meticulous hairdos and exceptionally high heeled shoes, who were generously made-up and laden with jewelry, were carrying a huge, wheeled suitcase, and judging by their walk and lack of communication between them, it would seem that the members of the group had no prior acquaintance amongst them.
A largely built dark skinned man was walking in front of them marking their way towards the luxurious bus, which parked in the center of the parking lot with the engine running, and in the front of it, it had an eye-catching sign spelled in English letters: “Razal Burge.”
An older mustached man wearing a blue uniform and a black cap was motionlessly sitting behind the wheel.
Another escort, short and with a mustache as well, who was lagging behind the fashionable fragrant group of women, began to transfer the huge luggage into the large trunk located at the bottom of the bus.
The elegant women climbed up the stairs and disappeared inside the huge vehicle, with its engine humming in a silent tremor, subtle and almost unfelt.
“Dear distinguished and beautiful ladies, welcome to Israel and to your new promising future,” opened and said the large-bodied man standing next to the frozen faced driver, who did not divert his gaze which was fixed to the front, in rolling English with a deep throaty Mediterranean accent.
To those looking on the side he almost seemed like a motionless wax doll.
“Our drive to the hotel will take several hours, and I hope you will enjoy the road although you’re probably quite tired from the flight from Chișinău to here.”
He paused slightly as he gave them a fatherly smile and then continued: “Each and every one of you has a private separate resting booth, equipped with a private bathroom, and I am confident that you will be able to enjoy yourselves and gather your strength for your new job here in Israel.”
The women mostly smiled tiredly as the bus started to move, and the large-bodied man passes between them handing each a small plastic plate wrapped in clear, rustling cellophane sheet, under which colorful sweets could be seen.
As he walked heavily through the aisle, he collected all of their passports, bound them into a small package wrapped in a rubber band, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket.
In addition, each of the women received a small bottle of beverage, given to her by the young short escort. Very soon, the garbage bins located at the bottom of each seat were filled with the empty little bottles, clear cellophane wrap and the colorful wrappers of the candy which were rapidly consumed.
The darkness which soon came as well as the almost complete silence in the bus, accompanied by the uniform calm hum of the engine, which was barely heard, caused all seven young women to quickly fall into a deep sleep.
It was late at night when the big shiny bus arrived at the “Allenby Bridge” border crossing between Israel and Jordan.
On the Israeli side the border patrol guards merely nodded at the bus driver, who smiled at them, waved hello and continued straight towards the Jordanian side, where it was stopped after several meters by the border patrol officers of the Hashemite Kingdom. The large looking man stepped off the bus to greet them with a wide smile, theatrically saluting the supervising guard officer, as he quickly handed him, almost covertly, a sealed brown envelope.
After a few minutes of talking, in which the two men huddled about twenty meters away from the Jordanian guard troops, along with a brave friendly hug, he stepped with ease back onto the bus, without having any Jordanian soldier or police officer perform an examination of any kind to the vehicle’s contents or papers.
The huge vehicle began driving east on the two-way road leading in the direction of the capital Amman. Three hours later the two mustached men were sitting in the front of the bus, which made its way east on the straight and narrow desert road in complete darkness.
The front part of the bus, which included the soft armchairs on which the young women were sitting several hours earlier, was dimly lit, and apart from the two of them was now vacant.
They sipped golden beer from the two very large cups they were holding, smiling at each other when the overgrown man asked in Arabic: “What is the name of our driver?” “His name is Daud,” answered the short man, who from the beginning of the journey was in charge mainly for loading the equipment and luggage.
“Daud?” The big man repeated after him with apparent nervousness, as his wide smile completely disappeared, “Daud is not a good name, and I really don’t like this name, because it is similar to David in Spanish as well as in Hebrew, and David is a name that really makes me want to kill someone.”
He fell silent for a few seconds and then said: “We will have to change his name.” The small-bodied man looked at him in question, when the mustached man stared at him and said: “When I was in high school in Argentina, my nickname among my friends was Goliath.” He paused for a few seconds before adding: “Since then I see anyone with the name of David as a dangerous enemy for me.”
He reviewed the face of the short man uninterestedly, and then continued with the monologue as if telling it to himself.
“Only those who deeply understand the Hebrew Bible, realize that the names of people all over the world in fact determine their fates, often without them even knowing it. I have no doubt that any man named David on the face of the earth can cause me some real damage, and that is why I must do whatever is in my power to neutralize and destroy him, otherwise, he will be the one to destroy me, perhaps even without knowing why he did it.”
The short man looked at him for a few seconds and then asked: “Are there any women with problematic names like that?” The overgrown man stared at him, suddenly looking angry and impatient, when he blurted in a threatening tone: “Of course there are.”
He swallowed his saliva with a grim twist of his face as he continued talking: “And woe to the woman I meet somewhere whose name is the same name which I have a problem with.”
The questioning look on the short man’s face only received a terrifying look from the huge man he was talking to, and he turned to look away, and without words stared down at the floor of the bus like an embarrassed child.
20
Dana finished her workday on a dark and calm evening hour, when she felt the buzzing of her mobile phone which was attached to the belt of her special tight nylon pants she was wearing, the flexibility of which was intended for operational physical activity whenever it would be required.
She opened the message from Shlomit and was surprised to see a photographed image of a luxurious tour bus, on the front of which the company’s logo she was familiar with from previous briefings was written in English: “Razal Burge.”
Attached to the photo was Shlomit’s message: “I have located Jule and boarded the night trip, at the end of which I hope we will have all the answers we need.”
She smiled to herself calmly but suddenly became alert.
“Did Shlomit really board that bus and plans to face that mysterious Jule alone?” She asked herself in concern.
A red warning light came on in her mind, immediately removing the calm which characterized the ordinary grayish conclusion of a workday in the office, as she turned around and quickly returned to the operations room which was vacant. She sat down next to the big screen, quickly inputting Shlomit’s personal tracking code.
A few seconds have passed until an updated map was displayed on the big screen, at the center of which appeared the Jerusalem-Jericho road, a few kilometers north of the Dead Sea, slightly west to the Israel-Jordan border crossing, with an update that she is now travelling at a speed of 90 km/H heading east.
“Shlomit my dear, where the hell are you travelling to inside a bus with that weird inscription?” She asked out loud, maybe to herself or perhaps to some supreme being, who might be able to provide her with the answers to the incomprehensible action of her operational cadet.
She had already entered the name of the “Razal Burge” company into the internet search engine many times, but without any unusual results. The name of the company consisting of two words did not ring a bell from any memory in her life, but within her inner state she felt that there is something obscure and strange hidden in this particular company name.
She pondered for a moment, thinking which direction she should focus on in order to understand the overall picture, and then quickly sent a return SMS message: “What language are they speaking there among themselves?”
Shlomit’s answer came back in seconds: “Arabic.”
Dana became alert, however, since that same bus was currently in the area of the State of Israel, she wasn’t worried, she counted on Shlomit to know how to take care of herself should any action be required.
She knew the word ‘Burge’ from a short basic course in Arabic she took several years ago, and remembered that it meant ’tower.’
She was unfamiliar with the word ‘Razal’ , however a quick search on the internet suggested the name of the Arab village of ‘Ein Razal,’ which up to 1948 was located slightly south to the city of Atlit, and after the War of Independence, its name was changed to ‘Ein Ayala’ (Gazelle). Meaning, it seems that the literal meaning of the company’s name is ‘The Tower of the Gazelle’.
She again admitted to herself that she hasn’t the slightest idea what could be the meaning of these two unrelated words.
For a long while she was unable to assess, wrecking her brain with the word ‘Razal’ , a word the Arabs also pronounce “Ah’azal, “ the search engine she was immersed in kept referring her to the word “Gazelle” which she has heard before in reference to the animal.
If so, the meaning of the settlement with the Hebrew name of ‘Ein Ayala’ was clear and logical she pointed out to herself. She thought about the two words ‘Tower’ and ‘Gazelle,’ attempting to find some logical connection between them.
She uploaded the map of the ‘Ein Ayala’ settlement and searched whether there was some sort of tower in its center, trying to think of every possible angle that unfortunately brought her each time anew to a thought impasse.
From the monitor displaying Shlomit’s location which remained on the big screen, she approached the organization’s sophisticated telephone switchboard. That same switchboard enabled her to call anywhere in the world, when with the help of a special software it was technically possible to determine the location displayed to the receiver of the call in advance, showing the location from where that same call originated. She marked the origin of the desired location inside the city of Milan in Italy, marked the code name she selected and pressed the switch to make the call.
David felt the familiar vibration, looked at the screen of his mobile phone, and was immediately filled with excitement when he recognized the phone number with the familiar prefix.
He clicked on the icon to accept the call on his mobile and instantly said in English: “Hi Isabella, how are you?”
Dana smiled to herself without a word, programming in her mind the speaking language to be English with a heavy Italian accent, and replied in the most joyous and relaxed manner she could muster, that she had arrived safely at her destination several hours after they said their goodbyes at the Ben Gurion Airport’s passport control.
After a few idle sentences which politely covered updates about the weather in Italy compared to Israel, as well as the state of health of both of them, she asked him what’s new regarding the documentary film he was offered to direct.
He sounded enthusiastic and full of energy to her, and as he described the anonymous woman whose tire he helped change on Highway 1 to Tel Aviv, he added that he has an idea for a relevant and captivating story for a movie, the general idea of which he understood they wanted him to direct.
David emphasized to her that he would be happy to start immediately with trial filming and only needed her approval to commence the activity.
Although with every moment that passed she was growing increasingly concerned about Shlomit’s location and actions, she tried to sound interested, and David wasted no time and began telling her about the idea, at the basis of which stood the international prostitution ring, founded by Jews in Argentina in 1870.
She positioned herself comfortably in the relaxing executive chair on which she was sitting, leaned her head back closing her eyes in calm, as if she knew she was about to hear a lengthy lecture filled with dry technical details.
David began describing to her how in the late nineteenth century, when the economic situation in Eastern Europe was hard and dire, a Jewish crime organization from Argentina, sent respectable and well-dressed youths to many Jewish families, and convinced them to send their young daughters, mostly in the ages of thirteen to eighteen, overseas.
The general idea of those persuasion attempts was that the young, beautiful girls could then marry wealthy men, or alternatively find respectable and lucrative income, which will allow them to later send money to their families they had left behind.
In this manner the young girls will be able to significantly improve their economic situation and standard of living, which descended to a level of horrendous poverty that manifested itself by a real hunger for bread.
Many of these Jewish family heads were tempted by the request, and sent their beautiful talented daughters into the unknown, while expecting a dramatic change in their lives and in the lives of their families.
Some of the daughters were convinced to marry wealthy South American merchants, and immediately after the glorious weddings which took place in Eastern-European cities, they left with their new husbands to the far away South American continent.
However, the majority of the young beautiful girls, who supposedly were not fortunate enough to find a rich husband, were diverted to a parallel yet technically different path.
Wearing their best clothes and equipped with small travelling bags containing the minimal equipment necessary for a two-day trip as it was explained to them, the girls were gathered around in well-known pick-up points in the small towns throughout Eastern European countries, where they parted with heartbreaking scenes from their families and loved ones.
From the colorful pick-up points, which were festively arranged and decorated in a manner which bodes well, the girls were driven in an organized fashion to the harbors of the Northern Sea, where huge ships were waiting for them.
The tens of thousands young women who believed in the bright and promising future which awaits them at the journey’s end, were gathered on those same cargo ships designed to carry cargo.
However, only after the voyage towards the Atlantic Ocean had begun, did the true horror of the real idea behind this cunning and criminal false representation was revealed to them.
The innocent girls boarded the ship willingly with the great hope of starting a new and promising chapter in their lives.
To their astonishment and calamity, hundreds of employees from the crime organization were waiting for them in the belly of the ship, who divided them into groups and gathered them in large halls under horrific sanitary conditions with a minimal amount of food and water.
Already after the ship left the port, they were all exposed to horrific rapes and animalistic sexual abuse, defined by the hundreds of the organization’s employees as “re-education” of those helpless girls, who from now on were at the complete mercy of those inhumane rapists.
Those nightmarish voyages lasted several weeks, at the end of which the ships arrived at the central harbor of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, where the girls were taken ashore already in complete physical exhaustion and in a state of advanced depression.
However, only now did the real nightmare begin.
They were concentrated in large halls where they would be stripped naked, and sex traffickers from all of the South American countries passed by them, reviewing them as if they were livestock.
Those same vicious human traffickers, after feeling up and checking the ‘human commodity,’ dragged the girls into private conjugal rooms, where they examined and personally tested the human merchandise and their suitability for the purpose for which they were brought to Argentina.
In those small rooms in the port of Buenos Aires, they raped and abused them for many hours, and later on purchased them for money like tradable goods.
Those grueling voyages of suffering were called in Spanish “Ramonte,” an acceptable term taken from the field of cattle gathering among the South American cattle breeders.
Later on, the girls were taken to brothels throughout the countries of South America, where they were forcibly coerced, including by starvation and beating, to have forced sex on a regular daily basis, and in fact to engage in prostitution for the rest of their lives.
Since in those days of the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the only communication between countries and continents was done by letters, and the time it took for those letters to arrive at their destination between the continents was many months, it meant that the girls’ loved ones never knew of their fate.
Most of these unfortunate women, who fell victim to one of the most horrific women trafficking ring known in modern human history, ended their lives as Argentinean and Brazilian prostitutes, who until their dying breath never got to see their loved ones who remained in Eastern Europe again.
