There were eight girls in all. The eldest of them was around seventeen. The youngest, I think, was eleven. I don't know. I didn't have the heart to ask.
Tiasa wasn't among them.
I went room to room, telling them to get dressed as quickly as they could, trying to get them mobilized. Aside from the pregnant girl, there was another who understood my Russian, and a third girl who could manage in pidgin English. I asked if any of them knew how to drive, and the pregnant girl did.
“Where are you from?” I asked her.
“ Volgograd.”
I gave her the keys to the Toyota SUV that I'd found on the man in the dishdasha.
“Go to the Al Maidan Tower on Al-Maktoum Road,” I told her. “It's easy to find, just follow the signs. Go straight there, straight to the Russian Federation Consulate, it's on the third floor. Take all of the girls with you. Tell them where you were, what they did to you. Leave me out of it.”
“I understand.”
Together, we hustled the girls out of the building, to the Toyota. The camp had begun to stir, and a couple of the men there watched us pass without expression or comment or apparent interest. The girls shuffled, some of them crying. Mostly, they seemed numb, very much in shock.
Before they were all loaded, I stopped one of the girls, the other one who'd understood my Russian. I'd seen her before, on Vladek's BlackBerry, the picture of her smiling as she believed his lies. It hadn't been more than ten days since he'd shipped her to Turkey, but all the same, I had to check the smartphone to be sure.
“Wait,” I told her.
She looked at me with alarm, the fear that had begun dissipating instantly in evidence again.
I brought up Tiasa's picture on the BlackBerry. She cringed at the sight of the smartphone in my hand, perhaps recognizing it as Vladek's, perhaps simply because of the association it held. She started to bring a hand to her face, to hide it from the camera, before she realized that I was trying to show her something on the screen.
“This girl,” I said. “Do you know her? Have you seen her?”
She shook her head, anxious.
“The man in Georgia,” I said. “The man who sold you, he sold her, too. That man can't hurt you. He'll never hurt you again. It's all right, you can tell me the truth.”
She bit her lip, then nodded.
“You remember her?”
“I remember her. Tiasa. She was… she cried all the time.”
“I was told she was here, that she came with you and some others to Dubai. Do you know where she is? Do you know where I can find her?”
The girl shook her head.
“You don't know?”
The girl looked to the SUV, where the others were waiting for her to join them. The engine started up. She looked back to me, afraid of telling me something I didn't want to hear.
“She didn't come to Dubai,” the girl said.
“You're sure?”
“She didn't come to Dubai.”
“Do you know where she went? Do you know what happened to her?”
“Please, mister…”
“Do you know where they took her?”
“No!” The girl was nearing tears. “No, I don't know, I swear. Please, please can I go? Please can I go now?”
I saw then that she was shivering despite the heat.
I helped her into the SUV. I closed the door. The vehicle pulled out almost immediately.
I looked at the picture of Tiasa Lagidze on the BlackBerry for a few seconds. Then I switched to check for messages. Like my search for Tiasa, the result was identical.
I had nothing.
Absolutely nothing.