“All these prove that I have done everything you asked.”
“If you had done everything,” he said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Damn it, Bentzi, this isn’t fair.”
“We don’t do fair. Is it fair that the Arabs have oil and we have rock? Is it fair that we are the only nation on the face of the earth that has to fight, and win, every single day just in order to survive? Is any of that fair?”
“Are you questioning my dedication to Israel now?”
Mordechai cut her off. “Don’t toy with me, Helena. You and I both know where your loyalty lies. I have never had a problem with that. So long as you followed orders.”
“Which is exactly what I am doing now,” she insisted.
“It’s out of my hands.”
“Please, Bentzi. I have never let you down before.”
“That’s why this is so difficult.”
“But it doesn’t have to be. Don’t you see?”
Mordechai studied her. “I’m not sure what I see.”
“Oy. Now with the guilt?”
He normally found her use of Yiddish amusing. There were times she could come off as just as Jewish as anyone at the Mossad, but that was the chameleon in her. It was an act, just as this was.
“I’ll double my efforts. I can do this. Trust me. I’ll work even harder.”
“Go back to your apartment,” he told her. “Call in sick. Nothing too specific. If Damien contacts you, tell him you’re having menstrual issues.”
She made a face. “That’s not very alluring.”
“Exactly.”
“I still think—”
Mordechai held up his hand, silencing her. “You go back to your apartment and you stay away from Pierre Damien. You don’t call him. You don’t go over to his place. You don’t so much as bump into him in the street. Those are your orders. Do you understand?”
Helena didn’t respond.
Mordechai repeated himself.
Finally, she nodded.
“Good. I will contact you as soon as we have your extraction figured out,” he said, sliding his tablet into his bag. He then removed a couple of notes from his pocket, stood, and placed them on the table.
“You’re not going to eat?” she asked.
“I’ll be in touch,” Mordechai replied as he turned and walked out of the café.
CHAPTER 9
There had been a hint of something in her voice. Was it melancholy? Ben Mordechai wasn’t sure and tried to sort it out as he walked.
Helena had never been what anyone would consider “stable.” While she hid her problems well, she was an emotional and psychological basket case. Had Mordechai gone through what she had suffered, he probably would have been too.
Hers was but one story among thousands in Eastern Europe. Young girls who had been tricked into the sex trade. Rings of professional traffickers lured them away from their villages. They were promised jobs as nannies with nice families in England or France. While they waited in a neighboring country for their alleged visas to be processed, they were raped, beaten, and hooked on drugs.
Their passports were withheld from them, and they were told horror stories about what would happen to their families back home if they went to the authorities. There were always families back home. The traffickers rarely picked the girls unless they had a substantial piece of leverage they could use on them.
Once broken, the girls were shipped to countries around the world. Helena wound up in Israel.
It was a national stain few Israelis would dare admit. The record, though, spoke for itself. When it got too bad to be ignored, the government would take action, but soon enough its blind eye would return.
Helena was held in the southern West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. There she and the other girls were forced to perform sex acts with twelve to fifteen men a day. Some were Jews. Some were Palestinians. Many were businessmen from Tel Aviv whom her pimps had inveigled.
If she failed to do what she was told, she was beaten. If she failed to please the customers, she was beaten. If she was too ill to perform, she was beaten and starved.
On one occasion, Helena took so sick she almost died. If it had not been for the other girls sharing their food and nursing her, she never would have made it.
When one girl, a woman Helena deeply cared for, did die — that was her breaking point. The girl had been beaten to death by one of the customers — a wealthy but very drunk businessman. The pimps should have returned the favor. At least there would have been some semblance of justice done. Instead, they got rid of her body and blackmailed the man. With the money, they brought in two more girls. They were very young. Helena could still remember what it was like to be young. She had had enough. That was the night she snapped.
Because of the constant threat of terrorism, many Israelis carried concealed weapons. They were not allowed to bring them into the brothel, but customers who were known, trusted, and had paid a premium were allowed to.
There was a special area with small, pistol-sized lockers where they could lock up their weapons. Many of them feigned using the lockers or bypassed them altogether. One such customer was a client of Helena’s. He liked her, a lot. But it wasn’t reciprocal.
He often drank before arriving and then had a couple of drinks more before heading upstairs. He was a mean man who liked to get rough. Some nights, he would show up with a garment bag and word would quickly reach Helena. Those nights never ended well. Not that any of her nights trapped in that nightmare ever did.
Inside the garment bag was the wedding dress of the man’s wife. As far as the woman knew, it was safely in storage, waiting to be handed down to their eldest daughter. He made Helena wear it while he disparaged his wife in absentia for getting too fat to fit into it. He was a jeweler and completed his sick fantasy by placing a replica of his wife’s wedding ring on Helena’s finger.
The more he would talk about his wife, the angrier he would become. And as his anger increased, so too did the level of pain and abuse he heaped upon Helena — until the night she snapped.
As it always did, word spread when the jeweler arrived that he was not only downstairs but that he had brought the garment bag with him. By the time he made it upstairs, Helena was ready for him.
He was unsteady on his feet, his eyes glassy. More inebriated than normal. She could smell his putrid, alcohol-soaked breath halfway across the room.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the small velvet box and threw it at her, telling her to put the ring on.
She did as he asked and waited for him to hand her the garment bag to put on the dress. She had everything planned. The request didn’t come.
Instead, the man unbuckled his trousers and told her to come kneel in front of him. When Helena asked him if he was sure he didn’t want her to change, the man barked obscenities at her.
He was making too much noise. If her pimps heard him this angry, they would step in, blame her, and she would take a terrible beating. She hurried to comply in the hope it would get him to quiet down.
The string of invectives continued until she was on her knees in front of him. Only then did he stop shouting at her.
He was a disgusting ape of a man covered in coarse, curly dark hair. The mere thought of him was enough to repulse her. The mere thought of any of the men that visited the brothel was enough to repulse her. She refused to judge any of the women who sought to escape the horror of their lives through the drugs the pimps provided. She herself had freely used the drugs throughout. But not tonight. Tonight she was sober.