Free By Any Means by Chris Culver Page A

wall. His daughter had become a lawyer apparently, one more major event he had missed in her life.
    Lev looked up from his search of the desk when Kostya walked in.
    â€œHave you found anything?”
    â€œKara changed her name. Her last name is Elliot now, like her husband. She saved your letters,” he said, sliding a thick stack of opened envelopes across the desk. Kostya added them to the portrait under his arm. Twice a year—on her birthday and Christmas—he wrote her a letter asking for her forgiveness, and twice a year he told her that he would be at a park near the White River downtown if she’d be willing to see him. She never showed, but he kept going year after year in the hopes that one day she’d change her mind.
    â€œAnything else?” he asked.
    â€œMaybe,” said Lev, reaching down to a drawer and picking up a stack of folded color pamphlets. He slid them across the desk and took a step back. “Tell me what you think of these.”
    The pamphlets had been written in half a dozen languages and contained pictures of smiling men and women carrying backpacks and walking through a bucolic college campus. Kostya flipped through the pamphlets until he found one written in Russian, a language he understood. They advertised a student exchange program that would allow young women to come to the United States from abroad and study and work part-time to pay their way. The pictures looked innocuous, but the pamphlet read like a sales pitch.
    â€œWhat does this company get out of its exchange students?” asked Kostya.
    â€œNothing according to their literature. They’re a charity.”
    Lev sounded suspicious and rightfully so. Everybody had an angle, even supposed do-gooders out to save the world.
    â€œSee what else we can find.”
    They searched for another ten minutes. Kara kept a copy of her taxes in her desk; in addition to dispersals from her trust fund, she had made just over a hundred thousand dollars each year for the past three years from a company called Commonwealth Financial Services. As they left the room, Lev bumped into a wooden filing cabinet beside the desk, causing it to slide across the floor on wheels hidden in the base, revealing a safe built into the wall. Lev immediately bent and tried to open it, but its handle wouldn’t budge.
    â€œWe can remove this, but we’ll make some noise,” said Lev, standing. “It’s your call.”
    â€œLet me try something,” said Kostya, kneeling before the safe and feeling his knees creak. Kara’s safe had a keypad like a telephone instead of a spinning dial, making it easy to use. He typed in her birthday, but that didn’t work. He then tried Alicia’s, but that didn’t work either. He didn’t bother trying his own; she wouldn’t have used that. As a last resort, he typed 05-22-02, the date Alicia passed away. The lock clicked, and the door swung open, exposing the interior.
    â€œAnything?” asked Lev. Kostya nodded and reached inside. He found four envelopes; the first two held cash, probably emergency money. The third envelope held her birth certificate, her wedding certificate, and other important documents. Kostya slipped that one into his jacket’s pocket. The fourth envelope felt heavier than the others. He slipped the top flap from the interior and pulled out eight passports from various countries. They all belonged to young women, mostly teenagers. He also found a black address book.
    â€œWhat is this?” asked Lev.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Kostya, holding out a hand. Lev pulled him to his feet. “We’ll find out. I know someone at the—”
    Heavy footsteps interrupted him. James walked into the room, his face drawn and his breath shallow.
    â€œWe found something in the basement.”
    â€œWhat is it?” asked Kostya.
    â€œA girl.”
    Kostya fingered the passports. “Is she alive?”
    â€œOh