Free Traffyck by Michael Beres

with thick cushions.
    Kiev’s evening news came in via satellite from the dish antenna behind the cabin. He watched the news every evening for information about the outside world and, more recently, to see if there was any mention of missing young people or of the deaths of the pornographers in Romania. The last time he’d heard mention of Ivan and his soldiers kidnapping a teenaged prostitute from the streets of Kiev had been two weeks earlier. The last time he heard mention of the Romanian massacre, which had been conveniently blamed on rival Mafia traffickers, had been two months earlier.
    The evening news was Pyotr’s only source of up-to-date information. The evening news had led him to Ivan Babii and to the eventual “rescue” of his newest members. No news broadcast had actually mentioned Ivan Babii. What had been broadcast was a report of an American pornographic filmmaker named Donner disappearing at the very time Pyotr had assigned two of his soldiers to watch a store that sold such items.
    His soldiers, witnessing Donner’s abduction in Kiev, had followed the kidnappers and brought back a name. A man named Vakhabov from Uzbekistan was involved. After this, his soldiers followed Vakhabov whenever possible. Last spring, they’d followed him to the Romanian Carpathians. Thus, his soldiers, dressed as priests, and ironically led by his Ivan, had saved young people from an operation run by another Ivan.
    News on television that evening was mostly depressing. Mothers disposing of children; trafficking on the rise in Ukraine despite the work of international agencies and NGOs; construction of the new Chernobyl sarcophagus bogged down by lack of funds; Russia, the US, NATO, and Islamists continuing their bickering; economic systems in disarray. It was an insane world. Victims in need of help, and the only way one was able to help was to recruit the abandoned youth of Kiev and other cities in Ukraine. And of course, when necessary for required funds, the selling of hooligans who refused to cooperate. He had no choice. There was no other way. And despite his so-called preaching, he regarded all religions as false. He knew it in his soul. God was God, and that was all. Knowing this, he had been forced to make the hard decisions to help the victims of Chernobyl.
    During a report about the anti-trafficking marketing campaign across Ukraine, an inane news editor put in La Strada’s old statement from Eva Polenkaya. The handsome widow who was said to be sixty but looked years younger made her statement vigorously into the camera as if scolding him.
    “Traffickers mold the softness and innocence of youth into human software. Young people lured or kidnapped are sold through networks and moved along established routes like the Balkan Trail. Once ‘trained,’ young people are commodities to be used again and again.”
    The statement had been aired so many times Pyotr had memorized it.
    The only uplifting news tonight was an interview with a scientist from Kiev University studying the herd of wild horses and other animals in the so-called Exclusion Zone. After this brief story, Pyotr stood and went to the cabinet. After turning off the main power switch, he closed the cabinet door and locked it. Carved on the door front, by a soldier named Shvedson, who met an untimely death in a so-called female clinic in Odessa, was a circle with a cross inside. Shvedson considered it a design for the caring of Chernobyl victims, showing all four limbs intact. The carving had been an innocent gesture, yet some of the older members had taken it to heart. Pyotr returned to the sofa and sat down. He turned out the lamp next to the sofa. Now the only light came from windows. From an upper window in his sleeping loft, the moon shone down at an angle, lighting up the front of the cabinet. The symbol on the varnished surface of the cabinet in the moonlight was an eerie sight. For years trafficking had made him rich, and now he was admired, one of