The Profile Match Read online

  A nurse put me through a procedure similar to what Jake did at the L.A. Field Office. She took my vitals, I peed in a cup, I gave her a statement, then she gave me what looked like a can of Ensure and hooked me to an IV. Said I had to sit there until the bag emptied.

  That was really hard to do, knowing Grace was out there. I would have failed had I not started praying again, which calmed me down.

  I finished the Ensure. My eyes drooped, and I pinched myself. I’d better not fall asleep. The room spun a little. Was my stomach disagreeing with the Ensure?

  And then a vision claimed my sight. I’m standing in a hospital room, walking toward a bed surrounded by IVs. Anya is lying on the bed, one hand reaching my way.

  “Help me,” she whispers.

  I came out of it, frustrated. Help her what, God?

  Pray.

  Help Anya pray? Or pray for Anya?

  I sat there a moment, trying to understand but urgency to move was too great. Was Anya here in this hospital? A glance at my IV bag showed it was empty, so I got up, pulled the needle and tube from my arm, and walked into the small waiting area. My dad was asleep in one of the chairs.

  “Uh, Dad?” I said.

  His eyes flew open. “What’s wrong?”

  I took a deep breath. “I need to see Anya. Do you know where she is?”

  He sat up straight and slid to the edge of his chair. “Well, yes . . .”

  “I need to talk to her. I think God is going to use her. I had a vision.”

  My dad clapped his hands and stood. “Then let’s go.”

  That my dad hadn’t questioned my sanity seriously meant a lot.

  He led me deeper into the medical office, and I began to get nervous. What was I going to say when I saw Anya? Would she even be awake? If she wasn’t, was I supposed to wake her?

  “I don’t know what you want me to do, God,” I prayed. Yet I kept walking, dread growing in my gut. We came to a room with a guard slouched on a chair outside. My dad said something in Khmi, and the guard answered by standing, pulling a key from his belt, and unlocking the door. He held it opened for us, but before I could cross the threshold, my dad blocked the way with his arm.

  “Before you go in, you should know. Anya called Viktor with the address of the warehouse where they were keeping you.”

  “Anya has Viktor’s number?” I asked.

  “I’ve made contact with her many times over the years,” Viktor said. “I think she is ready to turn witness against Diane and Irving.”

  “There’s no way,” I said.

  “If it wasn’t for her, you’d still be there now,” my dad said.

  “But she’s been trying to capture me for years,” I said. “She tried to force me to be the Profile Match.”

  “Diane wanted her to find the match. Anya wanted to get the job done. The sooner she found the match, the sooner she could find the First Twin and stop that person from bringing down their organization.”

  I still had no idea how Grace could bring down an organization as huge as the Free Light Foundation. “Still doesn’t explain why she’d help me all of a sudden.”

  “You’ll have to ask her about that.” Dad moved his arm, and I stepped forward.

  I felt the cold darkness press against me the moment I went inside. There was Anya, lying in a hospital bed, an IV taped to her arm, just like in my vision. She didn’t look so scary now. Still, I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to find Grace and go home to California, graduate, maybe ask Coach to keep calling D-2 schools. My hands began that all familiar tremble. I forgot to breathe. Then my dad grabbed my shoulder and squeezed.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re not alone.”

  I exhaled. Nodded. He was right. God wanted me here, so he’d tell me what to do. Right?

  “Can I do something to help?” he asked.

  “Maybe pray?”

  “You got it.” Dad stepped behind me and put both hands on my shoulders. “God, sometimes we have to do hard things. Scary things. And we worry we might not be able to do what needs to be done. We come up against resistance, and we want to stop. Life gets hard. It gets scary. Sometimes it hurts. And we don’t want to put ourselves through it anymore. But we have to fight through those hard times. Even if it’s hard and scary and painful. Even if it hurts or we think we’re going to fail. We have to fight because you’ve called us to fight. Help Jonas to dig deep. Guide him. Show him the way.” He continued, mumbling his prayer under his breath.

  I swallowed my nerves and faced the woman in the hospital bed. “Anya?”

  She groaned but did not move.

  I laid my hand on her arm. “Anya, can you hear me?”

  “Go away!” she said, her voice strange, deep.

  A shiver ran up my spine. Dad squeezed my shoulders and mumbled louder. “. . . so he can stand firm. Help him by the power of your spirit to . . . “

  “Open your eyes, Anya,” I said.

  “She can’t,” the voice said. “We won’t let her.”

  Panic zinged though me. “Who are you?” I asked.

  “We are many. Too many for you.” Anya laughed, and her head thrashed on the pillow.

  I took a deep breath. “It’s not me you have to worry about,” I said.

  Her eyes opened then. They were glazed over and black—no color, no white. Her face was taut and pained, her forehead wrinkled. She began to shake, worse than me.

  “Anya?” I asked again.

  For a brief moment her gaze focused on me. “Help me,” she said in her own voice, and she reached out, just like in my dream.

  What now? “Come out of her,” I said, a little surprised that I’d said it.

  Again, the deep laughter. “You have changed since we last met, boy. More confident but still an unworthy opponent.”

  “I’m not your opponent. I’m just the messenger.”

  “What is your message, then?”

  I didn’t know what to say. “God? What do I say?” I prayed.

  Then I remembered. Pray.

  I grabbed Anya’s hand. Her skin was icy cold. “God, I know this struggle isn’t against me and Anya. It’s between you and the darkness inside her. It’s been working hard lately, using Anya and Diane and Ving to do all kinds of horrible things. But you knew what was going on. And you allowed it for a time, but no longer. You’ve exposed the evil. Now I ask you to help us stop it for good. Help us set free all those who were taken in by these wicked schemes. It starts right here, God. With Anya and this darkness inside her. I can feel it. The pressure. The cold. The evil. It trembles before you. So, I ask for your strength. Surround us like a shield. Protect us from the evil and send it away for good. In Jesus’ name, we take refuge in you.”

  I had never prayed so many words at a time in my life, and I hardly knew what I’d said. But for a moment, confidence surged through me, and I remembered something Arianna had told me about demons when we were working in the nursing station in Moscow.

  “If your faith is strong enough, you cast it out in Jesus’ name.”

  I gave it a whirl. “In Jesus’s name, I cast you out.”

  Anya moaned, low, like a she was in horrible pain. “She is ours,” came the soulless voice again. “We have been with her many years.”

  “Come out of her, you evil spirits. In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave!”

  Anya shrieked and flailed on the bed. She pulled the IV pole across her bed and the needle came out of her arm. I fought to keep hold of her hand.

  “Again,” my dad prompted.

  I pushed down the terror inside me. “In the name of Jesus, go. Leave her, now!”

  Anya rolled away until she fell off the opposite side of the bed, ripping our hands apart. I ran around to the other side, fell to my knees, and pulled her to me. She was shaking hard, and I hugged her with both arms.

  “Leave her,” I said. “In Jesus’ name, leave her. Please, God, make them leave.”

  She stopped shaking, but she was breath
ing hard. “Spin-ceer,” she whispered.

  “Are they gone?” I asked.

  “One . . . left.”

  One more, God. “In the name of Jesus, I command you to come out.”

  Anya went into a terrible convulsion. My dad knelt beside me, put a hand on Anya’s head and mine, praying louder. “. . . give us your supernatural power, Lord,” he said. “By your precious name and blood, send this creature back where it belongs.”

  “Come out now!” I yelled. “By the authority of Jesus Christ.”

  Anya screamed again, thrashing her legs and arms. She tore at her hospital gown and scratched her face and mine.

  I kept at it, saying the same thing over and over in different ways until Anya went limp in my arms. The room was quiet then and very warm. I no longer felt the cold darkness. Footsteps pattered into the room, and suddenly a nurse was standing over us, angrily talking in Khmi. Behind her came Viktor, Isaac, and Pok.

  Viktor and Pok calmed the nurse. Isaac helped my dad and me get Anya back into bed.

  She opened her eyes and met mine, grabbed the front of my shirt. “I wanted to stop them. To make it right,” she said. “It took me too long to find the courage.”

  “I’m just glad you did,” I said.

  “Diane found me in my country. I was an orphan. Alone. Desperate. She gave me everything. She gave me power. Strength. But there was a cost. I had to do whatever she asked, whenever she asked. What she does to young girls . . . it’s not right. So many want to come to this country. To America. To have freedom and opportunity. But Diane’s cost is too high. To be owned by anyone . . . It is not freedom.”

  “No one owns you anymore,” I said.

  “Forgive me, Spin-seer.”

  “Don’t ask me,” I said. “Ask God.”

  “Tell me how.”

  So I did. And she prayed that God would forgive her and be her guide from now on. I couldn’t help it. I got misty-eyed. Because it was a beautiful thing to see someone like Anya Vseveloda find redemption.

  I also couldn’t help how anxious I was to leave.

  “Anya, I have to go find Grace,” I said. “Do you know where she is?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “In one of the brothels in the red-light district. On Ly Yoat Lay St., west of Preah Ang Street. But she might have been moved. I gave the order.”

  “To move her where?” I asked.

  “To Diane’s apartment,” she said. “It’s 12207 Samdech Mongkol Iem St.”

  I looked to Pok. “Is that far?”

  “Not far from each other,” he said. “Both about twenty blocks from here.”

  “Spencer,” Anya said.

  I turned back. “Yeah?”

  “I have evidence about the corruption in the Free Light Foundation. The drugs, the money laundering, the trafficking of drugs and people. I’ve been collecting it for years to use as blackmail. If I give this to you, will you arrest Diane and Ving?”

  “Yes. I mean . . . I don’t have the ability to arrest anyone, but I’m sure someone will.”

  “We will,” Isaac said.

  “You must also shut down the brothels they use to recruit,” Anya said, “especially those here in Cambodia and in the Ukraine.”

  “If you tell us where they are,” Isaac said, “we’ll shut them all down. For good.”

  Anya coughed then, and the nurse lifted a cup to her lips. She took a drink, then her eyes filled with tears. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “It’s not easy being the only one brave enough to call it quits. I respect that.”

  She wiped tears off her cheek, then waved her hands at me. “What are you watching me for? You must find Grace. Go!”

  We went.

  REPORT NUMBER: 32

  REPORT TITLE: I Go Under Cover in the Red-Light District

  SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond

  LOCATION: Driving across Phnom Penh, Cambodia

  DATE AND TIME: Friday, May 3, 9:47 a.m.

  The five of us piled into my dad’s van. Viktor gave me my backpack, and I dug my cell phone out and pulled up the TrackMe app.

  Before it could load, Isaac said, “I’m not getting a signal on Grace.”

  “How can that be?” I asked. My phone showed no sign of her either. “Did they take her out of the country?”

  “Could have,” Isaac said. “The better guess is, they took her earrings and destroyed them along with your necklace.”

  I looked for myself on the app and realized Isaac was right. I wasn’t showing up either.

  “How we going to find her?” my dad asked from the driver’s seat.

  “Street 127 is hostess bars, restaurants, and massage salons,” Pok said. “She could be any place, so we go, we split up, and we ask for white girl. Offer twenty dollar. People say no? Offer forty. People will talk for that much money. Good it’s so early. Most managers will be sleeping.”

  I didn’t want to run into any managers.

  As my dad drove us toward the red-light district, Isaac filled me in on what had happened with Grace’s agents.

  Dominguez and McCarey had taken Grace to check in to her hotel room and met an ambush, just like Isaac and I had. No one had been hurt. Grace’s other two agents, Ricks and Noy, had been in the lobby, one tracking Brittany, the other tracking Diane MacCormack.

  “Ricks came up to help me, while Agent Noy stayed with Diane,” Isaac said. “She didn’t see any sign of Grace outside the building, but they might have already taken her inside. Dominguez is working with the local police to see if she can get access to any surveillance cameras, but the hotel isn’t cooperating right now. No surprise there.”

  “They still don’t know she’s the First Twin,” I said.

  “Not that we know of, anyway,” Isaac said. “You got your cash? I’ve only got about fifty on me.”

  “I’ve got it,” I said, pulling my wallet out of the backpack.

  “I’ve got some,” Viktor said.

  We pooled our bigger bills, then I started divvying them into five piles.

  “I don’t think so,” Isaac said. “Four piles.”

  “I’m not staying in the van,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” Isaac said.

  “I’ll just get out as soon as you go,” I said. “I’m going to help look for Grace, so you might as well accept it.”

  Isaac set his jaw and glanced at my dad. “You okay with this, Mr. Halvorsen?”

  “Yep,” my dad said. “Jonas can handle it.”

  I smiled at Isaac and continued counting out the cash into five piles. When I was done and had passed out the money, my dad announced we were almost there. I looked out the window at the endless line of businesses and started to feel overwhelmed.

  “How do we know which places to try?” I asked.

  “You go restaurant, you go hostess bar,” Pok said, “anywhere you see massage sign.”

  “Of if you see an iron gate that’s opened,” Viktor said. “Just wander in and look around. If you see girls, talk to them.”

  “And if you get into trouble or find Grace,” Isaac said, “get back to the van and call us back. We’ll need to exchange numbers.”

  We did so, and I set up a group text. “This will be faster,” I said. “Then everyone gets notified at once.”

  My dad parked the van halfway down street 127, across from a place called the Sundance Inn & Saloon. The street was paved but narrow, no center line, no sidewalks. Rows of businesses lined each side, wall-to-wall like you might find in downtown L.A. The buildings were two-to-four stories high. Awnings and signs marked businesses on the street level, while the upper stories looked to be apartments, many with air conditioners hanging out the windows. I saw signs for Anchor Beer. Lots of parked motos and a few cars. Not too many people out this early.

  We piled out of the van and split up. I headed down my side of the street and saw Isaac on the other side, working his way west like me. The first business I came to was a beauty salon. Locked
up tight. Next to it, a green security gate was also locked. Then a beige security gate, which was open in the middle. I pushed one side open and ducked through.

  I stood in an alleyway that led the length of the block to what I guessed was another security gate. There were a few doors in the walls of the buildings on both sides—a couple that were opened. Should I look inside all these places? What if these were people’s homes?

  I was still debating when one of the doors opened and a woman came out. She was wearing a fitted Dodger’s blue tank dress with white fringe and clunky silver shoes that I didn’t think matched. She looked older, maybe thirty-five or forty?

  “Hey,” she said walking toward me. “How are you?” Her English was basic and halting.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m happy to see you too,” she said. “You have money?”

  Figs, she’d already gotten the wrong idea. “Have you seen an American girl?”

  She stared at me. I wasn’t sure if she didn’t understand or if she was thinking about my question. Then she said, “Let’s go your room.”

  I shook my head. “I’m looking for an American girl. About this tall.” I held up my hand.

  “Do you want to take me somewhere . . . out? I can go. We can drinking. You buy?”

  Enough of this. I pulled out my wallet and gave her five bucks. “Go eat some breakfast,” I said, then turned and left.

  “Hey,” she called after me. “You come back.” I could hear her shoes clunking after me.

  I slipped out the gate and continued down the street. I passed an Angkor restaurant then a blue and white striped awning that said White Moon Bar. Beneath it, the folding security gates were locked. What if Grace was in a place like this? How would anyone ever know?

  “Hey!” Dodger’s woman was back.

  “No.” I shook my head, waved her away, and kept walking. Next to the bar was a brown facade with full-length glass windows. Words painted on the door said, “Natural House Spa & Massage Boutique.” I tried the door. It was locked, but there were people inside, sitting on the floor. I knocked and waved. One of them got up and came toward me.