Tracks (6 page)

Mai-Li admired her brother for
his recovery and his positive attitude, but secretly she wanted his assailants
punished.  She volunteered her services to the police and became an
informant on gang related matters inside her school.  No one suspected
this fragile looking, soft spoken girl of being a police informant but in fact
her information helped dismantle several juvenile gangs taking refuge and
operating from within the school walls and other schools in the immediate
area.  She had hoped such activity would lead her to the people who
crippled her brother but this never materialized
.

After high school she was
accepted at City University as a history major, intending to focus on Chinese
history, a desire she had ever since she could remember sitting on her mother’s
lap taking in stories from the old country.  At twenty-two she became a
teacher at her old high school, remaining close to her brother who still lived
at home but was now an accomplished jazz guitarist who performed at various
locations around Greenwich Village and local Manhattan jazz clubs
.

At the university, she took a
minor in behavioral sciences, still mystified by the type of human nature which
brought about her family’s misfortune. She still lent part time services to the
police and it was there that she was first introduced to Black Jack’s missing
children bureau. She was asked to assist in locating an eighth grade student
from her school whose mother had reported missing after a full week of not
seeing him. The child, Wayne Gardner, was a known Hardhead who would sometimes
disappear under questionable circumstances, but never for more than a night or
two. The Missing Children bureau was called in after an additional two weeks
went by and the police were still clueless.  Mai-Li was introduced to
Black Jack at the Bowery Police Precinct and was asked to assist in gathering
information.  Old contacts in the area put her on a trail of a score
settled between rival gangs
.

There were three gangs
operating at the time in the Bowery out of the local high school.  Their
activity ranged from dope selling, to car theft, to shoplifting, to general harassment
of the public which included coercing harmless children into performing
dangerous deeds.  Wayne Gardner, who was a hard head but smart enough not
to belong to any of the gangs, managed to keep out of harm’s way until one of
the gangs recruited him to run an errand which happened to be an envelope full
of stolen cash.  Gardner, who thought he was doing a friend a favor,
unaware of the contents of the envelope, was due to deliver the cash to a
member of a rival gang who had been tipping off Gardner’s gang on money
collections at local small stores in the area.  The particular gang member
had been dissatisfied with the share he was getting from his own gang, so he
struck a deal with the rival gang, alerting them on any planned
robberies.  The rival gang would clean out the shop before the member’s
own gang, and send him his share via unrelated personnel
.

Gardner delivered the money
into a trap set by the suspecting members of the betrayed gang.  He met
the gang member, a youth no older than himself, at a narrow alley which turned
into a killing zone.  The young traitor tried to shoot his way out of the
alley but was gunned down along with Gardner who was caught in the
crossfire.  Their bodies were hauled in the trunk of a car to the East River
where they were fastened to pieces of concrete and dumped in the water. 
NYPD divers never found bodies but traces of blood were found at the spot where
the bodies were dumped
.

Mai-Li had tipped off Black
Jack who coerced the story out of a gang member who had been jailed for armed
robbery and was willing to turn State’s evidence.  Three youths were
brought up on murder charges but were never convicted for lack of
evidence.  It was one gang member’s word against another with no
supporting evidence, no bodies, and no weapons. The three walked and the member
who snitched was later found slain with his tongue cut out of his mouth
.

Mai-Li became Black Jack’s
secret collaborator in Lower Manhattan on matters involving missing
children.  She later joined Sam’s operation as a full-time member when her
crippled brother relocated, accepting an invitation to perform jazz with his
band at various clubs in New Orleans
.

Christine Patrese was the
final member of the team, the French newspaper reporter whose activities led to
the discovery of the Algerian ring assisting divorced Muslim fathers snatch
children away to Northern Africa from their estranged Western European
wives.  She had also assisted Sam and Black Jack in locating the family
whose child’s photograph resembled little Sammy.  Sam had kept in touch
with her as a sector head at LMC and later offered her a position at the Center
.

Christine was a
twenty-nine-year-old Parisian, born and raised.  Both her parents were
journalists and much of her childhood was spent traveling with her mother, her
father, or both, to troubled corners of the world.  Having been introduced
to a world of hardship and danger in places of conflict at an early age
predetermined much of what she would become, but it was not until her father
was accidentally killed in a skirmish on the Turkish border that she took up
reporting full time, wishing to fill the void left by her father.
 

She was eighteen at the time,
just completing her first year in Communication and Media at The Sorbonne when
word came from her mother.  Details were initially sketchy.  Her
mother was on her way to Ankara via Istanbul. They later learned that her
father, accompanying a troop of Kurdish rebels on a raid against Turkish
forces, was hit in the stomach by a stray bullet.  He made it alive back
to camp but without proper medical care, bled to death in the Back of a truck
carrying him to a field
hospital.                                                  
                            

He paid with his life telling
the Kurd side of the conflict.

As she mourned her father, a
devastated Christine knew he needed to be authentic and would not have it any
other way, so she did the only thing that seemed logical at the time, she quit
school and joined her mother’s reporting enterprise, picking up where her
father left off.      

Sam’s personal tragedy both
troubled and intrigued
her
and she deliberately became
more involved, investigating missing children cases, exposing the unsettling
issues in a monthly column, attaining something of a celebrity status in
France, while troubled parents could turn to her for help.
   

Christine and her mother,
Anna, shared an apartment in the Paris Latin section just off Boulevard San
Germain.  The third floor apartment was both home and office for generations
of Patrese family reporters: a three bedroom flat, with two bathrooms, a large
living room, kitchen and den, the large living room windows facing Odeon
.

She never admitted to it, but
her father’s death caused her to keep her social life to a minimum, male
company a pursuit almost never considered. She was of medium height,
athletically built with wavy blonde hair down to her shoulders and a
beautifully structured face with large brown eyes, a small pointy nose and full
lips. Her appearance would often turn heads in the street though she never
bothered grooming it. She wore simple clothes, mostly jeans and t-shirts with
dark sweaters and long overcoats in the winter, wanting to be unnoticeable
.

She felt a sense of
responsibility toward her mother, wanting to fill the gap for her dead father,
and never let her down.  She worked long and hard building a name for
herself as a reliable and exciting reporter
.

Christine was the last to
join. Sam went to recruit her in Paris once the operation was in place, managing
to secure her cooperation on a partial basis.  Christine would not move
permanently to New York, intending to keep her journalism status in France and
unwilling to leave her mother and their enterprise.  She did agree to join
as the European emissary, splitting her time between Paris and New York
.

It worked fine in Sam’s scheme
since most of Christine’s work would be in Western Europe.  Natasha’s
geographical responsibility included Eastern Europe and Russia; El Chino the
Spaniard dealt with Latin America and all Spanish speaking countries; Mai-Li
handled the Far East and the Pacific Rim; Black Jack had Africa and the Middle
East. Sam’s primary responsibility was the US and Canada
.

Geographical responsibility
meant overseeing and coordinating active investigations of cases in a
particular area, each investigator having traits such as command of the
language and understanding of local culture.  It was not by accident such
a versatile group was assembled. The Center, feeding on lessons learned from the
past, was designed so each geographical area will be covered by someone with
added value, above and beyond the essential investigative credentials
.

Of course, they were hard
pressed to be able to single-handedly fulfill the enormous obligation required
to properly handle all of their responsibilities.  None of them had nearly
enough knowledge, language or otherwise, to be able to have total command of
his or her area.  Black Jack, for example, knew no Arabic, but was the
obvious choice to handle North Africa.  Mai-Li had no obvious advantage in
Australia or New Zealand other than her geographical area, the Far East, being
closer and somewhat more associated with Pacific Rim immigration.  Cases
of child kidnapping between Australia and the Far East were a more common
occurrence than between the Far East and Europe, for example
.

Their method of work was
mostly to employ and oversee local forces.  A Center team member would
most likely handle ten to twelve cases at a time, each using hired help from
local governments, private firms or covert organizations such as Interpol, the
CIA, MI6, the KGB and others.

Child kidnapping cases were a
unique circumstance where even traditional foes would join forces.  It
gave Center members a unique status among international spook organizations, a
status they were not ashamed to exploit when called for.

Their limited resources also
limited their capacity to handle cases and each case was carefully evaluated
before a Center member was assigned to it.  Case credibility was always an
issue since bogus demands appeared almost as frequently, if not more than, true
claims for relief.  Center members were able to eliminate most fictitious
or immaterial appeals just from experience but a few had to be double-checked
with ancillary sources, mostly local official help in the designated country
.

Once a case was determined to
be genuine and of the sort that was relevant and within the Center’s capacity,
it would be prioritized and characterized based upon geographical discriminators
and member availability.  Most cases involved more than one geographical
area.  Western European cases were frequently linked with North Africa, a
prime destination of kidnapped children.  The member in charge would
generally be chosen from the child’s country of origin but in places like North
Africa Black Jack would always provide assistance and expertise.  Contacts
in such places were almost always the result of a long standing personal
relationship and no one dared rattle such arrangements.  Christine would
hand over the reins to Black Jack once the investigation’s center of gravity
crossed the Mediterranean.  They would cooperate from opposite sides,
Black Jack in Africa, Christine in Europe, until the case was resolved, if it
was resolved.  Sam and El Chino would cooperate in much the same manner
when children from the US would be kidnapped to Mexico and the rest of Latin
America
.

Member availability was
critical since cases were typically solved early rather than late.  Time
was a crucial element in solving such cases.  Early response was always
essential and when a member was not available from the onset, the first
available member would be assigned to allow for a quick response
.

It was a team effort all
around.  The Center members respected each other allowing one another
freedom to operate and independent judgment.  There were, of course,
disagreements and rudimentary arguments but mostly disputes were solved
in-house, the significant ones by a majority vote of the members involved
.

Sam, as founder of the Center
with access to the major donors, and Black Jack with his vast experience and
ex-detective status, had something of a right to veto certain decisions but
they rarely exercised this prerogative, preferring to allow consensus among the
team.  No one had claim on foreseeing what circumstances would
bring.  Experience did help somewhat but since every case developed so
differently it was impossible to clearly forecast the appropriate steps needed
to be followed to bring positive results.  Sam would authorize budgets for
each activity and Black Jack would be
appraised
of the
general tactical approach to a case.  Beyond that it was the member’s own
judgment, intuition, experience, and instincts which would guide the way and
hopefully lead to a successful conclusion
.