Xanadu - Part Two of Five
Apr. 10th, 2011 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Hannibal/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, slavery, mentions of child abuse
Summary: Part Two of Five for fill for this prompt over at the kink meme
I’m considering doing my final research paper this year on human trafficking and have been doing some looking things up tonight. And it’s hard to sift through everything, but a scenario took place in my head one night and hasn’t left since, so I have to request it.
I want something that hurt. That is brutal and may be hard to write and I’d like even harder to read it. So if anyone can take this on, you’ll be amazing.
We all know that Face was an orphan and there are some lovely fics where things have happened to him before he joined Hannibal’s unit. Things to make him street-savvy. Here’s my catch: Hannibal’s team is sent on a mission to break up a supposed human trafficking ring. When they get there they can immediately try to break it up or have to go undercover to get the sex-slaves out. Either way, I want Hannibal to walk in on something happening to a young blonde slave. And to not know what to do or how to save him, but to eventually do so. (If there’s an inclusion of Hannibal secretly going to Face and gaining his trust and promising to get him out, I’ll be blown away.) And then give him a place to call home. I’d love an aftermath of Hannibal and his unit trying to embrace Face and help him find a new life, which can or doesn’t have to be in the army. Just with Hannibal, please. With a bunch of hard ordeals along the way.
Anyone??
As Hannibal desperately tries to come up with a way to save Face, the slave of the Xanadu’s manager, he finds himself being blocked on every turn by Captain Decker, the man assigned to help him with the case.
Hannibal found himself spending more and more time down at the Xanadu that week.
Which was fine with Rose, who was very pleased about the weekend’s little adventure and wanted to know what else he could do, if they could get that set up as a permanent thing, what he knew about the other installations in the other town scattered down south on the peninsula.
Which was fine with Face, who always seemed to be in the same room with woman, who always flashed Hannibal a little smile that stayed on his lips a little longer, each time.
Which was fine with Hannibal, because it gave him a way to nick a couple of the lines in their security camera feeds, to set up a scenario that let him get Decker his surveillance. Because it gave him chances to get a little more information out of Rose, and because that smile warmed him in ways he hadn’t felt since he and Russ parted ways last year.
He found himself missing it when he was away.
Even if he did feel sick inside, ashamed of himself, when he noticed it. It wasn't okay, what he was feeling for the younger man, that subtle burn that somehow transcended lust, of how far he was sinking into it, day by day.
Moment by moment.
But no time for that right now, he told himself as he curved around the edge of the hallway down to his objective. He was twenty minutes late, his watch said, twisting on his wrist as he opened the door. And he tried to be casual as he found the door to the right room propped open.
Hannibal shook a cigar up to his mouth and, holding it, flipped open his lighter, cupping his hands around the flame as he puffed lightly. “So Face, how’s it going today?”
The smoke made strange patterns in the air of the little tech closet, and Face, leaning against the wall, blew up into it, over the edge of this month’s Wolverine, and there was the smile. Broad today, Hannibal thought. Broad and happy. And fully dressed. “Where’s Rose?” he asked carefully as he came in, fully well aware of the technician’s presence.
One of Decker’s guys, working on the system, one of those things Hannibal had graciously offered to set up for the madam, since your owner, Brian Park, is AWOL right now, ma'am...
Something she’d graciously accepted with a subtle little smirk. Hannibal wasn't sure what that meant, but he didn't like it. Hell, he didn't like a lot of things that woman did...
Face folded the comic down into one hand, and that smile didn’t waver at all. “My aunt said she had an errand to run, and since you said you were coming by...”
“You really need a babysitter, kid?” Hannibal asked, trying to keep it light for the sake of the younger man, knowing full well Face had probably been assigned to watch the technician in Rose’s absence, and that the kid didn’t know who the guy really was. That he was well aware of the situation here. That there was a game being played around him right now, one that was going to save him in the long run...
“Aunt Rose thinks I do,” he said, making a face, and then laughing, light-hearted, like Hannibal hadn’t walked in on him yesterday, naked, collared, sitting back on his knees by the madam’s desk while she calmly filed bills. “But you know how she is.”
“Yeah, I know,” and Hannibal looked to the tech. “You good there, man?”
The wiretap expert from the 501st shook his head. He tapped a panel on the wall with the butt end of his flashlight, lying smoothly. “I’m going to have to trace some lines, set up some equipment, spread out a little here. Could you two, maybe...”
Face looked at Hannibal, and the major shrugged. “Come on, kid. I’m sure nothing’s going to happen if you give the guy some space. We can always go talk or...”
Those blue eyes widened and that blonde head nodded vigorously, and Face let Hannibal open the door for him and lead him from the room, back out into the main room of the club.
Hannibal took Face over to the edge of the long bar, empty at 1400 and dark, and remembered, just in time. He was odd about chairs, this boy. Not quite comfortable using them.
“Go ahead and pull up a stool, Face.”
“You sure?” he asked, and Hannibal pointed at one of the tall barstools, cigar between his fingers.
“Sit, kid.” And he went around the edge of the conter, dipping under and popping up into it, pouring himself a double scotch and opening up the mini-fridge. “What do you like, Face? Coke or Sprite?”
“I-I’m...I... coke, I think,” he said, and Hannibal tossed him the can. The kid set it gingerly down on the counter, next to his half-folded comic. Clever fingers itched up over the silver top, but didn’t pop the tab yet.
Hannibal tried to ignore the hesitation. He’d had his share of broken soldiers, boys from bad nieghborhoods and fucked-up families, boys looking for a way out, for meaning, purpose, something good. And he’d fixed them, all of them, every one that ever passed through his unit. He was proud of that. And he could do the same for Face. Be proud of the boy, make the boy proud of himself again, build something here, give...
But not until the mission was done. And here was a prime opportunity to put some of the pieces together.
“Does Rose have you do errands for her very often?” he asked in the most unconcerned tone he could managed as he slipped his tall frame back out and into a stool next to Face’s.
The kid automatically reached for the scotch and slid it over, within Hannibal’s reach. He watched, until the major got the hint and took a sip, laying his cigar down in a nearby ashtray as he did so. It was only then that he answered.
“Sometimes. Not really. But...sometimes.” He was gripping the cold can between his palms, rolling it, like he had the beer in the O-Club. “And you were coming over, said I couldn’t get up to any mischief.”
Hannibal laid a hand on Face’s, the skin ice-cold, and moved his other to open the soda for him. “It’s okay, kid,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice, and moved away again, back to his own drink. “I won’t tell her I let you had a soda.”
“I’m on a diet,” Face explained lamely, and brought the can to his mouth. He shivered and looked up to the hanging stage lights overhead.
“She trusts you?” Hannibal asked.
“What, you think just because she treats me like a... look, major, sir, I’ve been with her a long time and she really does love me...”
Hannibal watched his own fist clench so tight the blood fled.
The kid took another little sip, holding it in for just a moment, licking his lips, his shoulders somehow introspective. “I mean, come on, major, you should have seen my last foster home before her. I slept on the floor there too, no air conditioning in those California summers, never enough food, nothing clean... the bastard was just keeping us for the money the state gave him, it was...” Another sip. “This is better.” He nodded, like he was trying to convince himself. “This is better. She takes good care of me here...”
And there was no way Hannibal could listen to that, so he changed topics as fast as he could. “You were in a foster home?”
Face shivered again, and Hannibal laid a hand on his shoulders, rubbing lightly until the kid found his voice. “Like, until I was fourteen, maybe? I don’t know. Somebody from the CPA came and picked me up one day, said she was taking me somewhere nice. There were a couple of girls with us, too. Cute girls, I remember thinking. And she took us to a big house out in the foothills, where Rose was, and...” The drink was longer this time, throat bobbing as he swallowed, and Face wiped his mouth on the back of his hand when he finally finished, head twisting a little to the side, away from Hannibal. “I’ve been with madam since then.”
Foster home? So nobody waiting, nobody wondering? Nobody to return to? Nobody missing him, mourning his absence, longing for his return... Hannibal tried to keep his composure. “Has, has it always been Seoul?”
“What the fuck difference does it make?” Face asked quietly. “I’m here now. It’s not like you give a shit or care or whatever.”
And Hannibal couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop it at all, and out it came.
“I care, kid...”
“Really? Why?”
The reaction wasn’t what Hannibal was expecting. A freak-out, maybe, tears, perhaps. But no, the kid just cocked his head and kept at the can of soda. Not happy, not upset. Just... curious.
Casual, off the cuff, curious.
Fuck.
What the fuck was he supposed to say now?
“I do care, Face. You don’t, this place...” Hannibal opened his hands and went back for his cigar, muttering the rest to it, more than the younger man, unable to meet his eyes. “This is no place for you. You deserve better than this.”
“What’s better?” the kid asked, like he was inquiring as to the price of a pair of shoes, and about as interested.
Hannibal shrugged, trying to hold it all in. Feeling the pressure build regardless. He kept his tone neutral, matching the kid’s. “What would you want? If you weren’t here, where would you want to go?”
A small smile, and the kid looked up, the body language suddenly excited, like within that lithe and growing body was the best answer to the best question ever. All that sweetness, Hannibal thought. All the joy, even in these conditions. “I’d go with you. I’d be yours, you’d take care of me. You mean, like that?”
There was nothing, nothing at all to say to those words, slicing into his gut like a rusty knife, and there was only one answer, only one thing that could be said at all, so Hannibal, mind blank, had to say it.
“Yeah, Face. Yeah. I’d take care of you, if you were mine.”
“Like madam takes care of me?” Face said seriously.
“Face, she stole you, she manipulates you, locks you up... no, kid, not like that. I’d let you have your freedom.”
“Freedom to do what?”
“Anything you wanted. That’s the point.”
“Like I could sleep in your bed? Every night?” Face kind of bobbed his head, and took a long, thoughtful drink. Trying to savor it, Hannibal realized, and wondered if the young man could even understand the concept he was trying to describe.
“If you wanted,” he replied, feeling a little desperate now.
A socked foot, slipped loose from its Airwalk, traveled slowly up Hannibal’s thigh as the stool scooted a little closer. “I’d want to,” he said, that lack of concern slowly starting to turn interested, but still detached. Like math problems, like goddamn status briefings. Like none of this was about him. None of it affecting him. “I’d definitely want to sleep with you. If, if you’d let me, sir.”
Hannibal closed his eyes, that pressure becoming unbearable, and bit back what he really wanted to say. The words, when they came, sounded like they were coming from a great distance. “Wouldn’t be up to me, kid. It’d be your life, your decisions...”
“Madam says I shouldn’t make my own decisions,” Face said slowly, and the can was at least seventy-five degrees from the horizontal now. “Says it’s bad for me.”
“Do you believe that?” Hannibal asked.
Face shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think.”
And that was the first real bitterness that Hannibal had heard out of the kid today. Encouraging. Better than the disaffected playfulness at least, the front he had to put up, and that meant there was something left here to work with. The kid was hiding himself, his anger, his instinctual need to rebel against the yoke, and so what was boiling there, just under the surface?
It passed through his mind in an instant, and Hannibal went back to his scotch in a vain effort to calm his raging nerves. “Do you believe that, Face?”
The kid stared at him, and a hint of real emotion crept in, eyes flaring. “You’re serious?”
“I am, Face,” Hannibal promised, setting his glass back down, and wrapped the kid’s hand up in his own. “I’d take you away from here...”
“It’d be a bad idea, major.” And the emotion was gone. Face jerked his hand away, that fixed little smile back on instead. “Brian Park knows some very scary people. A cute piece of ass isn’t worth the trouble it bring you.”
The cold, unworried logic...the pressure was approaching critical. Hannibal laid a hand on the kid’s thigh, leaned in a little. “Let me decide what’s worth it, Face.”
“You’re an Army officer, right? I’m sure you could have any of your men, just take one of them...”
Hannibal was assailed by an image as the kid talked, of Face in a private’s uniform, beckoning with one finger, sliding his ass back on... “Kid, stop...”
But Face was on a roll. “I’m sure whoever it was would be willing, sir. Who wouldn’t? I mean, your cock alone is... but you’re...”
“Face,” Hannibal said, gentle this time, and laid a hand on the kid’s cheek, fingers splayed, capturing those eyes. So conflicted, so confused, and he cursed himself for not being able to keep his mouth shut, for not realizing soon enough that helping wasn’t going to help, or for realizing and not caring. “Face, it’s not them, it’s not anyone else, it’s...” He tried to smile, words failing him.
Those blue eyes got huge and that fine brow knotted up in confusion, even as the kid tried to grab the major’s hand away. “You want me? Like, want me, want me?”
Hannibal nodded tightly, not daring to speak, some kind of terror growing in him now at what might come out.
“But... I’m a whore. I’m nothing. I’m worthless outside this...” The kid turned the can all the way up, sucking the last few drops out noisily, and when he finally finished, there was nothing there. No facade, no bravado, no Face. Like he’d emptied himself out completely, with that little statement. “Outside this world, sir, I might as well not exist. What else could you possibly want from me?”
And that’s what broke him. Hannibal just couldn’t hold it back any more. Not with that hollow echo, ringing loud in the silent, dark space around them. Not once he saw those eyes squeeze shut and that forehead bow, those shoulder heave in one long, unending sob... so Hannibal stopped the descent, sliding his hand around to cup the boy’s chin, guiding that pinched mouth up to meet his own.
Hannibal could feel the moment their lips touched, closed and chaste at first, a spark rushing between them, but the kid’s shudder had more to do with panic than anything else. So the older man put everything he had into making this the sweetest thing ever felt by this young life, sweet and gentle. And Face opened into it, unfurling, starving for this kind of contact, true affection. It was only when he started whimpering that Hannibal finally made himself pull away, thumbing over the shiny-slick spot on that flawless lower lip he’d just left.
“You wouldn’t be a whore, if you were with me, Face. You wouldn’t... you wouldn’t exist just to serve me. You’d be your own, grow into your own man,” Hannibal whispered, husky with need, and he hoped the kid didn’t notice the sudden hardness in his pants. “Seeing that... that’s what I’d want for you. That’s what I’d... I’d give you.”
There were tears shining clearly in those eyes as they finally snapped open, cold and hard now, and Hannibal realized there was no bigger mistake he could have made here.
It was pure anger.
The kid hopped off his stool and tossed the can lightly into the bin behind the counter, pacing away, not going too far, clearly torn between his own emotions and that baked-in need to obey, to be good, and Hannibal thought his heart might break as those little frenetic steps eventually slowed, stopped, the kid facing away from him.
“You’re an asshole,” Face said finally.
Utterly flat.
Hannibal sighed. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Face.”
“What? Of course not!” the kid snapped, running a shaking hand up through those shining curls, the sarcasm thick and cutting. “Promising shit you can’t deliver? Why would that piss me off?”
It felt like the whole room was between them, and Hannibal went back to his long-ignored cigar, tapping a good inch of ash from the tip. He couldn’t show what he was feeling. Couldn’t let himself falter at all right now. Had to stay strong. So Face might believe him. “I never promise anything I can’t deliver, kid. And I promise you, Face. I’ll get you out of here.”
He looked back over his shoulder at the exact time the kid turned around, incredulity washing over his features.
And that was just then that the wiretap guy from Yongsan came in, wiping his hands on a scrap of rag, smiling broadly.
“Job’s done!” he announced.
“Aunt left the check with me,” Face said, coming back over, reaching for his comic book, Hannibal realized, and scooped it up first. Handed it over, letting their fingers play over each other for a quick second, and then the kid pulled away.
“Here’s the check,” Face said, voice ringing, a white envelop in his outstretched hand. “And my aunt wanted to know, if anything else goes wrong, if you couldn’t...”
“She’s got my number,” he said brusquely, and shook Hannibal’s hand. “Nice to meet you sir...” and took the payment as Face got within range, “and you, too, kid.”
The tech was halfway to the back door, the one that led to the offices and the stairs and the loading platform beyond in the alley, when a burst of light flooded in, the doors thrown open, and it took Hannibal a moment to realize there was two figures outlined against the muggy summer sunshine.
Rose.
And an unfamiliar man.
“Face!” the madam called, sweet as poison. “Face, honey, come here, will you! There’s somebody I’d like you to meet!”
A tremor ran through the kid’s body, and Hannibal felt those eyes turn on him for a moment. “Major...” the kid whispered, barely audible.
“I swear it, Face,” he murmured back, wanting nothing more than to touch, to reassure, knowing he could do no such thing.
“The technician’s still here, Aunt Rose!” Face yelled back, fingers twitiching unnervingly.
“John, could you see him out for me? This is a really important piece of business!”
Hannibal bit his lip and ground out his cigar in the ashtray. Fuck it, it was cold anyway. “No problem, ma’am!”
“Face, dear boy!”
And, eyes adjusted to the shift in light, Hannibal could tell she was holding out a hand. Like she was calling a fucking dog, he thought, and felt his hackles rising.
But the tech was there and this... buyer... was an unknown quantity and if the kid’s hints had been right, they could be on top of something much larger here, criminal ties, international organization... and Hannibal had to force himself to remember the girls upstairs, the others who could have been somewhere else....
No, no no.
Motherfucker.
He couldn’t save the boy.
Not from whatever he was about to face.
Not right now.
Not yet.
The kid must have been having the same thoughts, but still, Face straightened. Braced himself. Held himself stiff and almost proud, just for a moment.
“I’d really hoped...” he said softly, looked over at the major, and then it was all over.
That fixed smile slid back into place, the false happiness resumed, and the moment was lost as Face slipped back inside his mask. A perfectly normal teenager, Hannibal thought with despair, and watched the kid bound over to the open door. None of their words reached back to the bar as the heavy metal closed again, just the sound of Rose’s laughter mixing with the scrape of hinges.
And then the light, the madam and that kid were all gone.
The tech watched it all for moment, still in the middle of the room, and then approached the lanky major, frozen in his stool at the bar. He leaned up against the lip of the counter, dropping his bag by his feet. “Taps made, bugs planted,” he said in a low voice, pulling his baseball cap down, just a little. “And who the fuck’s that kid?”
“One of the staff here,” Hannibal muttered, and finished the scotch in one go.
“So he’s...”
“Just let it go,” he ordered, shoving back, and the man, who was probably a sergeant of some rank, fell silent.
Fell into line behind him and left the club.
After his van drove off, Hannibal’s knees gave out and he collapsed in the alley, hands digging up into his hair, thought as far as the moon, nothing but his grief, the grief for what had been so lost in this boy’s life, for that innocence gone, for the confusion, for the love, for love, that he might never now know, never feel, never have, never understand...
Outside this world, sir, I might as well not exist...
Hannibal ground the heel of a palm into his eyes, but even that didn’t stem the tears that swelled up and burst out and didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t stop.
+++++
“You’re sure he said California?” Decker asked, and Hannibal nodded into his take-out coffee in a little room outside the installation morgue. It was almost never used, this place, and the room they were in was nothing but abandoned furniture and dusty corners. They’d pulled a couple of chairs into place, enough to sit while they waited.
0930 had been the specified time. It was 0943 right now
The family was here, in Korea. Anna Whiting’s family. In there, right now.
They were waiting for that family to finish up.
And they had nothing to tell them.
“Did he mention what city?”
The major hadn’t slept at all last night. He kept seeing that boy, disappearing into the back hall, and his mind kept adding all sorts of details. Ugly things, bloody things, things that wouldn’t let him sleep.
“No.”
“That’s a shame.” The hawk-faced captain squinted down at his own steaming thermos cup. They were speaking in low tones, hunched in on the couches. “It could help us track down the missing persons reports faster. Or if these girls were reported to child protective services as runaways...”
“It’s going to take ages,” Hannibal protested, and Decker kind of shrugged. “What about the madam?”
“Major Smith,” Decker said, “do I need to remind you that this is not your investigation, it’s mine, and you aren’t...”
“It’s my investigation, captain,” Hannibal growled. “It’s my responsibility, it’s on my head, so don’t even think about cutting me out.”
The counter-intel guy scraped his full set of nails across a discarded desk, staring at nothing, one deep, exasperated breath escaping him while he obviously considered something. Something playing on the edge of his tongue. “Look, Hannibal, it’s not that I don’t respect you. You’ve got a rep, and I’ve looked up some of your missions...”
“You have clearance for that, captain?”
“Better than yours,” he snapped, and had to drop his voice again. “But, like I said, you’ve got a rep. People see things, rumors go around...”
Hannibal felt his gut clench up tight, but he laughed like it was nothing and blew a thread of steam off the top of his coffee. “What are you trying to imply, Derick?”
Decker smiled at him, bland and predatory, and the major reminded himself that this was probably not the best man to fuck around with. Considered the field, some of the things he’d probably done, just as dangerous as Hannibal’s own missions, more so, in some cases, going in armed with lies and promises and nothing resembling a firearm. That he was probably very, very good at exploiting the truth. “I’m just saying that people talk, even people you think you can trust. And what you think is private, isn’t.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Hannibal said.
Decker nodded and stirred another sugar packet into his coffee reflectively. “Do you remember, major, the way it was before Clinton put that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell bullshit in place? How easy it was to just... throw people out?” The captain brought his cup to his lips, his words puffing across the stainless steel surface, steaming it up. “And if we're talking pedaphilia, the charges are always so, so much worse...”
But Decker was cut off by the squeak of a door and a large hand descending on his shoulder.
A throat was cleared in plain warning, but the tone was subdued, welcoming, appropriate. “Gentlemen, thank you for coming down here on such short notice.”
Hannibal had never been so happy to see a general in his life.
Even if there was a pale-faced woman with red-rimmed eyes standing behind him, swaying on her feet a little, her husband’s hand on her shoulder. They’d just come from the inner room, he realized. Just identified their daughter’s body.
“Of course,” he said, rising to his feet instantly, Decker following suit a grudging second later.
“Mr and Mrs Whiting...”
“Oh, please, Nicole and Adam,” the husband said in clipped London tones, and held his wife a little tighter. “We’re all in this together, aren’t we?”
The general nodded a little. “Absolutely. This is why I wanted you to meet the men who are trying to find your daughter’s killer. Major Smith and Captain Decker.”
The woman, Nicole, held out her hand to both in turn, limp from weeping. The father’s was a bit firmer, but not much. “It’s very nice to meet you both,” Nicole said. “I’ve been so terribly afraid since Anna disappeared...”
“It’s almost a relief, isn’t it?” Decker asked gently, and she did, to Hannibal’s surprise, nod back. The captain took her hand again, wrapping it up in both of his. “I promise you, ma’am, we are going to figure out who did this to her...”
“What did they do? Captain, Major, what did they do to my little girl?”
Hannibal looked at the general, who nodded again, and he sighed. “There... it appears to be a slave trafficking ring, of some kind...”
The woman was aghast. “Then, then... my baby was...”
“The coroner’s report confirmed there was signs of... physical activity, yes,” Decker offered.
The woman half-fell, her husband catching her and holding her tight in to him. “What’s the recourse against this?” the man, Adam, asked, honed for an answer. “What happens now?”
Hannibal let Decker bullshit through the details, the ins and outs of Korean law, American jurisdiction, everything that Decker was here to do, not really listening to any of. Disgusted with himself again, watching it all, for what he’d done to Face. For what he couldn’t do for Face. For what he’d left the boy to suffer, all alone...
And for making this case about the kid. It couldn’t be about Face, it couldn’t. It was about the parents, parents like these, people missing children, children, and did that make him a pedaphile? Did these... thoughts... he was having about Face make him, mean that he was...
“Major Smith?” Decker said, cutting through the haze with that little edge of sarcasm that never seemed to go away. “Do you have anything to add?”
“We’re doing everything we can to ensure this doesn’t happen to anyone else’s child,” Hannibal said gently, and the woman reached out for him again.
“Are they are... all children?” she asked.
Hannibal could feel Decker’s eyes on him as he answered, “yes ma’am, from what we’ve seen so far.”
And he’d never longed for the floor to open up and swallow him down, more than in that moment, right there.
+++++
“Hows it going?” Hannibal asked, and the wiretap guy nearly dropped dinner, a big bowl smelling of street food, in his lap.
It was the apartment building across the street from the Xanadu, a tiny place, the surveillance post for the duration. Small, dark, equipment fucking everywhere, empty Mountain Dew cans scattered about, and Hannibal owed a lieutenant a case of Johnny Walker Blue in exchange for the room number. Still, he had a studious, bland smile on his face and he knew the tech wasn’t going to give him any shit as he plopped down into a chair next to the perplexed man.
Do I need to repeat the question, sergeant?”
The man blanched and slid his headphones off his ears, hitting a button on his desk. The three monitor display he was using went dark. “No sir, not at all. What did you want to know?”
Hannibal reached across him and turned the screens back on. Surveillance video, mostly, pulled up on each, set to different time codes. “Finding anything?”
“It’s hard to tell right now, Major Smith, the...”
“Don’t try to shine me on, sergeant. I know you’ve sent the photos to both the British and American embassies, I know the Justice Department’s got you some material back, and I fucking know you were the one who said something to Decker. So talk to me.”
The sergeant shook his head. “Where’s the captain?”
“Working the goddamn diplomats since the family left town yesterday, now tell me what you’ve found.”
Hannibal was fully aware he wasn’t in this man’s chain of command. That they didn’t have anything near the same MOS, that he was in no position to give him orders, major or not, and that he’d basically broken into the building to talk to him.
And it was a testament to the sergeant’s survival instinct that he laid it all out without a second’s more hesitation.
It wasn’t pretty.
Brian Park, formerly of Vancouver, Seattle and Los Angeles, confirmed this morning. The man had no criminal record but was under investigation by the FBI for child pornography and prostitution in California and Nevada. Made frequent business trips to Asia, never married, net worth over ten million, connections with organized crime in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul. No further information available.
“What about the woman?”
“Rose McKenny? It appears to be an alias. FBI and INTERPOL are both running the pictures we sent them.”
“The kids?”
“Three of them, reported missing from the greater Los Angeles foster care system. The rest...”
“Still waiting on IDs?” Hannibal asked, and the sergeant swallowed, nodded. “So,” and he leaned forward for this part, “what else?”
“Hannibal, I don’t think...”
“Don’t think,” he ordered. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
The sergeant scratched the back of his neck, eyes rolling off the glow of the television screens, silent for long moments. And then... “look, you didn’t hear this from me. Captain Decker would want to check it out himself...”
Oh, fuck that. “Check out what?”
“The camera in McKenny’s office caught a conversation, I just finished watching it...” and he brandished his notes. “I was going to put it in my status report.”
“I’m here.” Hannibal nodded. “Show me.”
The sergeant hesitated. “I don’t think you want to see this.”
And what was that about? From that place? “Show me, sergeant,” Hannibal growled, low and with just enough threat in his voice to get the sergeant’s hand over the trackball, rewinding the tape to a time index.
“You sure, sir?”
“Play the goddamn thing.”
The center screen crackled back into life, and the sergeant pushed his chair back a little, grabbing a second pair of headphones and hooking them up with practiced ease. Hannibal took them, and scooted his own chair forward, legs screeching unnaturally loud on the laminate.
He slipped them on.
It was a top view of Rose’s office, the camera obviously in the corner, looking down, a good view of her desk. She was rising to shake that man’s hand, the man Hannibal had seen a few days ago,
Hannibal paused the image. “You get a good photo of this guy?”
The tech handed him the still. Grainy but features clear. “Sent it to the embassy today. Should be good for an ID. Err, should I...” His hand hovered over the button.
“Carry on, sergeant,” Hannibal said, and patted himself down. Had he forgotten a cigar? Shit, he had, hadn’t he...
“... pleasure to be doing business with you, sir,” Rose was saying, shaking that hand warmly, and the man nodded back, curt and slight. Businessman, Hannibal thought, or diplomat, and he leaned forward more, turning up the volume.
“And I with you, ma’am.” The man’s head turned, clearly looking at something, and Hannibal saw his boy, crumpled up a little by the side of the desk, collar on, splatter clear on his chest. “He’s a nice one.”
“Beautiful, isn’t he?”
“You’ve got no idea how much I’m going to enjoy him,” and the man knelt down. Hannibal felt himself tensing as a hand ran around the kid’s shoulders, heavy and possessive. “You say he’s not fully trained yet?”
“I’m rough on the lad, to be sure, but he needs a firmer hand than a woman can provide. He needs to be shown his place, don’t you, darling?” Rose asked, yanking his head up.
Those eyes closed, so as not to look at her, Hannibal realized. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Wants to know he’s owned. Longs for it so,” she continued, running a hand down the kid’s chest. Her nails dug in a little, and the major could see Face trying to bite back the whimper of pain. “I’m really far too easy on him.”
“That’s okay,” the man replied, and stood. “It’s always better to take those last few steps yourself. Just to make sure everything’s the way you want it.”
“I’ve heard you’re a man of experience with this sort of thing,” she said. “If you want a newer one, a bit fresher, I do have something in the warehouse I’m sure I could...”
“No, sixteen is quite young enough,” the man said, and Hannibal felt his blood run ice cold in his veins. Face was only sixteen? Motherfucker, did that... “And I like this one. He’s special.”
“He is, isn’t he...”
And the tech stopped the tape, uncomfortable. “That’s what I’m talking about, Hannibal. The... warehouse. Whatever that is.”
“Turn-over for new blood in her club and probably somewhere in Seoul we should look into it,” Hannibal breathed in one go, and touched the still image of Face, frozen, frightened, alone. “What else happens?”
“Major...I...I don’t really want to watch this again, if that’s perfectly alri...”
“Fucking play it,” Hannibal said, barely able to get the words out. There was a pit forming in his stomach, and he knew, he just fucking knew, he was going to regret this. But he had to know what that bitch was doing to his boy...
And... his boy? When had he started thinking about Face as...
The video started up again. “Now, if you don’t mind, ma’am, I have an event tonight. Is he going to be ready in...”
“Oh yes, absolutely, delivery upon the requested date,” Rose beamed, and bowed, just a little.
The man nodded back again, and looked down at Face. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your new master?”
Face’s head stayed bowed, the words coming as haltingly and awkwardly as they might in a school play. If high schools ever put on plays like this. “What does the master wish his slave to do?”
“Kiss his feet,” the man said coolly.
There was only the slightest trace of hesitation, so faint as to be barely recognizable on the tape, before Face knelt forward, pulling off a proper kow-tow, spine curving, lips touching leather between his outstretched hands.
“Sloppy. We’ll work on that,” the man said after a moment, curt, and strode out.
Face stayed on the floor, clearly struggling to stay still, and Hannibal hoped like hell it was anger. And then...
“Get up and lock the door, darling,” Rose said gently, and the kid rose onto bare feet, padding over and snicking the deadbolt tight. He came right back over to the Irishwoman, stopped, head still down until those thin fingers stroked it up.
“What does my lad think of his owner? Such lovely fear for him, you played...”
“I’d...”
Rose clucked softly. “No more first person, darling. That’s a privilege I’ve allowed you, remember?”
Those shoulders twitched. “F...this slave would rather stay with madam.”
“You can’t, baby,” she cooed, massaging his scalp now. “I’ve raised you, made you a good boy, and now it’s time for you to find a more permanent home.”
“This slave wants to stay with...”
“Oh, always my lad, aren’t you? So adorable, you,” she said with a soft little sigh, and pushed him to his knees, swinging her chair around and sitting down, legs spread and drawing her short velvet skirt up her knees, up her thighs, garters showing at the top of smooth hose. “You’ll always be special to me, Face, just like all those years ago...”
“And this is the part I am not fucking watching again,” the sergeant said vehemently and stopped the tape. "What the fuck is wrong with people?
Hannibal didn't answer. He couldn't possibly. Everything in his body was locked up, instincts all screaming at him to march down there right the fuck now and rip her throat out with his bare hands, save his boy, put an end to all of this...
And then the tech guy was leaning way forward. “You okay, sir?”
Hannibal realized he was still where he was at the beginning of the film, bent forward, fingers on the screen, and he was breathing fast and hard. It took him a moment to compose him, to slide back into the chair, to silence the singular, overwhelming, murderous desire. “Fine,” he said, knowing the sergeant didn’t believe him. He fisted his hands up, elbows on the flimsy table, bowed by the weight of the equipment on it, not looking at anything as his eyes mercifully refused to focus. “I’m absolutely fine.”
“Umm, I probably shouldn't say anything, but... I saw you two, on the security system as I was finishing up. Heard it all, too.”
Hannibal's head shot up of its own accord. "What? Did you tell..."
"I didn't tell Captain Decker a damn thing, and that's a promise, sir." The sergeant was fiddling with something under the table, and when he surfaced again, he was holding out a tape, something inscrutable in his eyes. “Look, major, I don’t know what’s going on with Captain Decker. He’s always a bit of a... and I know he’s going to do what he’s required to do, perfectly, which means he’ll make sure you spend time in Leavenworth for...”
“Sergeant...” Hannibal said, the floor falling away from him now.
“But you? You’re going to do whatever you have to do, and the right people will go to jail,” and he handed Hannibal the tape, and his single page of notes. “It’s your investigation anyway, right?”
He was smiling, thin and wane and brave, but Hannibal couldn’t even offer the ghost of anything in return. The image of Face, bowing flat down, the way the kid was hiding the tremble, the fear... no, he couldn’t allow it. Wouldn’t.
And then, like gift from god, pulling him back from the very edge of irreconcilable remorse, the Plan appeared. A good Plan. An insane Plan. A Plan that was fucking going to work, had to, or Face would be lost... and that he wouldn’t allow, either. Not while there was a shred of his boy left to be saved. He’d keep his word, he could keep his word.
He knew the way now, and for the first time since laying eyes on Face, Hannibal felt clear about...
“Sir?”
“Right,” was all he was able to get out, and shook himself. “So, did they mention when the... delivery date is?”
“Four days from now. Nothing about a warehouse, though...”
“Don’t worry about the fucking warehouse,” Hannibal grunted. “I’ve got a plan...”
+++++
Seoul, hell, most of East Asia, Hannibal thought absently as a liveried waiter poured tea from a silver pot, was the kind of place where you could actually bring a boy into a nice hotel, collared and leashed like a dog, and attract absolutely zero attention at all.
Not that Face was visibly wearing it. But judging from the little tug Rose gave a slender lead in her hand, the kid’s resulting jerk, the proximity of their bodies... Hannibal dropped a sugar cube in his cup with the provided tongs and tried not to think about what kind of device she had rigged up under the young man’s smooth polo.
“Ms McKenny, you look lovely today,” he said after a too-long moment, rising to his feet and holding out his hand. Her nails were deep purple today, her silk blouse impeccable. And his eyes flicked over to Face, who shyly brushed some of that gloriously overlong hair off his forehead. “What is...”
“Oh, the lad needs to learn how to be out in public and still behave himself. It may be necessary for him, from time to time,” she answered, and the waiter was back to pull out her chair for her.
Hannibal took a mouthful of perfect-temperature Oolong in the crowded sprawl of the downtown hotel tearoom, selected a small pastry off the gleaming tray in the center of the table, hoped like hell his shock wasn’t showing on his face. “I was under the impression we’d be alone for this little meeting,” he told her, covering with a note of arrogant displeasure. “It’s one of the reasons why I suggested this place.”
“And not because you wanted to take your lovely business associate out for tea?” she replied back, voice like honey, and motioned for Face, still standing, to sit. She laid a painted hand on his, and Hannibal didn’t miss the way she wrapped the little lead around the chair’s arm.
“I did want to discuss business but...”
“Oh,” she said happily, and snapped open her little pocketbook, handing a white envelop to Face. He held it in his own lap for a moment, fingers curling, eyes unfocused, before passing it under the table.
No smile yet today.
The major wondered if those were the first signs of the fight going out of the kid, and would have given both his kidneys, right then, to be able to take one of those hands in his own, offering him the tiniest sliver of faith. “I almost forgot the matter of last week’s introductions at the O-Club. The girls were very successful. We’ve seen a few more of your colonels around since then. I believe the offer was fifteen percent?”
Hannibal made a note to have that sergeant review the tapes for military haircuts again, and forced a smile. “Im glad that little bit worked out.”
“Wonderfully. And we must talk strategy. It makes the...acquisitions process so much easier,” she said, and the waiter came back around, forcing them all into silence.
It gave Hannibal a moment to reconsider his plan. With Face here... why the fuck had she brought Face? There was no sense in it. And, if the kid heard this, well, he seemed so close to the edge anyway, holding on to his pride, his autonomy, for some reason that he probably didn’t even remember anymore. Out of habit, perhaps, or spite. But neither was going to get him through until whenever Hannibal could wrap up this investigation, and certainly wouldn’t last if the buyer finally got his hands on the kid. Hannibal had to suppress a shudder at the thought - he knew how effective brainwashing could be, seen it in a dozen different places, and none, none as razor sharp as this...
“So, John,” the madam said, Face handing her the cream automatically, “what was it you wanted to talk with me about?”
“Yes, that,” and Hannibal cast one quick glance at the kid, figuring it couldn’t hurt, with what he was about to say, and his heart nearly failed when he watched the little answering smile spread. Shit, the kid did trust him, after all, and here he was, about to ask... but there was no help for it, he told himself, other kids to save besides this one, other considerations...
Even if Face's eyes were bright, so bright, looking at him...
I'm so sorry, kid, and Hannibal leaned forward, just a bit, just enough, two fingers on the tablecloth just beyond his own cup.
“I wanted to know if I could make a purchase.”
“John,” and that smile was hungry, on her face right then, so much so the major could hardly look at it, “I am not...”
“If you’re willing to part with your favorite butt boy,” he said, pulling a cigar, lighter from his suit’s inner breast pocket, both for emphasis an a sudden desperate need for nicotein, hoping like hell it was all indifferent enough, “then I’m sure you’ve got a rousing little market in, oh, individual services?”
Face’s jaw locked up, shifting a bit under the skin of his cheek, and Rose laughed merrily, patting the boy’s shoulder. “They grow up so fast, John, you understand.”
“Completely,” he said, and lit up.
“Are you wanting a female? Because that’s all I have in stock at the moment...”
“At the Xanadu. And no, I want a male,” he replied easily.
Face barely stopped himself from perking up.
Rose was not so subtle. She stiffened, just a bit. “This one, I’m afraid, is spoken for already.”
Hannibal shrugged, and puffed out lazily. “Who said I wanted that one?”
The kid made a strangled little sound, both of the adults at the table turning to look at him, and he coughed lamely, giving Hannibal a desperate little glance. One which could have no response right now.
“He’s the only one I...”
“Have at the Xanadu,” Hannibal repeated, and sipped at his tea as serenely as possible. He couldn’t taste it. “But that’s really just the showroom, isn’t it? Where do you keep the rest of your stock?”
Rose thought for a moment, and then rubbed Face’s hand where it lay on the arn of the chair, clenching down so hard his knuckles were white. “Why, darling boy, whatever’s the problem?”
The kid just shook his head, mouth opening a little, in a gasp or words, words he shouldn’t say, and Hannibal tapped the cigar into the tray, cutting it all off before Face’s day got any worse.
Mindgames, he remembered Face saying, and took a deep breath through the safety of the cigar. “Ms McKenny, what’s your answer?”
“I’d love to set something up for you,” she said cautiously.
“I’d like that.”
And finally, she nodded. “Let me make a phone call,” she said, and her hand left Face’s arm, the kid shuddering a little as it came off. “Be a good boy, darling,” she murmured, and off she went.
Hannibal waited exactly five seconds before turning to look at the boy.
His boy.
And it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Pure defeat.
Body sagging, he kid had dropped his beautiful face down into his free hand, shoulders shaking a little, and the light was fading from those brilliant eyes, put out like the sun in a snowstorm, darkness clouding in. The kid was so damn good at hiding, by this point, that it was almost possible to not see the flare of excitement, feel the burst of joy, die in that descending night. Hannibal felt a wave of grief wash over him. There was no way, no way at all to apologize or explain...
Christ in heaven, why the fuck was the kid here? Had the madam done this on purpose? Against him or against the kid? Why? What was she thinking? What did she suspect? What did she know?
Mindgames.
Motherfucker.
He still had to try. No matter how that deck might have been stacked against him.
“Face?” he asked softly, leaning over as far as he possibly dared, “kid, please, look at me...”
“You... you don’t... you don’t want...fuck... I’m such a fucking idiot...”
“I told you, I can’t afford you.” And the second it left his mouth, Hannibal could have killed himself for saying it. Fuck, of all the ways to start out with this is my plan to save your life...
That darkness got thicker in the kid. “...right.”
Hannibal dared, and pulled that hand away from that face, cupping it into his own. “Face, that’s not what I...”
And then the kid was jerking away and Rose was back, laying her cell phone primly down by her napkin and smiling at them both, reaching out for Face’s hand where it lay, bound to the chair arm. “Wonderful,” she said brightly, and selected something tiny and frosted off the tray between them. “We can get you in, day after tomorrow.”
“That’d be perfect,” Hannibal replied, and wanted to do nothing more right now than throw up.
Face, from the looks of him, felt the same goddamn way.
What is wrong with people, he heard the sergeant ask again.
But as he sat there and discussed ethnicity, age and expected period of use with Rose, Face listening on, shoulders , sipping tea in the airy room, as if they were in the goddamn habadashery business, Hannibal knew that was the wrong question to b asking.
No, the real question was what was wrong with him?
Continue to Part Three
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, slavery, mentions of child abuse
Summary: Part Two of Five for fill for this prompt over at the kink meme
I’m considering doing my final research paper this year on human trafficking and have been doing some looking things up tonight. And it’s hard to sift through everything, but a scenario took place in my head one night and hasn’t left since, so I have to request it.
I want something that hurt. That is brutal and may be hard to write and I’d like even harder to read it. So if anyone can take this on, you’ll be amazing.
We all know that Face was an orphan and there are some lovely fics where things have happened to him before he joined Hannibal’s unit. Things to make him street-savvy. Here’s my catch: Hannibal’s team is sent on a mission to break up a supposed human trafficking ring. When they get there they can immediately try to break it up or have to go undercover to get the sex-slaves out. Either way, I want Hannibal to walk in on something happening to a young blonde slave. And to not know what to do or how to save him, but to eventually do so. (If there’s an inclusion of Hannibal secretly going to Face and gaining his trust and promising to get him out, I’ll be blown away.) And then give him a place to call home. I’d love an aftermath of Hannibal and his unit trying to embrace Face and help him find a new life, which can or doesn’t have to be in the army. Just with Hannibal, please. With a bunch of hard ordeals along the way.
Anyone??
As Hannibal desperately tries to come up with a way to save Face, the slave of the Xanadu’s manager, he finds himself being blocked on every turn by Captain Decker, the man assigned to help him with the case.
Hannibal found himself spending more and more time down at the Xanadu that week.
Which was fine with Rose, who was very pleased about the weekend’s little adventure and wanted to know what else he could do, if they could get that set up as a permanent thing, what he knew about the other installations in the other town scattered down south on the peninsula.
Which was fine with Face, who always seemed to be in the same room with woman, who always flashed Hannibal a little smile that stayed on his lips a little longer, each time.
Which was fine with Hannibal, because it gave him a way to nick a couple of the lines in their security camera feeds, to set up a scenario that let him get Decker his surveillance. Because it gave him chances to get a little more information out of Rose, and because that smile warmed him in ways he hadn’t felt since he and Russ parted ways last year.
He found himself missing it when he was away.
Even if he did feel sick inside, ashamed of himself, when he noticed it. It wasn't okay, what he was feeling for the younger man, that subtle burn that somehow transcended lust, of how far he was sinking into it, day by day.
Moment by moment.
But no time for that right now, he told himself as he curved around the edge of the hallway down to his objective. He was twenty minutes late, his watch said, twisting on his wrist as he opened the door. And he tried to be casual as he found the door to the right room propped open.
Hannibal shook a cigar up to his mouth and, holding it, flipped open his lighter, cupping his hands around the flame as he puffed lightly. “So Face, how’s it going today?”
The smoke made strange patterns in the air of the little tech closet, and Face, leaning against the wall, blew up into it, over the edge of this month’s Wolverine, and there was the smile. Broad today, Hannibal thought. Broad and happy. And fully dressed. “Where’s Rose?” he asked carefully as he came in, fully well aware of the technician’s presence.
One of Decker’s guys, working on the system, one of those things Hannibal had graciously offered to set up for the madam, since your owner, Brian Park, is AWOL right now, ma'am...
Something she’d graciously accepted with a subtle little smirk. Hannibal wasn't sure what that meant, but he didn't like it. Hell, he didn't like a lot of things that woman did...
Face folded the comic down into one hand, and that smile didn’t waver at all. “My aunt said she had an errand to run, and since you said you were coming by...”
“You really need a babysitter, kid?” Hannibal asked, trying to keep it light for the sake of the younger man, knowing full well Face had probably been assigned to watch the technician in Rose’s absence, and that the kid didn’t know who the guy really was. That he was well aware of the situation here. That there was a game being played around him right now, one that was going to save him in the long run...
“Aunt Rose thinks I do,” he said, making a face, and then laughing, light-hearted, like Hannibal hadn’t walked in on him yesterday, naked, collared, sitting back on his knees by the madam’s desk while she calmly filed bills. “But you know how she is.”
“Yeah, I know,” and Hannibal looked to the tech. “You good there, man?”
The wiretap expert from the 501st shook his head. He tapped a panel on the wall with the butt end of his flashlight, lying smoothly. “I’m going to have to trace some lines, set up some equipment, spread out a little here. Could you two, maybe...”
Face looked at Hannibal, and the major shrugged. “Come on, kid. I’m sure nothing’s going to happen if you give the guy some space. We can always go talk or...”
Those blue eyes widened and that blonde head nodded vigorously, and Face let Hannibal open the door for him and lead him from the room, back out into the main room of the club.
Hannibal took Face over to the edge of the long bar, empty at 1400 and dark, and remembered, just in time. He was odd about chairs, this boy. Not quite comfortable using them.
“Go ahead and pull up a stool, Face.”
“You sure?” he asked, and Hannibal pointed at one of the tall barstools, cigar between his fingers.
“Sit, kid.” And he went around the edge of the conter, dipping under and popping up into it, pouring himself a double scotch and opening up the mini-fridge. “What do you like, Face? Coke or Sprite?”
“I-I’m...I... coke, I think,” he said, and Hannibal tossed him the can. The kid set it gingerly down on the counter, next to his half-folded comic. Clever fingers itched up over the silver top, but didn’t pop the tab yet.
Hannibal tried to ignore the hesitation. He’d had his share of broken soldiers, boys from bad nieghborhoods and fucked-up families, boys looking for a way out, for meaning, purpose, something good. And he’d fixed them, all of them, every one that ever passed through his unit. He was proud of that. And he could do the same for Face. Be proud of the boy, make the boy proud of himself again, build something here, give...
But not until the mission was done. And here was a prime opportunity to put some of the pieces together.
“Does Rose have you do errands for her very often?” he asked in the most unconcerned tone he could managed as he slipped his tall frame back out and into a stool next to Face’s.
The kid automatically reached for the scotch and slid it over, within Hannibal’s reach. He watched, until the major got the hint and took a sip, laying his cigar down in a nearby ashtray as he did so. It was only then that he answered.
“Sometimes. Not really. But...sometimes.” He was gripping the cold can between his palms, rolling it, like he had the beer in the O-Club. “And you were coming over, said I couldn’t get up to any mischief.”
Hannibal laid a hand on Face’s, the skin ice-cold, and moved his other to open the soda for him. “It’s okay, kid,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice, and moved away again, back to his own drink. “I won’t tell her I let you had a soda.”
“I’m on a diet,” Face explained lamely, and brought the can to his mouth. He shivered and looked up to the hanging stage lights overhead.
“She trusts you?” Hannibal asked.
“What, you think just because she treats me like a... look, major, sir, I’ve been with her a long time and she really does love me...”
Hannibal watched his own fist clench so tight the blood fled.
The kid took another little sip, holding it in for just a moment, licking his lips, his shoulders somehow introspective. “I mean, come on, major, you should have seen my last foster home before her. I slept on the floor there too, no air conditioning in those California summers, never enough food, nothing clean... the bastard was just keeping us for the money the state gave him, it was...” Another sip. “This is better.” He nodded, like he was trying to convince himself. “This is better. She takes good care of me here...”
And there was no way Hannibal could listen to that, so he changed topics as fast as he could. “You were in a foster home?”
Face shivered again, and Hannibal laid a hand on his shoulders, rubbing lightly until the kid found his voice. “Like, until I was fourteen, maybe? I don’t know. Somebody from the CPA came and picked me up one day, said she was taking me somewhere nice. There were a couple of girls with us, too. Cute girls, I remember thinking. And she took us to a big house out in the foothills, where Rose was, and...” The drink was longer this time, throat bobbing as he swallowed, and Face wiped his mouth on the back of his hand when he finally finished, head twisting a little to the side, away from Hannibal. “I’ve been with madam since then.”
Foster home? So nobody waiting, nobody wondering? Nobody to return to? Nobody missing him, mourning his absence, longing for his return... Hannibal tried to keep his composure. “Has, has it always been Seoul?”
“What the fuck difference does it make?” Face asked quietly. “I’m here now. It’s not like you give a shit or care or whatever.”
And Hannibal couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop it at all, and out it came.
“I care, kid...”
“Really? Why?”
The reaction wasn’t what Hannibal was expecting. A freak-out, maybe, tears, perhaps. But no, the kid just cocked his head and kept at the can of soda. Not happy, not upset. Just... curious.
Casual, off the cuff, curious.
Fuck.
What the fuck was he supposed to say now?
“I do care, Face. You don’t, this place...” Hannibal opened his hands and went back for his cigar, muttering the rest to it, more than the younger man, unable to meet his eyes. “This is no place for you. You deserve better than this.”
“What’s better?” the kid asked, like he was inquiring as to the price of a pair of shoes, and about as interested.
Hannibal shrugged, trying to hold it all in. Feeling the pressure build regardless. He kept his tone neutral, matching the kid’s. “What would you want? If you weren’t here, where would you want to go?”
A small smile, and the kid looked up, the body language suddenly excited, like within that lithe and growing body was the best answer to the best question ever. All that sweetness, Hannibal thought. All the joy, even in these conditions. “I’d go with you. I’d be yours, you’d take care of me. You mean, like that?”
There was nothing, nothing at all to say to those words, slicing into his gut like a rusty knife, and there was only one answer, only one thing that could be said at all, so Hannibal, mind blank, had to say it.
“Yeah, Face. Yeah. I’d take care of you, if you were mine.”
“Like madam takes care of me?” Face said seriously.
“Face, she stole you, she manipulates you, locks you up... no, kid, not like that. I’d let you have your freedom.”
“Freedom to do what?”
“Anything you wanted. That’s the point.”
“Like I could sleep in your bed? Every night?” Face kind of bobbed his head, and took a long, thoughtful drink. Trying to savor it, Hannibal realized, and wondered if the young man could even understand the concept he was trying to describe.
“If you wanted,” he replied, feeling a little desperate now.
A socked foot, slipped loose from its Airwalk, traveled slowly up Hannibal’s thigh as the stool scooted a little closer. “I’d want to,” he said, that lack of concern slowly starting to turn interested, but still detached. Like math problems, like goddamn status briefings. Like none of this was about him. None of it affecting him. “I’d definitely want to sleep with you. If, if you’d let me, sir.”
Hannibal closed his eyes, that pressure becoming unbearable, and bit back what he really wanted to say. The words, when they came, sounded like they were coming from a great distance. “Wouldn’t be up to me, kid. It’d be your life, your decisions...”
“Madam says I shouldn’t make my own decisions,” Face said slowly, and the can was at least seventy-five degrees from the horizontal now. “Says it’s bad for me.”
“Do you believe that?” Hannibal asked.
Face shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think.”
And that was the first real bitterness that Hannibal had heard out of the kid today. Encouraging. Better than the disaffected playfulness at least, the front he had to put up, and that meant there was something left here to work with. The kid was hiding himself, his anger, his instinctual need to rebel against the yoke, and so what was boiling there, just under the surface?
It passed through his mind in an instant, and Hannibal went back to his scotch in a vain effort to calm his raging nerves. “Do you believe that, Face?”
The kid stared at him, and a hint of real emotion crept in, eyes flaring. “You’re serious?”
“I am, Face,” Hannibal promised, setting his glass back down, and wrapped the kid’s hand up in his own. “I’d take you away from here...”
“It’d be a bad idea, major.” And the emotion was gone. Face jerked his hand away, that fixed little smile back on instead. “Brian Park knows some very scary people. A cute piece of ass isn’t worth the trouble it bring you.”
The cold, unworried logic...the pressure was approaching critical. Hannibal laid a hand on the kid’s thigh, leaned in a little. “Let me decide what’s worth it, Face.”
“You’re an Army officer, right? I’m sure you could have any of your men, just take one of them...”
Hannibal was assailed by an image as the kid talked, of Face in a private’s uniform, beckoning with one finger, sliding his ass back on... “Kid, stop...”
But Face was on a roll. “I’m sure whoever it was would be willing, sir. Who wouldn’t? I mean, your cock alone is... but you’re...”
“Face,” Hannibal said, gentle this time, and laid a hand on the kid’s cheek, fingers splayed, capturing those eyes. So conflicted, so confused, and he cursed himself for not being able to keep his mouth shut, for not realizing soon enough that helping wasn’t going to help, or for realizing and not caring. “Face, it’s not them, it’s not anyone else, it’s...” He tried to smile, words failing him.
Those blue eyes got huge and that fine brow knotted up in confusion, even as the kid tried to grab the major’s hand away. “You want me? Like, want me, want me?”
Hannibal nodded tightly, not daring to speak, some kind of terror growing in him now at what might come out.
“But... I’m a whore. I’m nothing. I’m worthless outside this...” The kid turned the can all the way up, sucking the last few drops out noisily, and when he finally finished, there was nothing there. No facade, no bravado, no Face. Like he’d emptied himself out completely, with that little statement. “Outside this world, sir, I might as well not exist. What else could you possibly want from me?”
And that’s what broke him. Hannibal just couldn’t hold it back any more. Not with that hollow echo, ringing loud in the silent, dark space around them. Not once he saw those eyes squeeze shut and that forehead bow, those shoulder heave in one long, unending sob... so Hannibal stopped the descent, sliding his hand around to cup the boy’s chin, guiding that pinched mouth up to meet his own.
Hannibal could feel the moment their lips touched, closed and chaste at first, a spark rushing between them, but the kid’s shudder had more to do with panic than anything else. So the older man put everything he had into making this the sweetest thing ever felt by this young life, sweet and gentle. And Face opened into it, unfurling, starving for this kind of contact, true affection. It was only when he started whimpering that Hannibal finally made himself pull away, thumbing over the shiny-slick spot on that flawless lower lip he’d just left.
“You wouldn’t be a whore, if you were with me, Face. You wouldn’t... you wouldn’t exist just to serve me. You’d be your own, grow into your own man,” Hannibal whispered, husky with need, and he hoped the kid didn’t notice the sudden hardness in his pants. “Seeing that... that’s what I’d want for you. That’s what I’d... I’d give you.”
There were tears shining clearly in those eyes as they finally snapped open, cold and hard now, and Hannibal realized there was no bigger mistake he could have made here.
It was pure anger.
The kid hopped off his stool and tossed the can lightly into the bin behind the counter, pacing away, not going too far, clearly torn between his own emotions and that baked-in need to obey, to be good, and Hannibal thought his heart might break as those little frenetic steps eventually slowed, stopped, the kid facing away from him.
“You’re an asshole,” Face said finally.
Utterly flat.
Hannibal sighed. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Face.”
“What? Of course not!” the kid snapped, running a shaking hand up through those shining curls, the sarcasm thick and cutting. “Promising shit you can’t deliver? Why would that piss me off?”
It felt like the whole room was between them, and Hannibal went back to his long-ignored cigar, tapping a good inch of ash from the tip. He couldn’t show what he was feeling. Couldn’t let himself falter at all right now. Had to stay strong. So Face might believe him. “I never promise anything I can’t deliver, kid. And I promise you, Face. I’ll get you out of here.”
He looked back over his shoulder at the exact time the kid turned around, incredulity washing over his features.
And that was just then that the wiretap guy from Yongsan came in, wiping his hands on a scrap of rag, smiling broadly.
“Job’s done!” he announced.
“Aunt left the check with me,” Face said, coming back over, reaching for his comic book, Hannibal realized, and scooped it up first. Handed it over, letting their fingers play over each other for a quick second, and then the kid pulled away.
“Here’s the check,” Face said, voice ringing, a white envelop in his outstretched hand. “And my aunt wanted to know, if anything else goes wrong, if you couldn’t...”
“She’s got my number,” he said brusquely, and shook Hannibal’s hand. “Nice to meet you sir...” and took the payment as Face got within range, “and you, too, kid.”
The tech was halfway to the back door, the one that led to the offices and the stairs and the loading platform beyond in the alley, when a burst of light flooded in, the doors thrown open, and it took Hannibal a moment to realize there was two figures outlined against the muggy summer sunshine.
Rose.
And an unfamiliar man.
“Face!” the madam called, sweet as poison. “Face, honey, come here, will you! There’s somebody I’d like you to meet!”
A tremor ran through the kid’s body, and Hannibal felt those eyes turn on him for a moment. “Major...” the kid whispered, barely audible.
“I swear it, Face,” he murmured back, wanting nothing more than to touch, to reassure, knowing he could do no such thing.
“The technician’s still here, Aunt Rose!” Face yelled back, fingers twitiching unnervingly.
“John, could you see him out for me? This is a really important piece of business!”
Hannibal bit his lip and ground out his cigar in the ashtray. Fuck it, it was cold anyway. “No problem, ma’am!”
“Face, dear boy!”
And, eyes adjusted to the shift in light, Hannibal could tell she was holding out a hand. Like she was calling a fucking dog, he thought, and felt his hackles rising.
But the tech was there and this... buyer... was an unknown quantity and if the kid’s hints had been right, they could be on top of something much larger here, criminal ties, international organization... and Hannibal had to force himself to remember the girls upstairs, the others who could have been somewhere else....
No, no no.
Motherfucker.
He couldn’t save the boy.
Not from whatever he was about to face.
Not right now.
Not yet.
The kid must have been having the same thoughts, but still, Face straightened. Braced himself. Held himself stiff and almost proud, just for a moment.
“I’d really hoped...” he said softly, looked over at the major, and then it was all over.
That fixed smile slid back into place, the false happiness resumed, and the moment was lost as Face slipped back inside his mask. A perfectly normal teenager, Hannibal thought with despair, and watched the kid bound over to the open door. None of their words reached back to the bar as the heavy metal closed again, just the sound of Rose’s laughter mixing with the scrape of hinges.
And then the light, the madam and that kid were all gone.
The tech watched it all for moment, still in the middle of the room, and then approached the lanky major, frozen in his stool at the bar. He leaned up against the lip of the counter, dropping his bag by his feet. “Taps made, bugs planted,” he said in a low voice, pulling his baseball cap down, just a little. “And who the fuck’s that kid?”
“One of the staff here,” Hannibal muttered, and finished the scotch in one go.
“So he’s...”
“Just let it go,” he ordered, shoving back, and the man, who was probably a sergeant of some rank, fell silent.
Fell into line behind him and left the club.
After his van drove off, Hannibal’s knees gave out and he collapsed in the alley, hands digging up into his hair, thought as far as the moon, nothing but his grief, the grief for what had been so lost in this boy’s life, for that innocence gone, for the confusion, for the love, for love, that he might never now know, never feel, never have, never understand...
Outside this world, sir, I might as well not exist...
Hannibal ground the heel of a palm into his eyes, but even that didn’t stem the tears that swelled up and burst out and didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t stop.
+++++
“You’re sure he said California?” Decker asked, and Hannibal nodded into his take-out coffee in a little room outside the installation morgue. It was almost never used, this place, and the room they were in was nothing but abandoned furniture and dusty corners. They’d pulled a couple of chairs into place, enough to sit while they waited.
0930 had been the specified time. It was 0943 right now
The family was here, in Korea. Anna Whiting’s family. In there, right now.
They were waiting for that family to finish up.
And they had nothing to tell them.
“Did he mention what city?”
The major hadn’t slept at all last night. He kept seeing that boy, disappearing into the back hall, and his mind kept adding all sorts of details. Ugly things, bloody things, things that wouldn’t let him sleep.
“No.”
“That’s a shame.” The hawk-faced captain squinted down at his own steaming thermos cup. They were speaking in low tones, hunched in on the couches. “It could help us track down the missing persons reports faster. Or if these girls were reported to child protective services as runaways...”
“It’s going to take ages,” Hannibal protested, and Decker kind of shrugged. “What about the madam?”
“Major Smith,” Decker said, “do I need to remind you that this is not your investigation, it’s mine, and you aren’t...”
“It’s my investigation, captain,” Hannibal growled. “It’s my responsibility, it’s on my head, so don’t even think about cutting me out.”
The counter-intel guy scraped his full set of nails across a discarded desk, staring at nothing, one deep, exasperated breath escaping him while he obviously considered something. Something playing on the edge of his tongue. “Look, Hannibal, it’s not that I don’t respect you. You’ve got a rep, and I’ve looked up some of your missions...”
“You have clearance for that, captain?”
“Better than yours,” he snapped, and had to drop his voice again. “But, like I said, you’ve got a rep. People see things, rumors go around...”
Hannibal felt his gut clench up tight, but he laughed like it was nothing and blew a thread of steam off the top of his coffee. “What are you trying to imply, Derick?”
Decker smiled at him, bland and predatory, and the major reminded himself that this was probably not the best man to fuck around with. Considered the field, some of the things he’d probably done, just as dangerous as Hannibal’s own missions, more so, in some cases, going in armed with lies and promises and nothing resembling a firearm. That he was probably very, very good at exploiting the truth. “I’m just saying that people talk, even people you think you can trust. And what you think is private, isn’t.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Hannibal said.
Decker nodded and stirred another sugar packet into his coffee reflectively. “Do you remember, major, the way it was before Clinton put that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell bullshit in place? How easy it was to just... throw people out?” The captain brought his cup to his lips, his words puffing across the stainless steel surface, steaming it up. “And if we're talking pedaphilia, the charges are always so, so much worse...”
But Decker was cut off by the squeak of a door and a large hand descending on his shoulder.
A throat was cleared in plain warning, but the tone was subdued, welcoming, appropriate. “Gentlemen, thank you for coming down here on such short notice.”
Hannibal had never been so happy to see a general in his life.
Even if there was a pale-faced woman with red-rimmed eyes standing behind him, swaying on her feet a little, her husband’s hand on her shoulder. They’d just come from the inner room, he realized. Just identified their daughter’s body.
“Of course,” he said, rising to his feet instantly, Decker following suit a grudging second later.
“Mr and Mrs Whiting...”
“Oh, please, Nicole and Adam,” the husband said in clipped London tones, and held his wife a little tighter. “We’re all in this together, aren’t we?”
The general nodded a little. “Absolutely. This is why I wanted you to meet the men who are trying to find your daughter’s killer. Major Smith and Captain Decker.”
The woman, Nicole, held out her hand to both in turn, limp from weeping. The father’s was a bit firmer, but not much. “It’s very nice to meet you both,” Nicole said. “I’ve been so terribly afraid since Anna disappeared...”
“It’s almost a relief, isn’t it?” Decker asked gently, and she did, to Hannibal’s surprise, nod back. The captain took her hand again, wrapping it up in both of his. “I promise you, ma’am, we are going to figure out who did this to her...”
“What did they do? Captain, Major, what did they do to my little girl?”
Hannibal looked at the general, who nodded again, and he sighed. “There... it appears to be a slave trafficking ring, of some kind...”
The woman was aghast. “Then, then... my baby was...”
“The coroner’s report confirmed there was signs of... physical activity, yes,” Decker offered.
The woman half-fell, her husband catching her and holding her tight in to him. “What’s the recourse against this?” the man, Adam, asked, honed for an answer. “What happens now?”
Hannibal let Decker bullshit through the details, the ins and outs of Korean law, American jurisdiction, everything that Decker was here to do, not really listening to any of. Disgusted with himself again, watching it all, for what he’d done to Face. For what he couldn’t do for Face. For what he’d left the boy to suffer, all alone...
And for making this case about the kid. It couldn’t be about Face, it couldn’t. It was about the parents, parents like these, people missing children, children, and did that make him a pedaphile? Did these... thoughts... he was having about Face make him, mean that he was...
“Major Smith?” Decker said, cutting through the haze with that little edge of sarcasm that never seemed to go away. “Do you have anything to add?”
“We’re doing everything we can to ensure this doesn’t happen to anyone else’s child,” Hannibal said gently, and the woman reached out for him again.
“Are they are... all children?” she asked.
Hannibal could feel Decker’s eyes on him as he answered, “yes ma’am, from what we’ve seen so far.”
And he’d never longed for the floor to open up and swallow him down, more than in that moment, right there.
+++++
“Hows it going?” Hannibal asked, and the wiretap guy nearly dropped dinner, a big bowl smelling of street food, in his lap.
It was the apartment building across the street from the Xanadu, a tiny place, the surveillance post for the duration. Small, dark, equipment fucking everywhere, empty Mountain Dew cans scattered about, and Hannibal owed a lieutenant a case of Johnny Walker Blue in exchange for the room number. Still, he had a studious, bland smile on his face and he knew the tech wasn’t going to give him any shit as he plopped down into a chair next to the perplexed man.
Do I need to repeat the question, sergeant?”
The man blanched and slid his headphones off his ears, hitting a button on his desk. The three monitor display he was using went dark. “No sir, not at all. What did you want to know?”
Hannibal reached across him and turned the screens back on. Surveillance video, mostly, pulled up on each, set to different time codes. “Finding anything?”
“It’s hard to tell right now, Major Smith, the...”
“Don’t try to shine me on, sergeant. I know you’ve sent the photos to both the British and American embassies, I know the Justice Department’s got you some material back, and I fucking know you were the one who said something to Decker. So talk to me.”
The sergeant shook his head. “Where’s the captain?”
“Working the goddamn diplomats since the family left town yesterday, now tell me what you’ve found.”
Hannibal was fully aware he wasn’t in this man’s chain of command. That they didn’t have anything near the same MOS, that he was in no position to give him orders, major or not, and that he’d basically broken into the building to talk to him.
And it was a testament to the sergeant’s survival instinct that he laid it all out without a second’s more hesitation.
It wasn’t pretty.
Brian Park, formerly of Vancouver, Seattle and Los Angeles, confirmed this morning. The man had no criminal record but was under investigation by the FBI for child pornography and prostitution in California and Nevada. Made frequent business trips to Asia, never married, net worth over ten million, connections with organized crime in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul. No further information available.
“What about the woman?”
“Rose McKenny? It appears to be an alias. FBI and INTERPOL are both running the pictures we sent them.”
“The kids?”
“Three of them, reported missing from the greater Los Angeles foster care system. The rest...”
“Still waiting on IDs?” Hannibal asked, and the sergeant swallowed, nodded. “So,” and he leaned forward for this part, “what else?”
“Hannibal, I don’t think...”
“Don’t think,” he ordered. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
The sergeant scratched the back of his neck, eyes rolling off the glow of the television screens, silent for long moments. And then... “look, you didn’t hear this from me. Captain Decker would want to check it out himself...”
Oh, fuck that. “Check out what?”
“The camera in McKenny’s office caught a conversation, I just finished watching it...” and he brandished his notes. “I was going to put it in my status report.”
“I’m here.” Hannibal nodded. “Show me.”
The sergeant hesitated. “I don’t think you want to see this.”
And what was that about? From that place? “Show me, sergeant,” Hannibal growled, low and with just enough threat in his voice to get the sergeant’s hand over the trackball, rewinding the tape to a time index.
“You sure, sir?”
“Play the goddamn thing.”
The center screen crackled back into life, and the sergeant pushed his chair back a little, grabbing a second pair of headphones and hooking them up with practiced ease. Hannibal took them, and scooted his own chair forward, legs screeching unnaturally loud on the laminate.
He slipped them on.
It was a top view of Rose’s office, the camera obviously in the corner, looking down, a good view of her desk. She was rising to shake that man’s hand, the man Hannibal had seen a few days ago,
Hannibal paused the image. “You get a good photo of this guy?”
The tech handed him the still. Grainy but features clear. “Sent it to the embassy today. Should be good for an ID. Err, should I...” His hand hovered over the button.
“Carry on, sergeant,” Hannibal said, and patted himself down. Had he forgotten a cigar? Shit, he had, hadn’t he...
“... pleasure to be doing business with you, sir,” Rose was saying, shaking that hand warmly, and the man nodded back, curt and slight. Businessman, Hannibal thought, or diplomat, and he leaned forward more, turning up the volume.
“And I with you, ma’am.” The man’s head turned, clearly looking at something, and Hannibal saw his boy, crumpled up a little by the side of the desk, collar on, splatter clear on his chest. “He’s a nice one.”
“Beautiful, isn’t he?”
“You’ve got no idea how much I’m going to enjoy him,” and the man knelt down. Hannibal felt himself tensing as a hand ran around the kid’s shoulders, heavy and possessive. “You say he’s not fully trained yet?”
“I’m rough on the lad, to be sure, but he needs a firmer hand than a woman can provide. He needs to be shown his place, don’t you, darling?” Rose asked, yanking his head up.
Those eyes closed, so as not to look at her, Hannibal realized. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Wants to know he’s owned. Longs for it so,” she continued, running a hand down the kid’s chest. Her nails dug in a little, and the major could see Face trying to bite back the whimper of pain. “I’m really far too easy on him.”
“That’s okay,” the man replied, and stood. “It’s always better to take those last few steps yourself. Just to make sure everything’s the way you want it.”
“I’ve heard you’re a man of experience with this sort of thing,” she said. “If you want a newer one, a bit fresher, I do have something in the warehouse I’m sure I could...”
“No, sixteen is quite young enough,” the man said, and Hannibal felt his blood run ice cold in his veins. Face was only sixteen? Motherfucker, did that... “And I like this one. He’s special.”
“He is, isn’t he...”
And the tech stopped the tape, uncomfortable. “That’s what I’m talking about, Hannibal. The... warehouse. Whatever that is.”
“Turn-over for new blood in her club and probably somewhere in Seoul we should look into it,” Hannibal breathed in one go, and touched the still image of Face, frozen, frightened, alone. “What else happens?”
“Major...I...I don’t really want to watch this again, if that’s perfectly alri...”
“Fucking play it,” Hannibal said, barely able to get the words out. There was a pit forming in his stomach, and he knew, he just fucking knew, he was going to regret this. But he had to know what that bitch was doing to his boy...
And... his boy? When had he started thinking about Face as...
The video started up again. “Now, if you don’t mind, ma’am, I have an event tonight. Is he going to be ready in...”
“Oh yes, absolutely, delivery upon the requested date,” Rose beamed, and bowed, just a little.
The man nodded back again, and looked down at Face. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your new master?”
Face’s head stayed bowed, the words coming as haltingly and awkwardly as they might in a school play. If high schools ever put on plays like this. “What does the master wish his slave to do?”
“Kiss his feet,” the man said coolly.
There was only the slightest trace of hesitation, so faint as to be barely recognizable on the tape, before Face knelt forward, pulling off a proper kow-tow, spine curving, lips touching leather between his outstretched hands.
“Sloppy. We’ll work on that,” the man said after a moment, curt, and strode out.
Face stayed on the floor, clearly struggling to stay still, and Hannibal hoped like hell it was anger. And then...
“Get up and lock the door, darling,” Rose said gently, and the kid rose onto bare feet, padding over and snicking the deadbolt tight. He came right back over to the Irishwoman, stopped, head still down until those thin fingers stroked it up.
“What does my lad think of his owner? Such lovely fear for him, you played...”
“I’d...”
Rose clucked softly. “No more first person, darling. That’s a privilege I’ve allowed you, remember?”
Those shoulders twitched. “F...this slave would rather stay with madam.”
“You can’t, baby,” she cooed, massaging his scalp now. “I’ve raised you, made you a good boy, and now it’s time for you to find a more permanent home.”
“This slave wants to stay with...”
“Oh, always my lad, aren’t you? So adorable, you,” she said with a soft little sigh, and pushed him to his knees, swinging her chair around and sitting down, legs spread and drawing her short velvet skirt up her knees, up her thighs, garters showing at the top of smooth hose. “You’ll always be special to me, Face, just like all those years ago...”
“And this is the part I am not fucking watching again,” the sergeant said vehemently and stopped the tape. "What the fuck is wrong with people?
Hannibal didn't answer. He couldn't possibly. Everything in his body was locked up, instincts all screaming at him to march down there right the fuck now and rip her throat out with his bare hands, save his boy, put an end to all of this...
And then the tech guy was leaning way forward. “You okay, sir?”
Hannibal realized he was still where he was at the beginning of the film, bent forward, fingers on the screen, and he was breathing fast and hard. It took him a moment to compose him, to slide back into the chair, to silence the singular, overwhelming, murderous desire. “Fine,” he said, knowing the sergeant didn’t believe him. He fisted his hands up, elbows on the flimsy table, bowed by the weight of the equipment on it, not looking at anything as his eyes mercifully refused to focus. “I’m absolutely fine.”
“Umm, I probably shouldn't say anything, but... I saw you two, on the security system as I was finishing up. Heard it all, too.”
Hannibal's head shot up of its own accord. "What? Did you tell..."
"I didn't tell Captain Decker a damn thing, and that's a promise, sir." The sergeant was fiddling with something under the table, and when he surfaced again, he was holding out a tape, something inscrutable in his eyes. “Look, major, I don’t know what’s going on with Captain Decker. He’s always a bit of a... and I know he’s going to do what he’s required to do, perfectly, which means he’ll make sure you spend time in Leavenworth for...”
“Sergeant...” Hannibal said, the floor falling away from him now.
“But you? You’re going to do whatever you have to do, and the right people will go to jail,” and he handed Hannibal the tape, and his single page of notes. “It’s your investigation anyway, right?”
He was smiling, thin and wane and brave, but Hannibal couldn’t even offer the ghost of anything in return. The image of Face, bowing flat down, the way the kid was hiding the tremble, the fear... no, he couldn’t allow it. Wouldn’t.
And then, like gift from god, pulling him back from the very edge of irreconcilable remorse, the Plan appeared. A good Plan. An insane Plan. A Plan that was fucking going to work, had to, or Face would be lost... and that he wouldn’t allow, either. Not while there was a shred of his boy left to be saved. He’d keep his word, he could keep his word.
He knew the way now, and for the first time since laying eyes on Face, Hannibal felt clear about...
“Sir?”
“Right,” was all he was able to get out, and shook himself. “So, did they mention when the... delivery date is?”
“Four days from now. Nothing about a warehouse, though...”
“Don’t worry about the fucking warehouse,” Hannibal grunted. “I’ve got a plan...”
+++++
Seoul, hell, most of East Asia, Hannibal thought absently as a liveried waiter poured tea from a silver pot, was the kind of place where you could actually bring a boy into a nice hotel, collared and leashed like a dog, and attract absolutely zero attention at all.
Not that Face was visibly wearing it. But judging from the little tug Rose gave a slender lead in her hand, the kid’s resulting jerk, the proximity of their bodies... Hannibal dropped a sugar cube in his cup with the provided tongs and tried not to think about what kind of device she had rigged up under the young man’s smooth polo.
“Ms McKenny, you look lovely today,” he said after a too-long moment, rising to his feet and holding out his hand. Her nails were deep purple today, her silk blouse impeccable. And his eyes flicked over to Face, who shyly brushed some of that gloriously overlong hair off his forehead. “What is...”
“Oh, the lad needs to learn how to be out in public and still behave himself. It may be necessary for him, from time to time,” she answered, and the waiter was back to pull out her chair for her.
Hannibal took a mouthful of perfect-temperature Oolong in the crowded sprawl of the downtown hotel tearoom, selected a small pastry off the gleaming tray in the center of the table, hoped like hell his shock wasn’t showing on his face. “I was under the impression we’d be alone for this little meeting,” he told her, covering with a note of arrogant displeasure. “It’s one of the reasons why I suggested this place.”
“And not because you wanted to take your lovely business associate out for tea?” she replied back, voice like honey, and motioned for Face, still standing, to sit. She laid a painted hand on his, and Hannibal didn’t miss the way she wrapped the little lead around the chair’s arm.
“I did want to discuss business but...”
“Oh,” she said happily, and snapped open her little pocketbook, handing a white envelop to Face. He held it in his own lap for a moment, fingers curling, eyes unfocused, before passing it under the table.
No smile yet today.
The major wondered if those were the first signs of the fight going out of the kid, and would have given both his kidneys, right then, to be able to take one of those hands in his own, offering him the tiniest sliver of faith. “I almost forgot the matter of last week’s introductions at the O-Club. The girls were very successful. We’ve seen a few more of your colonels around since then. I believe the offer was fifteen percent?”
Hannibal made a note to have that sergeant review the tapes for military haircuts again, and forced a smile. “Im glad that little bit worked out.”
“Wonderfully. And we must talk strategy. It makes the...acquisitions process so much easier,” she said, and the waiter came back around, forcing them all into silence.
It gave Hannibal a moment to reconsider his plan. With Face here... why the fuck had she brought Face? There was no sense in it. And, if the kid heard this, well, he seemed so close to the edge anyway, holding on to his pride, his autonomy, for some reason that he probably didn’t even remember anymore. Out of habit, perhaps, or spite. But neither was going to get him through until whenever Hannibal could wrap up this investigation, and certainly wouldn’t last if the buyer finally got his hands on the kid. Hannibal had to suppress a shudder at the thought - he knew how effective brainwashing could be, seen it in a dozen different places, and none, none as razor sharp as this...
“So, John,” the madam said, Face handing her the cream automatically, “what was it you wanted to talk with me about?”
“Yes, that,” and Hannibal cast one quick glance at the kid, figuring it couldn’t hurt, with what he was about to say, and his heart nearly failed when he watched the little answering smile spread. Shit, the kid did trust him, after all, and here he was, about to ask... but there was no help for it, he told himself, other kids to save besides this one, other considerations...
Even if Face's eyes were bright, so bright, looking at him...
I'm so sorry, kid, and Hannibal leaned forward, just a bit, just enough, two fingers on the tablecloth just beyond his own cup.
“I wanted to know if I could make a purchase.”
“John,” and that smile was hungry, on her face right then, so much so the major could hardly look at it, “I am not...”
“If you’re willing to part with your favorite butt boy,” he said, pulling a cigar, lighter from his suit’s inner breast pocket, both for emphasis an a sudden desperate need for nicotein, hoping like hell it was all indifferent enough, “then I’m sure you’ve got a rousing little market in, oh, individual services?”
Face’s jaw locked up, shifting a bit under the skin of his cheek, and Rose laughed merrily, patting the boy’s shoulder. “They grow up so fast, John, you understand.”
“Completely,” he said, and lit up.
“Are you wanting a female? Because that’s all I have in stock at the moment...”
“At the Xanadu. And no, I want a male,” he replied easily.
Face barely stopped himself from perking up.
Rose was not so subtle. She stiffened, just a bit. “This one, I’m afraid, is spoken for already.”
Hannibal shrugged, and puffed out lazily. “Who said I wanted that one?”
The kid made a strangled little sound, both of the adults at the table turning to look at him, and he coughed lamely, giving Hannibal a desperate little glance. One which could have no response right now.
“He’s the only one I...”
“Have at the Xanadu,” Hannibal repeated, and sipped at his tea as serenely as possible. He couldn’t taste it. “But that’s really just the showroom, isn’t it? Where do you keep the rest of your stock?”
Rose thought for a moment, and then rubbed Face’s hand where it lay on the arn of the chair, clenching down so hard his knuckles were white. “Why, darling boy, whatever’s the problem?”
The kid just shook his head, mouth opening a little, in a gasp or words, words he shouldn’t say, and Hannibal tapped the cigar into the tray, cutting it all off before Face’s day got any worse.
Mindgames, he remembered Face saying, and took a deep breath through the safety of the cigar. “Ms McKenny, what’s your answer?”
“I’d love to set something up for you,” she said cautiously.
“I’d like that.”
And finally, she nodded. “Let me make a phone call,” she said, and her hand left Face’s arm, the kid shuddering a little as it came off. “Be a good boy, darling,” she murmured, and off she went.
Hannibal waited exactly five seconds before turning to look at the boy.
His boy.
And it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Pure defeat.
Body sagging, he kid had dropped his beautiful face down into his free hand, shoulders shaking a little, and the light was fading from those brilliant eyes, put out like the sun in a snowstorm, darkness clouding in. The kid was so damn good at hiding, by this point, that it was almost possible to not see the flare of excitement, feel the burst of joy, die in that descending night. Hannibal felt a wave of grief wash over him. There was no way, no way at all to apologize or explain...
Christ in heaven, why the fuck was the kid here? Had the madam done this on purpose? Against him or against the kid? Why? What was she thinking? What did she suspect? What did she know?
Mindgames.
Motherfucker.
He still had to try. No matter how that deck might have been stacked against him.
“Face?” he asked softly, leaning over as far as he possibly dared, “kid, please, look at me...”
“You... you don’t... you don’t want...fuck... I’m such a fucking idiot...”
“I told you, I can’t afford you.” And the second it left his mouth, Hannibal could have killed himself for saying it. Fuck, of all the ways to start out with this is my plan to save your life...
That darkness got thicker in the kid. “...right.”
Hannibal dared, and pulled that hand away from that face, cupping it into his own. “Face, that’s not what I...”
And then the kid was jerking away and Rose was back, laying her cell phone primly down by her napkin and smiling at them both, reaching out for Face’s hand where it lay, bound to the chair arm. “Wonderful,” she said brightly, and selected something tiny and frosted off the tray between them. “We can get you in, day after tomorrow.”
“That’d be perfect,” Hannibal replied, and wanted to do nothing more right now than throw up.
Face, from the looks of him, felt the same goddamn way.
What is wrong with people, he heard the sergeant ask again.
But as he sat there and discussed ethnicity, age and expected period of use with Rose, Face listening on, shoulders , sipping tea in the airy room, as if they were in the goddamn habadashery business, Hannibal knew that was the wrong question to b asking.
No, the real question was what was wrong with him?
Continue to Part Three
