National Police Cadet Stela Dragomir leaned over the desktop and moved her finger to the next line of the flier inviting good-looking women to apply for jobs outside of Romania.  Her voice rose inquiringly as she read aloud the bold face print, her wide-eyed aquamarine gaze trained on the hiring agent seated on the far side of the desk, a Gypsy-handsome thirty-year-old who called himself Vlad.

FBI Special Agent Dawna Shepherd didn't understand Romanian but she knew her undercover partner was asking Vlad about each of the openings advertised for "Girls--single and very pretty, young and slender, apply in person with valid passport."

Vlad shook his head mournfully and muttered  "nu, nu, nu."  Right now he had no positions for models or dancers or choreographers or gymnasts as the flier promised.  He sighed, then spoke a couple of tentative sentences to Stela.

She blew air across her full lips, a snort of disgust.

Vlad responded soothingly, sounding to Dawna as if he were downplaying his last remarks, a Romanian version of no big deal.

Forehead wrinkled thoughtfully, Stela tapped the flier twice against the desk.  She crumpled the paper decisively, exaggerating the motion so that even a speech- and hearing-impaired person would understand none of those jobs were available.  Of course not.  Vlad was a small-time opportunist who recruited females for the international prostitution circuit.  This first interview was designed to weed out choosy women, those who weren't yet truly  desperate for work.  But he wasn't going to reveal that to a pair of attractively gullible young things.

Stela slipped out of her cheap blazer, moving away from the desk to the center of the room and fluffing her honey-colored curls.  Her expression grim, she held up her index finger toward Dawna in a way that made it clear the women had one last option.  Stela slowly unbuttoned the top two buttons of her white nylon blouse, revealing generous cleavage as she moved her sculpted pelvis in an unhurried bump and grind.  Telling Dawna that the only work available was in a strip bar.  Stela held out her hands, palm up:  Should we take it?

Dawna screwed her face into a worried expression, the way she'd look if she were thinking, oh no, this isn't how I see my new life in the West.  But Dawna didn't say the words aloud.  An essential part of her cover as an impoverished Romanian woman was that she could neither hear nor speak.  Fingering the collar of her high-necked, long-sleeved dress, Dawna shook her head unhappily to signify that yes, she wanted to leave Romania, but she didn't want to take off her clothes in front of men. 

Stela turned to Vlad, her voice plaintive, following the script she and Dawna had worked out earlier.  Surely there was other work for her shy older sister.

Vlad shrugged his shoulders, no other jobs, take-it-or-leave-it.

Stela faced Dawna, her hands moving in what they both hoped would appear to be the sisters' private sign language.  Speaking in glacially slow Romanian, Stela synchronized her hands and lips as if she were sounding out the phrases she was signing.

Dawna frowned and shook her head vigorously, but her motion slowed to a stop as Stela's plea continued and her expression and body language grew more beseeching.  Stela's round, childlike face was at odds with her full-bosomed broad-hipped physique.  The exuberantly healthy girl-woman combination radiated sexuality.  She was perfect bait for this trap which was why the Romanian National Police had plucked her out of basic training and plopped her into it.

Read the complete story in the March 2002 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE