Delusion in Death (In Death #35)(69)

So she moved on, inching her way through photos, descriptions, witness accounts, interviews with recovered kids, family members, interrogations of prisoners.

An ugly time, she thought, and as with any ugly time the innocents suffered and paid more than those who incited the ugliness.

More than lives lost, but lives fractured, or damaged beyond all understanding.

By the time she’d worked her way through half the list of lost children, she had a solid handle on how Red Horse had worked. Their leadership, their individual missions, credos, disciplines, even communications may have been loose, but their methods ran along a common line.

Use females to infiltrate camps, hospitals, child centers, gather intel on routines, security, numbers, then raid. Often, very often, she noted, sacrificing the female or female infiltrators in the process.

Take the kids, kill the rest—or as many as possible. Secure the kids, transport—scatter.

If kids died during the operations, well, there were always more kids.

She took a much needed break and carried her coffee to the door of Roarke’s office.

“I’ve got considerable,” he told her without looking up, “and some fairly interesting. I’m not quite done.”

“No, I just needed to step away from it a minute. It’s harsh.”

Now he stopped, looked at her. He’d seen her stand over the dead countless times, mutilated bodies, and take the blood and gore with her. So this was more.

“Tell me.”

She did, because it helped.

“After they scattered, regrouped, they’d begin indoctrinations on the kids who survived the raid. The younger ones, under four, they’d draw in with reward. Candy, sweets, toys. The older ones, or the stubborn ones, they broke down with pain or deprivation. No food, no light, whippings. A few escaped—very few. Some died, not so few. I’ve been reading old interviews with recovered kids that detail abuse—physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, off-balanced by care and comfort, then back to abuse if the kid didn’t renounce his family or swear allegiance to Red Horse—learn the doctrines, toe the line.”

“They tortured children.”

“All in the name of some vengeful God they’d decided to worship.”

“God has nothing to do with it. Man created torture.”

“Yeah, we’re good with inventing ways to screw each other up. If the kid had family, they threatened to kill his mother or father if he didn’t cooperate. Or they’d say his family was already dead. Or tell him, again and again, his family didn’t care about him, no one was coming for him.”

“Methods used throughout history to demoralize and break POWs, and to turn them when possible into assets.”

“It’s worse than what happened to me.”

She wanted to pace, to steam off the angry energy. Because she needed all the energy she could get, from whatever source, she continued to stand, rocking on her heels.

“These kids lost families who loved them, or were taken from them, then systematically tortured and brainwashed. The older ones, the stronger ones were used as labor—and if a girl was old enough, they forced her to have sex with one of the boys. They had freaking ceremonies, Roarke, and watched. Like a celebration.”

“Sit down, Eve.”

“No, I’m okay. Working through being pissed. It’s harder to work clean pissed off. I’ve got records of over thirty live births through abducted kids. The youngest on record was twelve. Twelve, for God’s sake. They took the babies from the girls. Impregnated them again when possible. I have one who was fifteen when recovered. She’d had three babies. She self-terminated six months after recovery. She’s not the only. Self-termination rates among the abductees is estimated at fifteen percent, before the age of eighteen.”

She took a long breath. “Most of the data on pregnancies and suicides came from Callendar and Teasdale. Nadine didn’t dig it up, because it’s classified. I’m not sure Summerset’s sources knew all of it or told him.”

“No, he’d have told us if he knew.”

“Why isn’t this public knowledge? Why wasn’t it screamed from f**king rooftops?”

Difficult for anyone to think of children being tortured and raped, he thought. But when you’ve been a child who’d been tortured and raped, it hit harder, and it hit closer.

“I think a combination of factors.” He rose to go to her, ran his hands up and down her arms to soothe them both. “The massive confusion during that era, the desperation of governments to cover up some of the worst. And the needs of the victims, their families, to put it all behind them.”

“It’s never behind you. It’s always in front of you.”

“Would you consider going public with what happened to you?”

“It’s my personal business. It’s not …” She breathed again. “Okay, I get that. Or at least some of it. But burying it—not just here, but in Europe, everywhere it happened. That took work and purpose and a hell of a lot of money.”

“The authorities didn’t, or couldn’t, protect the most vulnerable, and from a radical cult, one that wasn’t well funded or organized. Such things are worth the work and money to many.”

“HSO was practically running things, at least in the States back then.”