When Mircea set foot in Ireland for the first time, it was as an annulled man.
He had been thinking about his new status ever since Milla had requested the dissolution of their three year union. He wasn’t a divorced man; he kept his promise to not lay a finger on his bride to both Milla and Michael. It wasn’t that hard a sacrifice, considering Milla stayed in Germany while he forged a new life for himself in Malta. In this far flung corner of the EU, Mircea went to a business school at night, working as an administrator at a small import-export company with ties to the Church by day. Mircea had qualifications and experience now, although he still found it tiresome to do everything above-board. It would go so much quicker with a bribe here and there, he often thought, although just thinking of Michael’s stern face quickly pushed these inclinations back into a hidden part of his brain. He had to keep reminding himself that he had established himself as a legitimate businessman, working in purchasing in an English-speaking country. Although his old dream of living in London was still a bit too fraught with danger, Mircea could go anywhere now. So he took the chance of a business trip to Ireland, another part of the English-speaking EU, to see what opportunities were open to him there.
Ireland was truly an Emerald Isle – he saw green fields from the trains he took to meet with suppliers. It was a small country, not as tiny as Malta, but certainly not the bustling kind of place he wanted to end up in – if he still wanted to do that. With Milla ending their marriage, Mircea was thinking that the universe was telling him it was time to try something new.
He had to admire Milla: she was living in Nuremberg now, speaking German and had just finished her training as a dental hygienist. She wanted to get married – really married – to a German civil servant named Kai. More accurately, as she had confessed on the phone, she had to get married. She wanted to be married to the father of her baby.
Mircea had to smile to himself – German law was a bizarre thing. When he told Michael of the annulment and Milla’s upcoming wedding, Michael had said that it wasn’t as easy as they thought. If a woman gave birth to a baby within 250 days of her marriage ending, by law her ex-husband was the father of her baby. Thanks to the German legal system, Kai was going to have to adopt his own biological child! Mircea liked the irony of being someone’s legal father – I have something in common with Anton Kirilenko! Milla and Kai, now freshly married, were anxiously trying to undo the bureaucratic knots, but Mircea told them not to worry. He wouldn’t claim their firstborn, like a monstrous Rumpelstilskin, but he would be more than happy to do his share and support the little tyke.
Going through a factory of religious statues in Galway, Mircea paused in front of a weeping Queen of Heaven and reflected on his life. He was at a loose end – it was time to move on, time to move towards making his own life and family somewhere. Have I done enough penance? he asked the figure of Mary silently.
He had sold his apartment in Chisinau to help Milla pay for her training. With Milla married off and his only piece of real estate gone, he was now unattached and unencumbered. Is that not enough? he asked the statue. Mircea realised he didn’t want to be forgiven (which he was, Milla said) – he wanted a new start. He sighed. I’m pushing 30 and I’m still full of envy.
Mircea tried chatting Irish women up, but wasn’t having much success. He was out of practice – he may have been married in name only, but he hadn’t looked for a relationship in those three years. After the life he had led, he felt he had to take a time out, and reflect on how he viewed women. Michael said he had to see them as people, not just commodities to serve his purposes. Michael also tried to encourage Mircea to become a priest as well, but a lifetime of celibacy did not appeal to him. He was willing to take a break to atone for his sins, but he wasn’t going to go overboard. I really should get a girlfriend.
Mircea was no closer to knowing what to do next when his train drew into Dublin that evening. He was flying back to Malta in two days, and had hoped he would have some plan for the immediate future by then. He had looked into getting another job in Malta, but the subsidiary of the international software company he had looked into seemed to be more interested in getting him to go back to Eastern Europe. They had told him he would have more luck in the emerging market there, with his language skills. While it was a potential opportunity, Mircea didn’t really want to go back. He was pretty sure no one from the Syndicate was looking for him, but if they caught wind that he was now trying to establish himself as a reputable man, they might want to wreck his life just out of spite.
Heading towards the exit of Heuston train station, a poster caught Mircea’s eye. “End Sexual Slavery” was printed on red in bold black letters. Mircea stopped in his tracks, feeling as if the poster were speaking directly to him. I’m not involved in that anymore! he wanted to protest. He saw that it was a notice advertising a talk taking place that evening. Some organisation called Modern Day Abolitionists were hosting a presentation on exploitation and people smuggling in Trinity college. It was an open event, and Mircea was surprised to see the Catholic charity Michael had worked for on the list of sponsors.
“Well, Trinity College is on the list of must-see places in Dublin,” Mircea mused aloud. He didn’t relish the thought of going to such an event, having been actively involved in putting girls to work in brothels, but no one would know who he was or what he had done. Michael was always urging him to learn about the evil world he had come from, saying that someone with his inside knowledge as a procurer could help in the fight against exploitation. Mircea did feel he owed a debt; there was no harm in going along and listening tonight.
He came to Trinity College about ten minutes before the event was due to start. Looking around the old beautiful campus, he wondered if he shouldn’t try to get a real degree in business from a famous university, and not just a diploma from a college in Malta. Remembering how much even that simple qualification had cost, Mircea forgot about any hopes of a degree. He hurried along to the venue that was advertised on the poster.
The lecture hall was almost full, and to Mircea’s surprise, it wasn’t just women who were in attendance. There were men and women of all ages and nationalities there – Mircea could have sworn he heard a few snatches of Russian being spoken somewhere behind him. He sat next to some young guy who looked like a student, and was grateful that they dimmed the lights, as the event started with a video on sexual slavery.
On one hand, Mircea was relieved that the people in the video were much worse off than the girls in the clubs in Ukraine, Belarus or Cyprus. The women they showed were drugged-up emaciated husks, their captors brutal fat criminals being hauled away by the police as cheering crowds looked on. Mircea wondered how the public would have reacted if any of the clubs he worked with would have been raided – would he be jeered as the police hauled him away? The statistics they quoted in the film were staggering – Mircea knew there was a lot of money to be made in trafficking people, but these figures dwarfed the gross national product of some countries. His stomach turned when they said how some girls were as young as twelve; he thought about the underage Belarussian girl in Cyprus and hated himself. When the lights came back on, he scrunched down in his seat, wishing the ground would swallow him up. A male speaker from Modern Day Abolitionists spoke about the statistics and realities of exploitation – Mircea felt like every word was stabbing an accusing finger directly at him. When the speaker named a figure of traffickers who had been sentenced across the globe in the course of the year, Mircea knew he should have been part of that number. He had thanked Michael countless times, but he always felt as if he should have done some time in prison for what he had done.
Mircea was fighting tears when the next speaker stepped up to the podium. She was older than Mircea, and was visibly pregnant. Seeing her made Mircea think of Milla, but the lack of an accusatory tone when she spoke put Mircea at ease. Her name was Lisa di Angelo, and she had just been appointed the director of the Evangelical Alliance Against Exploitation. As she patted her expanding belly, she joked that the timing could have been better, but that she was in love with her job. She talked about how she came to be involved in action to stop sexual slavery – it was all due to something she read in her church’s prayer diary, the Red Light Prayer. She wasn’t a person who took up arms, or led attacks – she was a person who prayed. She prayed for the victims of traffickers. She prayed for governments to enact tougher laws against prostitution. She prayed to God for the world, and she prayed for the people who exploited others. She prayed that they would come to understand the harm they were doing, and that their hearts would be changed. She prayed for everyone’s heart to be changed, to be filled with love and to stop harming their fellow man. She said the power of prayer and of God’s love for man were the most powerful weapons of change in our world.
Mircea sat up and was openly crying as Lisa de Angelo spoke. He had felt shame in his journey of redemption; he had cried when Milla told him she forgave him. He had kissed Michael’s hand and thanked him for rescuing him, and gladly donated money to the Church. But hearing for the first time that he was not just some criminal, that he was a person who need to have his heart changed moved him deeply. What Lisa di Angelo said next stuck him like a bolt of lightning.
She paused in her speech and scrunched up her face, thinking. “Actually, I’m forgetting what really convinced me that the Red Light Prayer was working,” she said. “I didn’t believe the power of prayer could really stop sex trafficking, but then I had this pain in my jaw. It was like a pre-arthritis my dentist couldn’t do anything about. Everyone kept asking me about it, and I was looking into getting surgery and dental plates, but then one day, it stopped. People had been praying for me, and suddenly it was gone. I had been saying the Red Light Prayer at every stoplight, and then I heard about all these raids, all these people getting arrested, and all these women being rescued. When my jaw stopped hurting, I could see first-hand that God does do miracles. He does hear prayers. I would have put those arrests down as just a coincidence, but ending my pain was God’s way of saying hey look, I am listening. I am working.”
Mircea touched his own jaw, which had been remoulded and repaired. He remembered the crushing pain that had forced him to his knees. The same pain he gave Milla, and the same pain Lisa di Angelo had had. He could feel the hand of God linking him to these women, linking Mircea to his fellow man. He wiped away his tears, and at the end of the evening, Mircea rushed to the podium. He wanted to join the Modern Day Abolitionists, and tell them he had turned his life around, but most importantly, he wanted to shake Lisa di Angelo’s hand. She was busy talking with other people who had come to the event, but she stopped and the whole room went silent as Mircea took her hand and knelt before her. With tears in his eyes, Mircea took her hand in both of his.
“You prayed for me,” he told her. “You asked God to change my heart, and He did.” Lisa looked down into Mircea’s eyes, and a delighted smile lit up her face. Gently she bent down and kissed his forehead, speaking just one word.