The Auction

SETUP

Elena: Monday. Three weeks of getting ready for this.

Elena: The invitation came by regular mail. Thick, gold-embossed paper, no return address. Just a Geneva address and a date.

Elena: An anonymous source sent it. It's not the first time someone's leaked me something unsigned. But no one had ever sent me anything on paper before.

Elena: The paper has a smell to it. Old wood or archive dust. I can't quite place it.

Elena: My editor told me not to go. Said it was way too dangerous. That if someone was leaking the original info, it was because they wanted it to be found, and that's never a good sign.

Elena: I've spent six years covering human trafficking. I've been in Calais, Lampedusa, the camps in northern Syria, the detention centers in Libya. I know how this works. I know who the victims are and who's responsible.

Elena: But we always cover the bottom side of it. The boats. The camps. The dead bodies. Never the top side.

Elena: I think I can handle this.

I think.

Elena: The invitation says: Maison Aurelian. Private Session CXII. Invitation only.

Elena: I looked up Maison Aurelian. It doesn't exist in any public database. The Geneva address belongs to a consulting firm that's changed its name four times in ten years.

Elena: The company behind that one is in the Cayman Islands. The one behind that is in Delaware. And the one behind that, in Liechtenstein.

Elena: That alone is a news story.

Elena: Tuesday. My cover identity: Ana Vidal, representative for a family of Colombian investors.

Elena: Fake passport courtesy of the paper. Financial documents printed on real letterhead from a company that exists but has no idea I'm using it.

Elena: I'm going alone. No camera. Just this: a pen with a built-in recorder, a watch with a wide-angle lens my editor bought from a sketchy website, and this notebook.

Elena: I'll give the watch back if nothing happens. I'll keep it as evidence if something does.

Elena: If anything goes wrong, no one knows where I am.

That's what my editor said, too.

Elena: Wednesday. Flight to Geneva.

Elena: Lake Geneva from the plane looks like molten silver. The most expensive city in the world, they say. The city of watches, chocolate, diplomatic headquarters. This is where secrets have been kept for centuries.

Elena: Five banks for every resident. I read that somewhere. Not sure if it's true, but I believe it.

Elena: The newspaper paid for the hotel. Four stars, because the kind of people who get these invitations don't stay in hostels.

Elena: I go over my cover story a hundred times. Ana Vidal. Born in Bogotá. Lives in Miami. The family has money in oil and real estate. Looking to diversify. What diversify means in this context, I'd rather not think about until I see it.