Many thanks to Mriceman1964 for his endless help and enthusiasm, his sense of reality, and his understanding of how my thought-processes work!
Many thanks also to Firefly for lighting-up the dark recesses, and for her unfailing interest and ability to step into critic mode and tell me when she thought I was just plain wrong! Thank you both!
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Excerpt from the private diary of Nguye't Morrison
Friday, 6th May, 2011
On Thursday evening, Jamie and I spoke to this bloke in Toronto that Limbu, his contact in Singapore, had given him, a Sergeant Louis D'HΓ©rault, a man who's spent the last 15 years tracking down illegally adopted children funnelled into Canada from Asia, the former Russian hegemony, and South America. This man seemed to think we had a good chance of tracking Hu'e as there were indications that one of the crooked adoption agencies he'd made it his business to close down may have been the one that handled the sale of the child. My blood was boiling by the end of the conversation.
The Asian policemen we'd talked to, like prod-noses everywhere, had been reluctant to use that word 'sale'; 'traffic' was the closest they'd allowed themselves. This man was under no illusions as to the transaction that took place, and employed no euphemisms; as far as he was concerned, it was a human being, a child, who'd been put up for sale, like a can of beans or a sack of onions. We talked for almost an hour, and afterwards, Jamie and I had decided; we needed to go to Toronto, there was a good chance we could pick up the trail there and follow it through to the end.
This was always supposing we were actually following Hu'e's trail; I tried not to think of the other possible fates she might have endured; I could only manage to fit my head around the possibility that she'd been adopted and brought up by a good family. To think otherwise would lead me to something I can't even begin to consider; the possibility of her death years before, or life as a sex-slave or prostitute in some hell-hole. Either one of those possibilities can't be allowed into my head; to entertain them is to despair, and I still have hope, as does Jamie, darling, brave, caring Polar Bear that he is. As long as I believe that Hu'e had and is having a good life, I can keep on searching for her; to even consider any other possibility is to lose heart and quit, and I won't do that, not while hope remains.
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Jamie
Yesterday evening, Nia and I had a long and interesting chat with this French-Canadian guy, a real, live Mountie, working with the Toronto Organised Crime Squad, together with the Special Victims Unit of the Sex Crimes Unit, of all things, digging into babies-for-cash adoption rackets, both recent and historical, and he mentioned that he may have possibly located Hu'e and the family who adopted her. He mentioned the information Limbu had sent him, and, in conjunction with the collated data from the stuff I'd brought back with me from Da Nang, hinted he was almost positive he had the right child, right age and gender, right timeframe, and was waiting for confirmation of some things from the US State Department.
He also mentioned that had been receiving some encouraging feedback from various overseas and foreign adoption advisory bodies in the United States, as well as some unofficial but very helpful intelligence from the FBI. He finished by stating that we could do worse than look over the information and files he had, and invited us over to do just that. That was all I was waiting for, so this morning Nia trotted over to the Canadian High Commission in Grosvenor Square, a short walk from Bond Street tube station, to get our visa status confirmed. Luckily, UK citizens don't need visa's, so I was in the throes of sorting out flights for us to go to Toronto.
Nia was excited at travelling to Canada, and keyed-up at the prospect of possibly tracking down her sister, our sister, in the next few days. I didn't want to burst her bubble by telling her how unlikely and unrealistic her expectations were; she needed this, she needed to feel as if she was making headway against 28 years of silence and conspiracy in the disappearance of her older sister.
Last night the reality of what had happened to Hu'e finally seemed to have hit home, kicked-off in part by this Mountie bloke's refusal to use the term 'trafficking' in relation to the baby trade; he preferred to be blunt, and told Nia that her sister had been bought and sold, like so many hundreds of thousands of children spirited away from their families, a commodity with a cash value. She spent a good part of last night crying as that truth finally came home to her.