Prologue: The Girl From Belgrade

The first thing they took was her passport. The man jumped down from the cab of the lorry and snapped his fingers at her. Click-click. She already had her passport in her hands, ready for her first encounter with authority, and as she held it out to the man she saw, in the weak glow of the Belgrade streetlights, that he had a small stack of passports. They were not all burgundy red like her Serbian passport. These passports were green and blue and bright red - passports from everywhere. The man slipped her passport under the rubber band that held the passports together and he slipped them into the pocket of his thick winter coat. She had expected to keep her passport. She looked at him and caught a breath. Old scars ran down one side of his face making the torn flesh looked as though it had once melted. Then the man clicked his fingers a second time. Click-click.