The Cull

by Tony Park

  Hudson took up a position behind her, protectively, she felt. She was between the two men, who said nothing to each other.

  Mario glared at him. Sonja looked over her shoulder to Hudson.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Machado.’

  ‘Brand.’

  The silence hung between the three of them. Sonja put her hands on her hips. ‘For God’s sake, will one of you say something other than a surname?’

  Mario looked to her. ‘Paterson tells me he’s joining the team.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sonja said. ‘You can leave if you want.’

  ‘I’m not running because of you, Brand.’

  ‘No, you like the work too much,’ Hudson replied.

  ‘It’s men’s work.’

  Hudson looked around the bar, to Tema and Sonja. ‘Looks like you’re outnumbered.’

  ‘These women are more manly than you.’

  Sonja held up a hand. ‘Enough. You two are acting like schoolboys. We have important work to do and a new mission to be briefed on. If anyone wants out, now’s the time to leave.’

  The men stared at each other.

  ‘I want a glass of wine,’ Tema said. ‘Anyone else for a drink?’

  ‘Whisky,’ Mario said, not breaking eye contact.

  ‘Double,’ Hudson said.

  ‘Good.’ Sonja beckoned over a waiter. ‘Sit down, both of you, before I tell Tema to taser you.’

  They took seats across the table from each other. Sonja was under no illusion that the two would make up and play nice, but that didn’t concern her. She needed to find out more about what Clyde-Smith was up to. James Paterson walked in, a laptop computer under his arm.

  ‘The other guests are having dinner in the boma this evening, so we have this area to ourselves,’ he said without preamble. ‘Tema, you can fill Ezekial in on the mission later, assuming he’s still with us.’

  ‘All right,’ Tema said.

  Paterson opened the laptop and positioned it at the far end of the dining table so they could all see it. He used a remote to open his presentation. The face of a white male, mid-fifties, came up on the screen.

  ‘This is Nikola Pesev,’ James said. ‘Head of logistics for the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Tanzania.’

  ‘He’s a poacher?’ Tema asked, eyes wide.

  ‘I’ll take questions at the end of the briefing,’ James said. Tema nodded. ‘Peves is a Macedonian, a former officer in the old Yugoslav army, way back in the Cold War days. He was trained by the Russians and retains links to some former Soviet military people who have become successful “entrepreneurs” – read, gangsters.’

  James clicked the remote. An image of a female chimpanzee with a baby in its arms, against a background of emerald-green foliage, flashed up. ‘This is Peves’s current stock in trade: baby chimps. Julianne has just taken over a tented safari camp on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania, on the edge of Mahale National Park. Mahale, along with the better known Gombe Stream, is one of Tanzania’s havens for chimpanzees. Poaching is getting out of hand again. There’s a market for baby chimps in the United Arab Emirates – it’s trendy for wealthy Emiratis to have their own private zoos – and in Russia, where they’re still prized as pets.’

  Sonja shook her head. She noticed that Hudson had stopped glaring at Mario and was instead focusing on Paterson.

  ‘As a logistician, Nikola organises road and air transport in and out of Tanzania to support a number of refugee camps east of Kigoma. The camps are holding people from Burundi who escaped the recent violence there when old feuds between the Hutus and Tutsis – the same conflict that sparked the Rwandan genocide in 1994 – flared up in Burundi. The UN workers like to stay at Kigoma on the shores of Lake Tanganyika as it’s a lot nicer than living up in the hills with the displaced masses. Peves recently invested in a lodge on the shores of Lake Tanganyika further south of Kigoma, near Kipili. Peves’s place, Paradise Bay Lodge, is much closer to Mahale National Park and there’s an airstrip nearby. Much of his business is UN people on R&R, and we believe that when he charters aircraft to bring people from Kigoma to Kipili he backloads baby chimps stolen from Mahale to Kigoma, then arranges for them to be flown out of Africa on UN cargo aircraft. Questions now.’

  ‘Where does your intel come from?’ Sonja asked.

  ‘Like any successful crime figure, Peves has made enemies. One of them contacted a journalist and provided some pretty damning evidence on Peves and his activities.’

  ‘Who’s the journalist?’ Hudson asked.

  James looked up. ‘Ah, Rosie. Welcome. Right on cue.’

  Sonja turned and saw the red-haired South African walk in. She seethed, seeing the woman’s smug smile.

  ‘Hello, we meet again,’ Rosie said, directing her comment to Sonja.

  ‘So what do you have to say for yourself?’ Sonja asked.

  Rosie wasn’t backing down this time. ‘If you hadn’t sent me away so rudely before, I could have told you earlier.’

  ‘Ladies,’ Paterson said. ‘Sonja, please let Rosie speak.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Rosie nodded to James, who advanced his slide presentation. A scan of a story from the South African Sunday Times came up, a full-page feature headed, Lid lifted on UN child sex trafficking.

  ‘This is a story I did when I was on assignment in Uganda a year ago. A female UN worker I met in a bar in Kampala told me she was resigning because she’d reported a colleague, a medic, whom she’d seen touching a child inappropriately in a clinic in Entebbe. She claimed that as well as sexual abuse of minors there were rumours that orphaned children were being smuggled out of the country. The woman’s complaint against her co-worker had been buried in a mass of bureaucracy and internal investigations, but when my story broke the UN was forced to act decisively. The medic was charged, deported, and ended up doing time in prison in the US. I couldn’t conclusively prove anything about UN transport being used to fly or drive kids illegally out of the country, but the man responsible for logistics there was –’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Sonja interrupted, ‘Nikola Pesev.’

  Rosie nodded. ‘My source – I won’t name her – stayed with the UN after my story forced them to clean up their act, but she kept tabs on Peves. She believed he was dirty, and still is, though now she’s telling me he’s using company transport to ship out baby chimps rather than humans.’

  Sonja directed her question to James. ‘You say Peves worked with the Russians when he was in the military and still has ties to them.’

  ‘Yes, which brings me to my next slide.’ He advanced the presentation. There was a head shot of Peves in the middle of the screen with arrows radiating out to a number of Russian-sounding names. ‘These are companies for which Nikola Pesev is listed as a director.’

  ‘There’s a lot of them,’ Hudson said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Paterson.

  ‘I’ve investigated some of these businesses,’ Rosie said. ‘Some seem legit, others not so, but you could say that about every new business in Russia.’

  ‘He speaks Russian?’ Sonja asked.

  Paterson nodded. ‘Fluently.’

  Sonja rubbed her chin. ‘Where else has he worked in Africa?’

  ‘The question is, where hasn’t he worked,’ said Paterson. He gave a half-smile.

  ‘Zambia?’ said Sonja.

  ‘Tick. Right across the border from Zimbabwe, in the Lower Zambezi Valley, opposite Mana Pools National Park.’

  ‘One of the poachers we came across in Zimbabwe, in Mana Pools, spoke of the local kingpin there, Obert Mvuu, dealing with a Russian-speaking man named Nicholas,’ Sonja said.

  ‘When I interviewed Julianne,’ Rosie said, ‘she mentioned the report of a Russian-speaking white man buying ivory in Zambia. I didn’t let on to her at the time, but the first thing I thought wa
s that the man could be Peves. It’s the corroboration I was looking for. Nikola could very easily be misconstrued as Nicholas, and he speaks Russian.’

  ‘Mozambique?’ Sonja asked next.

  ‘Yes,’ said James, ‘he worked in Massingir, hometown of many of the rhino poaching gangs that enter South Africa. Peves is currently based in Tanzania, at his place on the lake, but he’s more of a consultant than a fulltime employee of the UN these days. He has a remit to travel the continent south of the Sahara to advise and audit the UN’s logistics operations.’

  Rosie cleared her throat. ‘I asked my source if she could trace Peves’s recent movements and she was able to do so, via a friend of hers who worked in the travel booking part of the organisation.’

  Paterson took centre stage again. ‘Rosie kindly handed the travel documentation over to me. I crosschecked it with the reports we have from my own sources in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, and here in Tanzania. There are several reports, most unsubstantiated, of a Russian-speaking white man having meetings with poaching kingpins and middlemen at the same times and in the same general areas as Peves’s travels through Africa on UN business. It would be easy for Peves to masquerade as a Russian businessman to disguise his real nationality and job.’

  He clicked the remote and Sonja leaned closer to the screen. The dates of Peves’s travels matched up with those of the armed contacts they had been in. It would have been easy for Peves to get to the Zimbabwe–Zambia border from his business meeting in Lusaka, and in Mozambique he had even been visiting Massingir the day before she and the others had been scrambled to intercept King Jim and Antonio Cuna at the golf course near Hazyview. ‘Nikola Pesev is one of the Scorpions,’ she said.

  Paterson shook his head this time. ‘Yes, but there’s more, I now believe Nikola Pesev is the Scorpion, the head man.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  He held up his hands. ‘I’m not, but Rosie’s information is pointing that way.’

  Sonja regarded him. She wondered if he was being overly cautious now that she was back, and whether his orders to Mario and the team – if she were not there – would have been simpler, more direct. ‘So our mission is to find out for sure, one way or the other?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Paterson said. ‘We will mount an intensive undercover surveillance operation on Peves. He’s at his new lodge on the shore of Lake Tanganyika at Kipili now, and is planning to stay there for a week. Julianne’s people have made reservations, though not direct, through a travel company. You’ll all be issued fake identities and documentation. I want everyone to make sure they have each other’s phone numbers, even the boys who don’t play nice, to make sure we’re all in communication during the infiltration phase.’

  ‘And if we do find proof Peves is the head of the Scorpions, what then?’ Sonja asked.

  Paterson glanced over at Rosie, the journalist, and then to Sonja. ‘We compile a dossier of evidence for the Tanzanian police and Interpol and let them take it from there.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sonja said.

  Chapter 21

  Hudson and Sonja were ready to leave Kuria Hills early the next morning. Julianne was up before dawn to say goodbye to them as they had breakfast, and Paterson was in the car park as the porters loaded Hudson and Sonja’s meagre luggage into the Land Rover for the road trip to Kipili, on Lake Tanganyika.

  ‘I don’t envy you, being the road party on this mission,’ Paterson said to them as he leaned against the driver’s side door.

  Hudson started the engine. ‘Well, like you said in the briefing, it’s less obvious if we all arrive from different directions.’ Paterson had explained that he’d be flying in while Mario and Tema, masquerading as a couple on their honeymoon, would arrive by boat from a luxury camp in Mahale National Park. Hudson and Sonja were going overland, via some of the worst roads in Tanzania. ‘We’ve got a long, hard drive ahead of us, so we need to get moving.’

  ‘What will you do about Ezekial?’ Sonja asked Paterson. ‘He’s a loose end.’

  Ezekial had disappeared from the camp. No vehicles or firearms were missing; he had simply vanished during the night. For most people, setting off through the Serengeti National Park in the dark, on foot and unarmed, would be akin to committing a lion-assisted suicide, but as a master tracker Ezekial was a consummate bushman, adept at reading the signs of the wild and avoiding dangerous game. He would be able to survive in the bush for weeks.

  ‘I’ll find him,’ Paterson said, then added, ‘I’m worried about the poor lad.’

  Hudson touched the peak of his Texas Longhorns cap. ‘Gotta go. Enjoy your flight.’

  They drove off along the narrow winding access road from the camp towards the main route that led north, to their left, to the Kuria Hills airstrip and the Mara River just beyond, and right, southwards, in the direction they needed to head, past Kichwa Tembo and on to the Fort Ikoma Gate and the road towards the great lakes.

  Against the pink morning sky was a line of black wildebeest silhouettes that stretched away as far as they could see. The animals were heading towards the Mara River. Hudson marvelled at them. They were not, judging by appearances and behaviour, the sharpest critters in God’s realm, but here they were, on their annual pilgrimage, travelling thousands of kilometres and guided by a mix of memory and instinct, in search of food, water and a future for their offspring. They grunted and brayed as they walked, shaggy heads tossing as if in conversation with each other.

  As they reached the junction of the main road, three Toyota Land Cruiser game viewers sped past them, leaving a cloud of red dust hanging in the still, cool morning air.

  ‘They’re in a hurry,’ Sonja said.

  He looked at her. ‘It’ll be a crossing, the migration swimming the Mara River.’

  She smiled. ‘You want to see it, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s quite a spectacle, Sonja. I know it might seem frivolous given what we’re setting out to do, but it’s one of those things I think everyone should see at least once in their life. I’d like to show you.’

  Sonja reached over and put her hand on his. He felt his old heart constrict a little. ‘Thank you for thinking of me.’

  ‘My pleasure, ma’am.’

  She smiled and Hudson turned left, instead of right.

  They drove a few kilometres down the road and came to the Kuria Hills airstrip. A guide driving an empty vehicle approached them and Hudson waved him down. Hudson asked if he knew where the other vehicles had gone, in search of the crossing, and the man gave him directions.

  From the airport Hudson crossed the river via a low-level concrete causeway. He pointed to the left, where the bloated body of a wildebeest, perhaps a drowning victim, was snagged in some rocks.

  After they crossed Hudson took a left on a rough track that meandered through a dry tributary of the river. They were still well inside Tanzania and stayed parallel to the Mara, following the tracks of the vehicles ahead of them, and countless others that had made the same human migration in the years before.

  ‘On a hill, over there,’ Sonja said, pointing.

  Hudson saw the three vehicles they’d been following. They had parked on the crest of the small rise, a hundred metres or so from the river’s edge. ‘They’re waiting up there, watching to see where the animals will cross, so they don’t spook them.’

  Sonja nodded. Hudson wove between trees and bushes and parked not far from the other vehicles. ‘Now we wait.’

  Across the river the wildebeest, sprinkled with a few zebra, were amassing. Their numbers were building up, putting pressure on those closest to the Mara. Much of the riverbank was a sheer drop-off, though there was a well-worn section that was not quite as steep, where previous columns had gone down to the river to drink and cross. Dust rose like a brewing storm cloud above the growing herds.

  Hudson took out his binoculars. ‘There are hundreds of them alr
eady, just on the edge.’ In the distance were four other long lines, single files of scores of animals all being drawn or pushed to the same point.

  ‘One’s going down to the water’s edge,’ Sonja said.

  Hudson shifted his view. Sonja was right. A lone wildebeest – it looked like a bull – had either decided to take the loose dusty track down to the river, or perhaps he’d been pushed over the edge by the crush building behind him. Whatever his motivation he found himself at the forefront. He tossed his head and looked up at where he had just come from.

  ‘Even if he wants to turn back, he probably can’t; the others are all crowding the edge of the bank,’ Sonja said.

  Stuck as he was, the lonely bull made the most of his predicament. He lowered his head, his shaggy beard dipping into the cool, fast-flowing waters of the Mara. He drank. Then he looked up, droplets falling as he tossed his head. Something hardwired into his tiny brain made him take a step, then another. He was in up to his knees.

  ‘My God, the tension is incredible,’ Sonja said.

  Hudson felt it, too. It was palpable, like a building force rolling across the river to where they were. He took Sonja’s hand.

  ‘Is he going to?’

  Hudson held his breath. Then, for whatever reason, that single wildebeest decided it was time to stop drinking and start swimming. His first strokes were clumsy, his hooves perhaps sticking in the mud or sand of the riverbed, but by the time he had covered a couple of metres he had triggered one of the greatest natural phenomena on earth.

  As if a siren had been sounded or switch flicked, the bumbling, disorganised mob focused itself and leapt, literally, into action.

  Behind the leader dozens of wildebeests now began running, staggering, slipping and sliding down the well-worn descent to the river. The ground was loose, bare of grass, and a curtain of dust began to rise as hundreds of hooves churned the sand and soil.

  ‘It looks like they’re on fire,’ Sonja breathed.

  The dust did look like smoke, rising up above them. By the time the first animal was halfway across the river there were fifty more in the water behind him, in files two and three abreast, legs flailing, heads held high out of the churning spume.