Wolf in Tiger's Stripes

by Victoria Gordon

  “Why do I get the impression you’re protesting just a bit too much?” Bevan entered the debate for the first time with a voice soft and calm, but authoritative. His voice remained soft, his tone nonaccusing, but the message was there, and nobody – least of all Derek – could fail to understand what he was getting at.

  Derek merely tried to bluff his way past the direct question. “Just what’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, the reply uttered in a tone of innocent indignation that Derek somehow, to Judith’s ears, didn’t quite carry off. He didn’t even turn to look at Bevan while replying, as if he knew that doing so would give away his lack of assurance.

  And Judith didn’t need to look at either man to know the answer. Derek should have been, on past performance, lauding even this miniscule bit of evidence to the very skies. She knew it, Bevan knew it, Derek knew it. Everybody in the place knew it.

  So why wasn’t he? It could mean nothing but kudos for Derek Innes as leader – coleader! – of the discovery team. But nothing compared to what he had to gain from an even more convincing tiger sighting in an area this important to the conservation movement. Nonetheless, it was out of character. The Derek she knew would be working to spin this acorn into the granddaddy of all oak trees, not playing it down as he was doing, or at least appeared to be doing.

  There’s something going on here that I don’t understand. And it’s something wrong. Very wrong!

  Judith was taking unexpected satisfaction from that thought when she felt the pressure of Bevan’s hip against her own, and she turned and looked up to see his mobile mouth twisted into a wry, quirky half-grin. And heard again in her mind the caution he’d uttered about believing nothing of what she’d seen. And she realized from his expression that he was deliberately manipulating this entire conversation, deliberately trying to maneuver Derek in a particular, specific direction, toward a particular, specific objective. But what?

  “You’re not making much sense, little mate,” drawled Bevan in a voice that didn’t bother to conceal the sneer it implied. “This may not be much, but it’s well and truly the best film evidence that’s emerged in recent years, and we all know it.”

  “We don’t know any such thing,” Derek asserted, rising to confront his audience, doing his best with bluster and all his considerable verbal skills to dampen their enthusiasm for Bevan’s logic. “Just look at what we’ve really got.” He pointed at the now blackened and silent screen. “Images of something that might be a tiger, or might be something else entirely. How could we tell from that? Nobody is going to be satisfied with it, or at least nobody that matters!”

  “Oh, come now,” was the reply from the usually quiet Reg Hudson, flip-flopping yet again in his support for the movement he clearly believed in. “We all know what we saw, Derek. I mean ... really! Are you seriously trying to talk us out of believing our own eyes?”

  “It could have been a stray dog,” Derek insisted. “It was a long way off, the light wasn’t that good so early in the morning, and the fog ... and everybody was excited, stirred up by ... by ...” He floundered badly, searching for words but not finding them, an astonishing lapse for Derek.

  “By Jan being so overwhelmed by everything,” he finally said, and continued speaking, oblivious to the groans of disbelief and – in Judith’s and Jan’s case – anger the accusation provoked.

  Both women looked at one another, then shook their heads, hardly able to credit how Derek seemed so intent on focusing blame anywhere, in any direction, just so it was away from himself. Then Bevan nodded sagely, and Judith was even more surprised. Indeed, she was frankly astonished, because he seemed to be agreeing with Derek.

  “A dog, eh?” Bevan said. “Well, it’s something we ought to bear in mind.”

  He surreptitiously nudged Judith with his elbow just as she drew a startled breath and opened her mouth to interrupt him.

  She looked up, too stunned to say anything as he blandly continued despite the hoots of derision and objection from almost everyone else.

  “Let’s not be too hasty,” he said. “I don’t know what experience you’ve all had with dogs, but I’d be forced to admit I’ve seen one or two in my time that could be mistaken for tigers in the right circumstances.” He paused long enough to swivel his glance round the tent before focusing again on Derek. “In fact, I once saw a fair-dinkum Queensland pig-dog that would have been a dead ringer for a tiger if somebody had taken the trouble to paint a few stripes on him.”

  Bull’s-eye! Judith couldn’t be sure if anybody else noticed, but she saw Derek’s eyes narrow in a flicker, saw the way his jaw muscles tensed up. Bevan’s onto something here, she thought, and wished she knew just what. For some reason Bevan decided not to push any further for the moment, but she could feel the tension in him, too, knew he was all keyed up, ready for something ... but what?

  The tension in the restricted confines of the tent seemed to grow almost visibly, to expand like a cloud of smoke until it touched, wrapped, enveloped all of them, and yet Judith realized it was only really there between Bevan and Derek, and with Bevan setting the pace now, inexplicably, unwilling to force a confrontation, it subsided.

  The comment about the pig-dog, though, brought a contemptuous snort from Ted Norton, who stomped over to glare up at Bevan and say, “I’ve been in the bush since before you were a pup, Bevan Keene, and I’ve never heard such a load of rubbish in my entire life. A dog! My God, man, I can understand him ...” with a sneering nod toward Derek “... thinking we’re all blind idiots. But you?”

  Even for the cantankerous old bushman it was, to Judith’s eye, just a bit over the top. Especially since from her position by Bevan’s side she could see that Ted’s eyes were actually twinkling. He was enjoying this!

  It was enough, however, to spark an outbreak of shouted opposition led by Jan Smythe, who was nearly in tears.

  “I just don’t believe this,” she cried. “Next you’ll be saying it wasn’t even a dog, it was fairies at the bottom of the garden. What are you two trying to establish? That we’re all victims of mass hysteria or mass hallucinations? What about my film, for God’s sake? I admit that cameras can be made to lie, but you all saw me taking that footage. And whatever else, cameras do not suffer from mass hallucinations!”

  “Don’t get all frothy, Jan. I’m just sort of playing devil’s advocate,” Bevan replied, his voice calm now, soft and alluring and even, Judith thought, seductive as he poured on the charm to mollify the angry photographer. “We all know what we all saw, but just how sure are we, I wonder, what it really was? There are feral dogs here in Tasmania, as you well know, and although I’m not saying that’s what you filmed, we have to consider every argument and question we might have to face later on. And more important, where’s the proof? You have to admit the light and distance factors don’t make your film the strongest evidence in the known universe.”

  “Strong enough evidence for me,” was the forceful reply. “You lot think what you want, but I am staying here until I can get more pictures of that animal. And better ones. If I have to stay alone, I’ll do it. I’ll sleep with the possums and live off the land if I have to. I’ll even eat wallaby!”

  That final comment showed her resolve, and Jan capped it by storming out of the tent, her camera bag flinging around her like a battle axe as she shouldered her way past Bevan with a hurt and angry glare.

  “Well, I reckon we ought to give this a rest and go check the trap line for exposed film,” said Ted, pragmatic to the end. “It has to be done sometime, and the day’s half gone already, so let’s get to it.”

  His statement brought Jan back into the tent at a dead run. Nobody, she said angrily, was going to touch those video packs but her.

  “Still, Ted’s right,” she said. “With all this stupid arguing going on, we’ve forgotten we could have all sorts of better pictures, better evidence, and all we have to do is go and pick it up.”

  “I disagree.” Derek now commanded the floor, and Judith – su
rprised that Bevan didn’t seem disposed to argue with the conservationist leader – fixed her attention on Derek. She watched and listened with avid interest. Derek was up to something. She knew it as sure as she was standing there, but she couldn’t figure out what it could be.

  Without Bevan to carry any opposition, the rest paused in their discussion to listen to Derek’s arguments.

  “There is more to this than any of us might realize,” he said, sliding into his politician’s hat and oily overcoat.

  Judith would have smiled if she weren’t so immediately suspicious. She’d seen Derek in this role before, all too often, and knew that at his best he could convince almost anyone that black was white and that pudgy pink pigs could fly.

  “As Bevan has correctly pointed out, we’ve planned for just about everything but success,” Derek continued. “And in view of what’s happened, I think there are more important things to worry about just now than collecting film that we can always get tomorrow, if it comes to that.”

  “Wait until tomorrow? With a tiger roaming around out there somewhere? Are you out of your tiny mind?” Jan was fairly livid! She barged to the front of the group and glared at Derek, clearly having lost all patience with him, along with whatever respect she’d granted him earlier in the trip.

  There’s more to this girl than meets the eye, Judith thought, and glanced up to see Bevan calmly watching the exchange, a curious, speculative expression on his face. He seemed immediately aware of Judith’s change in attention, however, and looked down to meet her eyes. He raised one dark eyebrow in the direction of the two protagonists, then grinned mischievously.

  The other members of the green contingent had leapt into the fray, now, both of them clearly taking Jan’s side of the argument. How could Derek possibly justify doing anything but getting out there now, immediately if not sooner, to see if there was other film of the animal? Now, before the weather decided to change, or the sensor batteries failed, or ... or ... ?

  Judith listened in frank disbelief as Derek launched into full political mode, turning each person’s argument inside out, upside down and backwards, until he had the issue and the people totally confused.

  Some of the people.

  Beside her, Bevan was silent, listening intently. But he seemed just as intent on watching her reaction to the performance. And across the tent, sprawled on a camp stool with a coffee cup balanced on one knee, old Ted Norton was equally entranced but clearly not convinced by anything he heard. Roberta had retreated to her role as caterer, taking no part in the arguments. She was busy buttering scones and making sandwiches, apparently ignoring the discussion entirely.

  Until, finally, there was a pause in the debate at the moment Roberta had obviously been waiting for. “I would just like to point out that regardless of what we do,” she said in a calm, unhurried voice, “somebody is going to have to go and bring in fresh provisions if we’re to stay past tomorrow. Unless,” and she fixed Derek with a stare that Judith reckoned would have brought a more sensitive man to his knees, “we’re all prepared to live on wallaby and bush tucker.”

  Now it was Bevan’s turn, and he slid into the conversation so smoothly it was almost as if Roberta had deliberately swept the path for him.

  “And whoever goes, it might be wise for us all to have a serious discussion about what’s to be said, or not said, about today’s discovery. What, and to whom, and under what circumstances.”

  That brought the hubbub to a crashing halt. Bevan had been the first to say anything about what Judith had recognized earlier as one of the major issues in the whole affair. What, indeed, was to be said? And to whom? And – because it was her job to organize whatever was said – by whom?

  29

  Judith looked round the suddenly cramped confines of the tent, realizing that all of a sudden everyone was looking at everyone else, and the looks were looks of suspicion and mistrust. It was like a scene from an old western movie where trusted, trusting partners had just discovered gold and immediately begun speculating how to avoid dividing the spoils.

  The impression was so vivid and struck her as so funny that she erupted in a giggle, only to stifle it just as quickly when she realized it had just made her the recipient of some very black looks. Then she suppressed the urge to explain the giggle, but had to wonder which task was the harder.

  “Speaking only for myself, I think it’s too early to say anything at all,” Bevan continued. “We’ve only been here less than a fortnight. We have all the time in the world to add to our store of evidence, to give Jan a chance for more footage, better footage. There’s no hurry about making any sort of announcement.”

  Whereupon he looked directly at Judith, who could do nothing but stare back at him through a wall of silence so tangible between them that she found it impossible to collect her thoughts, much less marshal a reply.

  “But ... but ... we can’t possibly tell anybody!” Reg Hudson’s was the first voice to break the long, speculative silence. And once started, he began to run off at the mouth as if he’d just learned to speak and was enjoying the experience too much to stop. “Well, we must tell the authorities, of course,” he said. “Eventually. Not now, of course. Because certainly they’ll have to know so the area can have proper protection, and that is of primary importance.”

  And he went on and on and on, repeating himself, contradicting himself, and making less and less sense as he attempted to explain in scientific and philosophical detail why the elusive tiger had to be protected from all sorts of real and/or imaginary threats.

  Containing her need to giggle had become a truly arduous task, and Judith could feel that Bevan, hip against her own, was having similar problems. Reg’s pomposity and unrealistic approach to the entire situation, she thought, must strike Bevan as ridiculously as it did her.

  Bevan’s chuckle rumbled from deep inside him when Reg finally paused for a proper breath, giving Bevan a chance to interrupt.

  “You don’t reckon maybe we owe it to the backers of this expedition to tell them what’s happened?” he asked, his face and voice the very epitome of innocence.

  “Certainly not!”

  Now it was Ron Peters’ turn, and Judith almost laughed as he embarked on a fanatical litany she could have just about predicted word-for-word before he opened his mouth.

  “They’re only out for financial gain,” Ron cried, almost frothing at the mouth in his vehemence. “Vandals, wreckers. They can’t be allowed to exploit a discovery as sensitive and important as this!”

  He was clearly about to embark upon a lecture even more impassioned than Reg’s, but Bevan apparently had begun to lose patience.

  “So we just ignore the fact that they’ve financed this little junket,” he said, “and that we wouldn’t be here without that finance, much less have the opportunity to see what we’ve all just seen? Not to mention a simple little thing like contractual obligation, which we all have. What do you expect us to do? Trundle back to civilization and forget the whole thing?”

  The sneer in his voice didn’t extend to Bevan’s mouth, but Judith was certain he was wound up as tight as a watch spring, and could be close to exploding. What surprised her even more was how placidly Roberta and Ted had endured the fanatical ravings of the young conservationists.

  “You’re one of them,” Ron accused, his eyes wide now with clear and obvious fanatical zeal. “You don’t care about the principles involved here. You’re just out for what you can get!”

  He turned to Derek, miraculously transformed from antagonist to champion of the green cause. “You tell him, Derek. Tell him how we’ve got the numbers, so we can take control of this whole thing. Go on! Explain it to him the way you explained it to all of us the other day.”

  Derek’s face hardened, and he raised a hand in a futile attempt to silence young Ron Peters, but it was too late and he knew it. Bevan had been given his opening.

  “Yes, Innes, do tell us about the numbers,” Bevan snapped, still not raising his voice
, showing no antagonism, no aggression. Just an implacable assurance. “I’m very intrigued by this numbers game,” he continued, and smiled a cold, icy smile.

  “It’s no game,” Ron said. “There’s four of us – five, counting Judith – and only the three of you. We’ll decide things, not you!” And as if to back up his boast, he waved a handful of vehicle keys as if they were some sort of battle trophy.

  Judith felt herself go tense. This had gone beyond a joke. Ron Peters was “right round the twist” over this issue, to use an Australianism, and she wondered how much more bizarre the conversation could get. Then she felt Bevan’s gaze focus on her, and she almost hunched her shoulders, waiting for the verbal blow she knew had to come.

  But when Bevan spoke, it wasn’t to Judith, nor was it to Ron, whom he contemptuously ignored. His glance barely touched Judith before striking at Derek like a sword thrust. And yet it was strangely without antagonism, almost as if he actually accepted the Queenslander’s leadership role but was refusing to allow that to give Derek any right of dominance over the situation.

  “You want to put him back on his chain,” Bevan said to Derek in a soft conversational tone. Only then did he turn and confront Judith directly.

  “So, what about you, Judith Theresa? Are you really committed to this lot of ratbags?”

  He asked the question gently, not as a challenge, and Judith found herself wondering why. She had been expecting a verbal assault, so she was at first unprepared for such calm, didn’t have a nondefensive reply on her tongue.

  I’m committed to you, which scares the hell out of me. Do you want me to admit that? Or deny it? What DO you want, Bevan Keene?

  She found herself mesmerized by his pale eyes, the combination of warmth and challenge she saw there. There was some message for her, some code only the two of them should be able to crack. But in this moment, with everyone’s attention focused upon her, only Bevan knew the code, and she had to think long and hard before replying.