Parker was hypnotized. He had seen knifings in movies but had never realized how extraordinary the reality would be. Its speed was astonishing. One moment, a human. The next, the human had vanished. “Beautiful,” he whispered. It was beauty in the Greek sense, something mysterious, something divine.
Somchai wiped his hands on the grass, stood up, unzipped his fly, and urinated. Parker walked forward as if in a trance, unzipped, and began to piss too, but as his water started to flow he suddenly laughed, and he hosed back and forth, up and down, squirting everywhere—in a nostril, into the ear, into her mouth, shouting with laughter. Somchai turned away from him.
An electric whip lashed the sky. The air beat time for a few seconds before the thunderclap; a drop of rain shattered on the ground, and in less than a minute lightning and thunder crashed together. Raindrops fell so hard they bounced half a meter into the air. Somchai threw back his head, held up his arms, and let red serpents of water leap wriggling from his body to the ground, where they scurried off into the earth. In minutes he was washed clean and Weasel’s blood was sluicing off the concrete.
They heaved the corpse into the compost and tossed in her handbag, then shoveled compost on top of her. When she was buried, they stood back to hold up their hands and faces to the waterfall. Parker swung Weasel’s Nikon around his neck. “Let’s go,” he said. He gave Somchai a gentle push.
Parker led the way along a flattened earth path that ran close to the face of the cliff and found, at the end of it, a neglected Cyclone-wire fence. Neither spoke, for their only interest was in escape. After a few meters they came across a section of fence that had been pushed down and trampled. On the ground nearby, there was one small football boot, a pair of socks, and a Latin dictionary. They had discovered, Parker realized, the school children’s entrance to the zoo. It came out on the roadway above the wharf.
Half a dozen dripping people were waiting for the ferry, which stood off the wharf, pitching and rolling in the rain-lashed waves. Branches of trees floated past. Parker and Somchai sat apart on wooden benches. From time to time Parker glanced proudly at the Thai and looked away, smiling to himself. Then his expression became grim as he tried to work out why the police bitch had taken his photograph. He dared not question Somchai yet, in case people remembered seeing them together on the zoo wharf.
Abruptly the wind and rain abated. A bus arrived and debouched more wet people. The ferry departed. Halfway to Circular Quay, the sun appeared in a fresh blue sky. It was two-forty-five in the afternoon.
At three o’clock, Deborah Smith realized she had lost Sergeant Miller. Feeling rather offended and something of a failure, she decided to go home. That evening, she caught the train to Albury, to stay with her mum and dad.
Once the ferry had set off, Parker made eye contact with Somchai, then left the warm, diesel-smelling cabin to stand outside at the rail. After a few moments he sensed Somchai standing beside him and, without looking, cupped his large white hand over the pygmy fist. “Thank you, dear boy,” he murmured. “Why were the police following you?”
“Bad men,” the Thai said. “Bad men make trouble for Khun Otto.”
“Who?”
“Photographer. Thin nose. Bad, bad man.” He screwed up his face as if he had sucked a lemon.
“What trouble?”
“He tell lies about Khun Otto. Wanting hurt him. Say he doing illegal. Make trouble with animal people.”
The Pembridge bitch is involved in this, Parker thought. Sonja had been right about her.
From Circular Quay they caught a train to Town Hall. In Gowing’s, Parker bought himself and the Thai tracksuits, socks, underpants, and cheap sports shoes. He also bought a baseball cap to cover Somchai’s hair. In their new, dry clothes, they ate in a cafe in the railway arcade. What an adventure, Parker kept telling himself. He was terrified of being recognized and could hardly swallow his toasted sandwich, but the excitement was fantastic. I’ve never felt so alive, he thought. By four o’clock they were in a cab, going to the domestic airport.
Kerry Larnach always allowed Parker to wait in the room in the terminal building used by Kalair crew between flights. After a while all the aircrew left, and Parker grabbed the telephone. He rang Grossmann at his office in Bangkok, catching him just before a meeting was due to begin.
“We had a bit of trouble earlier today,” he said. “The gendarmes.”
“Bad?” Grossmann asked.
“Yes.”
“I have a beautiful new lab here, John.”
Parker glanced around to reassure himself he was alone except for Somchai. “Otto,” he whispered, “I have to get out as soon as possible. So does the boy.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been asking you to do for more than a year, my friend. But the boy needn’t return. Could you, ah, leave him in Sydney?”
“No!” Parker exclaimed.
“Too bad. Well, see you soon.”
They caught the last flight to Kalunga, which departed at six-fifteen.
When Administration said that U-1 had been removed from the list for the day’s tour, Diana replied, “Not from my list.” She turned to the other new members of the Ethics Committee. One was a middle-aged nun, the other an elderly man who bred Persian cats. The nun, Diana thought, had a resolute air. “What about your list?” she asked.
“It’s on my list,” the nun replied.
“Seems to be on mine,” the breeder said.
“So let’s go,” Diana said, and moved off toward the Land Cruiser.
Administration found his voice. “You can’t,” he said, and caught Diana by the sleeve. “You can’t go there today because it’s a high-containment laboratory and the overseer, Dr. Parker, is away. He specifically asked that no tour is made of U-1 without his presence. So I’m sorry, Miss Pembridge, I can’t allow it. It’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“It’s high-containment.” He had never been inside U-1 himself.
Diana appealed with a glance to the nun. “We don’t want to see the high-containment area. We only want to see the animals. Isn’t that so?”
The nun nodded.
“I’m afraid I have no authority for that.” His pink lips were pressed together inside their furry retreat.
“Very well,” Diana said. “I want to speak to the director of security immediately.” Her hand inside her bag was grasping the fax from Oregon about the chimp hair she had found on Sonja’s jacket. It could be from the circus chimp; but until that was proved, Diana had a case.
Administration smirked. “That’s impossible, I’m afraid. The director of security is attending a personnel development course all day.”
“Christ almighty!” Diana blurted. “Bureaucracy! The rule of Nobody.”
Administration inflated his chest. “Shall we continue?”
The cat breeder nodded and the nun said, “Yes, please.” Diana tagged along behind.
The flight path from Sydney was due west, at first over the gleaming rope of the Nepean River and the dark folds of the mountains. Somchai had a seat aft and had gone to sleep a few minutes after takeoff. Parker was just behind the grubby blue curtain that separated the pilot from the cabin, and he had a magnificent view of the evening light spreading across the countryside below. The storm had cleared the sky of pollution, and now the air sparkled. I’ve come to love this light, Parker thought, and for a moment felt sorry he was seeing it for perhaps the last time. Then fury with Grossmann returned. Leave the boy in Sydney, eh? he said to himself. Such a brave and loyal boy! Somchai would cut off his right hand for Otto. Parker smiled to himself and settled to the task of working out how they could all leave Australia—he, Somchai, Phil, Freddie, and Steve. And Sonja and Lek, of course. It was essential that the boys come to Thailand with him, and he began to think of arguments to convince them to leave willingly, and immediately. He considered how long it would take, with seven of them working, to pack up Sonja’s house and U-1. They would have to leave the heavy machines,
but they would take the computer and all the parts of V II, and of course the frozen aliquot of White Eye. He considered the type of refrigeration he would need on the flight to Bangkok and how they would transport the chimpanzees. There would be seven passengers, plus two chimps, plus another hundred kilos of equipment, plus some household goods and their clothing. The boys would not have much luggage, Lek and Somchai would have none. An aircraft this size would do it, he thought. But how to fly out of the country undetected?
He plucked at the grimy blue cloth in front of him, pulling it aside far enough to see the copilot’s head.
“Excuse me,” he called over the engine noise.
“Yes, mate?”
“Do you know where Mr. Larnach will be this evening?”
The copilot consulted a clipboard.
“Kalunga,” he said.
Parker settled back to enjoy the rest of the flight.
Chapter Nineteen
Out west it stayed light longer than on the coast, so as the aircraft descended and circled the airfield, passengers could see the white crop dusters moored at the perimeter fence and the cars of people waiting to meet them parked behind the terminal. There was no white Land Cruiser there. Where’s Sonja? Parker wondered.
By the time the Cessna had landed and taxied to a halt, it was dark on the ground, as he had hoped it would be. He wanted Somchai to go unnoticed, although in the bush, people noticed everything. But with luck, Parker thought, anyone who sees Somchai will take him to be a kitchen hand in the new Chinese restaurant. It was essential that when he got into Sonja’s Cruiser, nobody was around. At the base of the steps, Parker gave Somchai a signal to become invisible and wait, while he made his way across the concrete to the Kalair shed. My mind is lucid. I am in command, he told himself. For a moment a delicious spasm shook his insides as he remembered the killing at the zoo.
The Kalair office at the airport was a converted two-bedroom weatherboard house. Spare uniform jackets hung from pegs on the walls, and unwashed coffee cups cluttered the sink. After ten years’ hard labor, Kalair was still a shoestring operation, with maintenance done at night and on weekends. Larnach had to hire an aircraft to service his Sydney-Kalunga route during the biannual major check. A big maintenance job was due the week after Easter, but so far nobody would rent him a replacement at a rate he could afford. Bookings were good over Easter; he could pay wages for another ten days, or he could hire an aircraft while the maintenance was being done. He could not afford both.
When Parker arrived at the door on Wednesday night, Larnach was trying to find a solution to his problem. He had pulled up on his computer screen a list, hacked from the Ansett Airlines database, of all the aircraft spare parts in the world.
“How would you like a one-way charter job for seven people and two trogs to Bangkok?” Parker asked.
Larnach leaned back in the swivel chair. Seven? he wondered, counting off Parker, Sonja, the three lab technicians, the Thai girl. Who was the seventh? “Tell me more.”
“Leaving tomorrow night.”
“Thursday? Thursday’s hard, mate.”
Parker’s jaw clenched. “Friday morning, then? Early.”
“Can’t think of anything I’d like better.” It occurred to Kerry to ask what had happened, but he decided that the less he knew, the better. When you’ve just won the lottery, you don’t ask why.
“Mind if I use your phone?” Parker said.
Cheap bastard should buy a mobile, Kerry thought.
Parker made a quick call to tell Grossmann they were leaving Australia on Friday. Then he rang Sonja’s house, although he was not expecting her to be home; he thought she would be on her way to the airfield to collect him and Somchai. But after a few rings the telephone switched automatically from the house to U-1, and she answered it there.
“I’m at the airfield. Why aren’t you here?” he said.
She giggled. “Sorry, darling. I’m busy. Is everything okay?”
Idiotic question, he thought: everything is never okay. “Of course. Are you coming to collect us or not?”
“Could you possibly get the air taxi? I’m really …” She made a simpering noise.
Larnach half listened, sneering to himself in disbelief. Fifteen minutes ago, he was a bankrupt. Now he was a free man. He had the scenario for liberty in his head: Fly the Cessna 421 to Bangkok, sell it, use the cash to buy into a business up there. Why didn’t I think of doing that before? he wondered. Selling an aircraft was like selling a motorcar: you changed the registration and filed off the engine number. “No problem, mate,” he said to Parker. “I’ll fly you home.”
“There’s someone else.”
Somchai was waiting in the dark outside the Kalair office. The seventh man, Larnach thought.
Night had settled by the time the taxi was above the lake. The water gave off a Morse code of silver in the moonlight; in the darkness ahead they could see the lights of the laboratory complex and, beyond, the condominiums. Parker grunted with satisfaction when suddenly the lights on the airfield were illuminated. Headlights were moving toward it. “There’s Sonja,” he said.
When the Cruiser pulled up on the concrete under her house, Parker stared at his wife. She looked overexcited. Had she been silly and skipped a meal that day? Or binged on coconut fudge? he wondered.
“What happened to your clothes?” she asked gaily.
“There was a storm. We got wet.” He rested his hand on Somchai’s shoulder and felt with pleasure the strong muscles beneath the fabric of his tracksuit. “Are you warm enough, dear boy?”
Somchai nodded.
Sonja giggled again and glanced down. Suddenly Parker realized what it was that he found disturbing: she had the I’ve-been-naughty look plastered across her face.
“What have you been up to?” he asked cautiously.
Diana stamped straight down to the aviary when she got home from the Research that day. After her outburst over U-1, the animal house inspection had turned into a disaster. She had been too forthright. “I accept that science and farm animals are slaves,” she’d remarked, “and I look forward to the abolition of slavery.” “Slaves?” the nun said in a scandalized tone. “Well, what else are they?” Diana replied. The cat man had already written her off as an extremist, and the nun, whom Diana had hoped to have as an ally, rejected her for blaspheming.
“It was a fiasco,” she told the eagle, who continued to gaze at a cloud twenty kilometers away. Diana was irritated that she had given up the eagle’s morning exercise in order to traipse around the Research and learn little more than she already knew, although she had to admit that it seemed none of the lab complex buildings had walled-off sections where animals could be hidden. It was now too late in the day to drive out to the flying hill. No exercise meant no food, for the eagle had to lose a lot of weight in the next two or three months. But the bird was tense, Diana noticed, waiting to be fed.
She approached with the hood, which she always put on before carrying her inside for the night. But as she moved forward, it seemed to dawn on the eagle that after waiting all day, she would be left hungry. A look of outrage fixed in her eyes, and she jumped down to the concrete and flung herself backward on her tail, ready for a fight. She’ll break her tail feathers! Diana thought.
For five minutes they glared at each other. Then Diana went back to the kitchen to microwave a mouse from the box in the freezer. When she returned to the aviary, swinging the mouse by its tail, the eagle gave a disdainful sideways glance. A second later, she gulped it down. Then, with dignity, she stepped onto Diana’s arm.
When Diana returned to the kitchen, Grace, who was shelling peas and trying to keep the kids from eating them out of the colander, noticed that her colors were in a turmoil. Diana slouched onto a stool beside the kitchen table. “You know what?” she asked after a while.
Grace shook her head.
“I’m sure they’ve got chimpanzees in that bloody place!”
The boys stared at each other.<
br />
“What place?” Tom piped up.
“The Research. I think they’ve got animals there that they won’t admit to. And I think they’re keeping them underground in the old dam, out near the lake. Where they’ve put the house with the solar panels.”
Tom’s little brown fingers clasped the edge of the table, and his face appeared. Billy scrambled up from the floor.
“You want some fruitcake?” Diana asked. She cut off two hunks and handed them a piece each, but they kept staring at her expectantly. She tickled Billy inside his ear, which he loved. “Eat your cake,” she said. She looked from one to the other, puzzled.
Billy said, “Promise you won’t be cross?”
“What have you been doing?” their grandmother said.
“She’s cross,” Tom whispered.
For a moment all four were silent. “I won’t be cross,” Diana said. “Tell me.”
Tom yelled, “They’ve got little grillers down there! Billy saw them!” He jumped with glee. “Little grillers! Just like Bubbles!”
Sonja sauntered off toward the door to U-1.
“Stay here,” Parker told Somchai.
She walked straight through the Big Lab to the door that opened onto the corridor outside Level 2. When he followed her through it, she was already putting on a gown. Parker felt his calm dissolve. She’s done something to the vaccine! he thought. Or even mucked about with White Eye.
She handed him a pair of latex gloves. While he was pulling them on, she heaved open the next door and disappeared inside.
The high-containment laboratory was in a mess. There was a blanket on the floor, and torn clothing was strewn about. He stooped to pick up a pair of scissors and, as he did so, looked over toward the bone saw. There was a naked bluish-brown foot, sawn off at the base of the fibula. He walked over and picked up the foot. It was frozen solid. He laid it on the table beside what else was left of Lek. Other parts of her were already packed into an autoclave bag standing open in its cart beside the bone saw. The plastic tent that covered the saw was spattered with skin and bone fragments, but there was surprisingly little blood. Sonja had bled her, Parker realized, before freezing her.
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