The Zoo Job

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Parker just hoped that, by the time Tartucci drove back from Newton, the smell of grease in his office would have dissipated . . .

  NINE

  NOW

  Terence Bisime tried to ignore the pains that shot through his calves as he operated the crane, slowly lowering the container onto the truck so Jacob could drive it to wherever it was being driven to, just like he’d done every workday for almost thirty years at the now-ironically-named King Lionel Port in Malani City.

  A chirp came from the cell phone sitting in the drink holder on the dashboard in front of him, followed by a tinny voice over the phone’s small speaker. “That’s the last load, Terence.”

  Terence put the crane into standby mode and then grabbed the phone. “What happened to the truck that was bringing, um—whatever it was for the Atlas?”

  Another chirp. “The Atlas radioed that they won’t be in until Saturday. Some kind of storm in the cape.”

  That prompted a sigh from Terence. Meeting the truck, taking the container off the truck, and placing it on the Atlas would’ve been an additional half hour of overtime. The Atlas was apparently unwilling to pay the storage fee, so they were going straight from truck to ship. It cost extra, but not as much as storing the container overnight would have. Everyone, it seemed, was cutting corners these days.

  After he parked the crane and climbed down out of it, Terence saw a very well-dressed, extremely attractive woman walking ahead of Pedro, who looked harried as he tried to keep up with her. Looking down, Terence saw that the raven-haired woman was wearing high heels—and still was able to outpace Pedro. Terence had never liked Pedro—he was Portuguese, and Terence was of a generation that still remembered the Portuguese as colonizers—so this amused him.

  “Look, Dr. Ainley, I appreciate your concern, but—”

  Speaking with a very clipped British accent—definitely upper class, not the Cockney Terence was used to hearing on British ships that came through the port—the Ainley woman said, “It’s no use giving me your personal assurances, sir, as they are meaningless. You are not the person who will be operating the crane that places my elephants on the vessel, and therefore your insistence that everything will be fine holds absolutely no meaning. I wish to speak to the crane operator.”

  Now Terence stopped walking and folded his arms, regarding this tableau with a raised eyebrow. “You wish to speak to a crane operator, ma’am?”

  Pedro waved him off. “Not now, Terence. Dr. Ainley, if you’d please—”

  But Ainley brushed Pedro aside and looked right at Terence. “Are you such a man, Terence?”

  That lovely voice saying his given name brought a rare smile to Terence’s lips. “I am, yes. Terence Bisime, at your service.”

  With a dismissive wave at Pedro, but still fixing Terence with her lovely gaze, Ainley said, “Thank you, Mr. Macao, that will be all.”

  “Dr. Ainley, I think—”

  “Mr. Macao, what I am interested in is procuring the services of this port to transport wild animals. Do you know what I am most assuredly not interested in?”

  Pedro just swallowed and looked even more like an emu than usual.

  Answering her own question, Ainley said, “What you think. Now go away, please, I wish to speak to someone who actually knows what he’s talking about.”

  At that, Pedro turned and slunk off.

  “Dr. Ainley, I must thank you,” Terence said.

  “And why is that, Terence? And please, do call me Antonia.”

  “For the first time in forty years, I am grateful to have lost half an hour of overtime. It permitted me to view that lovely exchange between you and Pedro.”

  “You don’t like Mr. Macao?”

  “He is Portuguese.” Realizing that by itself that was insufficient explanation to a foreigner, Terence quickly added, “I’m sorry. He’s likable enough, I suppose. But I’m of the generation that remembers when this land was a colony of Portugal. One of the few left, sadly.”

  Antonia Ainley’s smile was so bright it almost warmed Terence as much as the sun did. “You’re sad that your country is not still a colony?”

  “Oh, no. Say what you will about King Lionel, President Madeira, or General Polonia—and I could say plenty about them, though I would say none of it in front of a woman of your breeding—”

  Antonia inclined her head in response to these words.

  “—they are, all of them, quite the improvement upon being ruled by Europeans from thousands of kilometers away.”

  “Fair enough. Well, I hope you’ll indulge this European and answer a few of my questions?”

  Terence started gingerly ambling toward the main office. He wanted to change out of his coveralls and go home, but with his calves in the shape they were in, it would take quite a while just to make it to the office. Whatever questions Antonia wanted to ask, surely he could answer them on the necessarily slow walk. “May I ask, Doctor—Antonia—what do I receive in return for this great intelligence?”

  She laughed musically, walking alongside him as opposed to ahead of him, as she had done with Pedro, even though Terence walked at a quarter of the other man’s pace. “I don’t suppose telling you that, by providing me with a glowing report of your port’s efficiency, you will secure more work for your employers is much of an incentive?”

  Terence smirked. “No. I get paid regardless. And poorly, at that. People pay this port a great deal of money to use it in a manner that would keep it from being noticed, but those extra fees rarely make it down as far as the crane operator.”

  “I see. Well, I’m afraid I can offer you little other than the pleasure of my company.” Making a show of looking down at his left hand, where he still wore his wedding ring, she added, “But you’re married, so I doubt that’s much of an incentive.”

  “Ah, no.” Terence shook his head sadly. “My Vernetha died ten years ago. But I have never looked at another woman in all that time.” He looked over at Antonia’s beautiful face. “At least not until today. My children, my grandchildren, my coworkers—they all urge me to start seeing women again, that Vernetha would not wish me to be alone. There is a woman at our church, Nada, who has expressed interest. But I feel I am betraying my wife.”

  Antonia slipped her arm into his. It felt surprisingly comfortable and natural there. “I promise not to allow you to betray Vernetha, Terence. You see, I work for the London Zoo. We are acquiring a pair of elephants, and I wish to make sure they arrive safely. We’ve had some incidents in the past, in Angola, in Madagascar, and in Namibia, and I don’t wish to repeat them here.”

  Terence nodded. “What is it you wish to know from me?”

  “Have you handled wild animals before?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re sure? I mean, all the containers you load look alike, don’t they?”

  With pride, Terence said, “Dr. Ainley, I recall every container that I have ever loaded in the forty years I have been on the job. What was in it, where I put it, and where it wound up.”

  “Really?”

  The pride left his voice in short order. “No, not really—but I did up until my Vernetha died. After that, I only truly paid attention to those containers that had special instructions.”

  Antonia smiled up at him. “Like, say, wild animals?”

  For the second time today, and in many months, Terence smiled. “Yes. Just last week, there were two black rhinos that were en route to Portland, Maine, in the United States.”

  “Interesting. And how did you handle them?”

  For the rest of the walk to the office, Terence gave Dr. Ainley the minutest detail of how he handled the two black rhinos. He had no idea who negotiated the purchase—that was above his pay grade—but he knew that they came in on a truck rented by the Maimona Clinic, that it went on one of the dozen or so v
essels called the Black Star, and that it was bound for Portland.

  Antonia interrupted his description of how he had to wait for someone on the ground to verify that the airholes of the containers were not blocked. “How many other ships called Black Star were there?”

  “On that day, there were three. One was bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka, the other for Boston Harbor, also in the U.S.”

  By this time, they had reached the office. Antonia removed her arm from Terence’s, put a hand on his biceps, and said, “Thank you, Terence. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

  “So will your zoo be using this port?” Once, a decade ago, he would have said “our” port, but ever since General Polonia had taken over the country, he no longer felt like he was a part of the endeavor of running the port. He was just going through the motions until he died.

  Giving him a hooded, seductive look, Antonia said, “I’ll let you know.”

  Taking Antonia’s hand, he kissed it genteelly, the way he’d seen men do in old movies. “Thank you, Antonia, for the pleasure of your company.”

  “The pleasure was entirely mine, Terence. And you should get those legs looked at.”

  With that, she turned and walked off.

  His sore calves didn’t allow Terence to have a spring in his step as he walked through the back door of the office, which led to the locker room. Still, it was the first time in a long while that he ended his workday in a good mood, and that certainly had to count for something.

  Perhaps he would see a doctor about his legs, as his daughter had been pleading with him to do. And perhaps he would ask Nada to have dinner with him this weekend.

  HALF AN HOUR AGO

  Sophie was grateful that her days as a thief and grifter, as well as her years of working with Nate Ford, had given her plenty of excess cash. It was the only thing that kept her from balking at the price of a cab ride to King Lionel Port from the Empire Hotel, where she and Eliot—or, rather, Bernadine Onslow and John Smith—were staying in Malani City. For the ridiculous sum of six marks per minute, she had to endure an un-air-conditioned ride on bumpy, pothole-filled roads in a fifteen-year-old sedan with minimal shock absorbers.

  One of the clinic workers—a nice young man named Tomás—had given her a lift to the hotel from the clinic after the workday was done, as Eliot hadn’t yet returned. Eliot had said he had a “personal errand” to run. Sophie assumed it was something connected to his work in Malani with Damien Moreau almost a decade ago.

  Pointedly not offering to tip the driver—at those rates, the cabbies here bloody well didn’t need tips, and at the skill level of this one’s driving, he had hardly earned one—she paid her fare and went into the port office.

  While giving her “Dr. Ainley” spiel to the port master, a tiresome little man named Pedro Macao, she slipped one of Hardison’s jump drives into an unoccupied computer terminal.

  Macao had to take a phone call, so Sophie asked to use the loo. After he pointed her in the right direction, she went into the one-person ladies’ and plugged the jump drive into her phone.

  “Got it,” Hardison said into her earbud a few moments later. “Okay, this ain’t right.”

  “What is it, Hardison?”

  “There’s no way these are the right shipping records. There’s, like, maybe three ships a day going out at best. Ain’t no way this port can stay afloat—um, so to speak.”

  “It’s a corrupt regime, Hardison,” Eliot said.

  Sophie straightened. “Eliot, where’ve you been?”

  “Busy,” Eliot replied in his best don’t-ask voice. Because his absence hadn’t had any kind of effect on the job, and because of all of the team members, he was one most able to take care of himself, Sophie was willing to let it lie. For now.

  Eliot continued: “You’re not gonna find anything useful on a computer in that port.”

  “He’s right about that,” Hardison said. “The pictures Maimona sent to the zoo had four ships in the port along with the Black Star. One a’ them was called the Blue Meanie.”

  “Seriously?” Eliot asked.

  “Would I make that up?” Hardison asked defensively.

  Eliot snorted. “No, if you made it up, it’d be War of the Worlds or Professor What, or whatever, not the Beatles.”

  “It’s World of Warcraft and Doctor Who. Man, don’t you even listen to me when I—”

  “Not if I can help it,” Eliot said.

  “Boys, please?” Sophie said gently but firmly.

  Hardison let out a dramatic sigh. “Anyhow, according to what I’m lookin’ at right now, there was one ship in King Lionel Port that day—the Blue Meanie. None a’ the others in the picture are in the records.”

  Sophie nodded. “A place like this, with no government oversight worth mentioning, they’d take most of their business on a cash basis with no paper trail—or an electronic one. It’s a handy way to avoid tariffs.”

  “So how do we prove that the rhinos even came through there?” Eliot asked.

  With a feral smile, Sophie said, “Leave that to me.”

  Thirty minutes later, she had her proof, in the form of the very charming old crane operator named Terence. The first trick Sophie learned as a grifter was to take advantage of her looks. Average men would almost always open up to a beautiful woman who paid attention to them, by virtue of the rarity of such an occurrence. With only a modicum of extra effort, she probably could have gotten Terence to betray his dead wife.

  Not, she suspected, that the late Vernetha would have minded. She probably would have been proud of her husband.

  As she walked toward the port’s parking lot, Sophie said, “When in doubt, check in with the people who actually work for a living. They always see what nobody wishes them to see, because no one notices they’re there.”

  “Nice work,” Eliot said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Five minutes later, Eliot pulled up in the Focus they’d rented. Climbing into the passenger seat, Sophie asked, “So where were you?”

  “I told you I was busy.”

  Sophie knew this, of course, but she wanted to see Eliot face-to-face when he answered the question. Eliot had an excellent poker face when he needed it, but of late he’d tended to drop his guard around the rest of the team, thus becoming much easier for Sophie to read. Had he been angry at her repetition of the question, his eyes would have blazed and he would have scrunched up his face.

  He did neither of those things. Instead, he looked up and away, glancing sidelong at her as he put the car in gear.

  That was Eliot’s guilty look. The last time she’d seen it on his face was when Parker asked him what horrible acts he’d committed when he worked for Moreau.

  She wondered what he’d done this time. But he was no more likely to be forthcoming now than he was a year ago.

  At least not yet.

  They traveled back to the hotel in companionable silence. When they got to the hotel and parked, they went to Sophie’s room first to go over what they knew with Nate and the others.

  But as they approached the door, Eliot stopped her and pointed.

  Frowning, she looked at the toothpick that she’d left in the door. It was right where she’d put it.

  No—it was about half an inch below where she’d put it.

  She stared at Eliot, who motioned her to move to the side of the door, then mimicked the action of putting the key card into the slot.

  Nodding in response, Sophie inserted the key card, heard the slight click, and watched the light blink red before turning green.

  Eliot then burst into the room at full speed, only to find it in complete darkness—except, Sophie noticed, for three red dots that had appeared on his chest. Eliot noticed the dots as well, and froze in place.

  Then she heard an annoyingly familiar,
British-accented voice. “About time you two arrived.”

  Sophie sighed heavily. This was all they needed.

  A short, balding, round-faced man with a self-satisfied smirk screwed to his face sat on the easy chair, illuminated by the light provided by the corridor.

  Jim Sterling looked right at her and said, “Hello, Sophie.”

  TEN

  NOW

  Hardison stood on the ladder, wearing a blue NSTAR shirt, a white NSTAR helmet, blue jeans, and brown work boots, pretending to fiddle with a junction box on the Harvard campus. Nearby, on one of the many tree-lined roads that snaked through the grounds of the ancient university, was parked the white NSTAR truck that Sophie’s friend had procured for them. All Sophie had given Hardison was a name, a number, and instructions to say, “Sophie needs an NSTAR truck,” and lo, she said, an NSTAR truck would appear. Which was exactly what happened.

  It was one of several reasons why Hardison respected the crap out of Sophie. All his friends could do was coordinate an attack against a mess of dark elves. None of them could make an NSTAR truck magically appear.

  The helmet and shirt, of course, were Hardison’s own work. He’d created dozens of official-looking jackets, coveralls, helmets, hats, uniforms, and other articles of clothing for each of the five team members for just such occasions as this.

  But having the truck really sold it.

  Hardison’s current object of surveillance was really named Bartholomew Everett Allerton IV. Prior to moving to New England, Hardison would not have believed that anyone had a name like that outside of old M*A*S*H episodes, but residency in the land of blue bloods and Mayflower descendants had cured him of this illusion. He wasn’t sure what amazed him more, that Allerton had survived to adulthood with the first name Bartholomew, or that he was the fourth man in a row to do so.

  What especially impressed Hardison was that those few who called this guy by his first name actually called him “Bartholomew.” Not “Bart,” not “B.E.,” but the full first name. Of course, most people called him “Mr. Allerton.” He served as the vice president of financial affairs for Harvard, and as a result was referred to formally by just about everyone at his job, since it was in his power to wipe out financial aid packages, reduce salaries, manipulate endowments, and generally ruin the lives of anyone attending or working at the university.