The Zoo Job

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “But he followed me! In fact, he helped me find McAllister’s office!”

  Hardison put his head in his hands. “Parker, for like the nine-hundredth time, I’m the one who led you there.”

  “You verified the route, yeah, but Alec here—”

  “Parker!” Nate barked. He’d had enough.

  She frowned. “Fine. I have to go get all that stuff Hardison said I need, anyhow. C’mon, Alec.”

  As Parker moved to the door, Nate took a long gulp of his sipping whiskey. He was very proud of the person Parker had become in the years the team had been together. When they first were assembled by Victor Dubenich, Nate had balked at Parker’s inclusion, deeming her to be insane. It was, of course, more complicated than that. The sociopathic thief he’d been hired to work with back then had been created by the foster care system, refined by Archie Leach, and unleashed on the world. Leach had once boasted to Nate of having created the “perfect thief” in Parker, but that left it to Nate, Sophie, Hardison, and Eliot to turn her into a person.

  And she was making excellent progress. But sometimes . . .

  Looking over at Hardison, he asked, “Stuff?”

  Hardison held up both hands. “Look, man, there’s no way we’re gonna get her to lose the monkey. Hell, I ain’t even holdin’ out much hope for renaming. So if we’re gonna be stuck with the thing—”

  “We are not going to be stuck with it. At best, she is going to be stuck with it.”

  Nodding to concede the point, Hardison went on. “Either way, she needs to feed it, so I gave her a list of what the monkeys eat and how to take care of them. So she’s off to get some fruits, nuts, vegetables, and eggs.” A small smile, then. “I just hope she remembers about the box for—”

  “Anyhow,” Nate said quickly, since the one subject that interested him less than the feeding of Parker’s new pet was the animal’s elimination habits. “You said you broke the encryption?”

  “Yeah. McAllister had a nasty encryption, but then I realized it was similar to the one the Bank of Iceland used when I—”

  “Hardison!” Nate had already lost several minutes to useless digressions, and really just wanted to get on with it.

  “Hey, this was a decryption worthy of the finest minds at Langley, and I think, especially after putting up with that damn monkey all morning, I deserve some accolades.”

  Nate just stared at Hardison, who dropped his gaze and shook his head ruefully.

  “Which I obviously won’t be gettin’ right now. Okay, I got good news and I got bad news. Good news is—we finally know where our client’s black rhinos wound up.” He wiped the remote off with his palm before clicking on it. The big screen lit up with a black-and-white layout of the grounds of McAllister’s estate, with boxed sections in purple. Each purple section was labeled with the names of animals: GIRAFFE (2), LION, EMU, and so on.

  Hardison moved his finger on the track pad on his netbook, which moved a cursor around on the screen. One cursor went over the emu, and a date popped up next to the cursor.

  And then Nate saw it. One of the purple boxes had the legend BLACK RHINOCEROS (2).

  “Lookee here.” Hardison put the cursor over the black rhino box.

  Nate read the date that popped up. “That’s the day after the Black Star arrived at Boston Harbor with no black rhinos.”

  “And the day another Black Star arrived in Portland with two black rhinos on it. Figure another day for transpo, and bingo. We now officially have a mark.”

  “Right. What’s the bad news?”

  Hardison clicked again, and the image changed to that of a map of the area around Brillinger Zoo. The zoo itself was in red, with the land around it in yellow. Pretty much the whole area north of Brillinger was either red or yellow. “Turns out that McAllister has been quietly buying up the land around the zoo. Ain’t enough to do much with on its own, but you add the zoo to the equation, and bam!” He hit a button on the remote, and the red changed to yellow, providing a nice big yellow blob.

  “So he wants to buy the zoo?”

  “No, he wants to buy the land the zoo’s on.”

  “And turn it into something else.” Nate shook his head. “Marney will never sell, so—”

  “So he’s doing what he can to make the zoo collapse. Thing is? That was Plan B.”

  He clicked again, and the map was replaced by a screen-grab of an e-mail from a few years ago. Nate peered closely at it.

  FROM: Declan McAllister

  TO: Norm Brillinger

  SUBJECT: My Offer

  ATTACHMENT: NorthBrillinger.ppt

  I obviously heard about what happened with the bear the other day, and I have to say how sorry I am that you had to endure that. It’s a terrible tragedy, and one that nicely points up what I said when we had lunch last week, to wit, you’re not cut out for this. I know the zoo’s been in your family since the 1800’s, but it’s not the 1800’s anymore, it’s the 2000’s, and it’s time to move on. Now, I showed you my proposal, and I’ve also attached it here as a powerpoint, and I think you should seriously consider it before somebody else gets hurt.

  Besides, wouldn’t a planned community like North Brillinger be the perfect legacy for you, instead of a zoo that everyone will remember as the place where a bear went crazy?

  Take another look at the powerpoint and give me a call.

  Nate frowned. “All right, so he was trying to get Marney’s father to sell after the bear attack. Makes sense. What’s North Brillinger supposed to be?”

  “Funny you should ask.” Hardison clicked again, and a PowerPoint presentation began.

  Images of luxury condos, tree-lined streets, playgrounds, schools, and parks all flashed by while Revolutionary War–style music—a flute and a drum—played. Then a deep voice started to speak: “North Brillinger. A planned community for the twenty-first century. A place where people can live safely and happily in the beauty of central Massachusetts.” All the images were computer renderings, but then there was a photograph of a tree-filled area. “The paperwork has already been started to create a state park, as well as the Brillinger Museum, dedicated to the historical legacy of the Brillinger family from the Mayflower all the way to today. Ground can break this year, resulting in a fully up-and-running community by 2015.”

  Hardison stopped the PowerPoint, for which Nate was grateful, as the music was exacerbating the headache Parker and her monkey had given him.

  “If he started the paperwork . . .” Nathan started.

  “Yeah, not so much,” Hardison finished. “I checked, and there’s been no application by McAllister—or anyone else, for that matter—to make any land anywhere near Brillinger into a state park in the past ten years.”

  “He’d never be able to do this by 2015 either.” Nate shook his head. “There’s infrastructure, services, water, electricity, permits, not to mention the incorporation process. No, 2015 would be impossible, even if he’d started the day after he sent that e-mail. Wouldn’t Brillinger have realized that?”

  “He may not have cared.” Hardison clicked again, this time bringing up another e-mail screen-grab. “Just to warn you, Marney’s old man wasn’t big on, y’know, grammar. Or punctuation. Or capitalization.”

  FROM: Norm Brillinger

  TO: Declan McAllister

  SUBJECT: RE: My Offer

  thank you for your email declan. I do appreciate what youre saying because my legacy has as you know become very important to me since the diagnosis. I will think about what you are saying though and get back to you as you suggest.

  the main problem of course is marney she has had her heart set on taking over the zoo after im gone, and it will break her heart to sell it. but the zoo is also failing and theres
nothing we can do about that.

  I will be in touch soon my friend.

  yrs

  norm

  “What diagnosis?” Nate asked. “He died of a heart attack.”

  “That’s what he died of, yeah.” Hardison clicked again, this time providing a medical chart for Norm Brillinger from a visit to a hospital in Northampton one month before this e-mail exchange.

  Nate winced. “That’s an oncology report.” He took another sip of his drink.

  Hardison nodded. “When Norm Brillinger died of a heart attack, it happened when he was a month or two from dying of colon cancer.”

  “Marney must not have known.” Nate shook his head. “Okay, so McAllister cooks up a story about ‘North Brillinger’ in order to convince Norm to sell the land the zoo is on before he dies of cancer. But he obviously isn’t putting together a planned community, so what’s he really up to?”

  Again, Hardison replied, “Funny you should ask.” Another click brought up another e-mail screen-grab, dated a week before McAllister’s e-mail to Norm Brillinger, and the day before the cancer diagnosis came in for the latter.

  FROM: Declan McAllister

  TO: “Tartucci, Salvatore, COO”

  SUBJECT: Dead Zoo

  You were right, the bear was definitely the straw that broke Norm’s back. What little interest he had in running a zoo is pretty much gone. I had lunch with him today, and I think I’ve sold him on the “North Brillinger” nonsense. Good call there, by the way, he didn’t really show much interest until I started explaining about his legacy. It shouldn’t take much to push him over the edge, and then we can get the preserve up and running.

  Nate’s eyes widened. “Preserve?”

  Hardison nodded slowly. “McAllister applied for permits in Vermont to make his estate into a hunting preserve, but it was rejected by the state legislature because it’s a residential area and the community got all up in arms because of safety issues. But the zoo’s already a designated recreational area, so turning that into a hunting preserve is easy.”

  “And as an added bonus, you can hunt rare wildlife, including a few endangered species. Some people would pay a pretty penny for that.”

  “Yeah.” Hardison clicked off the screen. “There’s still a bunch of files I haven’t gone through yet, but these are what I got from the key-word searches. I’ll do more once I’m done updating Annie Kroy’s online profile for Sophie and Eliot’s meet-up with Mbenga.”

  “Good.” Nate finished his drink and was thinking very enthusiastically about the next one. “Now I have to tell a daughter the truth about her father.”

  SIXTEEN

  Sophie pulled up to the front door of Mbenga’s mansion in their rental car, Eliot right behind in the Escalade, with its dented door and blown-out rear window. In the passenger seat next to Sophie was the large box from the clinic that Eliot had taken from Mbenga’s thugs.

  Two soldiers stood outside the front door, and Sophie wondered if they were the same ones Eliot had seen when he came here with Damien Moreau nine years earlier. Given that they were soldiers in a different army from the one that existed when Eliot was here before, she figured they probably weren’t.

  When they climbed out of their vehicles, Sophie handed Eliot the box.

  She whispered to him, “I keep meaning to ask—were you the one who put that gap in Mbenga’s grin?”

  Eliot just smiled.

  The soldiers silently opened the large wooden door. Mbenga was waiting in the foyer, holding a folder. “Welcome back, Ms. Kroy. Ah, and Mr. Spencer. What a chore it is to see you again.” That last was said with a wide smile, showing off the gap between two teeth.

  “I’m just here to do a job, Minister. Same as last time.” Eliot was, at Sophie’s instruction, using his best aw-shucks-just-doin’-my-job voice, the one where the version of his southern accent with the light consonants came through. It softened him, made him less intimidating. (When the southern accent with the heavy vowels came through, people tended to run away very fast.)

  “Your job? That is laughable, Mr. Spencer. Please do not insult my intelligence by telling me that everything you did was your job.”

  “I worked for Damien Moreau,” Eliot said softly. “You really think I did anything he didn’t tell me to do?”

  Sophie watched as Mbenga turned this over in his head. After a second, she said, “Gordon Bennett, can we get on with it? You two wanna chin-wag about the past, do it on your own time, all right? Let’s get this done so I can get back to some real weather. Heat’s makin’ me barmy, it is.”

  “Of course, Ms. Kroy.” He nodded at the soldier who’d opened the door, who took the box from Eliot. The four of them then went into the living room.

  Sophie quickly took the room in. Brand-new leather couch facing the fireplace, an older easy chair, also leather, but not matching the couch. Between them was an end table containing an early Rodin sculpture that Sophie knew was a fake—she had the original in her storage unit in Los Angeles, having stolen it from the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia fifteen years ago—and hanging over the fireplace was a Rembrandt that Sophie knew was genuine. In fact, she’d thought that particular portrait to be lost. For a moment she was disappointed at the character she’d chosen for this grift, as Annie wasn’t much of an art lover. She was still tempted to make Mbenga an offer for it.

  The mantelpiece had several hideous figurines, as well as a wedding photo of Mbenga and a woman Sophie assumed to be Tereza. She was quite beautiful, and Sophie could see how Eliot would be taken with her.

  She also knew that both Mbenga and Eliot were right. Moreau no doubt did instruct Eliot to seduce Tereza—Moreau was the type of man who would use every resource at his disposal, including that of his enforcer’s charisma—but the affair ended up becoming far more than his boss’s instructions.

  There was also a sideboard behind the couch, and Mbenga walked up to it, placing the folder on the back of the couch. “May I offer you a drink, Ms. Kroy?”

  “G and T, if you’ve got some.” Sophie followed him to the sideboard. “Feel free to hold the T.”

  “Of course.”

  As Mbenga poured a glass of gin, the soldier put the box down and opened it. After inspecting the inside, he turned to Mbenga and nodded.

  The minister handed Sophie the gin. “Thank you for returning my property to me. I assume the insulin has been sent back to the clinic?”

  “What’m I gonna do with insulin?” Sophie asked. She and Eliot had in fact given the insulin to the Reverend Maimona (under the doleful gaze of Amalia) that afternoon.

  After Mbenga poured himself some of what looked to Sophie like brandy, he picked up the folder. “I had my man in Interpol send me over their file on you.”

  Of course, Sophie did not respond in any way that betrayed her surprise or concern that Mbenga had a contact in Interpol. Possibilities flew about in her mind, though. Was Sterling the mole? No, that wasn’t really possible. Sterling was the biggest bastard in the history of big bastards, but he would never be on the take. He took too much pride in being good at his job for that.

  Did Sterling know about the mole? That was a tougher question. The team had worked with Sterling twice, once in Kiev, once in Dubai, and both times he withheld information. It stood to reason he’d do so now as well.

  Was this why Sterling was in such a rush—and using her and Eliot in the first place? That was likely, and indeed fit perfectly. While Sophie agreed with Nate’s hypothesis that Sterling was being given a timetable, it didn’t make all that much sense that he’d have one. The very nature of Interpol was to build their cases slowly and meticulously, all the while dealing with multiple jurisdictions. So why would they rush Sterling to close this case quickly and move on? Unless, of course, there was someone above Sterling
who was trying to quash his case—someone who just provided Mbenga with a file on Annie Kroy, recently updated by Hardison.

  All this went through Sophie’s mind in a second. Even as it did, she was responding to Mbenga with a small smile and an appreciative look. “You got my Interpol file? Nice job.”

  “Thank you.” He opened the folder and stared down at it. Sophie could only make out a photo of her wearing the designer coat she usually favored as Annie (not that she would have dreamed of wearing it in this oven). “It seems you’re a person of interest in several money-laundering cases, not to mention having Tony Kadjic listed among your known associates, just as you said.”

  “‘Associate’s’ a bit strong, yeah? Never even got the deal done, there.” She nodded her head at the file. “Give us a butcher’s, I’d love to see what else they got on me.”

  Mbenga closed the folder and tucked it under his arm. “Perhaps one day I shall. When our relationship has—deepened.”

  Holding up her gin in a mock toast, she said, “Well, let’s get that deepening started, then.”

  “I notice you did not bring any money with you to pay for the RPGs.”

  Sophie regarded Mbenga with disdain. “You think I’m haulin’ pictures of the Queen around? Wake up and enter the twenty-first century, old son. When I see the goods, you get a wire transfer from my account in the Caymans.”

  Mbenga winced. “That is—problematic. I prefer these transactions to be cash. Less of a trail that way.”

  “Thought you were the minister of finance. You run the bloody trail, don’tcha?”

  “Manage the trail, yes.”

  Nodding in understanding, Sophie said, “General Polonia? He wants his cut?”

  “If this is to be a wire transfer, I’m going to have to ask for a fifteen percent increase in the price.”

  Sophie snorted. “’s not a bad rate, that is. Most dictators take twenty-five percent, in my experience.”