Crys struggled to keep a straight face as she overheard their conversation. Phan was obviously nervous about the meeting, telling the driver how to avoid the traffic and to take short cuts. Sometimes he referred to ‘the important American’ being late when they became stuck in a traffic jam. On the whole, the driver just ignored him.
But they arrived in time and the meeting went smoothly until Crys asked about availability of horn. As with Le the previous day, Ng seemed to want to hide the shortage.
Crys tried to keep a blank expression while being surprised that such a simple question was taking so long to answer.
‘Mr Ng sometimes has difficulty to get the amount he wants, but it isn’t too bad—’ Phan began, but Ng interrupted and spoke directly to Crys.
When he had finished, Crys looked at Phan. Phan swallowed and then said, ‘He says it is more difficult to get horns now in Africa. And they’re killing the men that get the horns. It’s a good thing, because prices are going up, and he makes more profit.’
‘Tell him that I’ve heard rumours about a big operation next week in South Africa to kill a lot of rhinos. That a lot of money is involved. Ask him if he’s heard anything like that.’
Phan repeated this to Ng in Vietnamese. He shook his head and replied.
‘He says he has not heard anything,’ Phan translated.
Crys then asked if Ng could arrange for her to meet the men who supplied him, and when Phan translated he shook his head and made a short remark.
Phan said, ‘He doesn’t know his supplier because everything is done with computers. He’s never met the people with the horns.’
‘Please send them a message and explain who I am and why I would like to meet,’ Crys replied.
Phan asked Ng if this was possible, but Ng refused. This was private, he said. Phan asked him again, but he was adamant. Eventually he turned to Crys and said that Ng wouldn’t do that.
Finally, Crys asked about Michael. Ng remembered meeting him but had no helpful information. And, although she watched him very carefully, she could detect no reaction when she asked him about the email address.
She gave up, disheartened, and soon afterwards they started the trek back to the hotel.
When Crys returned to her room, she saw she had a voicemail. She picked up the phone and listened. It was from Nigel.
‘This afternoon’s meeting is important because the dealer is affiliated to a different cartel from the first one. We think they might be the ones who are organising the raid in South Africa. I’ll phone again tonight.’
Crys was beginning to feel pressured. She was getting useful information for her article, but nothing that might help them discover what was planned in South Africa or what had happened to Michael. She was beginning to wonder whether she’d be better off making her own contacts or just sticking to the ones Michael had made.
She met Phan at a quarter to four, and he led the way through the maze of back streets to the next appointment, which was with a local man who called himself Joe. When she asked if that was his real name, he laughed and said it was. ‘My father was in South Vietnamese army. Friends with GI Joe. So, he called me that.’ He didn’t offer his family name.
His English was good enough that they didn’t need Phan to interpret.
Crys went through her usual list of questions and received pretty much the same responses about price and clientele as she had in her previous interviews, but Joe said there was no problem obtaining rhino horn as long as one was willing to pay the asking price. Crys glanced at Phan, but he didn’t seem to be paying any attention. However, when Crys mentioned the potential raid in South Africa, Joe looked startled and switched to speaking Vietnamese to Phan.
‘Where did she find out about this?’ he demanded. He glared at Crys as Phan translated.
‘There was a rumour in South Africa when I was there,’ she answered after Phan had finishing speaking.
‘Who told you?’ He was beginning to sound aggressive. Crys finally felt she was getting somewhere – rattling someone’s cage.
‘The police there had heard rumours,’ she replied.
‘What do you know?’
‘All they told me was there was a story going around about a big rhino kill. Many rhinos. They didn’t know any more than that. It was just a rumour.’
Joe stared at her as though he didn’t believe her answer. Suddenly she realised that if he was involved with the South African operation, then a story may have reached him from South Africa that a Vietnamese woman journalist had stolen a briefcase of money. Now it wouldn’t be too hard for him to figure out the connection.
‘You must go now,’ he said curtly. ‘I know nothing about anything in South Africa.’
‘Thank you for your time,’ she said, backing towards the door, hoping that he’d let them go.
‘Which hotel you stay at?’
Crys looked at him inquisitively. Why did he want to know that?
But she told him – he could find out from Phan anyway – and he nodded.
‘Goodbye,’ he said, turned his back on them and went through a door into the back of his shop.
‘Let’s go,’ she said to Phan. He nodded, looking relieved, and led the way out into the heat and humidity.
Crys was excited that she was finally onto something now. Her question about South Africa had clearly struck a chord.
‘How can I find out more about Joe?’ she asked Phan as they negotiated the crowded street outside. ‘I think he knows things I can use in my article.’
‘Not a good idea,’ he replied flatly. ‘He was not happy with you.’
‘Because I asked about South Africa?’
He nodded.
She realised she’d made a mistake leaving when Joe had told them to. She’d known this was going to be tough, maybe dangerous, and she’d turned tail as soon as he’d looked threatening.
She stopped and turned back. This was the first lead she had to the upcoming raid. She had to speak to Joe again, right away, before he had a chance to link her to the money in South Africa.
Phan’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going back to speak to Joe again. He knows more than he’s telling me. I need to find out what that is.’
He shook his head vehemently. ‘No. You mustn’t do that! It’s not a good idea. He was angry!’
‘That’s why I need to go back. You don’t have to come. His English is good.’
Phan grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t go back. It is dangerous. He didn’t like your questions. People disappear in Vietnam, and I’m responsible for you.’
But she ignored his pleas, pulled her arm away and pushed on through the narrow streets, back to the shop. Phan followed hard on her heels, keeping up a constant stream of appeals for her to change her mind.
But she was determined to find out what Joe knew.
When she reached the door of Joe’s shop, she stopped, took a deep breath, and tried to open the door. It was locked. She banged on it. No answer. She banged again. Nothing. She looked for a phone number on display, but there wasn’t one.
‘How did you contact him?’ she asked Phan, who was standing a few metres behind her, his face flushed and sweaty.
‘I didn’t arrange the meeting,’ he replied. ‘I was just told to get you here at four o’clock. You must ask Dinh. I think he arranged it. We must go now.’
She banged on the door again. ‘Joe,’ she called out. ‘Please open the door. I have something important to talk to you about.’
There was no sound from within. Crys realised it was useless and, frustrated, she gave up, to Phan’s obvious relief.
‘Dammit!’ she said out loud. Her first real lead and she’d blown it by giving up too soon.
‘Yes, yes,’ Phan said, with a forced smile. ‘We go now. I take you back to your hotel.’ He set off firmly.
By the time she walked into the hotel lobby, though, Crys knew what she had to do. First, contact Dinh and Nigel to see what they cou
ld tell her about Joe. Second, go back to Joe’s the next day and surprise him. He wouldn’t expect her to come back. And third, contact the US embassy, tell them who she was, where she was staying, and what she was doing. If something happened to her, she wanted them to come looking. She’d learned her lesson in South Africa.
Her call to Dinh wasn’t helpful. He confirmed that Joe was thought to work with a different cartel from Mr Le, but that he knew nothing else about him. He was just trying to arrange a broad set of contacts for her.
Nigel, on the other hand, was excited at the reaction that her talk with Joe had elicited.
‘You’re obviously onto something,’ he said. ‘You should definitely go back to see if you can get more information. But be careful. These are nasty people.’
As if she didn’t know that…
Next, she phoned the US embassy and was surprised that someone answered her after-hours call and was even willing to take her details. When the woman, who was obviously Vietnamese, heard what she was researching, she also cautioned Crys to be careful.
‘It’s a business that involves lots of money and plenty of influential people, Ms Nguyen,’ she said. ‘That’s not a good combination to get involved with.’
The more people told her that, the more Crys knew she was heading in the right direction.
It was still too early for dinner, so she took a cold shower, followed by half an hour of yoga. By the time she’d finished, her body felt much better. It was not used to days of relative inactivity. Normally, she skied or ran every other day, but on this trip, she’d done very little exercise.
She took the opportunity to call Mabula. He’d promised to let her know if there were any developments with the search for Michael, but she preferred to keep checking with him herself. And, in fact, he did have some news – both good and not so good.
‘I think we got close,’ he told her. ‘We spread our house-to-house search to the smallholdings around Giyani. There are lots of them, but we had a break. One person told us about a group of Asian men who were using a nearby property. There are Chinese people settling here – same as everywhere in Africa – but not that many, and it seemed worth investigating. Anyway, when we went in it was deserted, but there were signs of someone being held there and of a very hasty departure – food left in the fridge, bedding unmade, even some clothes lying around. We’re going over it with forensics. Hopefully we’ll turn something up.’
Crys was silent. Were they that close? Michael whisked away just before he was found…
At last she asked, ‘Do you think they were tipped off?’
‘Looks like it. But don’t worry. We’re close now. They know we’re after them. We’ll find him.’
‘Yes, thank you, Colonel.’
But she worried that if they were on the run, they might not keep Michael alive.
She needed something to take her mind off the hollow feeling in her chest, so she caught up on her notes, backed up everything she had to a thumb drive and also to the cloud, even though the connection was slow. She definitely didn’t want to lose any of the material she had for her article.
It was after eight by the time she walked out of the hotel in search of dinner.
As she walked, she found herself retracing her steps of earlier in the day. There couldn’t be any harm in passing Joe’s shop, she thought. Perhaps he was there. Perhaps he’d speak to her now.
But as she approached, she saw that all the lights were out. Joe had definitely closed up for the night. She would have to come back the next day. She frowned, cursing that she hadn’t insisted on staying in the shop when she’d had the chance.
She’d seen an appealing little restaurant a couple of blocks back, so she decided to call it a day and enjoy a quiet meal. As she turned to walk back, she stopped. Donald from End Extinction was standing at the corner of the street, watching her.
He nodded and walked away.
‘Donald. Wait!’
She ran to the corner, but by the time she got there, he’d disappeared. That was twice now that she’d seen him. No way was that a coincidence.
What was going on?
Why was he following her?
Chapter 29
Crys didn’t sleep well. Her brain was racing. She switched between worries about Michael and how his situation might now actually be worse, and how she could persuade Joe to open up. So far, he was her only lead, so he was the one she had to break.
Her body was uncomfortable too – the air-conditioning unit was barely working and no match for the hot, humid air that clung to everything. She was bathed in sweat.
Around six she climbed out of bed and took a long, cool shower. Then she called reception to order a cab. Her plan was to go and see the house where she spent her first year of life. She had no memory of it, only mental pictures created by the stories told by her parents. She hoped that actually seeing it would trigger memories and so deepen her connection to this country. She had a flutter of excitement in her chest as she set off. She had no idea of what to expect.
The house was closer to the city centre than she’d imagined – it took only twenty minutes to get there. The driver pulled up at the address she’d written on a piece of paper for him and pointed at the building. She took a deep breath and asked him to wait while she walked around. He started to object in Vietnamese, but she shrugged and opened her palms to show that she didn’t understand. He muttered, and then nodded, but pointed at the meter.
The house that was her first home was a typical Vietnamese tube house – very narrow and very deep. It was one of about ten on the block; Americans would call them townhouses, for want of a better word. All of them were set back from the paved road by about two metres, giving each a minute front garden. Her house had a frangipani tree, giving off a sweet scent, some orchids, and two scooters. The building looked well kept and was painted an ochre colour. She stood on the road for a few moments, hoping that some memories might well up. But it clearly wasn’t to be.
Crys took out her phone and took several photos, both of the house and of the surroundings. Then she returned to the cab, disappointed. She’d hoped to have an emotional attachment to the house, but there was nothing. It was just another house.
The driver looked slightly baffled as she got back into the taxi, but he didn’t say anything, and they headed back to the hotel. Crys felt oddly empty and a little sad.
Back in her room, Crys shook off the melancholy her early-morning trip had provoked and decided it was time to find out what Donald from End Extinction was up to.
She called the organisation’s office and was told Willandsen had just arrived. After exchanging greetings, she launched straight into her concerns.
‘Mr Willandsen, I’m not happy. Twice after meetings I’ve had in the city, I’ve seen your assistant, Donald, watching me. Can you tell me why he’s doing that? It can’t be a coincidence.’
‘You’re right, Ms Nguyen,’ Willandsen replied. ‘It’s not coincidence. I asked Donald to follow you.’
She was taken aback. She thought Willandsen would at least need some persuading to admit what Donald was doing. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘The main reason is that people in the business you are researching are generally suspicious of anyone who pries. We thought we’d keep an eye on you, just in case.’
‘In case what?’ she asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
‘In case we thought you were heading into dangerous territory. You can’t trust anyone in this business.’
‘And why should I trust you?’
‘You shouldn’t. That’s the point I’m trying to make.’
This man had an answer for everything.
‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, Mr Willandsen.’
‘If you say so, Ms Nguyen.’
‘So please tell Donald to stop following me.’ Crys hung up, annoyed. Why did everyone think that because she was a young Vietnamese woman she couldn’t look after herself?
But as she headed down to the dining room, she decided it more likely that Willandsen was interested in who she contacted than that he had any interest in her safety.
After a breakfast of chicken pho, followed by a strawberry-avocado smoothie, she headed out at once to Joe’s. Again, the shop was closed, but this time she wasn’t going to give up, however long it took. So, she sat down at a small coffee shop just down the road, determined to wait him out.
It was over an hour before she spotted him in front of his shop, unlocking the two big padlocks that secured the pull-down shutters. She waited until he’d opened the door and had gone inside, then paid for her coffees and jogged towards the shop.
‘Joe,’ she called as she walked into the multi-scented gloom. ‘It’s Crystal Nguyen.’
Joe pushed through a door at the back. Even in the dimness, she could see he wasn’t happy.
‘I have nothing for you. Please go.’
This time she stood her ground. ‘Please help me. I need to find out about what’s going to happen in South Africa. It will be a big story for me.’
Joe frowned and shook his head, speaking through clenched teeth.
‘I know nothing. You go now.’
‘Nobody needs to know you gave me the information. I won’t use your name.’
He shook his head. ‘People here know everything. Go.’ He walked towards her pointing at the door. ‘Go!’ he ordered, raising his voice.
Just then his phone rang. He hesitated, trying to decide whether to answer or to finish getting rid of her. Habit won – he answered.
Crys pretended to look at the bottles on the shelves.
‘I can’t talk now,’ Joe said in Vietnamese walking to the back of the shop. ‘The journalist is back, asking about South Africa.’
He listened to the response. ‘No. Of course I haven’t told her anything. She knows nothing. She thinks the plan is to kill a lot of rhinos.’ He clearly didn’t suspect that Crys could understand Vietnamese.
Dead of Night Page 24