by Ingrid Betz
“For God’s sake, if you want me to, then at least let me,” he exclaimed hoarsely. She relaxed her legs, although she couldn’t stop the trembling, and clamped her mouth shut so as not to cry out when the moment came. Only it never did.
His fingers stilled and after a couple of heartbeats he rolled away from her. He lay on his back breathing, and staring at the ceiling. From the unit next door came what sounded like a whoop of laughter.
“Asher?”
“It’s okay, chickie. I didn’t ask you here to rape you. Some other time maybe.” His tone was unexpectedly gentle. “When you’re more ready for it.”
“I’m sorry…” she whispered.
“Cover up. You’ll get cold,” he said with an air of finality and sat up. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his jeans. Tentatively she touched his back. Now that the ordeal was over, she was aware of a shy budding tolerance toward him.
They dressed without looking at each other.
Outside it had started to snow. Thin, wet flakes plastered the windshield of the car. Asher brushed an opening clear with the sleeve of his parka. “You’re okay to go home on the bus? Elaine will kill me if I’m late.”
Men were contemptible, she thought; Asher more than most. The realization made everything easier. “Sure.” She started walking even before he got into the car.
The bus back to London had been twenty minutes late, she recalled. By the time it came she could no longer feel her hands or her feet. They were as numb as her mind.
18.
“YOU DON’T WANT TO COME, MAR. Believe me, you don’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re scared shitless of these people, for one thing.”
Marigold frowned at the culture she was examining through the eye-piece of her microscope. “Must you use words like that? You know I don’t like bad language.”
“For the love of…” Peter thought better of the word he’d been about to blurt out. “Sorry.”
“I’ll be with you, won’t I? They won’t dare harm me if I’m with you.” Two weeks had gone by since the incidents with the black SUV. Plenty of chances for the Happy Long Life people or whatever Peter said their name was, to harm her. The fact that they hadn’t done so yet obviously meant it wasn’t a priority with them.
“You’re sure about that?” Peter’s tone was faintly mocking; he couldn’t help himself. At the same time he was flattered by her trust in him, Marigold could tell from the way his forehead flushed. She could see his reflection in the glass door of the cupboard every time she raised her head. He was standing by the filing cabinet, slipping documents into his briefcase in preparation for tomorrow’s trip to the site of the mine.
“Anyway, you’d only get upset,” he went on. “Or bored. I told you, they’ve got the basic operation set up and running. So it’s just a matter of me checking the facilities before they go into commercial production. Making sure the premises meet North American standards for cleanliness and safety. Maybe even offering a bit of advice if I see any way they could improve the process,” he added self-importantly. “I mean that’s what they’re paying Cormier Lab for, isn’t it?”
“Since when did you become an expert in the processing of ursodeoxycholic acid?” asked Marigold unkindly.
“It’s not rocket science.”
Peter sounded aggrieved but she had stopped listening. The phrase “up and running” drummed inside in her head. What he meant was that these people had captive bears on site, hooked up to catheters, and dripping their slow agony through the bars. Once she got over her initial shock and realized Peter was serious about working for them, she’d spent a couple of evenings at a library computer, calling up various web sites. The images and descriptions she discovered never left her now; they were worse than anything she’d imagined. Some nights it took her hours to fall asleep, and when she did, she dreamed. Terrible dreams she could never describe to anybody. In the past she’d have shared her revulsion with Lynn, but there was no one now that she could talk to. Marigold filled her voice with scorn to keep it from quavering. “Anyway. Why should standards matter to them? It’s not as though they can apply for an official license.”
“Not as things stand. But who knows? Regulations change. Or they’ll come up with ways to get around them…” Peter stopped at the look of distress in her face. “I’m only speculating. They’re smart people. Savvy enough to know what makes for successful marketing,” he continued stoutly. “Consumers in North America are a lot more sophisticated than those in third world countries. Even in the ethnic communities, people here expect a reasonable level of purity in the health products they buy. They want them to be safe. Consistent.”
“Pure? Safe?” Marigold’s fingers trembled as she laid aside one glass slide and reached for another. “Peter, you make me sick. This is bear bile you’re talking about. It’s meant to help a bear digest its food. Stop making a miracle drug out of it. And for heaven’s sake, stop calling it a health product. Next you’ll be believing the Chinese fairy tales about it yourself.”
“Well, there’s got to be some truth to them. China’s only been using the stuff for three thousand years.”
“Peter…”
“Okay, okay. I’ll stop. But you see what I mean? We can’t even talk about it without you getting in a state. How do you think you’d feel at the site?”
Suicidal, probably. She wasn’t the type to commit murder. But that wasn’t the point.
Marigold switched off the light on the microscope and slipped off the stool to face him. “My mind’s made up. If I’m going to be involved in the process, I want to see the whole picture.”
“Ordinarily, sure. But in this case…” Peter grew flustered as the specious nature of his argument struck him. He changed tack. “I’m only thinking of you, Mar. I want to save you from…”
“If that were true, you would never have gotten involved with these people in the first place. I don’t care what they were in China: scientists, farmers—in Canada they’re charlatans and animal abusers.” Her shoulders fell. “You might as well know. I’m seriously thinking of quitting and looking for a job with another lab.”
“Mar. You can’t!”
“Why not? I’m qualified. You always tell me how good I am…”
“It’s not that.” Perspiration broke out on his forehead. He’d been hoping against hope that he wouldn’t have to tell her about the clause in the contract.
“It wouldn’t be safe.”
“How do you mean?”
“Think about it, Mar. As long as you’re part of the operation, they can rely on you not to give them away to the police. About the incident in the park. But once you quit…”
She stared at him.
“They told you that?”
“Not in so many words. But…”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m part of the contract. You actually let them include me?”
“Well, yes. For your own protection. But it’s not only that.” He touched her arm, a look of desperation on his face. “You know I can’t run the Lab without you. Where else am I going to find a licensed technician to hire at such short notice? Somebody I can trust. Please! Don’t let me down. After all the effort I’ve put in to get this far…”
She was trapped, she thought. And typical Peter, trying to make her feel guilty. By somebody he could trust, he meant somebody willing to overlook any illegal aspects of the work the Lab took on. They’d been down this road before, although never for stakes so high. She ought to have quit years ago. He’d always been able to talk her around.
“It’s no big deal,” he pleaded earnestly. “All you have to do is test a few samples now and then. Make sure they’re up to standard. The rest needn’t concern you.”
She gave him a look that was as close to contempt as she ever came. “By the rest you mean
causing untold pain and suffering to animals for a dubious substance of no proven worth. Don’t you feel even a little ashamed of what you’ve agreed to?”
“You know better than to ask me questions like that, Mar. Bile isn’t my choice of product. I wish to God they were into manufacturing something else. Tea made from birch bark. Or dried deer droppings—anything. But it is what it is.”
“You could have refused. Would that have been so terrible? We’d get by. We always have. ”
He looked miserable. “Don’t you understand? My back is to the wall. With the bank loan due next month we could lose everything. And there’s Darlene. Lately she…” he exhaled explosively, “…don’t ask me to spell it out for you.”
“No. I wouldn’t want to hear it anyway.”
Marigold pushed the hair from her forehead with a tired gesture and made a note on the file attached to her clipboard. A woman she didn’t know from Eve would be receiving bad news in due course. Join the club, she thought.
“What are you afraid of exactly, if I come with you tomorrow? That I might ask embarrassing questions? Do something to spoil your chances?”
Knowing Marigold, it was a possibility. One that hadn’t occurred to him, but apparently it should have. He peered at her, his forehead creasing. “You’re not planning anything, are you?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, do I?” he said irritably. “You may not be able help yourself. You’re always thinking of Lynn…”
“And the bears. I’m thinking of the bears.”
“Exactly.” He saw her expression harden and hastened to say, “Although Li Chen assures me, they’re using the most up-to-date methods for extracting the bile. Next to painless, really.” He attempted a laugh. “Almost like milking cows—and who could object to that?”
Marigold stowed the samples away in the fridge and placed the cover on her microscope, bending down so he wouldn’t see her face. “Just tell me when to be ready, Peter.”
He groaned. “Haven’t you been listening? You’re not coming with me.”
“And if I don’t? Aren’t you worried I might go to the police instead?”
“You, Marigold?” His grin faded as he realized she hadn’t meant it as a joke.
“I still could, you know. Contract or not. Take a chance they’ll protect me. Tell them my boss is doing business with men who shot me and probably killed my friend Lynn Harmer.”
“You wouldn’t! You haven’t got the nerve.”
“Probably not,” honesty compelled Marigold to say. “But you don’t know that for sure, do you?”
Peter regarded her, not sure what to make of this new obdurate version of the old timid, biddable Marigold. Something in her had changed.
“It would mean getting up at the crack of dawn…”
“Yes?”
“The flight to Bracebridge leaves London at seven,” he said at last, in the sullen tone that told her she’d won. “They will have somebody at the airport to pick us up.”
19.
MARIGOLD FROWNED AS THE big white sign loomed into view at the edge of the trees. Happy Long Life Mushroom Company, it read. Two smaller signs below read Private Property and Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.
“Why mushrooms?”
“Don’t be dense, Mar. They can hardly call it The Happy Long Life Bear Bile Company.”
Marigold winced. “Proving they’re crooks and shouldn’t be in business at all.”
They had been jolting over back roads for the better part of an hour since leaving the Bracebridge Municipal Airport. The driver turned the SUV onto a narrow side road freshly surfaced with gravel, and rolled to a stop in front of an electronic gate. He powered down the window and leaned out to punch some numbers into a panel. The gate swung open and the road, like a pale-skinned snake, uncoiled itself through the brush ahead of them.
“For the tenth time,” muttered Peter. “Keep your voice down, will you?”
“Why? He doesn’t speak English.”
“As far as we know.”
Peter shied a glance at the back of the driver’s head. His black hair had been gelled and fashionably sculpted. Every now and then his eyes would meet Peter’s in the rear view mirror, black as olives and just as expressionless.
“Anyway. Plenty of companies operate under ambiguous names. You’d be surprised how many outfits wouldn’t make a dime if they were upfront about the ingredients of the stuff they sell. Instead they come up with names that conjure up a pleasing image to the consumer.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
Resentment mixed with the nervous apprehension that Marigold felt. She disliked the fact that Peter tended to judge everything by standards of profitability. The forest crowding in from all sides reminded her uncomfortably of the nights she’d spent stranded on the portage. Foliage dimmed the sun at intervals. Boulders jumped out of the underbrush and dead branches clawed at the sky. The SUV climbed and dipped and swerved around bends until her shoulder felt sore from colliding with Peter’s. Ten minutes passed, then another ten, and Marigold wondered if they were going to drive on like this forever. Never having to reach their awful destination.
“But why mushrooms of all things? In a mine…”
“Why not? A mine offers the ideal growing conditions. Dark. Damp. Moderate temperatures that don’t fluctuate much. Besides, mushrooms are big in Chinese food. So if a Chinese outfit says it’s growing mushrooms, nobody’s going question that. Clever, really.”
“What’s good for the bears doesn’t come into it, I suppose.”
“As long as they keep producing bile,” said Peter carelessly, and Marigold could have hit him, except that she wasn’t that type of person.
Running along to their left was the river she’d travelled with Lynn. She’d been catching glimpses of it through the trees, the water rushing and darkly bubbling, like the current of uneasy fear that flowed just below her consciousness. Sunlight glinted from the rock face of a cliff on the opposite shore. Ahead of them a clearing opened up, at the far end of which rose a cluster of wooden buildings, low-roofed and painted white.
The driver pulled up in front of the main building, next to a couple of dusty pickup trucks. Turning to face his passengers between the headrests, he spoke a few words in Chinese and motioned them to wait. He let himself out the door and they watched him spring up the front steps, an agile figure in black. Marigold thought of the men with nets and shivered.
“Gone to alert the welcoming committee,” said Peter in a tone of satisfaction. When Marigold didn’t answer, he leaned over and tapped her arm. “Promise you’re not going to go all soppy in there? It’s not as though bears are the only animals suffering in the world. Anybody frying an egg nowadays knows the hen that laid it is cooped up in a cage the size of a toaster oven.”
Marigold jerked her arm away and did up the zipper on her yellow Gortex jacket; the cleaners had fortunately been able to get the blood stains out. “Not if they buy Free Range,” she snapped.
“All I’m saying is, bears don’t have a monopoly on being confined in nasty conditions and tormented. What about pigs and calves? And I bet there’s not a country on the planet where people aren’t locked up and treated even worse. Canada included. It’s just something humans do. To each other and to other species.”
The driver reappeared. Opening Peter’s door, he beckoned the two of them to step out.
“Great. I’m looking forward to this,” said Peter chattily.
Marigold was silent as she followed the men inside. She didn’t trust herself to speak; her emotions might get the better of her. And if they did, Peter would insist that she stay behind in the car, and she’d never be able accomplish what she’d come up here to do.
They were given a formal tour of the building.
It contained several offices, a kitchen and a canteen, b
ut its main feature was a large bright hall divided into work stations. Here, they were informed, the bile would be rendered stable under sterile conditions and combined with other ingredients before being bottled ready for shipment. Mr. Hsi, a short, brisk individual with what appeared to be a permanent smile fixed below owl-like spectacles, had introduced himself as project manager. He’d given them a cheerful dissertation on the varied and beneficial uses of bear bile.
“More and more every year,” he assured them.
Later, the staff would be most happy to give a demonstration of the entire process. A wave of his short, fat fingers indicated the sparkling rows of glass containers standing ready on a long central rack. Everything looked clean and new and efficient; impossible to fault the company on that score. Peter made notes to that effect, and Marigold felt sick.
“But first, you come. Inspect site outside,” urged Hsi. Smiling and nodding, he led them through a shipping room, into a corridor that contained doors featuring the universal signs for washrooms, and finally through an exit at the back.
Smaller buildings housed a variety of storage facilities, containing everything from spare parts for the processing equipment, to sacks of rice and freezers full of food. Two free-standing dormitories, one for men and one for women, were outfitted with bunk beds and adjacent shower rooms. Spartan but adequate, pronounced Peter in an aside. A shed held an industrial-sized generator. Piled next to it were iron cages, and a metal canister on wheels that Marigold recognized as welding equipment. She trailed numbly behind the men, trying not to listen to the explanations of what they were seeing.
This company was clearly here for the long haul. Green shoots of bok choy sprouted in a well-tended garden, and half a dozen hens scratched and clucked in a fenced-in area at the edge of the clearing. Marigold watched them bleakly. These at least weren’t shut up in cages like toaster ovens.