by Chris Ryan
Alex recalled some of his father's tales of jobs abroad. 'Probably in the dirtiest, nastiest place imaginable.'
They were in what looked like the centre of the village. The track became a large flat circle of earth, like a small roundabout. Several huts were arranged around its perimeter. There was a big building like a farm shelter, with a roof of corrugated iron and one side open to the elements. A few rusted tables and chairs stood along the open side, some of them occupied. A man lay flat out across a row of chairs, snoring.
'Fancy a drink?' said Alex.
Paulo wrinkled his nose in distaste. 'No way Jose. Not even if you're buying.'
The building was raised off the ground. The floor was dusty, grimy wood. In the corners were heaps of dust and detritus – cigarette butts, dried animal droppings, twigs and dead leaves blown in from the surrounding woods. A counter ran along the back of the room. Alex and Paulo approached it. Paulo put his hands on it and immediately peeled them off again. The surface was sticky and left sooty streaks on his fingers.
Two elderly men were sitting at one of the tables. One wore a tall pair of green Wellington boots with tweed trousers cut off at the knee. The other wore a bright red shirt with a big rip in the sleeve and a dirty stain of engine oil on the front. They looked at the newcomers with half-closed eyes, as though they had recently woken up.
Alex wondered if Paulo was thinking the same thing as him: were these two the drinking companions of the bitten poacher, recovering from hangovers?
Paulo walked towards them. Alex always envied Paulo his ability to turn on the charm, to make his face look so open and inviting that almost anyone would talk to him. When Paulo reached the table he squatted on his haunches so he wasn't looking down at the men. That would help put them at their ease, thought Alex.
Paulo started talking. 'Gentlemen, we found someone the other day who we think came from this village. He was injured so we took him to hospital. We're trying to find his family. Has anyone gone missing from here?'
The men looked at Paulo doubtfully.
Alex joined him and squatted down like Paulo. He added, 'Or did anyone drop in here, passing through? Maybe he came from somewhere else.'
One of the men turned to the other and spoke rapidly. They were willing to talk, all right; but neither Paulo nor Alex could understand a single word.
Li, Amber and Hex went round the back of one of the huts. A broomstick made of twigs leaned against a doorway. A tiny child, eyes deep-set in an ebony-coloured face, watched them as they walked past.
A woman came out of the wood towards them, a plastic water carrier on her head. She moved sedately, like a giraffe.
'Look at that bag she's carrying,' said Li quietly. 'Same as the one our poacher had. Give or take a bit of grime.'
'Is it?' said Hex, mystified.
'Handbag identification and recognition – it's a girl thing,' hissed Amber. 'That's our lady.'
'Well, she might not be anything to do with the poacher,' said Hex. 'She doesn't look like she's rolling in riches. The bag's not exactly Gucci.'
The woman approached them.
Hex suddenly drew Li and Amber close. He whispered, 'What's that on her arm? Take a good look as she goes past.'
Li unfolded the map so that it looked like they were lost. The woman came alongside and Li nodded hello to her. While Li kept eye contact with the woman, Hex and Amber looked at her wrists.
The woman was wearing several burnished brass bangles – and what appeared to be an expensive Rolex watch.
When she was a few metres away, Amber whispered, 'I bet it's a fake. What would anyone here be doing with a real one?'
'More to the point,' said Li, 'where's the best place to get fake Rolex watches? Hong Kong.'
'Bingo,' said Hex.
Amber said, 'I know a bit of pidgin French. I'll go and talk to her – see if I can find out where she got it. Give me that map.'
'We'll be here watching,' said Hex.
Amber hurried ahead, half hopping to save her bad ankle. Hex didn't like letting her go by herself but she was the only one who spoke the language.
Amber rehearsed some phrases of pidgin French in her head. At last her enforced period of study leave in the back-up van would come in handy.
She caught up with the woman and called to her. 'Hello, can you help me?'
The woman stopped and turned. She was incredibly beautiful, Amber thought; the water in the carrier rippled in the sunlight and threw shimmers onto her shoulders like jewels from a crown.
Amber held the map out. 'Can you tell me where exactly we are?'
The woman took the map with a graceful hand, moving in the same unhurried way. She frowned as she looked at it, then glanced at Hex waiting with Li a little way behind. 'Doesn't your man know where you're going?'
'No,' grinned Amber. 'He's useless. Can't find his way anywhere without a computer to help him.'
The woman laughed. 'It's always the way.' She pointed at an area on the map. 'You're here.' As she brought her wrist up the watch flashed golden in the sunlight.
'That's lovely,' said Amber. She put her hand out. 'May I see?'
Proudly, the woman held out her wrist. Amber inspected the watch. It was a good copy but the second hand moved in little jerks; on the real thing it swept around the dial in a continuous movement. Amber had seen enough real Rolex watches to be certain that this one was a fake. 'It's really pretty,' she said.
'My boyfriend gave it to me last night,' said the woman.
'You're very lucky,' said Amber. 'Where did he get it?'
'He said it fell out of the sky.'
Tell out of the sky? Where?'
Amber wasn't too sure if she had translated the woman's answer correctly; but she thought it was something like: 'Where all the money comes from.'
Was it a figure of speech or did the woman literally mean the money fell out of the sky – or rather, out of a plane? Amber enquired further, trying to keep her questions casual. 'Money falls out of the sky too? Where? I want to know so I can send my man there.' She indicated Hex with her thumb.
The woman shrugged. 'I don't know.' Amber sensed the conversation had gone as far as it naturally could without arousing suspicion. She doubted she would get more information if she pressed harder. She smiled and thanked the woman for the directions, and watched her walk gracefully away towards one of the huts.
Paulo and Alex were already at the rendezvous point when Amber, Hex and Li got there. They retraced their steps to the spot where Joe had dropped them off. Joe was there waiting in the Range Rover.
'Give me some news,' said Joe, opening the door. 'I've been battling with bureaucracy.'
'We think the buyers come in by plane,' said Amber.
Joe drove the car back out onto the road. 'That figures. All the parks have checkpoints and we'd know if any vehicles had entered or left. But where are they landing?'
'They'd need a landing strip somewhere,' said Paulo.
'It can't be on the open savannah,' said Li. 'It would be too easy to spot a plane.'
'They must have hidden it in a patch of trees,' said Hex. 'If we go up in the balloon and look at all the wooded areas we should be able to see it.'
'Hey,' said Paulo, 'does that mean I get a turn in the balloon? Cool.'
Amber dug Li in the ribs. 'It's your turn this time too,' she said. 'You'll love it.'
Li felt panic grip her throat. Her brain worked like lightning. 'I think if anyone goes up it should be you. Navigation is going to be crucial.'
'How did it go with the poacher, Joe?' asked Amber.
'The police want evidence before we can put that scumbag away because he didn't have any ivory on him.'
'What kind of evidence?' said Alex. 'Three of us were threatened by him.'
'I don't know what they want,' replied Joe wearily. 'I said he'd got all that money on him and it was directly traceable but they don't like being told their job like that. Besides, the system's riddled with corruption. I expect
in a couple of days they'll be saying, What money? He didn't come in with any money.'
'Sounds as if we could do with catching something on camera,' mused Amber. 'People tend to take notice then.' The others nodded. But the same question was on all their lips: How were they going to do that?
'I take it the poacher is recovering well from his snake bite?' said Alex.
'Put it this way – he's in a better state than Tessa.' Joe's voice was bitter. 'He's even in the same goddamn wing of the hospital.'
'Can she have visitors yet?' said Li.
'Only family,' said Joe. 'She's still on intravenous antibiotics and they make her feel so rough that all she wants to do is sleep. I'll let you know, though, as soon as you can see her.'
Alex asked, 'Joe, how quickly do you reckon we can get the balloon ready?'
Joe reached for the hands-free phone on the dashboard. 'I'll get Gaston onto it so you can go straight up when we get back.'
Amber nodded. 'The sooner we find this airstrip, the better.'
19
RECONNAISSANCE
As they pulled up at Teak Lodge, Gaston and Patrick were on the front lawn inflating the balloon. 'Who's for the ride this time asked Gaston. He had to shout to be heard over the roar of the burner.
'That's us,' said Paulo and Amber together.
Gaston handed them helmets. 'Put these on.'
As usual, as many hands as possible were needed to get the balloon airborne. Hex, Alex, Li, Joe and Patrick held onto the ropes as the balloon gained buoyancy. Paulo and Amber stood with Gaston in the basket, watching him as he checked all the equipment.
'Cool,' said Paulo, looking around. 'I never expected it would have instruments. It's like a plane.'
Gaston gave him a quick run-through: 'Altimeter, compass, variometer – tells you whether the balloon's going up or down – and temperature gauge, which tells you how hot the air is at the top of the balloon. It's simple really.' He turned off the burner. The silence was instant and welcome.
Hex, holding onto one of the ropes, suddenly spoke out: 'I've got it!' His voice was excited. 'Joe, the poachers have built a receiver to find the signal your tagged elephants are sending out. That's why you're finding so many tagged ones killed.'
Joe looked sick. 'You have to be kidding.'
The occupants of the balloon had heard too. 'Joe, it's the only explanation,' said Amber. 'When we put a tag in an elephant, there was a poacher watching us through a telescopic sight, waiting for us to leave.'
'It's worse,' Hex went on. 'He could even have been watching us as we drove there. The tags would have been transmitting from the moment we put the batteries in.'
'Oh, that really is creepy,' said Li.
'How did they get hold of our frequency?' asked Joe, exasperated. 'You've seen their homes. Where do they get equipment like that?'
'From Hong Kong,' said Li. 'From their buyer.'
'Of course,' murmured Joe faintly.
'Get ready to let go,' said Gaston. 'Three . . . two . . . one . . .'
'See you later, guys,' said Amber.
'Don't forget about Moya,' said Paulo, looking at his watch. 'She'll be hungry again.'
As they lifted off, Li said to Alex, 'Come on – elephant duty.'
Hex turned to Joe. 'Joe, could I have a look at some of the tags?'
Joe showed Hex to a cupboard in the staff room. He lifted out a large cardboard box and put it on the table.
He began to unload boxes. 'These are the tags, and there's an unopened box with its labels in case they're any help.'
Hex picked up one of the boxes and read the label. Each carton contained fifty tags. 'You got a job lot of these, then?'
'We inherited them when we took over the lodge, like so much of the equipment.'
Hex took his palmtop out of its case and spread out his belt-mounted toolkit. He shook a couple of the disc-shaped tags out onto the table and selected a small probe from his toolkit. 'Let's have a look inside this baby,' he said and levered the cover off. He selected a small magnifying glass from his tool roll and peered into the workings. 'It's quite an old model.'
Joe pulled out a chair and sat down astride it, facing its back. 'Yes, they're probably smaller now. They're hellishly expensive. They have to be made of surgical steel so as not to cause irritation when they're implanted.'
'Interesting,' said Hex. 'It looks like this one's got a receiver so you can send to it as well as receive from it. What would that be for?'
Joe shrugged. 'Search me. I'm not very technical – as you must have noticed. The previous people had a lot of problems with the tags. They kept getting mixed up with the tags from other reserves. They'd think they were following an elephant and find it was a rhino or a lion. Finally they all clubbed together and hired a consultant to sort it out. He sold them new kit, but it had to integrate with the old tags because they couldn't go round replacing all the tags they'd already inserted. The mess was cleared up and they could all tell whose animal was whose, but don't ask me what he did. We're conservationists, not techies.'
Hex grinned. 'Well, if you kept getting mixed up between animals it was probably because your frequencies were too close together.' He looked up. 'Have you got any batteries?'
Joe lifted out another box. 'In here.'
'And is the detector in here too?'
Joe lifted out another box, still sealed. 'This is a spare one. Help yourself.'
Hex lined up a row of tags and batteries. 'Does your expertise extend to fitting batteries?' he asked.
Joe reached for a tag. In his immense hands it looked tiny. 'I think I can manage that.'
When they were all ready, Hex switched on the detector. The needle swung decisively into the red. One by one he took batteries out of the transmitting tags, to check that they were all transmitting on the same frequency. 'Just as I thought. You're transmitting on a set frequency. Was there any more equipment in that box?'
'Just a couple more hundred tags.'
'I reckon that consultant sold you far more of those than you needed,' replied Hex. 'You haven't got anything else – no other boxes; mysterious things that you can't figure out? We need the transmitter he used to programme them.'
Joe tipped the box so that Hex could see. 'Nothing.'
'Not to worry. I'll improvise.' Hex held up the detector in its bubble wrap. 'You say this is a spare? How spare?' His screwdriver was in the other hand.
'Well, it's been lying untouched in that box all this time. I'd call that very spare.'
'Perfect.' Hex tore off the wrapping and unscrewed the front panel. He lifted it away and looked inside. 'Oh, lovely old antiquey transistors,' he said. 'Now what shall we do with those?'
Alex ran into the room. His face was etched with concern. 'Sorry to interrupt – Patrick sent me. Joe, I think you'd better come and have a look at Moya.'
Joe got to his feet. 'Hex, I'll leave you to it.'
Hex watched them as they headed out of the room. That didn't sound like good news. But he had to put such thoughts out of his head. There was a job to do.
Alex led Joe out to the enclosure. Everyone was exactly as he had left them. Li and Patrick stood inside the pen. Between them was Moya, her head drooping, her eyes half closed. Her trunk hung down in a straight line, as though it was too heavy for her. It was the first time he'd seen the baby elephant standing still and it was a sorry sight. Her skin hung in shrivelled folds, like a dust sheet that had been laid over an angular piece of furniture. Nobody moved; they just stood in a sad tableau.
Joe stopped for a moment, taking it all in.
Alex stayed at the gate. Joe entered the enclosure and walked up to the baby elephant. Moya barely registered that a new person had invaded her territory. Her trunk didn't move, either in greeting or with curiosity; her eyes were still.
'She's gone the same way as the other one we had,' said Patrick quietly. 'The intestinal infection's too much.'
'Is there any point in putting her on a drip?' asked Joe. But
his tone suggested he already knew the answer.
Li moved to the fence, stepped out of the pen and joined Alex. Her eyes flicked up to his: Let's go, they said. She sensed that Patrick and Joe needed to be alone to do what they had to.
Amber was in control of the balloon as it came in to land in front of the lodge. Her hand was on the cord attached to the vent at the top of the balloon envelope. When she pulled it, air escaped, making the balloon drop. They had been out for three hours and she was thoroughly enjoying it. It was like sailing, but curiously skewed – instead of manoeuvring the craft sideways, she could only move it up and down. If they needed to change direction she took the balloon up or down until she found a breeze going the right way.
Paulo and Gaston tossed out guy ropes to Hex, Alex, Li, Patrick and Joe, who were running alongside the craft. Amber felt the balloon lift a little in an updraught and let a little more air out. When they were out over the plains she had been able to let the balloon go with the wind. Now that she had people hanging on she had to be careful not to let it lift off again. Landing a balloon was just as much an art as a science, but Amber was used to reading the wind from her experience as a sailor.
The balloon descended smoothly. The moment it bumped the ground, Amber cried, 'Hold her down,' and opened the top vent fully. As the gas left the envelope, the craft settled down.
'Did you find anything?' said Alex.
'Nothing that remotely resembled an airstrip,' said Amber. She climbed over the edge of the basket and carefully lowered herself to the ground, trailing another guy rope over her shoulder. Paulo did the same on the other side.
'We've been all around,' said Paulo. 'There are no patches of jungle that have been cleared. It would have to be quite a big area and there's nothing.'
Gaston hopped out too. With everyone out of the basket, the balloon began to lift again. But that made it easier to move to its garage. The group walked alongside, each of them leading it with a guy rope, the balloon floating between them as though it was on a magic carpet. But by the time they reached the small shed Gaston had referred to as the garage, the envelope had lost a lot more air and was sagging over Paulo, Amber and Li, and the basket was considerably heavier.