Operation Pink Elephant

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  As the Royal Australian Navy helicopter carrying Ben, Caesar and their three companions flew closer to the port, the pilot’s voice crackled in the headset covering Ben’s ears.

  ‘Sergeant Fulton,’ he said, ‘I’ve just been talking with the Port Authority. They say there’s no place for us to land at the port. I think they’d prefer it if we just went away.’

  Ben smiled faintly. ‘Not a problem. We’ll rappel down.’

  ‘Roger that,’ said the pilot. ‘Prepare for rappelling.’

  To the astonishment of the hundreds of men working on the docks, the chopper arrived at the port’s front gate and loudly hovered above it. Men driving forklifts almost ran off the road in their surprise and curiosity at the unusual sight. Rappelling lines dropped down from both sides of the Seahawk, followed by three soldiers rapidly sliding to the ground. To further amaze the watching men, a large brown dog was lowered down, followed by a terrified Sergeant Simon Simma. The sergeant had never even been in a helicopter before in his life, let alone been lowered from one. Simma went very pale, and the military cap on his head was knocked flying as he descended, but he made it in one piece and gratefully removed the lowering sling from under his arms once his feet were on solid ground.

  With its passengers off-loaded, the heelo lifted away, reeling in the rappelling lines as it climbed and headed back out to sea to once again reunite with Canberra. Sally One would return in six hours’ time. With the Seahawk disappearing to the east, Ben looked around as Baz, Chris and Sergeant Simma joined him. Already, the steamy coastal heat was coating his brow with perspiration. Dar es Salaam was close to the equator, and was one of the hottest, most humid cities in the world.

  A scowling port official – a tall, gaunt man with thick glasses, wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt complete with a necktie – came striding toward them from an office at the gate. ‘What do you think you are doing?’ he demanded.

  Ben, who had been clipping Caesar’s metal leash in place, came to his feet. ‘We’re the Global Rapid Reaction Responders, sir. A specialist unit of the United Nations.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’ The official was clearly not in a cooperative mood.

  ‘Well, whether you’ve heard of it or not, sir,’ Ben replied, ‘we are conducting a search for contraband in the TICTS area of the port.’

  ‘On whose authority?’

  ‘On the authority of Minister Benjamin Kadanka.’ This was the Tanzanian cabinet minister who had asked the UN for help with rescuing Lucky Mertz and catching Abraham Zuba.

  ‘Benjamin Kadanka is Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism,’ the official scoffed. ‘He has no authority here at the port.’

  ‘I think you’ll find he does, sir,’ said Ben.

  Sergeant Simma produced a letter from his pocket, unfolded it and held it up for the man to read. It was signed by the country’s Minister for Police, granting permission for the members of GRRR to go wherever they liked if they had a reasonable suspicion that they would discover evidence of a crime.

  ‘We’re looking for contraband ivory, Tanzania’s most precious natural resource,’ said Ben, leading Caesar past the official and around the port entrance’s boom gate.

  Baz and Chris followed close behind them, leaving the official standing there, blustering uselessly. Sergeant Simma was the last to pass the official. As he did, he poked his tongue out at him.

  In the TICTS half of the port, thousands of metal shipping containers the size of large trucks sat side by side, stacked one atop the other, across the bitumen dockside loading area. The small GRRR detachment working here was dwarfed by the stacks and by massive, four-wheeled lifting machines that looked like praying mantises. The sun had gone down, and now the docks were lit by banks of orange lights.

  With the sunset had come the evening cool. Both Ben and Caesar were grateful for that. They had been searching for six hours without success. Ben had given his four-legged partner a break every hour and a drink of water from one of the two water canteens on his belt. The canteens had been filled on Canberra, which produced its own fresh water by evaporating seawater in a large desalination plant aboard. This was the only water that Ben would permit Caesar to drink here at the port. He didn’t trust the quality of the local water, which might contain any number of diseases.

  As night wrapped around them, they worked on in the artificial light. There was no way that Ben and Caesar could have searched every single container in six hours. They might have accomplished it in six days. So, Ben had been selective, picking containers for inspection at random, taking special interest in those whose paperwork indicated they were carrying agricultural produce – which Wally Springer had said was the usual cover for smuggled ivory.

  To complicate matters, the seal on each container had to be broken and the doors unlocked for Caesar to check their contents. In order to do this, the assistance of a TICTS official was needed. Baz and Chris had gone in search of just such a man and had found an English-speaking Chinese clerk by the name of Mr Zhu working on the second floor of a TICTS office in a dockside warehouse. The middle-aged Mr Zhu had been reluctant to cooperate, but Baz and Chris hadn’t let that get in their way.

  ‘This isn’t a request and it isn’t an invitation,’ Baz had told Mr Zhu. ‘You are going to help us look inside the containers, end of story! A mate of mine is in trouble, and you are going to help us get him out of trouble.’

  Mr Zhu was brought down to the piers. He opened one container after another, looking very nervous as Ben let Caesar poke his nose inside each one. But as time ticked by, Caesar found nothing.

  ‘You’re pushing him pretty hard, Ben,’ Chris Banner said with concern, when Caesar took a drink break.

  ‘I know,’ Ben said grimly. ‘He’s pretty much at the limit of his endurance now. Some dogs lose interest in the job after a while, but Caesar would sniff until he dropped.’ Kneeling beside his partner, Ben ruffled Caesar’s neck. ‘Wouldn’t you, mate?’

  In response, Caesar wearily licked him on the cheek.

  From the seaward side of the port came the buzzing sound of an approaching helicopter.

  ‘That’s the Sally coming to pick us up, Ben,’ said Baz. ‘I think we’re done here. Don’t you, mate?’

  ‘I don’t like giving up,’ Ben replied with a sigh.

  ‘Hey, man, we could always announce that we found the ivory shipment,’ Chris suggested with a grin. ‘How would Zuba know the difference?’

  ‘His mates at the port would tell him that we hadn’t found it,’ Ben replied.

  ‘But who’s he going to believe?’

  ‘I’d rather find the real ivory haul.’ Ben leaned close to his EDD. ‘What do you reckon, Caesar? We check one last container before we call it quits?’ Caesar’s tail began to wag. ‘Okay, Caesar’s up for it,’ he declared with a smile, giving the labrador another pat before coming to his feet.

  Taking hold of Caesar’s leash, Ben walked to the next row of shipping containers and stopped to look up at a blue container sitting on top of another.

  ‘That one?’ asked Baz, lugging an aluminium ladder that he and Chris had found in a wharf shed.

  Ben nodded. ‘Yep, that one will do.’

  Baz placed one end of the ladder against the bottom of the upper container, then turned to Mr Zhu. ‘Up you go, sunshine. Open her up, there’s a good man.’

  Mr Zhu shook his head. ‘It a waste of time. I no do.’

  ‘It’s not your decision to make, my friend,’ said Chris, taking Mr Zhu by the shoulders and marching him to the foot of the ladder. He pointed upwards. ‘Climb!’

  ‘Like I say, all waste of time,’ Mr Zhu protested. Slowly, he climbed the ladder. He removed the seal and opened the doors. Then back down the ladder he came.

  ‘Okay, mate,’ said Ben. ‘One last time.’ He unclipped Caesar’s leash and pointed up the ladder. ‘Caesar, seek on!’

  Tail wagging, Caesar launched himself onto the rungs of the ladder. He climbed nimbly to the top, and a
s he poked his nose into the open container, he became very restless. Caesar looked at Ben, then into the container again, then at the rungs of the ladder.

  ‘Something’s up,’ Ben announced. ‘Come back down, Caesar. Back down here, mate.’ He pointed to the bitumen beside him and let out the recall whistle.

  Caesar obeyed instantly. But he was much more slow and uncertain coming back down the ladder than he had been going up. Once he had four legs on the ground, he did an odd circle on the spot, looked back up at the container, then sat down, with his gaze fixed firmly on the container’s opening.

  ‘Bingo!’ exclaimed Baz. ‘That’s Caesar’s signature, isn’t it? Caesar has found something.’

  ‘Looks like it to me. Caesar, stay.’ Ben set off up the ladder. Once he looked in through the open doors, he was confronted with a wall of hessian sacks stamped ‘GROUND CARDAMOM, Product of Tanzania’. Taking hold of the corner of one sack, he dragged it out and threw it to the ground below.

  ‘No do that! No do that!’ Mr Zhu protested, waving his arms about. ‘Damage goods!’

  Ben ignored him, pulling out and dumping another half-a-dozen sacks, to Mr Zhu’s dismay. Then he took a torch from a clip on his belt and shone it into the container’s interior, through the gap in the wall of cardamom sacks that he had created. In the torch beam, he saw more sacks, with long curved shapes inside.

  ‘That’s it!’ he exclaimed, poking his head out of the container. ‘We’ve found Zuba’s ivory shipment!’ Ben, his elation overcoming his weariness now that they had found what they were looking for after six hours of searching, scrambled down the ladder. ‘Chris, you can do the honours.’

  Chris climbed into the container and removed every sack of elephant tusks for confiscation and burning. It would turn out that eighty per cent of the contents of the container were illegal ivory.

  Caesar had been sitting patiently watching his master up on the ladder. Now that Ben was back on the ground, Caesar’s tail began to wag. But the labrador was too well trained to move. Ben dropped to one knee beside him and, pulling his head in close and patting him vigorously, exclaimed, ‘You’ve done it again, Caesar! Well done, mate! Well done!’

  ‘Super-sniffer strikes again,’ Baz said with a laugh, turning to Mr Zhu. ‘Mate, someone has a lot of explaining to do. Let’s start with you.’ Chris tossed down another sack filled with elephant trunks. It landed with a dull thud at Baz’s feet. Pointing to the sack, Baz demanded, ‘Where did this illegal ivory shipment come from?’

  Mr Zhu paled. ‘Nothing to do with me!’ he protested. ‘I know nothing about this.’

  Baz raised his eyebrows. ‘Mr Zhu, mate, that’s what they all say.’

  That same Saturday, Nan and Maddie Fulton were walking hand in hand along a busy shopping street in Holsworthy.

  ‘But I still don’t know what ivory is, Nan,’ said Maddie, as Nan paused to look in the window of a dress shop. ‘How can it be an elephant’s tusk one minute, and then ivory once it’s been chopped off the poor elephant? Why don’t they just call it “elephant’s tusk” all the time?’

  Nan smiled to herself. ‘The word “ivory” sounds much nicer, Maddie. I don’t think many people would be as interested in buying it if someone said “Buy this statue made from elephant tusk and put it on a shelf to show it off” or “Buy this jewellery made from elephant tusk and hang it around your neck”.’

  ‘So, is an elephant’s tusk like our bones?’

  ‘Yes, sort of.’

  ‘Then, why do people buy elephant bones and put them on their shelves?’

  ‘Because ivory is shiny and rare, and it can be carved into really intricate shapes.’

  Maddie frowned. ‘But elephants need their tusks. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be born with them, would they? That’s like selling people’s arms because our arm bones could be carved into inticklate shapes. Isn’t it?’

  ‘In a way, yes,’ Nan conceded. She looked down at her granddaughter. ‘You know what, Maddie? I don’t think a lot of people know that ivory is actually the tusks of elephants.’

  ‘That dericulous!’ Maddie exclaimed, screwing up her face and folding her arms. ‘People should know that!’

  ‘Well, when you look at ivory, it doesn’t look like an elephant’s tusk.’

  ‘What does it look like, then?’

  For a moment, Nan was stumped for an answer, and then she remembered something. ‘Last week, there was a display in the jeweller’s window in the next street. I’m sure there was an antique ivory necklace among it. Come on, we’ll see if it’s still there.’

  Taking hold of Maddie’s hand, Nan led her along the pavement and around the corner to an old-fashioned shopfront.

  ‘Look, it’s still there,’ said Nan, pointing to a red felt display board in the shop window that was labelled ‘Rare Antique Estate Jewellery’. Attached to the board were old necklaces, rings, earrings and even a tiara. Most featured silver settings and sparkled with diamonds, emeralds and rubies. But one necklace was yellow in colour and featured dozens of finely carved pieces strung together. ‘That’s an antique ivory necklace!’ Nan declared, pointing to it. ‘It’s probably one hundred and fifty years old and worth a small fortune.’

  ‘That’s ivory?’ Maddie said with surprise. ‘It doesn’t look like an elephant’s tusk.’

  ‘But it is. An elephant had to die for that ivory to fall into the hands of the man who carved that necklace.’

  ‘Why isn’t there a sign that says it’s made from dead elephant?’ Maddie wanted to know.

  ‘I suppose, Maddie dear, the shop people don’t think that’s important.’

  ‘Well, I do!’ Maddie declared. Letting go of Nan’s hand, she marched in through the shop’s doorway.

  ‘Maddie!’ Nan called, setting off after her. ‘Where are you going?’

  Inside the jeweller’s store, there were three salespeople behind the glass counter, two of whom were talking with customers. Maddie marched up to the third salesperson, the manager, a smartly dressed woman in her fifties.

  The woman looked down at Maddie on the other side of the counter, and smiled. ‘Hello there. What can I do for you, sweetie?’

  ‘You’ve got dead elephant in your window!’ Maddie announced. ‘And it’s hobble!’

  The smile froze on the manager’s face. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Maddie’s eyes narrowed and she folded her arms. ‘In the window. The necklace. It’s made from an elephant’s tusk. That’s hobble!’

  The manager’s smile quickly became a frown. ‘Excuse me?’

  By this time, Nan had caught up with Maddie. ‘My granddaughter doesn’t approve of your ivory necklace in the window,’ she explained, placing her hands protectively on Maddie’s shoulders.

  ‘Oh.’ The manager smiled. ‘It’s an antique necklace, dear,’ she said to Maddie, patronisingly. ‘Very old.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Maddie retorted. ‘Someone killed an elephant to make it. It shouldn’t be allowed.’

  Nan steered Maddie toward the door. ‘Someone has to take a stand against ivory poaching,’ she said over her shoulder.

  The manager’s face clouded over. ‘Not in my shop, they won’t!’ she huffed, ignoring the other customers who had turned to look at her. ‘Anyway, it’s too late for that elephant!’

  Outside, Nan and Maddie resumed walking side by side.

  ‘You’re not mad at me, are you, Nan?’ asked Maddie. ‘For telling the lady about the dead elephant tusk in her window?’

  Nan smiled. ‘No, Maddie dear, I’m not mad at you. In fact, I’m rather proud of you for speaking out.’

  Maddie beamed. ‘Good!’

  ‘Yes, very proud,’ said Nan.

  ‘Who else can we tell to stop killing elephants?’

  ‘I think that’s enough for today.’

  ‘Joshie!’ Maddie suddenly exclaimed.

  A familiar face appeared in the crowd ahead. Josh and his best friend Baxter Chung waved and walked up to the pair.
/>   ‘Josh, what are you doing here?’ asked Nan. ‘Why aren’t you with Sergeant Kasula?’

  Josh shrugged. ‘Kelvin quit the course.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘During the week. Just because he wasn’t winning anymore.’ A triumphant smile came over Josh’s face. ‘After he put me on the mat for weeks, I learned how to put him on the mat, Nan. Even though he’s a lot bigger than me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?’

  Avoiding Nan’s gaze, Josh didn’t reply.

  ‘So, Kelvin just gave up?’

  Josh nodded. ‘He said it wasn’t fair that I was beating him.’

  ‘That’s not how it works, I’m afraid,’ said Nan. ‘Kelvin can’t just give up because he’s not winning. That’s the easy way out. His mother and I agreed that he would see that course through with you. And see it through he will. Come on.’ Turning in the opposite direction, she led Maddie away. ‘You too, Josh.’

  Josh glanced at Baxter unhappily. ‘Nan, where are you going?’

  ‘We’re going to pay the Corbetts a visit. I bet Kelvin’s mother doesn’t know he chickened out of the course.’

  ‘Oh, Nan!’ Josh protested. He hated it when Nan took on the Corbetts.

  Nan looked back over her shoulder. ‘Come along, Josh. My car’s just around the corner. Say goodbye to Baxter.’

  Begrudgingly, Josh farewelled Baxter then trailed after Nan and Maddie. ‘Can I please just stay in the car when you talk to Mrs Corbett?’ he asked, when they reached the car.

  ‘No, you cannot stay in the car. This is all about you and Kelvin, Josh, in case you’d forgotten. He bullied you, remember? And you hid it from us. This was part of his rehabilitation. Neither he nor you can get out of it.’ Opening a door to the car, Nan pointed to the back seat. ‘In you get, young man.’

  ‘It’s so embarrassing when grown-ups argue about us kids in front of us,’ Josh said, clambering into the back. Maddie quickly slid in after him.

  ‘There will be no arguing,’ Nan assured him. ‘Mrs Corbett and I are in complete agreement on this. Kelvin has no easy options here. Nor do you, young man.’