Liebman looked at me and bowed his head.
“We’d like you to tell us more about the trafficking of animals from the wild,” Mercer said. “We think there may be a connection to something Paul Battaglia was working on.”
“I imagine you have colleagues who would know about that,” Liebman said.
“I’m really of the view that my boss stumbled onto something,” I said. “That he crossed paths, perhaps, into a territory where he didn’t belong—wrong place, wrong time—rather than that he was deep into a case.”
It was difficult—maybe impossible—to explain to an outsider how secretive the district attorney could be, how he didn’t trust people, even his closest aides, for fear that they would leak word of a matter that would be picked up by another jurisdiction. Most of all, it was hard to explain how he hated James Prescott and feared the feds would steal his thunder once again by running off with one of his projects. The older Battaglia got, the more selfish he grew to be about grooming a successor, the more he wanted the glory to reflect entirely on his own individual brilliance.
“What territory would that be?” Liebman asked, replacing the penguin on top of some pamphlets and reaching for a wooden object, also carved, in the form of a monkey.
“Trafficking, like Mercer just told you. If we’re right—if this is an area that the task force needs to explore—we’ll pass the information on to those prosecutors and detectives as soon as we leave here.”
“The focus of the investigation, as of now,” Mercer said, “has been on old cases, on criminals the district attorney has prosecuted, on grudges from his past. But the three of us think we shouldn’t overlook his interest in wildlife conservation, and the fact of how dangerous your work really is.”
I wanted to ask Dr. Liebman what he thought about American hunting preserves, but he hadn’t seemed to warm to us yet.
“Is it legislation that’s needed?” I asked.
“There are laws, Ms. Cooper,” he said. “Years ago, something called CITES was established. It’s the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. By now there are scores of countries signed on, at least to talk the talk.”
“Then is it enforcement?”
Liebman was holding the small monkey figurine between his thumb and forefinger. “In many places it is indeed a lack of strong enforcement efforts,” he said, “but at the heart of it all is the need to stop the demand for the products. As long as people want the animal parts—rarely the animals themselves, Detective Wallace—as long as there is a demand for the parts, the slaughter and the trafficking will go on.”
“So, the ivory markets,” Mercer said, “and the traditional medicines.”
“Have you explored the cyberworld?” Liebman asked.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” I said.
Some of my colleagues were experts on cybercrimes, including the most sophisticated areas of encryption—areas in which Google and Apple spent fortunes trying to deny government agencies like ours the right to break the codes to investigate cases. Maybe Battaglia was working with guys in that bureau who ought to be brought into the investigation.
“This black market thrives on the Internet,” he said. “You ignore it at your peril.”
“Talk to us about ivory,” Mercer said. “About elephant tusks.”
“Everyone’s favorite subject, Detective,” Liebman said. “You’re thinking too common, really.”
“How does the ivory get out of a small village in Africa?” Mercer said. “I understand that there’s a poacher and then a middleman.”
“It has become far more difficult,” he said. “The Wildlife Conservation Society, for example, uses dogs at some of the larger airports. South Sudan, for example, and Entebbe. In Mozambique and Kenya.”
“Dogs?”
“Yes, Mr. Wallace. They’re trained to sniff ivory—and pangolin scales and the like—by the same people who train dogs to sniff for land mines and explosives in combat zones.”
“How well does it work?” I asked.
Liebman reached to a bookcase shelf behind him and produced a small photograph in a frame. The picture was of a springer spaniel with floppy ears, playing with a toy while standing beside a small pile of ivory tusks.
“They’ve only been in operation since last year,” he said, “but so far they’ve been a great success. Four to six busts a month, which results in seizures worth millions of dollars.”
“That’s good news,” Mike said.
“Yes, although it has pushed the traffickers in another direction,” Liebman said. “One that is much harder to control.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The illegal trade has shifted its modus operandi to moving cargo by boats instead of planes,” he said. “The entire eastern coastline of Africa—and its ports—now houses the points of departure for rhino horns and ivory tusks and all else. The massive ports—like Mombasa—are far larger and much harder to patrol than the airports. A handful of spaniels can’t get the job done.”
“So ships?” Mike said. “Not planes.”
“Container ships.”
“Carrying what?”
“Meant to be carrying cargo of all kinds, across the Indian Ocean,” Liebman said, “to Asia.”
“Then the ivory, or whatever, is buried in the cargo.”
“The ivory, Detective Chapman, is packed in with the heroin, which is why wildlife trafficking has become such an integral part of organized crime operations,” Liebman said. “We’ve all been drawn into the heart of darkness—into Africa’s heroin highway.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Heroin and Africa?” Mike asked. “That doesn’t make sense. That’s not where the dope comes from.”
“Perfect sense, actually,” Liebman said. “With all the conflict surrounding Afghanistan—the source location you’re thinking of—the preferred route for getting pure heroin to Europe, and even to America, is through East Africa.”
“Really?”
“We’ve learned, at our organization, that more than seventy thousand kilograms a year are smuggled through that region—the southern route, as it’s now known,” he said. “The drug lords capitalize on nonexistent security in many of the poorest regions on the African continent, and on porous borders through the countries there as well.”
“What about at sea?” I asked. “What happens when these shipments are intercepted?”
“Nothing at all,” Liebman said, replacing the photograph and picking up the carved monkey again. “Seizures at an airport can be prosecuted, as you know. But when the maritime patrols intercept drugs or even arms in international waters, they can’t even detain the smugglers.”
“What do they do to them?”
“Simply dump the contraband at sea, Ms. Cooper, and let the criminals sail away.”
“That’s insane,” I said.
“We know that,” Liebman said. “It’s part of a treaty signed by thirty countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia.”
Liebman stood up and walked to the office door. Attached to the back of it—facing us—was a map of the Eastern Hemisphere.
With his long, thin finger, Dr. Liebman traced a line from Mombasa across the Indian Ocean. His first stop was the Arabian Peninsula. He jabbed Dubai with his forefinger.
“It all depends on demand, like I say. The crown prince of Dubai likes to post photos of himself on Instagram, holding his pet lion.”
“Pet?” I asked.
“Exotic pets are a huge status symbol in the Emirates, Ms. Cooper. A rare white lion—the kind the prince favors—might set him back one hundred thousand dollars,” Liebman said. “It’s the favorite trading place for cheetahs, too.”
“The Egyptian pharaohs kept cheetahs as pets,” Mike said. “Makes me crazy to think of the fastest land animal on earth kept on a leash.”
&nb
sp; “Oh, they’re driven around in Bentley convertibles or on the front of a speedboat, too,” Liebman said sarcastically. “Not a bad life, unless you understand that their habitat loss has nearly driven them to extinction.”
“How do they get to the boats?” I asked.
“They’re smuggled through the war zones of Somalia across the sea to Yemen—where cheetahs are the least of anyone’s problems—and on to the oil-rich countries of the UAE, for a king’s ransom.”
“The animal that needs space to run,” Mike said, “winds up in a cage in a royal palace.”
“So I must ask you,” Liebman said, “did Paul Battaglia have enemies in any of the Arabian countries?”
“Big-time,” Mike said. “What was the bank, Coop?”
“BCCA,” I said. “I’m sure you read about it last year. Battaglia prosecuted the men who ran the Bank of Commerce and Credit of Arabia. Major jail sentences and a hundred forty million dollars in restitution.”
The tabloids had a ball with the case. They came up with an alternate explanation for the lettered acronym: the Bank of Crooks and Criminals of Arabia. When James Prescott had been too slow to move on the international banking scheme, Battaglia had clawed back jurisdiction by virtue of a handful of transactions that had occurred in Manhattan. It had ratcheted up the tension between the two prosecutors so badly that they didn’t speak for weeks.
“That’s one place you should look, then,” Liebman said. “If the district attorney uncovered any of the wildlife-smuggling schemes in the bank records of the oil royals, that might have put him deeper into the quicksand.”
Mercer and I exchanged glances. We might be able to narrow the focus on a suspect, but the wide reach of the manner of the crime was beginning to seem overwhelming.
Stuart Liebman was as droll as he was brilliant. He moved his finger out of the Red Sea, around the peninsula, and over to India.
“Then there’s walking gold, as we call it,” he said. “Did your office have any ongoing investigations in India?”
“Not for lack of trying,” I said. “But the US attorney got the jump on the most recent one. The biggest that I can think of.”
“What’s that?” Mike asked.
“Cybercrimes. Child porn,” I said. “The cops brought the matter to me.”
“At the same time,” Mercer said, “as the FBI put it on Prescott’s desk.”
“Because of the strength of their tech industry,” I said, “the Indians have developed very robust cyberlaws, much like our own. The FBI was working with the Indian government on a huge hacking case. Password hacking, actually. And it led to a massive child porn operation out of Delhi, linked to Thailand.”
“Did you try to keep the investigation for Battaglia? For your unit?” Mike asked me.
“Yes.”
“But the feds raked it in?”
“You bet. They had much greater resources available to deal with witnesses abroad,” I said. “Unlike the banking improprieties, which are mostly paper chases.”
“Did Battaglia go batshit when Prescott took it over?” Mike asked.
“He didn’t seem to care at all,” I said. “He was distracted by something at the time. He just told me to let it go.”
“Really uncharacteristic of him, wasn’t it?”
“This Prescott fellow you keep mentioning,” Liebman said. “Do you trust him?”
I didn’t have a ready answer. I had never questioned his integrity before.
“He’s straight,” I said, speaking softly. “I’ve known him a long time. He’s a true public servant. I trust James Prescott.”
“Very well, then,” Liebman said.
“What’s walking gold?” Mike asked.
“Tigers, Detective. Tigers are being slaughtered across India,” he said. “For their skin and for their bones. And none of that is the work of small-town poachers.”
“All organized gangs?” Mercer said.
“Yes, the same kind of syndicate that’s wiping out elephants and rhinos in Africa.”
“Shooting tigers, too,” Mike said.
“They’re not shot,” Liebman said. “You can’t sell those pelts if they’ve got bullet holes in them, can you?”
“How, then?”
“Jaw traps, Detective. Large iron contraptions about a foot in diameter—rusty, most of them—with serrated teeth, anchored to the ground by a thick chain.”
I winced at the thought.
“There are more than a dozen tiger reserves—protected areas—in Central India, but the syndicates get into them and secure the jaw traps, usually near watering holes. Once the trap clamps down in the tiger’s mouth, it’s far too powerful for the animal to escape. Best to do it when the moon is full,” Liebman went on, “so that there’s no need of flashlights to give the traffickers away in the dark of night.”
“And the dead tigers?” I asked.
“It’s like a surgical strike, Ms. Cooper. The gang surrounds the dead animal and can have all the parts ready to go within a couple of hours,” he said. “And it’s usually the women who carry off the skin and the bones, because they’re far less likely to be searched.”
“The skins are purely decorative,” I said. “And Americans buy as many of them as anyone else in the world, am I right?”
“You are. Luxury ornamentation.”
“And the bones?”
“They’re smuggled almost exclusively to China,” he said.
There it was again. There was that country in which the trafficking seemed to be centered, no matter how many detours along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
“Traditional medicine?” I asked.
“Tiger bone wine, Ms. Cooper. A very traditional, very expensive tonic believed to impart the tiger’s great strength and vigor to all who drink it,” Liebman said. “It’s not medicine at all. It’s centuries of superstition.”
Superstition, I thought. All of these species—and so many others—killed because of human ignorance, for beliefs in magical fixes and supernatural protections.
Mercer knew trade routes from the collection of maps that his father had given him all throughout his youth. He stood up next to Stuart Liebman and studied the world chart.
“Get us to China,” he said. “It’s still a long way off.”
Liebman threaded his finger from the ocean past the Bay of Bengal, between Malaysia and Indonesia, and brought it to a rest on the southern tip of Vietnam.
“Did Battaglia have any business here?”
“In Vietnam?” I said. “Not that I know of.”
“Well, it’s the weakest link on the path to China,” Liebman said. “You can bring your goods in anywhere along the Vietnamese coastline, because what the smugglers are searching out is the easiest place to make the border crossing.”
“And it’s well-known for that purpose?” Mercer asked.
“Completely. It’s a place right here in North Vietnam,” he said, putting his fingertip on the spot. “Called Mong Cai City.”
Mercer leaned in to see it.
“Why?” he asked. “What’s there?”
“More corrupt government officials than you can count on all your collective fingers and toes run Mong Cai,” Liebman said. “Gambling casinos create a great diversion, as do all the tourists and shoppers looking for counterfeit goods. They keep the border guards wide-eyed and hungry for bribes of every kind. Most smugglers can slip across into China—into Dongxing City—as though the bridges had been greased with oil to ease them over. If there’s one arrest for every three hundred attempts to get across the border, I’d be surprised.”
“So the traffickers go where the government is most corrupt and least regulated—” Mercer said.
“And where the profit margins are the greatest,” Liebman said. “For every kind of wildlife that’s traded, getting to China i
s the goal. That’s where the stakes are highest.”
“Organized crime,” Mercer said as he sat down and shrugged his shoulders. “Heroin and wild animals. I’d never have linked them together.”
“Surely the district attorney knew of syndicates linked to Asia,” Liebman said.
“We’ll look into it,” I said. “We’ll tell the feds what you’ve told us, of course.”
“Keep your eye on this James Prescott fellow,” Liebman said, going back to his desk, picking up his stone penguin, and starting to stroke its back again. “I doubt I’ve told you anything he doesn’t already know. I suspect he’s way out ahead of you on this.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I have no idea what Liebman meant by that statement about Prescott,” I said to Mike.
The three of us were sitting in the basement office of Giuliano, the owner of my favorite Italian restaurant, Primola. He always let us go downstairs to watch the Final Jeopardy! question before we sat at our table for dinner.
“How did it make you feel, Coop?”
“Queasy.”
“Enough to spoil your appetite?”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “Of course the feds have their fingers in every kind of trafficking operation worldwide. And they all network with each other through the Department of Justice, so whether Prescott himself is ahead of us on any of this, he’ll certainly know which other US attorneys—San Fran, Los Angeles, Miami—whether any of them were going down this path. But Prescott isn’t about to tell us anything, including what he and Battaglia crossed swords about.”
“Liebman also said the name Diana meant nothing to him,” Mercer said. “No help there.”
“He didn’t react at all when I asked him about that,” I said. “There wasn’t a glimmer of recognition.”
“What do you tell Prescott tomorrow?” Mercer asked.
“Everything we just heard. I have no choice in this.”
The category was revealed on the big board. “MONUMENT MEN,” Trebek said, reading the words aloud. “How do you feel about MONUMENT MEN tonight?”
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