Elefant

by Martin Suter

  Roux’s anger and hatred had faded away; now he was resigned. Or as good as. For sometimes he was struck by how unbelievable it was that they’d failed a second time so close to their goal, and for a moment he’d feel sure that everything had to take a turn for the better.

  In the night they’d broken into the vet’s apartment. Nothing suggested that she’d left in a hurry, but there was considerable evidence that she wasn’t an especially tidy individual.

  They found no clues as to where the people they were after might be. Only a folder on the back of which it said ‘Hainbuchstrasse’, which implied that the villa where Schoch had been hiding belonged to her.

  When they’d arrived at the street clinic early that morning, a good hour before it opened, Roux’s heart was pounding. But the longer they waited and the larger the group of people waiting grew, the more listless he became.

  Now it was nine o’clock, half an hour after the official opening time.

  ‘Go and ask,’ ordered Tseng, who’d hardly said a word since they’d arrived.

  Roux got out and joined the group. He vaguely recognised one them, probably one of the dog lovers from Giorgio’s lot.

  ‘Do you know why it’s not open?’ Roux asked.

  ‘She had an emergency yesterday and said we should come back today. But when today, I’ve no idea.’

  While they were still puzzling over what might have happened, the vet’s Peugeot drove up. A young man got out, pushed his way through the throng of people, climbed the handful of steps to the door and said to the crowd, ‘Good morning. Please excuse the delay. My name is Dr Peter Grimm and I’m standing in for Frau Dr Sommer while she’s on holiday.’

  He unlocked the door and entered the second-hand shop, which today smelled of patchouli.

  30

  Singapore

  2 July 2016

  Sabu’s condition hadn’t got worse, but she was still refusing solids. Kaung, who called her Barisha, kept trying to feed her the bottle and sometimes she drank a little. He also got her to move and she’d take a few steps, but the right hind leg always dragged behind.

  The flight had been gruelling for all of them. Although the Gulfstream G550 was a spacious business jet, it was a small aircraft that didn’t have much to counter the turbulence above the Indian Ocean. It could accommodate twelve passengers and usually a flight attendant was included in the price. They’d dispensed with one to avoid Sabu being seen.

  They’d also requested ‘absolute privacy’, which meant that the door to the crew rest area, with its lavatory, bed and galley kitchen, had to remain closed throughout the entire flight.

  In the short periods without any turbulence, Valerie and Schoch had tried to get some sleep. Neither had enjoyed much during their short stay at the Hotel du Lac; at night their worry about Sabu had kept them awake, while during the day there was much to sort out: Schoch’s emergency passport, Valerie’s stand-in, meetings with her trustee who needed instructions and power of attorney, and the issue of a pet passport with the necessary vaccinations for Sabu the dwarf poodle.

  And all this in the constant fear of being recognised by someone.

  They were mightily relieved when they’d concluded the border formalities and the aircraft finally took off, leaving the overcast sky beneath them.

  After their dawn landing at Singapore’s Changi Airport, they were met at the plane steps by the bank’s VIP agents and driven to the VIP terminal in a limousine. A bleary-eyed immigration officer stamped the passports without any questions, even Kaung’s Burmese one, which time and again he’d renewed and extended in preparation for the day when his dream would come true and he’d return to his home country.

  Now Valerie and Schoch were sitting at a table laid for breakfast in the Palm Court of the Raffles Hotel, looking over the veranda railings and between the lady palms at the lawn, where an elderly gardener in a broad-brimmed straw hat was repositioning the sprinklers.

  Kaung was in his room, watching over Sabu. She’d drunk a little milk and eaten a slice of the apple that the waiter had brought up with breakfast.

  ‘Barisha feeling better,’ Kaung had said. ‘Can travel soon.’

  Valerie put her hand on Schoch’s.

  ‘Kaung believes that Sabu is sacred,’ Schoch said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because you believe in creation.’

  ‘Not exactly. I don’t believe in the distinction between evolution and creation.’

  ‘Okay. But in something sacred?’

  ‘Sabu is very, very special. Maybe there’s no difference between very, very special and sacred.’

  ‘So you believe in miracles too?’

  ‘Sabu is one.’

  ‘I thought she was the result of genetic engineering.’

  ‘Do you think they’d go to all this fuss finding her if she were so simple to manufacture?’

  31

  Zürich

  Autumn and winter 2016

  The villa in Hainbuchstrasse was sold for 15.4 million francs to an anonymous buyer, who was said to be Russian. The renovation work began a few weeks after the contract was signed by the buyer’s and seller’s proxies.

  Right after the sale the Sommer Foundation received a transfer of 212,000 francs in recompense for a payment it had made for the same amount to a certain Frau Iten. She in turn transferred the sum to a travel expenses account of GCBS bank and deleted a booking for the same amount made to JetFlug, a private charter company.

  Dr Peter Grimm was taken on full time as the street clinic’s vet.

  Circus Pellegrini enjoyed unexpected success with its new comic elephant act.

  Dr Horàk was commissioned by Dr Roux to implant the last of the modified blastocysts in Asha. With success.

  In Beijing the Chinese Genetic Company instructed their security department to undertake an international hunt for the pink dwarf elephant, without Dr Roux’s involvement. The team entrusted with this mission was headed by Tseng Tian, who was already familiar with the matter.

  32

  Beijing

  29 August 2017

  Without any success to show for itself, ‘Project Pink’ sank ever lower in the list of the Chinese Genetic Company’s priorities over the months that followed. Tseng and his team were assigned other tasks and Roux, the partner still resident in Switzerland, was given ever shorter shrift. The plan was to shelve ‘Project Pink’ completely after eighteen months.

  But then one day, one of Tseng’s internet researchers stumbled upon an obscure Buddhist blog mentioning a shrine to a sacred pink dwarf elephant by the name of Sabu Barisha.

  This discovery created a stir at the team meeting and Tseng instructed two other researchers to search the internet and the dark net for Sabu Barisha.

  Results came quickly. The search item kept taking them to a relatively new elephant sanctuary in Myanmar to the north of Rangoon, between the Irrawaddy and Sittaung rivers.

  The sanctuary was called Sabu Barisha after a small temple there, where a tiny, glowing pink elephant of the same name was worshipped.

  There were several photos of the temple complex and of statues of the miniature elephant god. They also discovered three videos with eyewitness statements of pilgrims – two elderly women and a young man – who had seen Sabu Barisha and gave credible descriptions of her. There were no video clips or photos of Sabu Barisha herself.

  Tseng presented the material to his superior, who informed the CGC management. They approved a three-man expedition to Myanmar under Tseng’s command with the goal of capturing the creature, but at the very least they were to obtain usable cell material.

  Three days later the group landed in Rangoon, each equipped with a diplomatic bag and diplomatic passport. At the airport they picked up their reserved Land Cruiser and set off.

  After a long drive on poor roads, sections of which had been washed away by the monsoon rains, they reached the huge entran
ce gate. SABU BARISHA ELEPHANT SANCTUARY stood in colourful letters above the entrance.

  They drove in and followed the signs to the reception, a large bungalow in the shade of an old teak tree, where they were greeted with ice-cold ginger tea by a young woman in traditional dress.

  The camp had more than ten guest bungalows, staff houses and stalls. Some of the buildings dated from the time when the camp still belonged to the British colonial power or the national logging corporation; the rest had been built by the new owners.

  Tseng and his companions moved into their bungalows.

  33

  Myanmar

  1 September 2017

  The large bungalow now housing the reception was where the camp manager and his family had lived in the colonial era. The building was mainly constructed from the teak that grew locally. The polished parquet floors, the doors and windows, the roof and most of the furniture were made from it.

  The former living room was now a dining room with space for twelve tables.

  Six others were occupied besides the one where Tseng and his companions now sat, all by Indian, Chinese and Burmese groups in traditional dress.

  The CGC men silently ate their curry, washed down with a bottle of Myanmar Beer.

  After pudding – coconut milk with sago – a European woman in Burmese dress entered the dining room and went from table to table. Although Tseng had only glimpsed the vet fleetingly from the car outside the villa, he knew it had to be her.

  She came to their table, welcomed them on behalf of the management, wished them a pleasant stay and gave them a flyer with information about the sanctuary.

  It lay on the edge of a huge area of wild and cultivated teak forests from the colonial era, and bordered an extensive forest conservation area. The government had now imposed a logging ban on the commercial plantations too, as each year the country’s forest land was declining by more than 100,000 hectares, representing 2 per cent of the total forest land annually.

  The new owners had adopted the thirty-two elephants who’d worked in the now protected forest, taken in another fourteen former worker elephants since and had raised the total population to fifty-five with nine elephant orphans.

  The aim of the project was to find a species-appropriate way to care for both their own animals and those in the neighbouring eighty square kilometres of conservation area, and to gradually reintroduce the healthy elephants into the wild. The weak and sick elephants would be looked after until the end of their lives.

  The sanctuary offered an insight into the lives of elephants. The visitors could observe the herds on the huge expanse of land from off-road vehicles. They could watch them bathe, and visit the baby area where elephant orphans were hand-raised.

  What you couldn’t do was ride, feed, wash or have direct contact with the animals. But it was possible to sponsor elephants and help out with the reforestation.

  The flyer made no mention of Sabu Barisha or her temple.

  34

  The same day

  Fritz Schoch was slim, but no longer scrawny. He wore a checked longyi and a white shirt with stand-up collar. His face and head were still smoothly shaven and he no longer had the shakes.

  Schoch was sitting at his desk typing on the computer. He’d refreshed his IT skills, marvelling at the quantum leaps made in this area over the past ten years. Now he looked after the administration of the camp and the Sommer Foundation. Not a full-time job, but enough for someone who hadn’t lifted a finger in ten years.

  Valerie entered the small office they shared. She was wearing a longyi too and a traditional Burmese blouse. She’d greeted the guests in the dining room, as she did every evening, and now sat down in front of her computer.

  Valerie had been back to school as well. She’d been instructed in Burmese elephant medicine by the sararwaan, the vet who Kaung had called on because of Sabu Barisha, and also learned about conventional medicine for Elephas maximus on the internet. Now she was looking after the health of her growing elephant population, helped always by Kaung and the sararwaan.

  Valerie and Schoch went about their business quietly. It was palpable that both of them felt comfortable in each other’s presence.

  Valerie interrupted the silence. ‘Have you seen the three newcomers? Chinese.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Strange. Not our typical guests.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Just not the sort of people to visit an alternative elephant sanctuary. More like men on a mission.’

  ‘You mean …?’

  ‘It’s just a feeling.’

  Since their successful and adventurous escape to Myanmar they’d never stopped keeping a watchful eye out. But this wasn’t the first time they’d had a strange feeling about some visitors, so they weren’t overly worried by Valerie’s inkling.

  She went behind Schoch, placed a hand on his neck and said, ‘Shall we? It’s time.’

  He turned off the computer and got up. At that moment the rain started pounding on the roof.

  35

  The same day

  The temple lay in a small clearing a kilometre from the main bungalow. A six-sided pagoda, pistachio green, white and golden, as if crafted by a confectioner, and with a glistening wet golden roof, its spire rising about five metres into the night sky.

  The entrances were guarded by ferocious lion statues.

  Inside, right in the centre, stood a golden cube, each of its sides a metre wide. On top, in the middle of orchid flowers and incense sticks, stood the statuette of a tiny, glowing, pink elephant.

  Kaung, his eyes closed, knelt in front of it and moved his lips. He heard the rain fall silent as suddenly as it had begun, then lost himself again in meditation.

  All of a sudden he sensed somebody entering the temple. He opened his eyes and saw three men, one of whom he knew. It was the tall Chinese man who’d been looking for Sabu Barisha.

  Kaung closed his eyes again.

  ‘Kaung,’ the man said.

  Kaung didn’t react.

  ‘Where is Sabu Barisha?’ the Chinese man asked in English.

  Kaung pretended not to understand.

  ‘Where is the little elephant?’ It sounded louder and more menacing.

  Kaung stood and tried to escape past the men outside.

  When the tall man gave a signal, his companions flanked Kaung and held him by the arms.

  ‘Come,’ Kaung said.

  The Chinese man nodded to the other two and they led him out of the small temple.

  36

  The same day

  Valerie and Schoch went to the temple, as they did every Friday, to bring their offerings. Followed by those oozies who could spare an hour that evening, and their wives. There must have been around thirty people, many of them carrying candles or petrol lamps.

  The clouds had broken and an almost full moon shone on the gold of the pagoda’s roof.

  A group of men stepped out of the main entrance, dimly lit by a pink light. They took a few steps forward then stopped. One of them was Kaung.

  Valerie and Schoch walked up to them. Now they could see that the other men were the Chinese newcomers. Two of them were holding on to Kaung.

  ‘Everything okay, Kaung?’ Schoch asked.

  The tall Chinese man gave the other two a sign; they let go of Kaung and he leaped over to Schoch and Valerie.

  ‘What do the men want?’ Valerie asked.

  ‘Sabu Barisha,’ Kaung said.

  ‘The experimental animal doesn’t belong to you,’ the tall Chinese man said. ‘We are here on behalf of Dr Roux, the legal owner. We demand you hand the animal over to us.’

  The oozies and their wives had caught up with Valerie and Schoch and formed a circle around the group.

  Now Kaung spoke. ‘Sabu Barisha not belong Dr Roux. Sabu Barisha belong nobody. Sabu Barisha sacred being.’ He turned to the temple, put his palms together in front of his face and bowed. Those standing around him did likewise.

  V
alerie whispered something to Schoch. He thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘Come,’ he told the Chinese men.

  They went first along a narrow path through a section of forest. The rainwater dripped from the leaves. They reached another, smaller clearing, with a bungalow that looked as if it also dated from the pre-independence era. It was built on stakes and surrounded by a wooden veranda with five steps leading up to it. The oozies and their wives sat on the veranda; Valerie, Schoch, Kaung and the three men went in.

  They entered a living area with a mixture of traditional Burmese and old colonial furniture. Schoch flicked a switch and a few fans started rotating on the ceiling.

  Kaung sat on the floor.

  Valerie invited the men to take a seat, fetched a laptop and booted it up.

  She attached a memory stick and started the video.

  37

  The same day

  The words SABU BARISHA appeared in pink on the screen like a film title, while a variety of drums, cymbals and harps played traditional Burmese music.

  The title remained for a few seconds then faded into a still image of the tiny elephant with her trunk in the air. Her mouth was open and it looked as if she were laughing. The three Chinese men whispered to each other.

  The image started moving. Sabu Barisha walked across the Persian carpet of a gloomy room. Occasionally her glow overexposed the picture, bathing the entire screen in her pink.

  A different scene now emerged: the small elephant sucking powerfully on a baby bottle being held by a hairy hand.

  A cross-fade showed the same hand rolling a ball of wool towards the mini-elephant. Sabu Barisha trapped it with her trunk and pushed it back skilfully with her foot.