“I forgot,” Freddie said.
“We’ll have to reorganize the jobs again.”
Steve and Freddie grunted, their attention back on their work. Sonja looked from one to the other in irritation. “Nobody told me” she said, “that you needed Lek today.”
“No hassle.” Freddie squinted at the protein molecule on his screen. “We’ll manage without her. Hey, Phil—look at this.”
“She’s got a sore throat,” Sonja persisted. None of them seemed to hear, so she turned and went upstairs.
Diana was in the aviary when she heard the phone ringing in the house and realized she had forgotten to switch on the answering machine.
I hope it’s not that kid with the kite, she thought. A schoolboy from a property two hundred kilometers away had found a fork-tailed kite, poisoned by something it had picked up near a slaugh-teryard. While the kite was on the ground, disabled by poison, a cattle dog had mauled it. Diana held telephone and fax conferences with the boy almost every day, but usually later than this. She was teaching him how to imp the bird’s broken feathers.
After six or seven rings the noise stopped, and she returned her attention to the eagle.
The bird had seemed sluggish early on, and Diana wondered if she had worked too hard on her first day at the flying ground. But she came to Diana’s arm willingly, half jumping, half gliding a couple of meters from her perch. When Diana carried her to the block outdoors, she cast from her crop a felted mass of fur and duck feathers, leftovers from the feast of two days ago. After casting she became perky, whistling as she shook out her feathers and waggling her tail. Last week, while her wings were still tied, Diana had imped the damaged tail feather, using a sliver of bamboo to join the broken part to an eagle tail feather she had in her collection of spares. You needed a magnifying glass to spot the mend. Now when the eagle preened, the perfect layering of her plumage was magical. Feather overlapped feather with ingenious artistry. The bird seemed at these moments to be another sort of human, one who came down from behind the sun.
A few moments after the phone stopped ringing, she heard Grace call “It’s America!” from a window upstairs.
Diana was panting when she picked up the receiver. A bright American voice said, “Hi, Diana. Hope I haven’t interrupted your dinner.” They could not come to grips with the idea that Australia was eighteen hours ahead of the West Coast. “A courier has just delivered your latest hair. There’s been no time for proper analysis, but we thought you would like to know what we all think, just from comparing the two samples.…” Diana held her breath.
“They’re from different animals,” the bright voice continued. “We’re saying that based on a visual comparison of color and length, and after putting the new hair and one of the earlier hairs side by side under the microscope. Even allowing for the variation in hair on different parts of the body, this second sample appears to be from a lighter-colored animal, with a finer coat. Our guess would be that it comes from an animal that has been in a tropical climate and outdoors more recently than the first one, which, as we told you, showed signs of being kept indoors, with no sunlight, in air-conditioning. But the sex and type of food of this animal, that we can’t tell yet.”
Diana felt a thud of disappointment. Hairs traveled like seeds. She knew that Sonja had dined with Jason on the night he had treated the circus chimp: it was possible that chimp hair on Jason had transferred itself to Sonja’s clothing and then to her husband’s. “Would you mind putting all that on the fax to me?” she said. I must keep an unprejudiced mind, she told herself. I mustn’t suspect people just because they give me the creeps.
She was still thinking about Dr. Parker and his foxy little wife when she returned to the aviary. At lunch at the Ethics Committee meeting, the wife had said, “Animals are so much nicer than humans. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the humans vanished and the animals could have their planet back?”
“No,” Diana said.
Sonja had looked astonished.
“Animals don’t want us to leave them.”
Sonja gave a nervous laugh. Her ears were turning red from some complex emotion caused by the sudden arrival on the veranda of Dr. Parker.
At Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport on Wednesday morning, the first jumbo of the day lifted from the runway like a slow arrow. The sky was already hot, although it was barely light. Overnight, the temperature had stayed at 22 degrees. Susan Miller did not mind being on the early shift at the airport in this weather, because by the afternoon, when the heat would be booming like a kettledrum, she would be surfing into the cool green sea. She had swum in the ocean pool just after dawn, and because of that had arrived a few minutes late at the meeting in Customs’ Operations Room. She was wearing a navy skirt and preppy striped cotton shirt, to look like airport ground staff. Her short, chemically yellow hair was still damp.
The marks, three of them, all in the heroin trade, were not due to arrive until 0700 hours, but there were some details of coordination between Customs and the Dogs to work out before the aircraft landed. A fact discovered only last night had complicated the operation: the apron controller had allotted Bay 15 to the 7:00 A.M. flight from Bangkok. Number 15 was the only detached bay at the international terminal, and therefore it was possible that in the short distance between the jumbo and the finger walkway, one of the marks could pass his load to an accomplice working on the tarmac. The insecure bay meant that a team would have to drive onto the tarmac, park as close as possible to the aircraft, and keep both lines of disembarking passengers under surveillance. The marks were a Caucasian male aged thirty, a Chinese male aged forty-one, and a Thai female aged twenty-three. The Chinese was the boss. He was flying first class and would not be carrying drugs. The woman was in business class, and the younger male was in economy. As far as Customs could figure from the list of passengers’ names, the flight had at least twenty-eight Chinese males aged between thirty and forty-two, eighty Caucasian males aged twenty-five to thirty-five, and seventeen Thai females aged eighteen to twenty-five; picking them by sight would not be easy.
Susan slid into a seat next to her probationer, Debbie Smith.
“What have I missed?” she whispered.
Smith had dimples, a beauty spot at the corner of her top lip, and succulent-looking breasts, which had so disturbed one of the men at the briefing that he had turned his chair at an angle so he could not look at them. Her expression was bewildered. “I don’t know,” she whispered back.
Sergeant Miller tried to keep a pleasant look on her face. She was sick of being den mother for these thickheaded girls who never lasted out their probationary year, although she had to admit this one was gorgeous.
“I was wondering …,” Smith said. She wanted to make a good impression on Sergeant Miller. “I was wondering …” A photograph of the Chinese appeared on the screen. Weasel nudged Smith to shut up.
The plan they made that morning was to construct a double filter that would not alert the marks (or whoever might be waiting to meet them) that they, in particular, were under surveillance. First, a sniffer dog would be stationed in the corridor leading to passport control. The dog could find drugs in hand luggage or carried outside the body, but skillful couriers knew how to confuse drug dogs. These marks were expected to get past the dogs while a score of people with foodstuffs and Buddha sticks would be grabbed by the dog. At the immigration barrier, officers would have instructions to put the symbol for a luggage search on the customs card of every Caucasian male aged twenty-five to thirty-five, every Chinese male aged thirty-five to forty-five, and every Thai female aged twenty to twenty-five who disembarked from the first Bangkok flight. The broad net would trawl in all sorts of unexpected contraband. By 8:00 A.M., there would be seven hundred fifty passengers in the arrival hall, all fatigued, all ending long journeys, all anxious to pass through Customs as fast as possible.
Miller and Smith were assigned to the finger walkway. After that they were to change into jeans and T-shirts
and take up positions in the luggage collection area, ready to help in arrest. In the case of nothing being found on the marks, they were to keep the woman under surveillance when she left the terminal. They would have a backup team of five, plus two cars.
When the aircraft landed, the first thing Somchai noticed was that the weather was not so cold as he had thought it would be. He felt some easing of his fear of being so far from home. Khun Otto had said it would not be for long: just a few months, until any trouble over the Spaniard had passed. Although Khun Otto said it was safer for him to be in Australia, Somchai did not feel safe, and as he followed the other passengers along a corridor of raw tan brick he felt increasingly nervous, especially when he saw the wooden barricade. Beside it were two blue-uniformed men, one of them struggling to hold a panting German shepherd dog. The animal quivered with excitement and yanked her leash. Somchai was frightened of dogs, as were many of the other passengers.
The smiling young handler said, “Don’t be afraid of the dog, ladies and gentlemen; she won’t bite, and there’s no rabies in Australia,” but only a few people understood him.
The dog shoved her nose in Somchai’s crotch, sniffed the legs of his jeans and his Reeboks, and passed on.
Meanwhile, on the finger walk, Weasel had already observed the Caucasian male hand a plastic carry bag to the Thai woman and alerted the Customs men at the barrier. The dog went into a frenzy of snarling and barking, and the woman was led away.
In the baggage claim area, the hundreds of people milling around the carousels were so intent on their own problems that only a handful realized a young white man had just been surrounded by three others and forced to follow them. The Chinese had gone through, clean, and was standing in a queue outside the terminal, waiting for a taxi. The two men standing behind him in the queue, dressed casually to look like disembarking passengers, were federal police officers. The Chinese stepped into a cab. Seconds later, the officers stepped into a taxi that jumped the line. A burgundy-colored Mazda pulled out from the two-minute standing zone and fell in behind the cabs.
“Well—that’s our work for the day,” Weasel said. “What would you like to do now?”
Probationer Smith had been hoping for drama and felt disappointed by the speed and quietness of the arrests. She was expecting something more glamorous. “Could we go for coffee?” she asked. There was a coy inflection in her voice.
So young and so flirty, Weasel thought.
Somchai was just emerging from the men’s lavatory. He had collected his backpack from the carousel, gone into the lavatory, removed his knife, and strapped it to his calf, so that if he was stopped at Customs (Khun Otto had explained all this) his knife would not be seen.
“Where would you like to go?” Weasel asked Smith, who shrugged and looked open to any suggestion.
Somchai, his blue backpack slung on one shoulder, walked out into the hot Sydney morning and joined the end of the taxi queue.
He registered on Weasel’s brain for a moment before she returned her attention to Deborah Smith.
“Let’s go back to headquarters and get rid of our gear. Then we’ll be fancy free,” she said.
“Sounds good to me,” Smith replied.
A white Commodore turbo cruised to the curb. Weasel got in the front and Smith in the rear. “Office,” Miller said.
“After that?” the driver asked.
Weasel turned for a moment to Smith, who flashed an encouraging smile. “We’ve earned a cup of coffee. Where do you reckon?” Weasel wanted to suggest the Gelato Bar at Bondi. Then she could say, “How about a swim?” and she and Deborah could walk up to her flat.… Maybe that was rushing things.
“Mate,” the driver said, “you can’t do better than what the tourists do: Go down to the quay, sit by the water, watch the ferries, have a beer. I’ll drop you there.”
When Michael Romanus arrived in the terminal, the congestion of the earlier flights had cleared. Outside the Customs hall, he telephoned his mother, who burst into tears and asked, was he sick? was he dying from a tropical illness?
“No, Mama. I’ll be home soon,” he said over and over. When she quieted down she began complaining about her sister and her brother-in-law and how the government and the customers were squeezing her to death. After that she listed all the things in the house that needed repair and how, without his father, life was useless. Then she began crying again.
He had to blow his nose when the call was over.
Before booking a flight to Brisbane, he wanted to speak to the woman Raoul had been in contact with about the chimps going to Australia. Since it was still early, he tried her private number first. A recorded message announced that it had been disconnected. He rang the Research, where an android said, “Thank you for calling the Exotic Feral Species and Microbiology Research Centre. If you wish to speak to someone in Administration, press 1. If you wish to speak to someone in Personnel, press 2. If you wish …” Eventually a human came on the line.
“Dr. Carolyn Williams has passed away,” the human said. “Is there anyone else who can help you?”
Romanus was so taken aback, he did not ask how she had passed away, or when. I’ll chance it, he thought. “Dr. John Parker.”
After a moment the android came back on the line. “The person you wish to contact is unavailable today. If you wish to speak to someone else, or leave a message, press 9.”
He hung up. What would I say to Parker anyway? he wondered. Tell him, You better come clean, pal, while you’ve still got time?
He knew he had to go to the police as soon as possible. He also knew that the disappearance in Thailand of a Spanish national would not interest the Australian cops, so he would have to convince them that animals were arriving unquarantined in Australia. If they believed that, they would be willing to bring in Interpol, which was the only way of overriding Grossmann’s power in Thailand. His plan, worked out on the flight from Bangkok, had depended upon meeting up with Carolyn Williams, discovering what she had found out about the final destination of the chimps sent from Saraburi, then going with her to the police.
In his hand luggage he had the contact numbers of wildlife protection agencies throughout the world. He turned to the index and found the Primate Rescue Organization contact for Australia. Raoul had warned him about the PRO rep: she was La Loca, the Mad One. “I understanding not this woman, although she knows much of birds,” Raoul said. She had tried to shoot him once: a jealous woman. “And Carolyn Williams, she, too, is mad. She and La Loca are half-sisters, but nobody talks about that.” I’ll have to talk to the crazy half-sister, Romanus thought.
The woman who answered said, “She not here now.”
Romanus asked, “Do you know what happened to a woman called Carolyn Williams?” There was silence.
“She been murdered.”
He collected his wits. “When did it happen?”
“A month ago.”
He counted back. A month ago, he and Raoul were in Alor Setar, in Malaysia. Raoul had telephoned Williams with the details they had gathered about a chimp called Lucy, who, according to the staff at Saraburi, had been sent to Dr. Parker in Australia three months earlier. Romanus remembered the date because the next day Raoul was flying to Chiang Mai, and he was driving to Mae Wong, via Saraburi, carrying the decoy baby orangutan to give to Otto. It had a tattoo inside its lip so it could be traced.
At the information desk he found the name of the airline that flew to Kalunga, but it was fully booked for that day and the next. After a long wait he got through to State Rail: he was too late to catch the train, so his only option was to hire a car and drive. A yawn almost stifled him. He had been too tense to sleep more than a couple of hours on the flight from Bangkok, and when he did doze, dreams tumbled him about.
He rang back and explained to the woman who answered La Loca’s phone that he wanted to meet Diana, but he could not get to Kalunga until Thursday afternoon.
“You comin’ on the bus?” the woman asked. A s
pecial bus was leaving from Sydney’s Central Railway Station next morning, she said, taking a group of bird-watchers to Kalunga.
He pushed his luggage cart out of the terminal, into the steaming morning, and caught a cab to the Airport Hilton, half asleep before he checked in.
Diana’s tour of the Research that morning was in concert with two other members of the Ethics Committee and was conducted by the director of administration. He began by taking them to the rabbit breeding house, where they spent almost an hour. Next was the fox enclosure. The cubs were as playful as puppies and sucked and nipped at their fingers, but the fox stink was almost unbearable. Diana waited a few minutes until her olfactory nerves overloaded and switched off and was then able to spend the next half hour examining their enclosure, unable to smell anything. Administration and the others stood upwind, waiting impatiently. When she rejoined them, Administration said, “It’s nice someone takes this committee so seriously.” His pink lips inside his beard gave an irritable twitch.
“I’d like to inspect Dr. Parker’s laboratory next,” Diana said.
“Dr. Parker’s laboratory?” His eyes shuttled from side to side, his tone was faintly incredulous, as if the suggestion that Dr. Parker had a laboratory was odd, if not completely bizarre. “I’m not sure …”
“U-1,” she said.
“U-1?”
That morning, Sonja had buttonholed him on the third floor and said that whatever happened, he was not to take people traipsing through John’s laboratory today, while John was away. She gave him a note on a memo sheet, saying, “Please ask the director of administration to delay inspection of U-1 until my return. I want to be present to explain to members of the Ethics Committee our animal-keeping practices.”
“He phoned this message to my secretary,” Sonja said.
“But it’s all arranged,” Administration had objected. “U-1 is on the list.”
White Eye Page 23
