by Andy Maslen
Uri huffed out an irritable sound.
‘You’ll have a long wait, then.’
‘So be it. But that wasn’t why I called. Not precisely. There’s something fishy about the whole business.’
‘You think?’
The exasperation in Uri’s voice was tangible.
‘You’ve been looking at Lieberman.’
A statement, not a question. Eli knew what her old employer would be doing, regardless of any investigations conducted by the police or Shin Bet, the internal security service.
‘Of course. It’s early days, but we think we’re onto something.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, Eliyah! If only you worked for me, I could share all our intelligence with you in a morning briefing. But you work for the Brits now, don’t you? This is sensitive stuff.’
‘Uri Ziff!’ she said with mock outrage. ‘How could you play that card with me? Especially when I am in Africa helping a Metropolitan Police detective chief inspector work the case.’
Uri sighed.
‘Strictly confidential, yes? I’m treating you as an employee on temporary sabbatical in the UK, yes?’
‘Thanks, Uri. I won’t let you down.’
‘You’d better not! So, here’s what we know. Lieberman is – was – a physics teacher at David Ben Gurion High School in Haifa. After completing his military service in the IDF, where he gained a qualification as a designated marksman, he returned to civilian life and did a teaching degree at Tel Aviv University.’
‘Which is all great background, but—’
‘Don’t be so impatient! It was always your one weakness,’ Uri said. ‘Ten days ago, his wife and children went missing. He kept it quiet but we talked to her employer and the children’s school. No sign of them ever since. No CCTV, no airline tickets bought with her credit card, no passport scans at any border crossing or port or airports, nothing.’
Eli connected the dots at lightning speed.
‘He was being coerced. They kidnapped his family, threatened to kill them unless he did the hit.’
‘Impatient, yes, but also a quick study. That’s our working assumption, too.’
‘Do you buy the idea of Tammerlane just happening by at the right time to kill him?’
Uri sighed. Eli caught the familiar scratch of his big hand scrubbing at his stubbly jaw.
‘It’s a possibility. Our analysts are divided. Personally, I think it stinks.’
‘Me too. Here’s something in return. My contact here told us the British cops found some soil specks in the sniper nest.’
‘And they’re African.’
‘Ha! I’m not the only quick study. Yes, they’re from Botswana.’
‘What was Lieberman doing in Botswana?’
‘That’s what our friend from the Met,’ Eli smiled at Stella, ‘wants to find out.’
The call with Uri finished, Eli invited Stella to join her and Gabriel in their room to discuss an idea for the next day’s activities.
20
The following morning, Stella pulled up at the tree-shaded front gate of the Sir Seretse Khama Barracks on Monganaokodu Road. She killed the Toyota’s engine as the soldier on the gate strolled over from his post, AK-47 held nonchalantly at his hip.
‘Yes, madam,’ he said. No smile. The suspicious look of military base gate guards the world over.
‘Carl Jensen and Rachel Camaro to see Major Modimo,’ she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder, where Gabriel and Eli sat in the centre row of seats.
‘Who are you?’ he asked her.
‘Security.’
He glanced at the bulge on her right hip beneath her untucked shirt. She’d strapped a zipped nylon pouch onto her belt earlier and the effect was convincing.
‘They have an appointment?’ he asked, apparently satisfied by her one-word answer.
‘At ten.’
‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘Please,’ he added, as if he realised he’d forgotten his manners.
Stella watched him enter a tiny brick kiosk and pick up a phone. He emerged a couple of minutes later.
‘Park over there,’ he instructed her, gesturing with the muzzle of his AK towards a red-earth square fronting an office building. ‘Major Modimo’s office is inside.’
He walked back to the barrier and pushed on the steel counterweight, swinging the red-and-white striped pole up to admit them.
‘Thanks,’ Stella said through the open window as she inched the Land Cruiser over the threshold. She followed a track edged with white-painted rocks to the rudimentary carpark.
She parked, and all three clambered out of the Land Cruiser’s air conditioned interior into the already searing heat of a Gaborone morning. A stork strutting across the compound, its rosy beak as long as a combat knife, eyed them warily before taking wing and flapping noisily up to perch on a rooftop.
They entered the whitewashed office block. A young female soldier in beige dress uniform, her braided hair tied in tight at the nape of her neck, looked up from a folder and smiled.
‘You are here to see Major Modimo?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m Alec Jensen.’
‘And I’m Rachel Camaro,’ Eli said.
They both held their press passes out for inspection, but the young woman waved them away with another smile. She ignored Stella. The gate guard must have filled her in on ‘the security’.
‘Wait here, please,’ the soldier said, before picking up her desk phone, a heavy-looking unit in a shade of institutional green Stella remembered from her parents’ first house.
‘Major Modimo. Your guests are here. Yes, Sir.’
She replaced the handset in the cradle and smiled up at them.
‘Major Modimo is coming to collect you personally,’ she said, in a tone of voice that suggested this was very far from an everyday occurrence.
The tread of boots on polished tiles sounded loudly from a corridor behind the reception area. Gabriel straightened. Beside him Eli did the same, and he noticed approvingly the way Stella took a couple of steps back to stand behind and to his left.
The man who rounded the corner and approached the small group forced Gabriel to hurriedly reset his expectations. He realised he’d been expecting a carbon-copy of another African officer who’d extracted him and Britta from a firefight in north-western Mozambique a few years earlier. Major Anthony Chilundika had been tall, solidly built, heavily moustachioed and possessed of a jovial booming voice: a Sandhurst-trained combat commander with the manners and appearance to match.
Major Modimo presented an altogether different model of army officer. No more than five feet seven and ten stone, he nevertheless looked good in his immaculately tailored camouflage fatigues. His steel-rimmed glasses and neatly trimmed goatee gave him the cerebral look Gabriel associated with intelligence and strategy types.
They shook hands and, after the introductions were out of the way, the major ushered them along a narrow corridor to his office.
Sparsely furnished, with a desk and three mismatched chairs, the room was clearly a purely practical space. Gabriel saw none of the trappings of success so many people at the top of hierarchies – military or civilian – collected. No gold pen and pencil sets. No extravagant artworks or ceramics. No expensive leather-upholstered sofas or glass-topped coffee tables.
He did, however, register a framed photograph of the major smiling and shaking hands with a man Gabriel recognised from the briefing notes Don had supplied: Jerome Tsebogo, Botswana’s current president. Beside it, another photo of the major, an AK-47 on his hip, standing with three soldiers behind the corpse of a black man, sprawled on the ground beside a tusk as long as he was.
The major spoke, jerking Gabriel’s attention back to the present.
‘You are in Botswana writing an article for the Times of London about the illicit trade in ivory, yes?’
‘That’s right, Major,’ Gabriel said. ‘As you know, the people of Britain are very concerned that these
magnificent animals should be protected. It’s a very topical story.’
‘It is also a very complicated story, did you know that?’
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’
‘The farmers up north are not so happy about Botswana’s healthy elephant population. A single bull can destroy an entire year’s crop in one night. They come into villages and smash the place up. They kill people, too.’
‘We’d want to present all sides of the story, obviously.’
‘Yes, and I’m sure your readers will love to hear that,’ Modimo said with unmistakable sarcasm. ‘Poor blacks killing beautiful elephants just,’ he made air quotes, ‘to protect their livelihoods.’
This conversation wasn’t going at all the way Gabriel had envisioned.
‘We heard about the murders of your men by poachers. And the three British paratroopers. We thought we could start there. If you could arrange for us to visit the site of the killings.’
‘I have already detailed a squad of my best men for protection. I will accompany you,’ Modimo said.
He turned to Stella.
‘You are security?’
‘Yes, Major.’
‘You have a weapon?’
She smiled.
‘Civilians are prohibited from owning handguns in Botswana, Major. As you know.’
Gabriel could see the major trying, and failing, to suppress a smile.
‘Of course, my dear lady. And your employers, which one, I wonder? Techpoint? Logistics International? Kagiso Group? They will not, how shall I put this delicately, have reached an accommodation with my colleagues at police headquarters?’
Stella lowered her eyes and returned his smile. Said nothing.
Modimo laughed.
‘Well, no matter. For the purposes of this little,’ he paused, ‘adventure, I will furnish you with a firearm. I assume, even though you aren’t carrying, you know how to shoot?’
‘I do.’
‘Excellent. Let us proceed, then. My men are on standby and eager to get into the field.’
Outside, seven soldiers were standing in the shade of a tree. A couple were smoking. They were laughing and bantering. As soon as the major arrived, the cigarettes were hastily stamped out, the laughter ceased, and all seven snapped to attention.
‘At ease, men,’ the major said. ‘These are our visitors from England. Mr Jensen, Miss Camaro and,’ he turned to Stella, ‘my apologies. I didn’t ask your name.’
‘O’Meara.’
He turned to face his squad again.
‘And Miss O’Meara. Corporal Kobisa, find Miss O’Meara a rifle.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
The man sprinted off and returned shortly afterwards bearing a wooden-stocked AK-47. He skidded to a halt in front of Stella, who thanked him and shouldered the rifle.
Modimo pointed to the Land Cruiser.
‘I should take your car if I were you. More comfortable than anything the BDF can provide.’
He laughed.
‘Would you like to travel with us, Major?’ Gabriel asked. ‘We could use the time to learn more from you about ivory poaching.’
The major smiled.
‘Elegantly put, my friend. Saving my poor rear end from a fifty-mile ride on military suspension, eh? Yes, why not. Thank you.’
The major turned to his men, issued a few orders in Tsetswana and then, as the soldiers climbed into the truck, returned to Gabriel’s side.
‘Follow that truck!’ he said, laughing again.
Gabriel took the wheel and Modimo sat beside him. Eli and Stella climbed into the Land Cruiser’s spacious rear compartment.
‘There,’ Major Modimo said, pointing to a spot about five hundred yards to their left.
Ahead of them, the truck was already turning, leaving the track and bumbling across the rough, rock-strewn ground, avoiding acacias and tall, brick-red termite mounds. Gabriel followed its tyre-tracks, looking past it to the place Modimo had indicated.
At a distance, the object might have been a bonfire waiting to be ignited. A pile of whitish sticks arranged in a rough pyramid. As they neared their destination, the object resolved into the skeleton of an adult elephant. Behind a low-growing thorn bush, Gabriel spotted a second skeleton and then, hidden by that, a third, much smaller than the other two.
He brought the Land Cruiser to a stop behind the truck and climbed out.
Major Modimo issued his orders. Even without Tsetswana, Gabriel could translate it. It’s what he would have said.
Establish a perimeter. Anyone appears, give them a warning. If they don’t stop, shoot. Once in the air. Then to kill.
They walked over to the largest skeleton. Not a scrap of flesh remained, just bleached bones shrouded in a thick, desiccated hide. The front of the skull had been sawn clean off. The spongy interior was revealed across a dead-flat plane of bone, its edges scored by a chainsaw’s teeth.
All around the carcass, the ground had been gouged out in scrapes and scoops. They reminded Gabriel of the gouges in his lawn back in Salisbury when his old greyhound Seamus would dig up the grass for chafer bug larvae.
‘What are they?’ he asked.
‘When the meat is gone, and beetles have consumed every last morsel of edible material that remains, vultures eat the blood-soaked earth. Mother Nature is very efficient out here, Mr Jensen. How does the line go in the film? The circle of life?’
Gabriel nodded, reflecting that, for these poor beasts, the circle had been accelerated unjustly by men’s insatiable greed for money, not a predator’s natural appetite for food.
Behind them, Eli was using the Canon. Photographing the skeletons but also the ground, documenting the entire site in a series of identically framed pictures they could upload to a laptop and study for clues back at the hotel.
‘If you don’t mind, I will wait in the Land Cruiser,’ the major said. ‘I have been here more times than I care to remember. Take your time. We will return to the barracks when you are ready.’
Five minutes later, Stella called over.
‘Alec, Rachel! Over here!’
They hurried over.
Stella was crouching between two widely spaced acacias. She pointed at a series of zig-zag tread marks in a smooth area of dried mud.
‘Must have rained a little before they drove out here. I can take a cast of that.’
She headed over to the Land Cruiser and returned with a black nylon holdall in one hand and a plastic container of water in the other. She set the water down and unzipped the holdall. From its crowded depths she brought out a plastic bag of white powder, a large plastic measuring jug and a block of grey modelling clay, all purchased the day before in Gaborone.
Gabriel watched as she began pulling lumps of modelling clay off the main block and rolling out fat sausages. These she flattened into inch-high strips. She erected low walls around a foot-long section of the tyre-track and squeezed and smoothed the joins with her thumbs. She mixed up the Plaster of Paris in the jug until it reached a gloopy consistency that reminded him of melted ice cream. Pronouncing herself satisfied, she slid a pair of purple nitrile gloves on and poured the thick white liquid into the enclosure and eased it to the edges with her thumb.
She looked up at Gabriel and Eli.
‘In this heat it won’t take more than thirty minutes to dry,’ she said. ‘I’ll photograph it and send the pics back to London. My forensics guy might be able to get us a make and model.’
‘Let’s keep searching while it dries, then,’ Eli said. ‘No offence to Major Modimo or the Botswana Police Force or your former colleagues, Gabe, but they could have missed something. And Stella’s a professional.’
They spread out, each taking a 120-degree slice of a circle. On hands and knees, they began a fingertip search of the ground. They were looking for something, anything, that might provide a lead to the identity of the poachers.
Gabriel could feel the heat burning into him. They’d brought plenty of water, and drunk their f
ill before starting work, but, even so, he could feel his tongue sticking to the inside of his mouth.
A flicker of scarlet caught his eye: a small bird, identical to the one he’d saved from the spider. He followed its flight as it flitted from bush to acacia and back again. Finding a perch to its liking, it began stroking its beak from side to side on the branch, as if sharpening a knife on a whetstone. Something else caught Gabriel’s eye. A smooth, curved, bone-white surface.
21
He got to his feet and walked over to the thorn bush, causing the bird to depart, peeping with what he imagined was annoyance.
Rolling his shirt sleeve down and donning a leather glove, he snaked his hand into the depths of the thorn bush, wincing at the sharp pain as an inch-long dagger impaled his forearm. He managed to extract the thorn using his other hand and continued pushing his right arm deeper into the bush.
Finally the bone was within reach. He placed his fingers around it and pulled steadily. The high, whispery squeals as he dragged it past thorns set his teeth on edge. As it came free, he realised it wasn’t a skull at all.
He was looking at a complex curved piece of plastic. No more than three millimetres thick, it was white on the convex side and a dull black on the concave. One edge was smooth and clearly shaped by machine, but on one side, the plastic had been fractured or torn away somehow.
‘What are you?’ he murmured, holding it in the sunlight and turning it this way and that.
He rubbed it on his shirt to remove the thin scrim of red dust. Now he saw it. The paint wasn’t plain. It was pearlescent. As he tilted it, a second colour, a pale mint-green, glistened through the white.
The insight popped into his head unbidden. A flashbulb going off.
‘Auto trim,’ he said triumphantly. He turned and called over to Eli, who was on her hands and knees about thirty metres away.
‘El—’ he stopped before he uttered the second, betraying, syllable. Shit, stay focused, Wolfe! ‘Rachel, I found something.’
Eli got to her feet and ran over.
