Ivory Nation

by Andy Maslen

  ‘Neither is that.’

  ‘Please, work with me on this.’

  ‘Look, my friend. You paid for my services. I delivered. I tell you what. You’re curious. So am I. Answer me one question and I’ll answer yours.’

  ‘OK, fine. Yes.’

  ‘Why no middleman?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘People like you, normally they use go-betweens. Deniable, you see? But you, you come direct. I want to know why.’

  A pause. Long enough for the Syrian to look up and signal the hovering waiter for another mint tea.

  ‘Deniable, yes. But also leaky. In this game, the only way to ensure total secrecy is to do it yourself. Happy?’

  ‘Yes. I am in Gaborone.’

  ‘That’s Botswana.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Why are you there?’

  ‘Like I said, my friend, that’s not your concern.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. The police here are investigating the shooting and there’s no way I can intervene. Not overtly. They found a link to Bots. You need to go. Find another bolthole.’

  ‘Bolthole? You think I’m hiding?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you people do? Lie low for a bit.’

  The Syrian bit back an urge to hang up.

  ‘I can’t speak for anyone except myself. But I am not lying low, as you put it.’

  ‘What, then?’

  The Syrian sighed. He supposed it wouldn’t do any harm to let ‘Leon’ in on his plans.

  ‘A detective is here. From London. She is asking questions. The wrong questions. I am here to ensure she does not leave with answers.’

  ‘You’re going to—’

  ‘Never mind what I’m going to do!’ the Syrian snapped. ‘Do not call this number again.’

  He looked up, rolled his eyes as the waiter, an elderly man with tightly curled silver hair, placed the glass of tea on the table and picked up the empty.

  ‘My ex,’ he said. ‘Some people don’t know when it’s time to let go.’

  The waiter smiled. A man-to-man, ‘I hear you, Brother’ kind of smile.

  29

  HONG KONG, GABRIEL’S HOUSE

  Gabriel raised his glass to Mei. She tipped the rim of hers until they clicked together.

  ‘Cheers!’ he said.

  ‘Cheers, Big Bro.’

  He took a sip of the champagne. Off-dry, stewed apple, hazelnuts. Delicious.

  ‘Are you ever going to stop calling me Big Bro?’

  She grinned.

  ‘How does BB sound to you?’

  ‘It sounds great. BB King’s one of my favourite guitarists, so I’ll take that.’

  He set his glass on the table. The moss was spongy beneath his bare feet and he enjoyed the sensation as he curled his toes down into the soft mat. Away in the distance, pale-blue mountains floated in the mist, their bases obscured by white cloud.

  The air on the hill smelled fragrant – perfumed creeping flowers, pine, and top notes of seawater from the harbour below.

  ‘I hope we can spend some time together,’ Mei said.

  ‘Me, too. Apart from business.’

  ‘Yeah. Because there’s something I want you to do for me.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Will you take me to see Michael’s grave?’

  ‘You haven’t been yet?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t want to go alone. I want you there with me.’

  ‘We can go now, if you want?’

  Mei looked up. The whites of her large eyes were as clear as porcelain. She returned her gaze to her ‘big bro’.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Gabriel led Mei along a wide gravelled path that led away from the cemetery’s car park. They passed the office building and chapel, with its non-denominational stained-glass window in blue, green and gold glass. Above their heads, clouds had clumped into gloomy, rounded masses, their greenish-grey undersides pregnant with threat.

  Ahead, the gravestones stood in serried ranks, the grass between them mown down to a half-inch of startling green. Here and there, mourners stood or knelt by the graves of their loved ones, singly or in pairs. Gabriel turned his head towards a keening sound.

  A young woman, no more than thirty, stood on her own by a small white headstone topped with a carved angel. A net veil obscured her face; in his mind’s eye he saw red-rimmed eyes, tears on her cheeks, bitten lips. She clutched a white handkerchief in black-gloved hands.

  Your husband? Please, God, not your child.

  She turned suddenly and he caught a flash of her eyes behind the veil as she stared straight at him. He looked away and walked on, relieved when Mei threaded her left arm through his right.

  He steered Mei around a tall laurel bush, clipped into a perfect cone, and nodded the way ahead.

  ‘He’s just down here, on the right.’

  Reaching Michael’s grave, Gabriel stepped off the path, releasing Mei’s arm, and stood, head bowed.

  The grass here was cut just as neatly as elsewhere in the vast, stone-filled field. Gabriel looked at the grass under his feet. It was pale, the vibrant green changed to a dull grey. Who turned the colour down? He shook his head. The vibrancy returned.

  A few dried-out sprigs of pink magnolia sat in a glass vase before the gravestone. He read again the sparse, gold-filled phrases carved into the small slab of polished black granite.

  Michael Francis Wolfe.

  Nineteen eighty-five to nineteen ninety.

  Beloved son and brother.

  Taken from us too soon.

  ‘Master Zhao used to bring those,’ he said, pointing at the flowers. ‘They’re the last bunch he brought here. I’m never going to move them.’

  ‘Do you remember him?’ Mei asked. ‘Michael.’

  ‘Now I do. It took a while. For years I believed I was an only child. I told you before, right?’

  ‘Some, yes. I don’t remember all of it. What was he like?’

  Gabriel closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled in a soft sigh. He felt neither pain nor grief. Something had broken inside of him during the two weeks when he’d retreated from reality in the aftermath of Michael’s death. But he missed him. Missed the idea of him.

  ‘He was funny. Mischievous. A proper little brother. Always getting into trouble. His school uniform always looked like he’d been in a scrap. He used to love playing rugby. That’s how he died. He went in after a ball I kicked into the harbour. He drowned.’

  ‘You’re OK talking about it now?’

  Mei phrased it as a statement, not a question.

  ‘Yes. For so long, I thought it was my fault. It was mixed up in my head with stuff that happened just before I left the army. Then Kenneth Lao told me the truth.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes. Mum. She was drunk when she should have been watching us. It wasn’t her fault. Not really. She went to pieces after Fang kidnapped you.’

  Mei nodded. She stepped forward and placed a hand on the gravestone’s curved top. She knelt, placed her lips against the stone and closed her eyes. Gabriel watched as she communed with the soul of their dead brother. After a minute, she straightened in a single, flowing movement and rejoined Gabriel.

  She took his arm again.

  ‘I want to see their graves, too, BB.’

  ‘Mum and Dad’s? They’re in England.’

  ‘I know. I want to see them.’

  ‘I’ll take you as soon as this operation is over.’

  ‘Pinky promise?’ she said, holding out her right little finger.

  Amused at his sister’s childlike gesture, Gabriel nevertheless hooked her finger with his and squeezed.

  Back in the car, Gabriel started the engine, then turned to face Mei.

  ‘What about the people you said you could introduce me to?’

  ‘I’ll make some calls. Things are changing in my world. Now I’m taking WK in a different direction, I can talk to some of Fang’s old rivals. They want what w
e have so they’re keen to do deals. All kinds.’

  ‘I need to be back in Botswana by Friday.’

  ‘It’s Monday today. You’ll have plenty of time. Anyway, if you’re a couple of days late, Eli can cope, can’t she? After all, isn’t your girlfriend a, what did you call her, “a real badass”?’

  Gabriel smiled because Mei had slipped into American-accented English to utter this last, pungent phrase.

  ‘Let’s make sure she doesn’t need to be this time.’

  Back once more in the bar of the Golden Dragon, Gabriel felt an entirely justifiable sense of déjà vu. Only this time, the boss wasn’t a gangster plotting his murder with a corrupt Chinese Communist Party high-up. It was his little sister.

  The barman recognised Gabriel and came over with a smile. He held a sweating martini glass by the stem and placed it in front of Gabriel on one of the casino’s trademark gold cocktail napkins with a black-scalloped edge.

  ‘Tanqueray Number Ten, not too dry, three olives,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Tony.’ Gabriel sipped the ice-cold drink and smiled. ‘Perfect.’

  Gabriel picked up the glass and threaded his way through the crowd of well-dressed gamblers to the door leading to the private offices.

  Mei had redecorated Fang’s office. Gone was the heavy Chinese rug with its deep- plum-red stain where its owner had bled to death. Gone was the gold-painted antique furniture. Gone were the gold dragon lamps, each snarling reptile clamping a light-globe in its slavering jaws.

  In their place, polished wooden floorboards, a white carpet, modern steel-and-glass desk, blond wood filing cabinets and a half-dozen contemporary light fittings that Mei told him she’d commissioned from a rising glass artist on the mainland.

  She came round from behind the desk and hugged him. In her working dress of tailored western-style suit and heels, she could have passed for a business executive rather than a triad boss. But then, as she’d explained, that was the plan.

  ‘The Mafia did it. People go legit all the time,’ she’d said to him on his previous visit.

  ‘Your guest not here yet?’ Gabriel asked, taking a seat.

  ‘He’ll be here shortly. He just texted me. Stuck in traffic.’

  Gabriel had to smile. Even top-level gangsters weren’t immune from Hong Kong’s notorious jams.

  Five minutes later, the office door swung inwards to reveal the Golden Dragon’s security manager. He extended his free arm and in walked a very short, very thin man who, Gabriel judged, had to be in his eighties.

  Mei rounded the desk for a second time and crossed the expanse of white carpet. She bowed and extended her right hand, which the old man took, executing his own, smaller bow.

  ‘Mister Cho, I’d like you to meet my brother, Gabriel,’ she said, leading the old man over to Gabriel, who had stood in anticipation. He bowed as the man closed the four-foot gap between them.

  ‘Mr Cho runs the Four-Point Star triad,’ Mei said over the old man’s shoulder.

  Cho barely came up to Gabriel’s shoulder. He raised his chin and scrutinised Gabriel’s face, his deep-brown eyes moving restlessly over each feature.

  ‘Your sister is a tigress. Very powerful lady now,’ he said in English. ‘You are lucky. I do not come to meet any gweilo.’

  The slang term for a westerner could have been an insult, but Gabriel dipped his head a second time, acknowledging his outsider status.

  ‘I am pleased to meet you, Sir,’ he said in Cantonese. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me.’

  They sat. Mei produced drinks.

  ‘You are interested in ivory?’ Cho asked.

  ‘In the people who poach it. Who kill for it.’

  Gabriel sketched in the details of the operation to capture the poachers. When he’d finished, Cho stroked his chin with a liver-spotted hand.

  ‘The Four-Point Star controls the ivory trade into China. Also Singapore, Thailand and Japan. But we are just importers here. We also own a factory in the United Arab Emirates. They process the raw material, which comes in from Africa via a market in Vientiane. You know it?’

  ‘Laos, yes,’ Gabriel said.

  Cho nodded, agitating the wispy white hairs above his ears.

  ‘Globalisation,’ he said, smiling to reveal crooked brown teeth. ‘Not just good for car makers and drug companies, eh?’

  ‘Can you permit me to visit your factory in the UAE?’

  Cho glanced at Mei. Gabriel saw his pale eyebrows lift fractionally. I can trust your brother? they said.

  ‘Gabriel is discreet,’ she said. ‘I give you my word he will breathe nothing of what he sees. Also, I will be in your debt. You know my plans for the WK. Maybe we can find a way to divest some of our holdings to your control.’

  ‘Mister Cho,’ Gabriel said. ‘What my sister says about my discretion is true. Other people may wish to pursue your operations. I only wish to avenge my fallen brothers. You knew my mentor, perhaps. Zhao Xi?’

  Cho nodded.

  ‘Everyone in Hong Kong knew Xi. He was a fine man.’

  Gabriel placed his right palm over his heart.

  ‘I swear on his memory, and that of all my ancestors, that I will say nothing of what I see.’

  Cho interlaced his fingers in his lap. He straightened his back.

  ‘The manager is a man named Yusuf. I will email him to tell him you are coming. I accept your promises and your oath. But I will also send you with one of my men. It will remove the need for,’ he unlaced his fingers and waggled his hand in a seesaw motion, ‘additional security measures. You are happy with this?’

  ‘I am. And thank you.’

  Gabriel took the window seat on the Cathay Pacific flight to Dubai. He yawned: his body clock was still set to Gaborone time. The presence of a thickset Four-Point Star minder to his right, reeking of garlic, did nothing to prevent his falling into a deep sleep as the Airbus A330-300 left the tarmac, climbed and banked into a crystalline-blue sky.

  Nine hours later, a stewardess leaned across the burly minder and touched Gabriel lightly on the shoulder to wake him before landing.

  30

  GABORONE

  Mid-morning, and Eli and Stella were sitting at a roadside fruit stand just a few yards down Chuma Drive from the resort. In front of them, on a table constructed from upturned wooden crates sat two big bowls of fruit salad: mangosteen, melon and a soft-fleshed, aromatic fruit the female vendor had called ‘Mama’s Kiss’.

  Apart from the occasional truck loaded with timber or battered blue oil drums, the road was quiet at this time of the morning.

  A young boy, eight or nine, strolled past on the far side of the asphalt. In front of him, a fat-bellied goat ambled along, kept moving by the boy’s insistent application of a stick to its hindquarters. The boy waved to them as he passed.

  ‘Good morning!’ he called out in English, beaming them a thousand-watt smile. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine!’ Eli called back. ‘How are you?’

  He stopped, and his grin widened.

  ‘I am fine! How are you?’

  Eli smiled.

  ‘I am fine! How are you?’

  ‘I am fine! How are you?’

  Feeling the game could continue indefinitely, she changed tack.

  ‘My name’s Eli. What’s yours?’ she called out.

  ‘I am Abednigo Tsonga. I will be best football player in all Africa!’

  ‘Good luck!”

  He smiled once more, switched the goat across its backside, and waved over his shoulder as he walked away.

  ‘Nice to be so untroubled,’ Stella said. ‘He’s got his goat, his dream. Lives in this beautiful country.’

  ‘You sound envious.’

  Stella shrugged.

  ‘He looked happy. I wouldn’t mind that sort of simplicity in my life.’

  ‘You’d be bored inside a week.’

  Stella wrinkled her nose.

  ‘I think you’re right. I just wish you weren’t.’

  ‘L
ife can’t be too bad, can it? Hey! I just realised. All I know about you is the work stuff. You’re this kind of super-cop who punched a serial killer’s ticket. What about who you are as a woman?’

  Stella smiled and scooped another spoonful of Mama’s Kiss into her mouth. A squirt of juice escaped her lips and she rolled her eyes as she wiped it from her chin.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your story. What made you who you are today?’

  Eli saw a cloud flit across Stella’s face. Damn! Have I just trodden on something fragile?

  ‘Until a few years ago, I would have said my story was pretty conventional,’ Stella said. ‘School, university, teaching, then I joined the police. Fast track to detective inspector. Great things expected of me.’

  ‘Something happened, didn’t it?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Eli reached over and placed her hand over that of the woman she realised she wanted as a friend.

  ‘Stella, if you don’t want to talk about this, it’s fine. I just go charging in where angels fear to tread. Always have.’

  Stella shook her head and smiled at Eli.

  ‘No, it’s fine. And call me Stel. My other friends do.’

  Eli smiled, feeling a flush of pleasure. Here was someone she could relate to, the first woman in England with whom she’d made that connection.

  ‘Stel it is, then.’

  Stella inhaled sharply. Looked up and down the road even though they were alone, apart from the fruit stand lady, who was snoozing under a wide pink, yellow and green beach umbrella.

  ‘I guess with what you and Gabriel do for a living I’m safe saying this, but I’ve killed more people than Mim Robey. A lot more. Sometimes I get the heebie-jeebies when I think about it.’

  ‘Not innocent people, though, surely?’ Eli said.

  Stella shook her head.

  ‘No. Not really. Some were murderers. Others were accessories. A few were trying to kill me.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ Eli said. ‘You shouldn’t worry.’

  ‘As simple as that?’