“For what?”
“You always manage to keep your cool.”
I leaned into her. “Well, you kicked ass on Bird Street. I never could have done that.” I got up and started humming, “Everybody was kung fu fighting…” as I skipped up the trail.
Ling-Ru laughed and followed along. We both sang, “Those kicks were fast as lightning,” as we ran back up the switchback as if invincible to whatever could come next.
As soon as we reached the top of the switchback and turned a corner with an expansive view again, my phone rang in my pocket. We were finally back in range.
Ling-Ru grabbed her phone and started dialing.
I pulled my phone out and looked at the screen to see who was calling. It was Craig. I picked up. “Craig?”
“Catherine, thank God you’re okay.”
Up in Smoke
Craig didn’t bother with the pleasantries when I answered the phone, so I knew something was seriously wrong. “Craig, what’s going on?”
“You haven’t seen the news yet, have you?”
I stiffened. “No, why?”
“Your text came through this morning. I’ve been trying to reach you ever since.”
“Ling-Ru and I went for a walk. My cellphone’s been out of range.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. What’s up?”
“Is there any way that Nigel could have seen you on Bird Street last night? Enough to identify you?”
“I don’t think so, but the SHU did.”
“Do you think they knew where you were staying?”
“Ling-Ru seemed to think so. Craig, what happened?”
“The Chungking Mansions burned down last night.”
“What? Were people hurt?”
“Not sure of the final count yet, but at least ten weren’t able to get out in time.”
“Oh my God! Ten people died? That’s terrible.”
“Bloody tragic.”
“How did it happen? Do you think—I mean—could it be possible…?”
“I suspect this was not an accident.”
I looked at Ling-Ru’s knowing expression and I shook my head in disbelief. “Ling-Ru had me come with her to Lantau.”
“Smart girl,” Craig replied.
I put my hand over the phone and whispered, “Did you reach anyone?”
Ling-Ru nodded.
“You tell them about the tiger?”
She nodded. “They’re coming out with animal control.”
“The cobra?”
She nodded.
“Good.” I uncovered the phone again and listened to Craig.
“What was that about a cobra?” Craig asked.
“I’ll explain when I see you.” I now felt like I needed to address both of them. “The place was a fire waiting to happen. It could easily have been a coincidence.”
Ling-Ru shook her head.
“The timing is too coincidental,” Craig insisted.
“Could they really want to get rid of me that badly, enough to burn down an entire hotel?”
“We’re working on that.”
“What do the police think?”
“Arson…for insurance. The place was on the edge of bankruptcy. The usual story.” He hesitated. “I hope you didn’t have a lot of personal things there.”
“I had everything there.” I was trying not to think about it but was most concerned about my computer and files that I hadn’t backed up. Interviews I had conducted in Hong Kong. Emails. And Jon’s letters.
“Your passport?”
“It was in the safe.”
“Good. I understand most of their safes are still intact. Can you meet at my office first thing in the morning?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ve got tickets for you and Ling-Ru for the noon flight to Kunming tomorrow.”
“That’s great.” I turned to Ling-Ru. “We’re going to Kunming tomorrow.”
Ling-Ru nodded and smiled.
“Where are you?” Craig asked.
“On top of Lantau.”
“At the Big Buddha?”
“No, just up the ridge from the apartment.”
“Gorgeous view, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Please be careful.”
“I will.” I suddenly remembered the HIN on the tugboat. “Oh, and Craig, can you have a look at the pictures I took of that tugboat in the Gulf of Tonkin?” I opened up the picture on my phone and zoomed in on the numbers and letters inscribed on the side of the boat moored at Jin Jin’s dock. “Can you check to see if they match the following HIN: HIJ 007JB MI69X?”
“Got it.”
“Great, thanks. Goodbye, Craig.”
“See you tomorrow. I have some shopping to do.”
“Shopping?” The line went dead.
Ling-Ru and I jogged along the ridge, through the forest, past the monastery, and back out onto the ridge trail again. We descended the switchback on the other side of the ridge and could see Li’s apartment complex below. Sweat was pouring down my salt-covered skin, and I couldn’t wait to wash off the sensation of raccoon-dog ankles poking at my body.
We continued jogging past the same few small dwellings we had passed that morning, crossed the street, and made it back to the apartment. Li and his family were still out clamming, so the place was empty except for Smara and Li’s father.
I hoped we wouldn’t bump into Jin Jin’s son and have to tell him the bad news. I assumed that we would have beaten his sons back to the apartment, but they could have taken a shortcut. He may have heard about the tiger by now.
As we walked up the sidewalk to the apartment, I couldn’t help noticing familiar tread marks in the soil next to the sidewalk. The word KONG was written everywhere—the same tread marks that were outside Jin Jin’s house and in the sand where the grizzly bear was buried. It was most likely a common brand of shoe, but combined with the fact that the treads appeared to be from the same shoe size in each location, a man’s shoe, I couldn’t help wondering whether either Li or Jin Jin’s son had been at the site prior to our arrival.
I pointed to one of the prints. “You should check to see if either Li or Jin Jin’s son owns a pair of Kongs. These were the treads we saw at Jin Jin’s house and by the grizzly bear.”
Ling-Ru looked at the shoe treads. “Will do.”
When we got into the apartment, I took a shower while Ling-Ru went to the beach to look for Li. I ran the water as hot as I could possibly stand it, given how hot and humid it was outside. The water pressure wasn’t nearly strong enough to get the salty grime off, but it was still a relief to have fresh water against my skin.
As I washed my hair, it occurred to me that the only clothes I now owned were the ones I had worn here. It was hard to believe that fewer than forty-eight hours had passed since I had first put them on.
I’d have to buy some new clothes after I got to Craig’s office. And I’d need a new place to stay. But I didn’t even have a credit card since my bag was stolen. Craig was going to have to cover me.
Ling-Ru’s team arrived later in the afternoon and picked us up in a large customs boat, and we motored over to the next bay. The police were just finishing up their collection of evidence for Jin Jin’s case as customs brought a tugboat in to tow the illegal boat to their customs dock in Hong Kong. They also sent a team up the ridge to retrieve the tiger.
After a somber dinner with Li’s family, we all retired early. Ling-Ru and I needed to get an early start in the morning.
Throughout the dinner, Li kept checking to see if Jin Jin’s son had returned to his apartment, but he and the two boys never showed up. Li assumed that they went to be with Jin Jin’s wife in Hong Kong.
Tailors, Snitches & Sequencing
Craig was hunched over his desk, pouring over printouts of the images I had taken of HINs in the Gulf of Tonkin. He had blown up several images of the tugboat with the registration clearly legible along the starboard side: HIJ
007JB MI69X.
He stood up. “Oh, Catherine, it’s a bloody relief to see you alive.”
“I do prefer to be among the living, thanks.” I looked down and pointed at the code in the image. “Do we have a match?”
“Indeed, we do. Nice work.”
I sat down and took a breath. The flight down the Ka Long River hadn’t been a bust after all.
Suddenly I realized that there was something different about Craig’s office. There was a garment bag hanging from his door and behind his desk were shelves and shelves of very small teapots of all colors and dimensions that were not present on Friday.
“Odd time for a shopping spree.” I got up and picked up a small yellow clay pot. “What’s with the teapots?”
Craig got up and took the pot from me. “I inherited them.”
“From the Tea Museum?” I asked.
Craig had taken me on a tour of Hong Kong on my first day on the job. We took the Peak Tram up to the Victoria Peak overlook, the highest point on Hong Kong Island. We went up the tower to the viewing platform on Sky Terrace 428 to take in the most spectacular view of Victoria Harbor and the green mountains of the New Territories. On the way down, we stopped in a most impressive aviary in Hong Kong Park and ended up at the Tea Museum, where I learned how the Chinese revered not only tea and the art of tea making, but also the importance of teapots and the clay from which they were made.
Craig had a faraway look in his eyes. “From someone who meant a great deal to me.”
“Patrick?” I knew he wouldn’t willingly leave Johannesburg to base out of Hong Kong, but something had happened to change his mind. I was assuming it was his love interest, Patrick, who he had mentioned in passing, but I never asked questions—particularly relating to his inopportune and unexplained disappearances. All expats in Hong Kong seemed to be on the run from something. I was getting used to the pattern.
“I forgot I told you about him. I had the collection shipped back from Macau.” Craig put the teapot down and distractedly handed me a tiny purplish-brown clay teapot barely the size of my palm. “If we end up sending you to Shanghai, you’ll have to visit the town of Yixing where the clay is obtained. It’s so dense that it hardly shrinks in the kiln, making for a very tight fit on the lid and excellent heat retention.” I held the pot out in front of me as Craig stared at it admiringly. “I had grown quite fond of this collection. Modest, really. Patrick tried to represent some of the earlier dynasties, but with the new tea craze, these are harder and harder to come by, some even stolen national treasures. Now that I own the collection, dealers come to me in droves.”
I put the one pot down and picked up a fat, dark blue pot. Craig lifted the lid up and down, demonstrating the perfect fit. The lid had an especially deep lip on it, which I assumed facilitated keeping the heat in as well.
“Funny, the other day I was offered a pot from the Ming dynasty straight out of the Forbidden City,” Craig said. “Amazing what people will try to sell.”
“The Forbidden City?”
“Yes, from a catalog of stolen artifacts. If Patrick hadn’t shown me one of these catalogs himself, I wouldn’t have believed it. I assumed the dealer was hoping I’d pick up where he left off.”
“Didn’t Nigel deal in this area, before he developed a taste for ivory?” I lifted the lid of a black pot shaped like a large egg.
“Yes, in fact, he did—or still does.” Craig took the lid from my hand and placed it back down onto the pot. “The dragon egg is my favorite,” he said reverently. Then he wiped his palms to change the subject. “Well, enough about teapots. I could go on about them all day.” He sat back down. “I was thinking about donating the collection to the Tea Museum, but then I decided I couldn’t part with them. They’re the only connection I have to our past.”
“You never told me what happened.”
“I haven’t wanted to talk about it.”
“I understand. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Craig sighed. “He made the mistake that many make, thinking he could run parallel with triads and not be consumed by them. He was an antiques dealer. Extraordinary things would pass in front of him.” He pulled out a pamphlet and opened it. “He wanted this in the worst way.” He pointed to an old ivory-handled brush. “Imagine being able to buy an ivory brush that belonged to one of Emperor Qing’s concubines.”
“Legally?”
“Of course not.”
“You didn’t tell me that part.”
“He was mostly aboveboard.” He shook his head. “I tried to warn him. But he wouldn’t listen. Even after the Getty incident and the crackdown on stolen treasures being sold to Western museums for a price.” He looked out the window with faraway eyes. “He developed a taste for it. He couldn’t let it go. Then one day they took him.”
“Who did?”
“The Sun Hee Un.”
I sat down in shock. “Craig, I had no idea.”
“That’s when I moved to Hong Kong.”
“Were you able to get him back?”
“No. Patrick was murdered two months ago, while you were in the Caprivi.”
“Oh no, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” I tried to think back to what might have been going on at that time. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Craig ignored me as a hidden anger rose to the fore. “I’m going to get these guys, Catherine. They can’t be allowed to do what they’re doing.”
“But Craig, it’s like Jon said to me once, you can’t let this stuff get personal or it’ll consume you.”
“It’s a bit late for that, I’m afraid. They took the best thing I had in my life, and I’m not going to let them get away with it.” He looked me up and down. “Come on, Catherine, who would be in this business if it weren’t somehow personal? We’re certainly not in it for the money. I hired you because I saw that fire. You were passionate about elephants. Passionate about doing the right thing. Personal motivations can drive good things.”
“The last time I was in this office, you warned me that my feelings for Jon could make me vulnerable—a handicap, I believe you called it.”
He stared out the window. “It’s a complicated world.”
Even though I knew I was right, I felt for him. I switched to a more sympathetic tone. “Was he from here?”
He nodded.
“I had no idea you were going through something like this.” Some of his communication, or lack thereof, while I had been stationed in Namibia now seemed more understandable. “I hadn’t realized just how similar we actually are.”
“Don’t get too comfortable with that thought.”
“You’re right. There’s lots we don’t have in common, like your fondness of tailors.”
“My custom suits are not just for show, you know.”
“You’ve tried that one on me before.”
“My tailor friends are a wealth of information.”
“What makes you think that your tailor friends can be trusted?”
“My tailor friends got us that HIN to link traffic from the Mong Cai to somewhere in China.”
“I thought that was thanks to the mysterious Mr. Weiping.”
“You never would have been there if it weren’t for my tailor and Mr. Weiping.”
“And Marcus?”
“It’s a collaboration. Always a collaboration. It makes it easier to spread the whistle-blowing out to a safer distance.”
“Any follow-up on Weiping?”
“None yet.”
“In the meantime, maybe we can find out where the ivory originated.” I pulled the ivory chips out of my pocket. “Is the lab ready to go?”
“Absolutely.” Craig stood up and invited me into the converted tearoom. He waved his hand proudly. “The guys from USFWS helped me put it all together, but I have no idea how any of it works.”
“Impressive.”
Overnight, Craig had turned the tea area into a fairly sophisticated genetics lab. In addition to the existing sink an
d refrigerator, there were now a small centrifuge and a sequencing machine, the size of a large laser printer. And there was a small cryogenic grinder to maintain the ivory at minus two hundred degrees Celsius during grinding to keep the DNA intact. Without these cold temperatures, the grinding process could heat up the DNA to a temperature that would cause it to degrade.
Since everything was done by kits these days, a wet lab really wasn’t needed, and the prep work was quick and easy. The only time-consuming step with ivory was the pulverizing and decalcification of the dentine prior to extracting the DNA.
“I’ll give you a crash course at some point, but would you mind if I got these started now?”
“By all means.”
Before placing the ivory in the cryogen for grinding, I put on some latex gloves and cleaned the ivory chips off with ten percent bleach to remove any trace of my own DNA that would have gotten onto the samples because of my handling of them. Then I placed the samples in the grinder. After ten minutes of cooling, the machine was programmed to switch back and forth every two minutes between grinding and cooling for about twenty minutes. Then I could start the decalcification protocol.
The entire process took six days, which is why I was eager to get it started as soon as possible. But six days was still a lot quicker than sending the samples to the University of Washington, particularly since we didn’t have our permit yet to send ivory samples to the United States.
I removed my gloves, washed my hands, and went back into Craig’s office. I looked at my watch. “What time did you say my flight was?”
Craig looked at his clock on the wall. It was nine thirty. “In three hours.”
“I’ve got to get to a clothing store and buy some things for the trip on the way to the airport.”
Craig nodded toward the garment bag hanging over the back of his door. A small carry-on bag sat underneath it. “Well, I must admit, I took the fire at your miserable hotel as an opportunity.”
I looked at the garment bag. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I knew you’d deliberate, and there just wasn’t time for a fashion crisis this morning.”
“Hey, how did you know I’m not a good shopper?”
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