Ivory Ghosts

by Caitlin O'Connell

  “How come?”

  “He had three tusks buried in his yard.”

  “The induna mentioned that. He said it was a setup. Do you think he is innocent?”

  “We are proceeding with the case. We need more evidence,” Gidean explained. “But, you don’t get treated very well in this prison, even if you are the induna’s son.”

  “I see,” I said as I made to leave.

  Gidean and Natembo stood up and nodded good-bye. “Go well,” Gidean said, and smiled.

  Just then, a woman burst into the office and ran to Gidean, collapsing into his lap in hysterics. Gidean put a hand on her head, whispering soothing words to her.

  He looked up at me. “This is Bernie’s wife.” Gidean shook his head. “Bernie is one of the other rangers stationed here. He is very, very sick this morning.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He is suffering from very bad coughing.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “We are having a problem of transport. Our ministry vehicle is in for a service and we are having no vehicle to take Bernie to the hospital.”

  “I can take him. I was planning to go see the doctor anyway.”

  “I will accompany you,” Gidean replied.

  Chapter 13

  Gidean and Natembo placed Bernie horizontally in the back of the Beetle, and Gidean got into the front. Bernie’s eyes were wild as he coughed uncontrollably, spitting up large mouthfuls of blood onto the backseat. His blood-splattered hands shook as he struggled to sit upright.

  I had never seen an extreme case of TB, but it seemed clear that that’s what he had. I slowly rolled the window down, as the heavy coughing was pretty unsettling. From the rearview mirror, I saw blood dripping down the backseat with every cough. It was clear this was terminal.

  “How long has he been like this?”

  “Some months now. On and off.”

  “He’s been like this for months?”

  Gidean nodded. “It is serious. Very, very serious.”

  “Has he been treated for TB?”

  Gidean shook his head.

  “Is TB a big problem in the Caprivi?”

  “Not since ten years. Now it is extreme. It is due to the problem of this HIV. It was not like this before. TB was not such a big problem as it is now.”

  “And HIV? Do people understand what it is?”

  “At-at-at-at-at. There are many stories. Many different beliefs about this thing. In fact, just the other day, I heard that people were not using condoms made in America because they believed that the Americans were using them to spread AIDS in Africa.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am very, very serious.”

  “People are not using condoms?”

  “Sometimes they do. There was very much education about these things. But now things are worse. I don’t know how it happened. The wrong information spreads. We are still suffering here in Caprivi from a postwar mentality. There is this idea that everything that is bad is the fault of the government.”

  We drove in silence for some time. When we got to the hospital, the admission line went around the building. I looked at all of the people that were either standing or sitting, looking as if they had been there for some hours at least. “What can we do?” I looked back at Bernie. “He can’t stand in that line.”

  Gidean shook his head. “There is no option. That is the only way he can see a doctor.”

  “But isn’t there an emergency room? Can’t we get him in right away?”

  “No, Catherine, it doesn’t work that way here. There are many, many people in need of treatment.”

  I got out of the car and looked at the front of the line to see if there was an admissions person that I could speak to. “I’ll be right back.”

  Gidean waited with Bernie at the car. He was too weak to stand up and was still coughing blood everywhere. I couldn’t help wondering how many people he might infect by standing in that interminable line.

  I walked up to a very young exhausted-looking health worker who stood inside a booth at the head of the line. I got lots of stares from the people in line presumably thinking that I was trying to use the color of my skin in order to cut the line.

  I pointed to my vehicle. “I have a ranger who is very, very sick. He is too weak to stand in this line.”

  “Lady,” she said, “all of these people have been here for many hours and many of them are also very, very sick. I am sorry.”

  “But could you at least have a look at him? He must be very infectious.”

  “I am sorry. Isn’t there a friend that can stay with him in line?”

  I couldn’t help being aggressive. “I will bring him to you so you can decide whether it’s safe to expose all of your other patients standing in this line.”

  “You must speak to the doctor about this.”

  “Okay. Where is the doctor?”

  She looked at me blankly. “I will call him.”

  I waited while the health worker disappeared into the building. I waved the flies away from my lips as a small boy herded a few goats toward an open-air market on the other side of the hospital. The dried fish and chickens attracted more flies than I wanted to think about, standing in this line with all of these suffering people.

  I turned back to the counter and looked up at the red face of an angry Afrikaner with a wild beard and a beer belly.

  “What’s the problem here?” the man snapped.

  I looked the man up and down. “Are you the doctor?”

  “Of course I’m the doctor. Why else would I be in this dump?” He held his hand out at the growing line of patients. “A very busy doctor, as you can see.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure you must be extremely busy, but my friend seems to have TB.”

  “Yes?”

  “Surely you can’t expect him to stand in this line? He’s probably contagious.”

  “I’m sure he is. Perhaps you don’t realize how many terminal cases of TB that I see on a daily basis. We don’t have a way to quarantine patients.”

  “Seems like that should be a priority.”

  “Put yourself in my position,” he growled. “We’re dealing with an epidemic here with no resources. All I can do is attempt to maintain order. If you come here demanding special attention, you’re going to cause a commotion.”

  “I have no intention of causing trouble. I’m just trying to help a friend.”

  “And if I bring your friend to the head of the queue, what message does that send to every other person here that’s riddled with TB?”

  “As far as I can tell, he appears worse than everyone else. And I think that everyone else would appreciate him being attended to.”

  “Ah, so you’re a TB expert?”

  I shook my head. “No, not at all. If I could just bring him here for you to assess, I think you’ll agree.”

  The doctor waved his hand officiously and I quickly ran back toward my car. Gidean had positioned Bernie in the line and they were able to find some shade under a tree. Gidean stood up. “Is everything all right?”

  I grabbed his arm. “Come. We’re going to take him to admissions. The doctor will have a look.”

  Gidean shrugged. “Okay.”

  I patted Bernie gently on the back. “Come. It’s just over here.”

  Bernie nodded weakly, and we did our best to carry him to the admissions booth.

  The doctor looked at Bernie and waved him inside.

  Gidean turned to me. “I’ll take it from here,” he said. “You’ve done enough.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  I grabbed Bernie’s other arm and put it around me. “I will help you.”

  “Thanks, Catherine.”

  When we reached the doctor, he waved to his attendant to bring Bernie inside.

  I reached my hand out to the doctor. “Thank you. I’m Catherine Sohon, by the way.”

  Begrudgingly, the doctor shook my hand. “Ge
ldenhuis. Donnie Geldenhuis.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Geldenhuis. I really appreciate this.”

  “I’ll never hear the end of the complaints.”

  “Father Sebuku actually mentioned your name yesterday. You have an office in town?”

  He nodded. “I try to make it there over lunchtime, but it’s usually too backed up here.”

  “Great, I hope to catch you there.”

  “We’ll see how it goes.”

  As I drove away, I couldn’t bear to look in the rearview mirror at the backseat. But the thought of TB baking onto my seats was enough for me to muster up the energy to go to the grocery store, buy some disinfectant and paper towels, and wipe down the seats.

  Chapter 14

  I stared at a photograph on the wall of Dr. Geldenhuis’s office of an elephant-back safari in a mountainous jungle. The elephants were Asian. It looked like one of those places Craig had mentioned with regard to the difficulties of patrolling drug and wildlife trafficking in the mountainous terrain of Asia.

  Doctors often went to exotic places, or at least they often had photos of exotic places, perhaps to take their patients’ minds off their pain. I looked more closely at the picture. Out of the entire expedition, there was one white man. It was Dr. Geldenhuis, wearing a wide-brimmed oilcloth hat.

  Dr. Geldenhuis walked through the door and loomed over my shoulder, annoyed. “Can I help you?”

  I turned to face him, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. The nurse said I could wait in your office.”

  Geldenhuis took his time sizing me up. Then he softened. “I keep telling her not to do that.” He scratched his head, looked at the photo, and smiled. “Perhaps I need more interesting photos in my waiting room.”

  “Where was this taken?”

  “Yunnan. Just on the border with Myanmar. Hell, it’s a raw place.”

  “See any wild elephants?”

  “Not on the Chinese side. But Myanmar is riddled with the buggers. And the ivory is denser than lead. Carves like butter. Not like the kak you get in Africa. Except for the Congo, of course. But not much left there. Pity, really.”

  I looked at him incredulously.

  “A hobby. I buy the antique stuff.”

  I tried to play dumb. “But isn’t the trade shut down?”

  “Preconvention stuff is all aboveboard in China. There’s a whole backlog of it since the carving factories closed. Can only export the worked antiques, though.”

  I looked down, not expecting such a conversation. I feigned ignorance. “Interesting. I had no idea it was so complicated.”

  He looked me up and down. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m working in the area and wanted to ask your advice about malaria.” I thought this was a safe place to start the conversation.

  He shrugged. “You don’t need me for that. You can get chloroquine at the clinic.”

  “But isn’t this a chloroquine-resistant area?”

  “Why do you want to take anything? The prophylactic is worse than the bug, I assure you.”

  “Not worse than dying from cerebral malaria, surely?”

  “True. We do get a case every now and again. Why didn’t you get something from the Peace Corps, or whoever you are working for? I can’t get mefloquine up here. What outfit did you say you were with?”

  “A conservation group based in South Africa.” After our conversation about ivory, I suddenly didn’t want to say “WIA,” in case he had heard of them or asked what the acronym stood for. “They thought I could get what I needed locally.”

  “Clearly they didn’t know where they were sending you. What do you have going with them?”

  “Helping to monitor the local elephant population. They’re in charge of coordinating elephant counts throughout southern Africa.”

  “I see. I have my guy Alvares fly for the censuses sometimes, but you’ll be lucky to catch him sober on a weekend. Caprivi’s not good for the liver.”

  “So you have a 182?”

  Geldenhuis nodded. “You know airplanes?”

  “I’ve flown a census or two.”

  “You’re a pilot?”

  I nodded.

  “So, what kind of monitoring are you doing, exactly?”

  “General counts. Population level stuff. And then I hope to look at how many mortalities are due to age or disease or poaching.”

  Dr. Geldenhuis raised a brow. “Poaching’s not a big problem here, you know. There are plenty of elephants, just not enough space. The farmers are hacking down the forest like nobody’s business. There’s going to be no place left for them to live.” He got up and showed me to the door. “Well, I’ve got to get a quick bite and get back to the hospital.”

  “How did the ranger look?”

  Dr. Geldenhuis exhaled. “He’ll be lucky to survive the night.”

  I shook my head. “What a shame.”

  “Treatment takes months, if they’re lucky enough to get it. Around here, people don’t know if they’ll be alive from one day to the next. It’s just too long. And, of course, once people start to feel better, they stop taking it.”

  “That must be a huge problem.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I headed toward the door. “And doxycycline? Can you get that?”

  He led me through the door to the waiting room before answering. “I’ll put an order in. Should be here in about two weeks. Meantime, wear socks. Anopheles mosquitoes love the ankles.”

  “Yes, I noticed. Thanks.” I was about to walk out, then stopped and turned around. “Hey, listen, I meant to ask you something. Father Sebuku mentioned that you do some flying for the Red Cross.”

  “I do what I can.”

  “Do you know if they need any other pilots in the area? I’d like to volunteer in my spare time.”

  “Afraid I don’t,” he said dismissively.

  As I passed him, he pressed a hand down on my shoulder and his eyes pierced right through me. “It’s not like the parks in South Africa,” he whispered. “Elephants don’t like people here. Watch yourself.”

  I nodded nervously, not knowing what he was talking about or what had caused his sudden aggression. I made a quick exit, passing a thin Chinese man wearing a suit, fidgeting in a plastic chair in the waiting room. He looked like the owner of the Dollar Store—the one I’d seen having an argument with Alvares.

  I couldn’t help noticing how the suit sagged off the man’s frail body and wondered why he was here wearing it. It was more modern than the few suits I had seen around town on a couple of elders, and not common. Maybe he was trying to make a good impression on the doctor.

  When I got outside, I turned around and looked at the dingy office. I took a breath to shake off the interaction and walked over to my car, which was parked right next to the window of the doctor’s office.

  I stood next to my car door, bracing myself for the heat that would assail me from inside the vehicle. I took a few moments to wait for a car to drive by so it wouldn’t fill my car with dust. The car passed, and I watched as orange powder from the dirt road blew in through the slightly opened louvered windows of the doctor’s office. Then I opened the door and stood back as the heat escaped.

  I heard raised voices coming from inside the office, and for a moment, I was tempted to see if I could hear what the doctor was saying, but he walked over and closed the dirty louvers with a loud clap. I tensed up, rolled down the window, and jumped into the sauna. It was time to face Jon Baggs.

  Chapter 15

  I parked under the shade of a sausage tree outside Baggs’s office and checked my sat phone to see if Craig had sent me anything. There was an attachment of a snapshot of a news clipping from the South China Morning Post. There was a fuzzy photograph that looked just like Dr. Geldenhuis. Craig had scribbled a note at the top of the clipping. “Have you come across this bloke?” Another scribble read, “Okay to run by Jon.”

  I read the piece.

  Dr. Geldenhuis, a general practitioner in the small town of
Katima Mulilo, is a suspect in a murder case. Dr. Geldenhuis was known to have a relationship with a local Chinese businessman named Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee has been suspected of smuggling small amounts of ivory to Hong Kong, but was never found guilty.

  Mr. Lee was last seen in a mokoro on the Chobe River just south of the Namibian border in Botswana. Dr. Geldenhuis was the last person seen with the victim before he disappeared. Authorities are searching for clues.

  I dug around in my backpack for my cigarette lighter USB plug and plugged it in. I connected the small 12-volt printer that Craig had given me, which I kept underneath the passenger seat along with a sheath of paper. I attached the sat phone to the printer and printed out the article.

  Carrying the piece of paper, I walked past five men lying on the lawn in ragged clothing as Baggs pulled up. He got out cursing and slammed the door before realizing I was there. I waved sheepishly. He did a double take, as if experiencing the same startle response he’d had on our first meeting. He recovered by bowing at the waist, mockingly. He goose-stepped up to the men, tapping one in the belly with his boot. Jon twitched one eye, mockingly, as if struggling to keep it opened. “Buffalo meat must be a soporific!”

  “Mr. Baggs, I have something I want to show you.”

  Baggs ignored me and kept walking. I followed. As he entered the building he shouted, “Draadie! The usual, 63131.”

  She shook her head.

  “Christ. Not again.”

  She nodded.

  “And stop those men from loitering.” He shook a finger at her. “You know full well they’re not here for jobs. They’re listening for patrol schedules, trying to determine the best day to go out for some fresh buffalo relish.”

  Draadie flipped up The Namibian in front of her face. “I’m just the secretary.”

  Baggs cursed under his breath and disappeared into his office with me following.

  As Baggs walked behind his desk, I saw him remove a fax from the corner. I had just enough time to see the WIA letterhead. It was my security clearance.

  He sat down and glared at me, making me realize that, before I brought up Geldenhuis, I had to apologize for what had happened over the weekend. Gidean or Eli would have told him about my getting in the middle of their bust. “Look, I’m really sorry about the other night. I had no idea.”