Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 02 (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

Leo stepped out of his office and strolled to the bench he’d had his carpenters construct for him under a baobab tree. Like the Mowana Lodge to the east, Leo wanted a large baobab to serve as a signature for his hotel. Unlike that at the Mowana, which sat in the back portion of the hotel, Leo’s baobab would grace the entrance. He had the business cards and camera-ready graphics already at the studio. He’d been told the tree with its huge girth was hollow. He wondered if it would be possible to cut a doorway into it. A Dutch door and the tree could serve as the night security post. He would have a gate. It would be down after…ten, midnight? He’d ask around. The people in this country were so peculiar about disturbing wildlife. He didn’t know if trees counted.

He should be content. But not now. Not with this Greshenko business. He lowered himself onto the bench with a grunt. Something he did more often lately. Age acquires some inevitable negatives, diet and nutritional good behavior notwithstanding. He needed some alone time to think how best to break it to Yuri that he’d contacted Kgabo Modise, the cop from Gaborone. His contact at the CIA had made it clear that from the viewpoint of the people in DC, if Leo were to call in the problem officially they would have no option but to detain Greshenko, seek to have his residence permit revoked, and possibly remand him into the custody of the Russians. They suggested the locals might have a gentler solution. So, he’d made the call to Modise who said he’d be by as soon as he finished some business at police headquarters. An hour or two.

He’d had the builders place the bench so that it faced the casino and he could sit and monitor progress made day to day. As he settled on the wooden slats, he wished he’d thought to bring a cushion. Age! He let his gaze wander over the project. It would be ready for Greshenko’s promised surge of guests. That should have cheered him. It didn’t. Leo exhaled, wished he’d taken better care of himself in the past so that he could still have his afternoon cocktail and cigar. That wasn’t asking too much. A movement to his right caused him to swing his gaze around to a pile of concrete blocks a few meters away. He squinted against the sun and realized that the monkey, he assumed the same one that had stolen the cell phone, had taken a position on the blocks and had something in its hand. Or did monkeys not have hands but paws? W. W. Jacobs wrote a story,
The Monkey’s Paw.
So, paw it is. He looked again. Clearly the beast had gotten a hold of something that did not belong on the concrete blocks. He stooped down and gathered a handful of debris and threw it at the monkey.

“Hey, get out of here. Shoo.”

The monkey dropped whatever it had been holding, bounded across the yard, and with a leap that was nothing short of spectacular, sailed into the trees. It turned and screamed at Leo who assumed he was being castigated with the simian equivalent of obscenities. It then made a gesture which confirmed his assumption.

Leo walked to the pile and retrieved the object. “Sammi,” he yelled, “What the hell is this thing and why did somebody leave it lying around?”

“Sorry, Mr. Painter, it is my fault. That is my youngest boy’s gaming device. I took it from him this morning as punishment. It was in my back pocket and I thought maybe it will be damaged there so I took it out. I am thinking I will put it in a jacket pocket and then the foreman called to me into a conversation and I forgot.”

“You nearly lost it to that monkey. That’s the same monkey that filched the cell phone, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes. You can tell by the white tuft over his eye, you see. I think he must have had a run in with a big cat when he was small and escaped with a cut over his eye.”

“I thought you all were going to get rid of him. Get him drunk and dump him in the park or something.”

“That was the plan, yes, but the park people are giving the very fishy eye to everyone who is entering the park, except the game drives. They are concerned about the murder, you know. I think now is not a good time to do that.”

“Well if we can’t have him drink beer, how about something that will do him in? These monkeys are like rats, for crying out loud. If this were Chicago, I’d set out poison and that would be that.”

“Oh no, that cannot be. If we are caught killing the animals it is off to jail for a very long time. It is not worth a cell phone or this game toy. We will be more careful, I promise.”

“Careful or not, this is the new rule—you lose something to that little thief, replacing it is on your dime.”

“Dime?”

“
Thebe,
then. The costs of replacing whatever is lost will come out of your pay. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes. Certainly. That is very fair.”

Leo wasn’t sure it was, but he wouldn’t say so. If the threat of lost money helped stop the problem, then he’d let them believe it was so. If and when it happened again, he’d decide whether to enforce the rule. He returned to his bench. The light-fingered antics of the monkey were the least of his problems. What would Modise do to Greshenko and how would that affect the casino? Well, the cop said we were to report any and all illegal activity. They will have done it. That ought to score a few points in their favor.

But the real worry would be the reaction of the goons who’d put Yuri into the game. Leo guessed that if all that Yuri had told him were true—if half of it were true—there’d be hell to pay in the morning. Well, you reap what you sow, he’d been taught and it looked like some of Yuri’s bad seed had finally germinated and produced a crop. People on the shady side of the law didn’t always spread the best seed around.

The Bible, if he remembered the story correctly, and that would be a stretch, taught that you had to let the crop mature and then pick out the weeds from the good grain at harvest. Tares among the corn. Too early and you couldn’t tell the good from the bad. He conjured up an image of his grandmother reading from her Bible dictionary. She took her Bible seriously. She had a dictionary that allowed her to look up things like tares. Who said tares anymore? As a child Leo had listened politely to her. He loved his grandparents. But as soon as he was out of the house, all thoughts of the Hereafter were left behind. Now? Perhaps he should pick up the Good Book, you never knew.
Bearded dirndl
. What did that have to do with this? Ah, it was the name of the weed that looked like wheat until it reached full maturity—this from grandmother’s dictionary. You had to wait ’til that happened and then you separated the wheat from the weeds. The latter were burned in the fire. Grandmother had looked at him with flinty eyes and urged him not to be numbered among the weeds or he’d burn in the eternal flames. The image a demon in a red union suit brandishing a pitchfork and herding him into the eternal flames had terrified him. He’d promised to never be a tare, a weed, a bearded dirndl, although the idea of growing a beard did have a certain attraction to an eight year old.

On reflection, he wasn’t entirely sure, at the remove of nearly sixty years, that he’d managed to avoid the weediness he’d promised her he’d eschew. He shuddered. He no longer believed in the fiery furnace, but was less sure about retribution or the lack thereof at some point. He shook his head and longed again for one of his banished cigars. Why could he remember all this youthful imagery and not what he’d had for lunch the day before? I must be getting old, maybe senile. What a terrible thought. Someone…who? Can’t remember. Someone once said “the trouble with Alzheimer’s is: when you finally realize you have it you can’t remember where you hid the gun.”

He sat back down on his bench and waited for Inspector Modise. He really needed to concentrate on something brighter. But that would have to wait.

Chapter Twenty-seven

“I’m worried. This whole business has moved from something that was simple to something very complex, Jack.”

“In my experience, Harvey, anything worth doing usually moves that way. You show me a simple job, and I’ll show you a low return on investment.”

“Right, if you say so. Okay, I met with the guy I bumped into at that squirrely meeting, and he said he could provide some locals to help us make the orgonite. They seem pretty happy about the process, though they did wonder why we were assembling it here. In the past they said it came in from outside the country and their job was to just place it.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“I made up a book about the London office had determined that the stuff worked better if it was made fresh before it was put down. All bollocks, of course but they seemed okay with that. Who knows?”

“Here’s the plan then. Have them make up the cone things with a hollow inside. Then when the goods get here, we can pop it in a plastic bag, shove it in, and seal the bottom. That way our buyers can retrieve it without a lot of fuss.”

“I don’t think they’ll buy into plastic. It will cut down on the power.”

“Harvey, have you slipped round the bend? What do you mean, ‘it’ll cut down the power?’ The whole business is bogus. Who the bloody hell cares? Tell them there’s new research. Plastic acts as an amplifier or some such guff.”

“Sorry. I’m trying to think like them.”

“Right. Good luck with that. Then we’ll tell the lads that they can’t be part of the final loading. Too dangerous. Tell them we have a new formula direct from old Whosis himself.”

“Reich? He’s dead. Been that way for years, you could say.”

“Say we found some old notes of his what say using this new approach would up the power. I don’t care, just keep them the hell away.”

“I’ll think of something. Okay, then we stuff the cones, seal them, and drop them off in the park. How’s the buy going?”

“Super. I have the money. It’s going to cost a bit more than I hoped what with the interest they’re asking but we’ll book a packet.”

“Where’d you find it?”

“There’s a group of European investors anxious to buy in. They are most likely mobbed up, but they have the cash. We get the stuff for quarter of a mil, sell for a half quick like, and we’re in the chips, lad. Two hundred and fifty thousand Euros. Think of it.”

“Right. I ain’t counting my pennies ’til they’re in my pocket. When will the stuff be here?”

“On its way. That local wheeler dealer, Botlhokwa, is handling the transfer through Zambia or Zimbabwe. It should be here any day now. Somebody named Noga is our contact.”

“I’ll get the chaps going on the cones.”

***

“So, Superintendent Mwambe, you have saved me time by rounding this man up and putting him under arrest.”

Mwambe thought Kgabo Modise seemed very pleased with his good fortune. He didn’t know how he thought about that, though. Did he really want this upstart from Gaborone liking his efforts? Bad luck for Andrew. So much for a grace period.

“Andrew Takeda, before I charge you I wish to suggest that you can do yourself a large favor by coming clean.”

Andrew’s eyes widened and Mwambe could almost see the wheels turning behind them. Would his friend try to slither out of this with a pack of lies and make his case worse in the hopes of keeping his employment, or would he come clean? He knew Andrew could tell a pretty tall tale if he wanted to.

“I don’t know what you are saying.” Takeda glanced hopefully at Mwambe, who merely shrugged.

“You don’t? That is very strange indeed. Perhaps you would like to inspect these photographs. I must apologize for the quality. They were taken with a cell phone, after all. You will be interested in them as well, Superintendent.”

Modise tossed Sanderson’s processed and enlarged pictures on the desk. Mwambe nudged them with a stubby finger. “Who took these pictures?” This did not look so good. Someone seeing these for the first time would think he and Andrew were somehow in some dodgy business with the big man, Noga. Did Gaborone have agents in his jurisdiction he did not know about? This was serious.

“It is not important who took them. What is important is what is going on here.”

Mwambe sat back in his chair which protested with a loud squeal. There could be no saving Andrew now. “We were just discussing this very situation,” he said. “That man in the picture having a chat with Takeda here is a man called Noga. I do not know his full name. I am not sure anyone does. He is one of Botlhokwa’s people. I am under the impression that he may have been alerted by Ranger Takeda that someone would be entering the park at night. Isn’t that right, Takeda?”

Takeda wiped his palms on his trousers and swallowed. Mwambe could see the emotions race behind the poor game ranger’s eyes. Fear, doubt, cunning, and finally, resignation. For him, the game was up.

“As I told Superintendent Mwambe here, I had some contact with this man before. I believed he was one of us, you see.”

“Us? Another game ranger? I don’t think so. Who, or what, is
us
?”

Takeda lowered his gaze to the floor and then, a decision made, shot Mwambe a defiant look. “Us. That would be myself, Mwambe here, and a dozen other men who wish to see the countryside restored and the land healed.”

“You say the superintendent is involved with this man?”

Time for Mwambe to assert himself. “Modise, you are ahead of yourself.”

“Am I? This picture seems to tell a different story, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, it does not. Takeda means that he and I and others are convinced that orgonite will have many beneficial effects for the country.” A safe description and near enough to what he believed. “We meet and plan how we might accomplish this great thing. We arrange for the orgonite to be brought in and so on. That is all. Takeda met this man and foolishly thought he held that same beliefs. Understand, because he is a rogue does not mean he cannot be concerned for the home continent.”

“I am sorry, but I am not following you. Please explain this sequence of pictures and the connection between them.”

Takeda took a deep breath and let it out. He was defeated. “It is like this. I know this man and believed he wanted to help with our project, you see. I mentioned a ‘precious cargo’ would soon arrive. He thanked me and that was that. I cannot believe he would go and shoot somebody—”

“I believe you have left something out of your story,” Mwambe interrupted. Now was the time to distance himself from Takeda. Friendship is one thing, a career in jeopardy and disgrace quite another. He was a policeman after all.

“What? What did I leave out?” Takeda’s eyes pleaded. Mwambe ignored them.

“You witnessed the shooting in the park, did you not?”

When Mwambe made this accusation Takeda collapsed. His body language up to that point had been alert and cautious. No more. If he didn’t know better, Mwambe would have said he shrank by about half.

Modise stared with dead eyes at Mwambe. “You knew of this arrangement?”

No time for equivocation now. “I knew he would be in the park to meet the man sent from Kinshasa and receive the orgonite, yes. We all did. I simply waited for him to come forward and tell me what he saw that night. That is why we insisted on the suicide story. I wished for some time, you see? When Takeda didn’t do his duty, I called him in, and here he is. And, also, here you are. If I have erred in this matter it is in overlooking the illicit entry into the park. It is something you will discover, Modise, which is not always considered an illegality in these parts. After all, the Chobe is our homeland and orders from the government not withstanding, we maintain we hold certain rights to it.”

Modise studied Mwambe for a moment. “And were you aware that this man has made a small extra income over the years by allowing others into the park?”

Mwambe shook his head. “I did not know for certain, but I am not surprised. Until that new superintendent for the game rangers took over, it was a common practice, something many did. This is the north, Modise. Except for the lodges and tourist places, the economy is thin here. We do what we must to survive.”

“You, too?”

“Not me, no.”

“Then I would like you to please explain the pictures to me again.”