Ivory Ghosts (21 page)

I stood on my porch in the late afternoon looking out over the floodplain, watching the elephants pour in, and listening to the roar and growl of another elephant reunion. I dialed Craig's number.

“Craig, how are you?”

“Charming compared to how I felt in Hong Kong. I haven't seen a single chopstick since I've been back, and I'm bloody grateful for it. Hadn't realized how nervous they made me.”

“You mean because of the ivory?”

“No, man. Ivory chopsticks, wooden chopsticks, it makes no difference. Forks are much more civilized implements. I resent having to stab at my food with two sticks in order to get it into my mouth. I'm developing much more respect for the Thai people for managing to resist the chopstick in their culture.”

I laughed. “How long were you there?”

“Two days.”

“Only
two
days?”

“And I leave first thing in the morning for Lusaka. My itinerary is absolutely mad. Glad you were able to reach me. One of these days I'll have to pay you a visit. Hear the elephants are stunning up north.”

“Can you hear them in the background?” There was a particularly jubilant bellow filling the floodplain.

“Oh, that explains the unholy noise. Thought it was a poor connection.”

“The elephants are very vocal in the Caprivi, as I'm finding out. I'm getting used to it.”

“Catherine, I must be brief. I have some bad news.”

“I was hoping you'd have good news.”

“My guys in MCD told me that the police didn't catch Alvares.”

“What? But Jon seemed so certain that they would.”

“That's what I wanted to ask you about. Do you know what the time delay would have been between dropping you off, going to the police, and then meeting you at his house?”

I was so confused. “It couldn't have been more than ten minutes.” What was he getting at?

“Could Alvares have unloaded that quickly?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe.” I tried to remember what Jon had said to me after returning from the police station that night.

“Catherine, I hate to say this, but we've got to be more cautious about Jon right now.”

This was the last thing I wanted to hear. I paused. “What? Really?” I tried not to have any emotion in my voice, but Craig knew me too well.

“Look, I'm sorry to do this to you at the moment, but trust me on this one. Things aren't lining up between the failed bust at Liadura and Alvares getting away last night. I had warned you when I hired you that there'd be times where I'd ask you to trust no one. Now is the time.”

My mind couldn't help starting to spin with questions. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but why had Jon asked me in the driveway if Nigel had gotten there yet, as if Nigel's presence would influence the outcome of catching Alvares—or Alvares getting away? He was acting really strangely, but I had brushed it off. And why didn't he want Nigel to know what Chastity was up to? I was so sure that he was becoming suspicious of Nigel. But I had pretty much convinced myself that the reverse possibility hadn't been true—that Nigel might have reason to be suspicious of Jon. He had been so supportive of Jon, especially during our conversation at Liadura. Was he purposely defending Jon to throw me off? Why would he do that? What if they were both trying to derail me? What if Jon made a pass at me on the houseboat because he was trying to distract me from what Alvares was doing in the reeds? The more I thought about it, the more embarrassed I felt I'd be, no matter which outcome would turn out to be true.

“Catherine, you still there?”

I took a big breath. “Well, I had what I had hoped would be good news, but now I don't know what to think of anything anymore.”

“What is it?”

“Jon identified the other man in the photos.”

“Brilliant, who is he?”

“It's Ernest, the guy they thought had been eaten by a crocodile.”

“Really, hey. So the doctor thought he'd do better with the witch doctor's henchman than the witch doctor himself. Interesting.”

“But, have you heard any follow-up on using the photos as evidence? Jon told me that they have been deemed inadmissible.”

“Geldenhuis is a bloody difficult bastard to nail, I'm learning.”

“So it's true? They were thrown out?”

“Someone's paying big bucks to protect this bloke. And I didn't want you to worry too much about it, but someone might have seen you on the airstrip that night in Zambia. Maybe this fellow, Ernest.”

“What?” I immediately thought back to the moment on the airstrip when the branch snapped and I dropped my camera. I was focused on the doctor and the witch doctor. I wasn't paying attention to where Ernest might have been looking at that exact moment.

“If that's true, he may have been able to identify you somehow, and figure out that you didn't have permission to cross the border at night.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. Just murmurings.”

“What can we do?”

“Lie low for the moment. We're making a new plan with the magistrate. I think we'll make headway.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Oh, and I do have some good news.”

“Great, I wish we had started with the good news.”

“The ivory you picked up from the crime scene is an exact match to the three tusks you sampled from Jon's office.”

“The induna's son!” This evidence would place Nandi's brother at the murder scene. He could have been the third person in the car. That was the one piece of information that Eli and Natembo were able to extract during their interrogation of Ernest—that someone else was driving.

“Who is the induna's son?” Craig asked.

“I'm going to see him in prison tomorrow.”

“You've done well, Catherine. I can bloody well see the end of this saga just around the bend.”

“Well, I can't, particularly after this conversation, but I'm glad to hear you can.”

“I know you'll hang in there. And good luck with the census. Remember to bring enough Dramamine this time.”

“Thanks, Craig. Always looking out for me.”

“Catherine.” He had that tone, like he read the sarcasm into my flat response. “Be careful.”

“It seems like everyone around here is
too
careful when it comes to this case.”

“You have to understand, I'm still trying to get us out of trouble after your Zambia stint. We don't want your efforts wasted. You've got to trust us. We have to be very sensitive right now. Go as slowly as you need to. And keep your distance from Jon.”

Nandi and I stood on the concrete step outside a crowded, noisy jail cell. The place reeked of urine and unshowered bodies. The police were not happy about our showing up for a visit, but they couldn't seem to come up with a good reason to stop us, so they begrudgingly let us through to an area where prisoners were allowed to talk to visitors.

It took some time for the guards to inform Nandi's brother that he had a visitor. As we waited, a smartly dressed woman was let in and approached the bars, dabbing at her weepy eyes. She looked at Nandi and became hysterical. “It's the rangers' fault that Moffit is dead. They did nothing about those elephants.”

Nandi whispered softly to the woman, trying to get her to calm down.

Nandi turned to me and explained that this was Moffit's sister, who had been away in South Africa when he died and had only now been able to return. She wanted to speak to Nandi's brother as well.

I nodded to her solemnly.

The woman scoffed at me. “And who is this?” She looked me up and down. “An informer for the rangers?”

Nandi shook her head and whispered, “No, she is not an informer. This is Catherine Sohon.”

The woman turned away, refusing the introduction. “That last payment was supposed to go to me. Sianga owes me that.”

Suddenly, two large female prisoners lunged at the bars and hissed at the woman with their index fingers over their fleshy mouths. They pointed to the guards standing nearby. They urgently put hands to ears and lips. One of the women hissed in a whisper, “Don't be stupid. It's not private here, lady.”

I nodded to the women gratefully. Whatever it was that the induna's son was hiding, I didn't want anything to happen to him before we were able to speak to him ourselves. Knowledge of illicit business of any kind seemed to be a liability around here, particularly when it had to do with smuggling ivory and large amounts of cash.

Nandi convinced Moffit's sister to wait outside until we were finished. She told her that she might be too late for what she was looking for and that her brother was in grave danger—that her questions might make things worse for him. With her departure came a collective sigh of relief.

Eventually Nandi's brother was let into the communal area. He saw Nandi and approached looking hopeful. They exchanged a few words in Yeye. He nodded over to me, and their conversation got tense. Nandi's tone became urgent as she started to plead with him.

He turned away from her to look at me, clutching the bars from inside the cell. “Do you have a cigarette?”

A baton slammed against the bars next to my shoulder and Sianga's hands let go of the bars. My head spun around to see a guard looming over me.

“Sorry, I don't smoke. My name is Catherine.”

“This is my brother, Sianga,” said Nandi.

Nandi spoke to her brother again more calmly. I had explained to her on the ride over that the ivory found in his yard came from the same lot of tusks found at Susuwe in the trunk of the murder victims' car. I had told her that he might be in even more trouble than he might have thought. It would be important to know what really happened—whether someone planted the ivory on him to frame him, or whether he knew more than he was willing to tell anyone. He'd have a better chance if he offered what he knew before the evidence came out.

After a prolonged whispered terse discussion, Sianga looked at me and shook his head. “I cannot tell anything.”

I looked at him squarely. “I understand you may know something that might help.”

Sianga stared, his face expressionless. “It is too dangerous for my family.”

I had to bite my tongue. I wanted more than anything to ask him if he was there that day—at the crime scene at Susuwe. I wanted to know why the exchange went badly. Why did they kill those people? Instead, I whispered very softly, “We can protect you if you help us.”

Nandi took a moment to look me up and down as if she had missed something about me, as if to wonder how it might be possible for me to offer her brother protection. Then she whispered as the young man stared back at me with cold eyes, “You have to ask my father first.”

“Ask him what?” I now felt the urgent need to know what this man knew, and I didn't want to have to wait a whole week before seeing the induna. Anything could happen in a week—not to mention how many more elephants could die. And with the police not showing up in time to catch Alvares with a
mokoro
full of weapons, I felt as if our options for bringing all these criminals to justice were narrowing by the day. Not to mention Craig's latest thinking. He had to be wrong about Jon. I couldn't dwell on what it might mean if Craig's suspicions turned out to be true. But either way, I had no choice but to put some distance between us.

And we needed to be able to gather evidence that couldn't be thrown out. The fact that my pictures confirmed that Ernest was alive and was Geldenhuis's smuggling partner was a big step forward, but now I knew from the genetic evidence that the second accessory to the witch doctor's bloody quadruple murder at Susuwe might be standing right in front of me, and I wasn't ready to walk away empty-handed.

Sianga looked at me, first uncertainly, and then with knowing eyes. “My father has to agree that I can give you what you are looking for.”

I couldn't help but clench my fists in frustration, knowing there was nothing I could do but appear grateful for his willingness to consider talking to me. I bowed slightly. “Thank you for seeing us. I'll be back next week.”

After Nandi and Sianga exchanged a few more panicked sentences in Yeye, Sianga fell silent. Nandi turned and walked away, motioning for me to follow. We left the prison with our eyes to the ground.

Fortunately, my mind was going to be occupied with the elephant count for the next week or I'd have been driven mad with anticipation of the importance of what Sianga might have to tell me. More delays meant more elephant deaths.

I pulled up on the yoke to give us a better view of the elephant herd that extended across several kilometers around Horseshoe. The place looked all the more beautiful from above in the early morning light—the glistening oxbow lake of Horseshoe teeming with elephants. Pods of hippos dotted the bends in the river, bobbing up and down in objection to our presence as we flew over at one hundred meters. It felt great to be up flying a census again.

Jon was counting furiously from the backseat, sitting next to Natembo. Gidean was in the front adding the numbers on a chart. After three hours of census flying, I was pretty exhausted. But the place was littered with elephants, which made the time fly by.

All morning we had counted groups of several hundred that extended all along the Kwando heading south from Susuwe, and seeing this many elephants was breathtaking. “This is unbelievable!” I said, leaning over to Gidean and speaking loudly through the airplane headset.

Gidean nodded, holding his stratified map of coordinates and elephant numbers on a clipboard. “Beautiful, isn't it?” He leaned over to take a photograph.

Jon called up from the back, “Five hundred on this side and still more.”

“Four hundred this side,” called Natembo.

“Largest group I've ever seen,” Jon called. “Total of six hundred on my side.”

Gidean entered the count on his map. “Natembo, your final count?”

“Five hundred and fifty this side,” Natembo answered.

We were doing the stratified count as planned, flying at a height of a hundred meters along a predetermined set of GPS coordinates that were one kilometer apart. The tight coordinates meant a lot of banking—which was having a cumulative effect on my stomach, despite the Dramamine I had taken.

I looked at the mirror as Jon dipped into a bag of greasy slices of dried meat. “Wouldn't want to drive through that lot!” He laughed and chewed hungrily as he saw me looking at him. “Bloody pachyderm
Jurassic Park
deal.” He handed the soggy bag up to me. “Gemsbok. Keeps the stomach grounded.”

I hesitated as I looked into the bag of greasy globs that were more fat than meat. I decided that I'd better decline. And I wasn't going to allow myself not to enjoy Jon's company. Just as long as I didn't say anything incriminating, what would it hurt? If I suddenly became cool, that would also not be good, as he'd sense that something was wrong. I was going to ride this out and Craig would have an explanation for his doubt and we'd move past this awkward situation. I had to believe that. And right now, I
needed
to believe that.

We flew south along the snaking Kwando and continued past Horseshoe. The river looked as if it went on forever south. But when we reached the Botswana cutline we turned due west toward the Kavango River, two hundred kilometers away.

After a few minutes of flying over the sandveld, we came upon a long double fence bordering Botswana. I could see a kudu caught in between the fences, trying to escape. Carcasses of those that hadn't make it hung on the fence.

“Jon, is the ministry aware of this?”

“It's a bloody travesty.” He chewed on some more biltong. “Cattle can't rub noses with wildlife if the Europeans are to enjoy disease-free prime rib.”

“That's terrible.”

“Used to be worse. The fence used to come right up to the river. Now, at least there is a twenty-kilometer corridor for game to move up and down the Kwando and Kavango.”

“That's right, you mentioned that elephant-movement study showing how much elephants use the area.”

“Yes, sometimes scientific data actually gets turned into management policy.” He smiled. “A rare thing indeed.”

Gidean finished reviewing his map and looked over at me. “We've finished the southern high-density area. We need to do the block along the Angolan border.” He pointed to his watch. “Do we have time?”

I checked the fuel gauge and nodded, banking left over the floodplain. We headed north along the sparkling Kwando, past Hippo Pool, past Nambwa Campsite, past Susuwe, and up toward the Angolan border.

The right side of the floodplain was lined with cornfields in various stages of harvest, some in the range of a hectare or two and some much more substantial. Clusters of huts dappled the horizon far inland of the floodplain, first the village of Choyi and then Kongola, and as we got further north, Shesheke and then the sprawling Singalamwe, bordering Zambia. We must have seen six or seven large groups of hippos along the way.

When we reached a long straight cutline that looked like a firebreak, I recognized the Angolan border. I started banking left and pressed down on the left rudder, but I was a little too late and we crossed the border.

An urgent voice came over the radio. “Identify yourself! You do not have permission to cross into Angolan airspace!”

Startled, I banked more sharply.

“If you do not explain your purpose we are prepared to shoot!”

I grabbed the radio. “Radio one. Radio one. Please be prepared for Cessna 182 code 22668. Permission to bank over border. Aerial survey under way.” As I spoke, I could see a whole open area between dense veins of trees that was filled with freshly butchered elephant carcasses, smoke from a fire, and long strings of red meat hanging on drying racks. This was a different camp. And much bigger than the previous one.

Jon called up from the back, “
Je'sus,
Catherine, get us out of here, now.”

The sounds of automatic weapon fire exploded from below. The high-pitched sound of bullets penetrating the metal of the fuselage pierced my ears like daggers. “Damn it!” I pulled up on the yoke and quickly gained elevation.

In our rapid ascent, I had to dodge a group of vultures spiraling in a thermal and try not to stall the plane in the process. The plane began to bounce in the thermal, and I fought the rudder pedals and yoke as hard as I could, trying to stay level. I tightened my stomach and tried to focus on every detail as the conditions kept changing.

Jon grabbed my seat from behind as we continued to bounce through the thermal. “
Kak,
man!”

Natembo sat in stoic silence, while Gidean looked like his life was passing before him.

Suddenly the plane hit an air pocket and we went into a free fall from a hundred meters. My stomach lurched as I pushed in the throttle and pulled up on the yoke to get some lift. My stomach felt like it was coming out of my mouth as my ears popped from the loss of altitude. There were a few sickening seconds of dread before the plane leveled out at fifty meters, just above a dense acacia woodland.

My heart was beating in my ears. I took deep breaths to ease my pulse and loosen up my rib cage. I tried to appear as calm as possible under the circumstances. I held the lives of these guys in my hands. All I could think about was getting us all on solid ground as quickly as possible. I had never before been shot at in flight, and I had only been in two other free falls as a pilot at such a low elevation, but they hadn't lasted nearly as long as this one.

They say that things slow down in the final moments before disaster. But what no one says is that time actually stands still. Those sickening moments churn in the gut like they had been there for an eternity. I would have given anything for time to move faster on any one of these occasions, but it never does.

We flew the thirty minutes back to Popa Falls in silence. I could tell that no one wanted to guess how many carcasses they had seen. This block would have to wait to be counted.