CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

Aiguo was quick to confirm that the small plastic cylinder he had found under the skin of the tiger was a microchip. It stood to reason that such an expensive and endangered animal such as a tiger would have an identity tag of some sort. Would it be a chip from the Hangzhou Sanctuary? Aiguo doubted it. Mr Liu had never mentioned it before, and he was sure that with the amount of animals moving through the park, both legally and illegally, that an identification tag keeping track on the animal's movements, would be the last thing that Liu and Kojo Selassie would want.

So where did it come from? This question should not have concerned Aiguo, but it did. Part of him wanted to throw it away and simply continue with his work, providing for his family and remaining blissfully ignorant to the goings on at the park. Another part of him was sick to the stomach of what was happening and tired of turning a blind eye. One day, would it be Aiguo's own hand that cut the flesh from the very last tiger in the wild? Would he be an integral part of the reason why his children would never see a tiger living free in the jungles of his homeland?

For the last six months, Aiguo had been living a lie. His family did not know the true extent of his work and he was ashamed of it. Could this small plastic chip release him from the confines of his own concrete cage? He was as captive now, in the grips of the triads, as the tigers themselves. And if he stepped out of line it would be Aiguo Chang who would be put to the knife – just like the tigers he butchered.

It was at the end of the day, and after he had cleaned up the mess left behind by Lei Wu's lack of butchering skills, when Aiguo made his mind up and figured out what to do with the chip. After locking up, he made sure to loiter around the building, feigning forgetfulness and pretending to return to his office. Once he was sure all the others had gone, he slowly walked to the gates and sparked up a conversation with the ever friendly guard.

"Ahh, Nakia, I wonder could you help me? I need to get into the Veterinary Department to retrieve some chemicals. I must use them to clean and sterilise my equipment before the morning. I have none left of my own and Lei Wu has left my premises in a most unsatisfactory condition. I will be very busy tomorrow and Mr Liu will be most upset if I cannot complete my work. I'm sure you understand."

"Of course, Mr Chang! Triad scum have no respect for working people. How can a man set to his work with someone like Lei Wu forever looking over his shoulder? If I had my way...well... I would rid the world of men like Wu forever!"

"Yes, of course, but they are still very dangerous people and it would be best if we keep thoughts like that to ourselves."

Nakia nodded his agreement and reached into his pocket for the large bunch of keys that allowed him access to every building in the park.

"I have my rounds to complete. I will meet you back here in ten minutes if that is OK?"

Aiguo thanked him and walked off towards the Veterinary Department, where he hoped to find a microchip reader. He was certain that the tiger he butchered was not from the Hangzhou Sanctuary – it had been way too healthy and in much better condition than any animal the park could produce.

If Aiguo could establish the origins of the tiger then maybe something could be done by those who had lost it. Maybe the park would be closed down. Maybe Mr Liu would be forced to run it as it should be. Maybe Aiguo could retain his job having done his bit for the tigers and other wild animals of Asia. Maybe not.

He was willing to take the chance.

If he could establish what information was held on the chip and anonymously make contact with someone who could do something about it, then he would have played his part. Others could investigate how this animal had ended up in this park, and if they had any sense at all they would discover the many other animals that pass through it every day - that was their job.

Small though it was, his actions might be enough to ease his niggling conscience, but not so much that Lei Wu and his friends might find him out.

# # #

Up in old Liu's office, Lei Wu slowly sipped on an ice cold glass of lager. He enjoyed locking himself away in the comfort of the old miser's office; drinking his expensive imported alcohol and smoking on his Cuban cigars.

It had been a long day. Preparations for their largest shipment ever were under way and under Lei's watchful eye. Men had toiled all day to secretly store the many skins, bones and ivory that Lei and his men would escort across the oceans to Europe and beyond. It galled him to return to that cold barren rock they called Ireland, but Meizhen Chen had ordered it, and so it would be.

For now though, Lei eased back into the comfortable surroundings of Bai Liu's office and studied the CCTV images from around the park. Canny old Liu had installed a huge bank of monitors in a storeroom at the back; secretly watching the comings and goings of his workers on hidden cameras selectively positioned at important locations. Lei watched as peasants finished their days work and returned home to their hovels with the small reward of but a few coins; mere droplets in the ocean of profit being made through the Hangzhou Wildlife Sanctuary. The irony brought a rare smile to his face.

Lei promised himself he would never return to the dirt and squalor of the city streets. It had taken him years to rise to the rank of Straw Sandal and he vowed never to return to the slums he had grown up in. These shipments would make him rich beyond belief. Richer than any man he knew. Nothing would get in his way.

On the screens before him, Lei watched as Aiguo Chang, the parks trumped up Head of Medicine, stopped with the security guard. Then strangely, instead of walking out of the gates with the others, he turned left and with more than a few backward glances, disappeared inside the park. Lei scanned the remaining cameras for sign of Chang and soon found him opening the doors to the Veterinary Department. What was he up to?

Liu had not placed cameras inside of the buildings, for fear of the expense most likely, and it was a full ten minutes before Chang eventually emerged and hurriedly returned to the gates to meet with the guard.

Lei had never warmed to the meddling Head of Medicine. He made a mental note to speak with the guard, and then to Chang.

# # #

Heather's second day back at work in her drab and dreary office in central London was proving to be a somewhat more productive experience than she had expected. After her phone call the day before with the mysterious Irishman, she had searched through old intelligence documents gathered together by the WIA.

The procedures set in place for intelligence gathering and its dissemination were such, that when the information was found to be non-actionable by the WIA itself, then it was passed on to the relevant authorities around the world. Unfortunately, most of it was very low grade and with the limited resources at their disposal, mostly non-actionable.

Heather did however find a document containing information relating to Laohu's Traditional Chinese Medicine Shop in Belfast, Northern Ireland and after a little bit of googling research of her own, found a newspaper article dated six months previously reporting the death of a man at that property following a shoot-out with unknown assailants. She had followed it up with a call to the local Police Chief. His secretary had informed her that he hadn't arrived in work as yet, but was expected soon, so Heather was excitedly waiting for a return call when a new e-mail popped up in her inbox.

It was from her mysterious Irishman, Daniel Harpur. There was no text or explanation, only a series of attachments. They were photographs taken in low light and sent direct from a mobile phone. As Heather scrolled through them her jaw slowly dropped. The mug of tea she held in her hand, poised at her lips to drink, poured its contents onto the desk, where it slowly dripped onto her lap as she stared at the screen in a state of shock.

Ignoring the spillage and never taking her eyes from the computer screen, Heather reached for the phone to called Peter Blackthorn.

"Peter, I'm forwarding you an email I have just received. I'll give you five minutes to look at it and then I'll be up to explain."

Without waiting for a reply, Heather hung up the call and began to print the images; forming a plan in her mind and a pitch that Peter Blackthorn would find hard to refuse. When the printer finally stopped churning out the dozen or so pictures, she gathered them together and leafed through them; her brain hardly able to register what her eyes were seeing. After one phone call and less than twenty four hours, Daniel Harpur had produced evidence that she could only dream of.

She stopped at a picture that showed the side of a large plastic crate. Displayed on the corner of the crate in faint black ink were the words CARTER INTERNATIONAL LOGISTICS. Laid on the floor in front of it were some of the crates obviously more legal and documented contents – row upon row of small plastic containers of varying shapes and sizes. Some of these containers still lay neatly packed into one half of the crate, but beside them and deep down inside, close to the bottom, was what sent Heather's heartbeat racing.

Two tiger skins were laid out along the bottom of the crate, the orange and black stripes standing out in stark contrast to the bright white plastic surrounding them. On top, and wrapped in cellophane, were four large blocks of pale white powder. Next to that lay a pile of bones, each wrapped tightly in cellophane, and from what Heather knew of anatomy, and guessing from what she saw before her, probably consisted of the remainder of the two tigers that once wore the skins. As if that wasn't enough, the next picture she came to showed a similar crate. This one crammed full of coats and jackets of every size and description. Wrapped up in some of them were the tusks of elephants, so crudely and hastily removed from the animals, that the jagged ends were they were cut and ripped from the elephant's body still sported blood and gore.

What Heather had before her was cold hard evidence of the illegal trade in endangered wildlife, and it had been found on British soil! Not only had Harpur captured evidence of the cargo here in the UK, but he had discovered it still contained in the crate it was shipped in, on the premises of the company that shipped it!

Excited, and with her hopes set high for an international investigation, she gathered up the photographs and made her way up to the office of the head of the Wildlife Investigation Agency.

Forty minutes later, Heather slouched behind her desk. Her hopes once again dashed. The excitement she felt at reigniting her quest to save the tigers all but disappeared and buried under a mound of red tape and bureaucracy. Peter Blackthorn, although interested and surprised at the images she had presented, had shot her hopes of any kind of investigation down in flames.

"Heather, this is impressive, really, but how did this person obtain these images? Was he sanctioned by the WIA to enter a private property and snoop around? I bloody well hope not! Who is he? What are his motives? Will any court in the land accept his oath? Are these images even real? Maybe he just staged the whole thing to bring bad press on this Carter Logistics place, or worse still, to make fools out of us!"

"But, Peter, what if they are real? These very animals could have been taken from the Panna Reserve! Surely we must at least look into it?"

"The man is an unknown quantity, Heather. If we could confirm his identity it might be something, but as it stands I will not jump head first into an international investigation on the word of a stranger and a few grainy images. More work needs done before I even think about it. Without verification of the intelligence and Kojo Selassie's name stamped on the ass of one of those tigers, it's a no go."

On a scrap of paper at the edge of her desk, Heather absently printed the name DANIEL HARPUR. Beneath it she printed CARTER INTERNATIONAL LOGISTICS and beneath that, TIGERS AND TUSKS. Slowly she circled each one and joined them with a ragged line. Then she settled her head on her hands and rested it on the desktop to think.

She didn't get a lot of time to do so because two things happened in quick succession.

Firstly, her phone rang. The police in Belfast returned her call. They told her that Daniel Harpur was a disgraced former soldier whose evidence could not be relied upon due to his problems with alcohol. They also suggested that Harpur had developed an unhealthy interest in Carter International Logistics following the death of his friend.

Secondly, her friend and colleague, Tracy Coburn, burst into the office waving a sheet of paper in her hands. She jumped up and down excitedly, and in a high pitched voice told Heather that she had just received a call from the Panna Tiger Reserve in India. They told her that a man called Aiguo Chang in China had recovered a microchip from the body of one of their tigers, and he wanted to talk to someone who could do something about it.