Crys didn’t sleep well. Her brain was racing. She switched between worries about Michael and how his situation might now actually be worse, and how she could persuade Joe to open up. So far, he was her only lead, so he was the one she had to break.
Her body was uncomfortable too – the air-conditioning unit was barely working and no match for the hot, humid air that clung to everything. She was bathed in sweat.
Around six she climbed out of bed and took a long, cool shower. Then she called reception to order a cab. Her plan was to go and see the house where she spent her first year of life. She had no memory of it, only mental pictures created by the stories told by her parents. She hoped that actually seeing it would trigger memories and so deepen her connection to this country. She had a flutter of excitement in her chest as she set off. She had no idea of what to expect.
The house was closer to the city centre than she’d imagined – it took only twenty minutes to get there. The driver pulled up at the address she’d written on a piece of paper for him and pointed at the building. She took a deep breath and asked him to wait while she walked around. He started to object in Vietnamese, but she shrugged and opened her palms to show that she didn’t understand. He muttered, and then nodded, but pointed at the meter.
The house that was her first home was a typical Vietnamese tube house – very narrow and very deep. It was one of about ten on the block; Americans would call them townhouses, for want of a better word. All of them were set back from the paved road by about two metres, giving each a minute front garden. Her house had a frangipani tree, giving off a sweet scent, some orchids, and two scooters. The building looked well kept and was painted an ochre colour. She stood on the road for a few moments, hoping that some memories might well up. But it clearly wasn’t to be.
Crys took out her phone and took several photos, both of the house and of the surroundings. Then she returned to the cab, disappointed. She’d hoped to have an emotional attachment to the house, but there was nothing. It was just another house.
The driver looked slightly baffled as she got back into the taxi, but he didn’t say anything, and they headed back to the hotel. Crys felt oddly empty and a little sad.
Back in her room, Crys shook off the melancholy her early-morning trip had provoked and decided it was time to find out what Donald from End Extinction was up to.
She called the organisation’s office and was told Willandsen had just arrived. After exchanging greetings, she launched straight into her concerns.
‘Mr Willandsen, I’m not happy. Twice after meetings I’ve had in the city, I’ve seen your assistant, Donald, watching me. Can you tell me why he’s doing that? It can’t be a coincidence.’
‘You’re right, Ms Nguyen,’ Willandsen replied. ‘It’s not coincidence. I asked Donald to follow you.’
She was taken aback. She thought Willandsen would at least need some persuading to admit what Donald was doing. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘The main reason is that people in the business you are researching are generally suspicious of anyone who pries. We thought we’d keep an eye on you, just in case.’
‘In case what?’ she asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
‘In case we thought you were heading into dangerous territory. You can’t trust anyone in this business.’
‘And why should I trust you?’
‘You shouldn’t. That’s the point I’m trying to make.’
This man had an answer for everything.
‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, Mr Willandsen.’
‘If you say so, Ms Nguyen.’
‘So please tell Donald to stop following me.’ Crys hung up, annoyed. Why did everyone think that because she was a young Vietnamese woman she couldn’t look after herself?
But as she headed down to the dining room, she decided it more likely that Willandsen was interested in who she contacted than that he had any interest in her safety.
After a breakfast of chicken pho, followed by a strawberry-avocado smoothie, she headed out at once to Joe’s. Again, the shop was closed, but this time she wasn’t going to give up, however long it took. So, she sat down at a small coffee shop just down the road, determined to wait him out.
It was over an hour before she spotted him in front of his shop, unlocking the two big padlocks that secured the pull-down shutters. She waited until he’d opened the door and had gone inside, then paid for her coffees and jogged towards the shop.
‘Joe,’ she called as she walked into the multi-scented gloom. ‘It’s Crystal Nguyen.’
Joe pushed through a door at the back. Even in the dimness, she could see he wasn’t happy.
‘I have nothing for you. Please go.’
This time she stood her ground. ‘Please help me. I need to find out about what’s going to happen in South Africa. It will be a big story for me.’
Joe frowned and shook his head, speaking through clenched teeth.
‘I know nothing. You go now.’
‘Nobody needs to know you gave me the information. I won’t use your name.’
He shook his head. ‘People here know everything. Go.’ He walked towards her pointing at the door. ‘Go!’ he ordered, raising his voice.
Just then his phone rang. He hesitated, trying to decide whether to answer or to finish getting rid of her. Habit won – he answered.
Crys pretended to look at the bottles on the shelves.
‘I can’t talk now,’ Joe said in Vietnamese walking to the back of the shop. ‘The journalist is back, asking about South Africa.’
He listened to the response. ‘No. Of course I haven’t told her anything. She knows nothing. She thinks the plan is to kill a lot of rhinos.’ He clearly didn’t suspect that Crys could understand Vietnamese.
He listened again. ‘I can’t do that. I have two big customers coming this morning. If I’m not here, they’ll go somewhere else.’ He started pacing around the small shop. ‘Yes. Yes. All right. Right away.’
He hung up and turned to her. ‘You must go. Now. I have a meeting I must go to.’ He herded her to the door.
‘Can I come back and talk to you?’
‘No. I have nothing more to say. Goodbye.’ He pushed her out of the door.
There was nothing she could do. She left, but she was determined that this wasn’t the last time she would talk to him. And she’d learned one piece of information – it sounded as though the plan didn’t involve a big kill of rhinos. That was good.
As she walked along the street, she wondered what she should do. The phone call was clearly something to do with her – or with something she would be interested in. When she reached the end of the block, she pretended to look in a shop window, but kept glancing back at Joe’s shop. Sure enough, after a few minutes she saw Joe locking up. He then headed off in the opposite direction. Crys decided to follow. She knew she was taking a big chance, but this was her only good lead. Everything else led to a dead end. She’d survived hell in South Africa. She was confident she could survive in Vietnam.
For the next fifteen minutes, she hurried to keep up as Joe rushed through the labyrinth of streets and alleys. Soon she had no idea where she was or where they were headed. But the longer they walked, the fewer shops there were and she realised they’d entered an industrial area.
Now, there were almost no other people about. She felt her adrenaline level increasing. This was becoming more risky. It was harder and harder to ensure Joe wouldn’t see her if he looked back. She hid behind corners of buildings until he either turned down another road or was far enough away he wouldn’t recognise her. She was both scared she would lose him and scared he would see her. Sweat trickled down her face as she scampered from one hiding place to the next, feeling faintly self-conscious. She wasn’t trained to do this; if anyone was watching her, they’d know she had to be tailing someone.
Eventually Joe turned down a road and, by the time she’d reached the corner, he was nowhere to be seen.
She looked down the street. Given the pace he’d been walking, she figured that he could have reached three of the six buildings on the street, but there was no indication of which he’d gone into. She pulled back, out of sight from any of the buildings, and thought about her options.
The stupid choice was to knock on each of the warehouse doors. The prudent one was to head back to the hotel. But could she risk losing what might be her only chance?
As she was making up her mind, she heard a door slam shut. Peeking around the corner she saw three men she didn’t recognise walking up the street towards her. She immediately walked away from them. That way, by the time they reached where she’d been hiding, she’d be halfway down the block. Hopefully they would think she was just visiting one of the other warehouses in the area.
She didn’t look back.
But as she reached the next cross street, two more men came around the corner, just ahead of her. As she stepped aside to let them pass, she realised that one was Joe.
He stopped, looking at her, his face a mixture of surprise and anger. She froze for a second, staring into his eyes.
She spun round to run, but in a flash, he reached out and grabbed her arm. ‘Come with us,’ he said. His grip tightened on her arm till it hurt.
She tried to shake loose, but he was strong. He just clenched her harder – until she thought her bones would crack.
‘Let me go!’ she cried, struggling.
‘I told you I had nothing more to tell you.’ He started dragging her along. ‘Now you’ve made my boss mad. He wants to meet you. And you’re not going to like that.’
She saw that the other three men were now close. ‘Help me!’ she shouted trying again to shake loose from Joe’s grip.
‘Please help me,’ she begged.
The three men stopped.
One of them laughed. ‘So, this is the stupid American,’ he said in Vietnamese.
With a lunge, she finally wrenched herself out of Joe’s grasp and tried to bolt away. But there was nowhere to go, and she ran right into the arms of one of the other men.
‘I’d like to take her home,’ he said holding her arms to her sides, his hot breath against her face. ‘I can teach her a few things.’
She struggled some more, her fear skyrocketing.
Joe grabbed her left arm while the other man held the right and they yanked her along towards one of the warehouses. The pain in her shoulder was excruciating.
She could hear them joking with each other in Vietnamese about what they’d like to do with her. It was all she could do not to show she understood. Pain lanced through her shoulder. She stopped struggling. There was no point.
What were they going to do to her?
She was pushed into a chair in front of an old, metal desk. The chair opposite her was empty.
Then they waited. The five men stood behind her chatting to each other. None of the talk was about rhinos or South Africa or even about her. It was typical men’s talk – football and, surprisingly, women’s volleyball. But even that was predictable – the discussion focused less on the game and more about how the players would be in bed. She gripped the sides of the chair. How could she get away? The men were between her and the door.
Suddenly, the talk stopped, and a male voice greeted the men. They responded respectfully. Then, a nondescript, middle-aged man walked around the desk and sat down behind it. He stared at her for several seconds before speaking.
‘You cause me big problem,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘You steal money in South Africa. Now you try to find out about our rhinos.’
‘How did—?’ Crys began.
He opened a drawer, took out a piece of paper, and slid it across the desk towards her. She leaned forwards and picked it up – it was a photo of her, tied to a chair. The chair where Pockface had held her. She didn’t remember him taking the photograph, but then she looked almost unconscious in the picture.
‘Hurt?’ asked the man, smiling and pointing at her fingers, which were still strapped together.
She couldn’t speak.
‘We hurt you much more…’ He wasn’t smiling now.
‘You are wrong, Mr…?’ He didn’t finish her sentence. ‘I didn’t steal any money from anyone.’
He ignored that. ‘What you do here now?’ He glared at her. ‘I think you make Ho tell you about me.’
She shook her head. ‘Ho was dying. He didn’t say anything.’ She turned in the chair and pointed at Joe. ‘I followed him.’
Nobody said a word, but the man behind the desk didn’t look at all pleased by that news. She looked back at him and tried to sound calm and matter-of-fact, but her hands felt clammy and her pulse was racing.
‘I’m writing a story for National Geographic about the killing of rhinos and the smuggling of rhino horns. That’s why I was in South Africa. That’s why I’m here now. I want to speak to everyone involved so people get an accurate picture of what’s happening.’
‘Why you follow Joe?’
‘I asked him about an operation to kill lots of rhinos in South Africa. He wouldn’t answer me. That’s why I followed him. I want to know more about it. It’s the whole point of my job.’
‘Who told you about South Africa?’
‘The police in South Africa said they’d heard some rumours.’
‘Police very stupid in South Africa. Too difficult to kill many animals. I think you force Ho Van Tan to tell you what money was for before you kill him. He tell you this stupid story to confuse you. He was carrying money for us. He dead now. You kill and steal money!’
She shook her head. This was even worse than she’d feared. ‘I think Ho was stealing your money. He killed the pilot of the plane. Shot him in the head.’ The words were tumbling out. ‘Then he tried to shoot me. But he was injured.’ Desperation popped an idea into her mind. ‘He died in the Land Rover I was driving to take him to hospital.’ The story was close enough to the truth.
The man frowned. ‘Ho not steal money. Trusted partner.’
‘You can believe what you like, but I think he decided to steal from you and hide the money. He didn’t have any money when I found him.’
The man stared at her for what felt like an age. ‘No. I think you don’t tell the truth. You know where money is. You tell us now or you not happy.’
‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I’m just a journalist…’
The man stood up. ‘We find out if you know.’ He nodded at the men behind me.
She was grabbed by the arms – again wrenching her sore shoulder – and pulled up from the chair. Then they pushed her through a side door into a large room that was obviously a warehouse.
The boss man walked up to her and stuck his face right in front of hers. ‘I give you fifteen minutes to change your mind. If you don’t tell me where the money is, you will see what we do to people who try to steal from us. Not nice.’
He turned to Joe and spoke to him in Vietnamese. ‘You showed her the way here. If she doesn’t tell me where the money is, you will make her talk.’
Joe nodded with a smile. ‘Thank you, Chu Nhan.’
Crys suppressed a shudder, convinced still that she shouldn’t let them know she understood.
‘But if she still doesn’t tell me, you are to blame for this problem.’ Joe’s face fell.
With that the man walked out, and the others followed, leaving Crys to try to find a way out of the mess she’d got herself into.
She stood in the middle of the empty room, desperate to find a way out but at a loss what to do. There was another door at the opposite end of the room, so she ran over to it and turned the handle, but, of course, it was locked. She looked around. The only windows were too high to reach. They were near the top of one wall, and the ceiling was about ten metres above her.
With no escape route, she looked for something she could use as a weapon. The only furniture in the room was a metal chair and an old desk with a lamp with a naked bulb. Apart from that there were only some empty cardboard boxes with MANGOES printed on the outside.
And her cell phone was in her backpack, which one of the men had ripped from her when they’d dragged her into the building. It was sitting on the boss man’s desk.
The situation looked pretty hopeless. She shook her head.
Why didn’t she learn her lesson in South Africa?
She searched the room again in case she’d missed something. The only thing she found, behind the mango boxes, was an old can of paint and a bottle of what smelt like paraffin with barely any liquid left in it.
She’d just sat down at the desk when the boss man’s door opened, and he walked in.
‘Get up.’
He held a camera in front of her – her camera. It showed a photograph of her translator.
‘Who is this?’
‘My translator, Mr Phan Van Minh.’
‘How did you find him?’
‘Someone from the Department of Intercultural Affairs sent him. He must work for them.’
He swiped through a few photos, then stopped. ‘And this?’
‘He’s the first dealer I spoke to. Mr Le Van Tham. The department arranged my meeting with him too. And I think he arranged for me to speak to his supplier in Saigon Port – Mr Ng.’
The boss man swiped some more. ‘This him?’
I nodded.
‘And how do you know about Joe?’
‘Look, everything I’m doing here has been arranged by the Department of Intercultural Affairs. I don’t know how they chose the people I should meet. I said I wanted to meet different people – dealers, suppliers, importers, people who use rhino horn. Everyone associated with the trade. I assume it’s a legitimate government agency.’
He stared at her for a few moments. ‘Why no photo of Joe?’ he said at last.
‘He told me to leave when I asked him if he’d heard about an operation to kill lots of rhinos in South Africa.’
He stared at her again and shook his head in disbelief. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Five minutes more, then Joe have some fun.’
He turned and walked out, and she heard the key turn in the lock.
So, they definitely weren’t going to kill animals in South Africa. But they were obviously planning something. Perhaps they were going after horn or tusk stockpiles.
But there was nothing she could do about it. There was no one she could alert.
In the meantime, she had a more pressing problem. How was she going to stop Joe from beating the life out of her?