Michael shifted in his seat. ‘I don’t really know where to start.’
‘The beginning is a good place,’ Mabula commented.
‘Well, the beginning is National Geographic commissioning me to write a story on the rhino-horn trade. But the start of all this was meeting Dinh in Ho Chi Minh City. I went to ask him questions about what Vietnam was doing to meet the CITES ban on trade. He was very friendly, and told me a story about how they were trying to track the trade from South Africa through Mozambique. We got on well, and he took me out for dinner. Maybe we drank a bit – that Mekong Whiskey. It’s firewater.’ He paused. ‘It was then that he persuaded me to help them, to get information on the trade route under the cover of being a journalist. I agreed. It was stupid. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap. I guess I never thought I’d really accomplish anything in any case.’ He stopped and finished his glass of water.
‘But I did,’ he went on. ‘I was lucky, and Bongani made some contacts for me. Money talks loudly in this part of the world. It started right here. Anton was selling the horn to a Portuguese gang who smuggled it into Mozambique. I followed them and documented it all – even got great pictures. Dinh’s men took all that, of course. Actually, I nearly got caught at the house where the Portuguese transferred the horn. They were scanning with binoculars, but they went right past me. I was so relieved, but I ended up with something worse. It was out of the frying pan into the fire…’ He sighed. ‘When I phoned Dinh and told him what I’d found out, he was so courteous and grateful. The next thing his men grabbed me with orders to kill me, but I managed to talk them into letting me live. For a while.’
He took a deep breath and had to grab the side of his chair to prevent himself falling. ‘Crys, could you get me some more water?’ he asked in a weak voice.
Crys went to the buffet, frowning. She’d seen Mabula’s face. It was the way he looked at her when she said she didn’t know about the money.
‘Was Nigel Wood involved in all this?’ Søren asked.
‘Wood?’ said Michael. ‘No. Why?’
Søren just shook his head.
Crys gave Michael the full glass and he drained it.
Then Mabula asked, ‘What about the emails?’
Michael frowned. ‘What emails?’
Crys borrowed Mabula’s pen and pad and wrote down the email address and passed it to Michael. He looked up at her, surprised.
‘The emails about the twenty thousand dollars, Michael,’ she said.
He shifted uncomfortably, biting his lip. ‘Oh, that was Dinh. It’s his private email. He offered me money. I played along, but I never meant to take it…’
Mabula was still staring at Michael. ‘I have the other emails, Mr Davidson,’ he said, his voice hard now. ‘The ones from your personal address. I know the whole story. And you took the ten thousand dollars paid to you in advance. I think you knew what you were doing all along.’
Michael suddenly slumped down in the chair, his eyes closed. Crys jumped up and grabbed his hand. It was ice cold even though the day was already starting to warm up. ‘He’s passed out,’ she said. ‘We have to get him out of here. You can’t ask him any more questions now!’
Mabula said nothing.
After a moment, Crys asked quietly, ‘Did he really take the ten thousand dollars?’
Mabula nodded. Søren was shaking his head.
‘He was playing along with them! It’s not what it seems!’ Crys exclaimed.
Couldn’t they see that?
But she was trying to convince herself – to deny the truth. To quell the anguish that had gripped her.
By this time Michael was coming round. He looked about, obviously disoriented.
She looked into his unfocused eyes, and it came to her what Michael’s father had told her when she’d spoken to him back in the States.
Like Bongani, he needed that money. For his daughter’s surgery. So he knew what he was doing all along…
Crys’s heart sank. She felt as if all the strength had left her body.
Hiding her pain, she helped Michael into the living room to lie down on the couch.
She left him without a word and returned to Søren and Mabula.
‘I’m going to give you some background,’ Mabula said as she sat back down. ‘Both of you know some of it, but maybe between us we can put it all together. For the last couple of years, I’ve been working on smashing a rhino-poaching ring in this part of the world—’
‘Dammit, you could have told me that right at the beginning! Just think of the problems you could have avoided!’ Crys was almost shouting. Why had no one been honest with her?
‘I understand your anger, Crys, but look at it from my side. We’ve had a few successes, more failures. But we were getting closer. We knew that the man Ho, who was on that plane that crash-landed, was a money courier for a cartel in Vietnam, bringing it in through Maputo in Mozambique. It seems customs there was paid to look the other way. Then you appeared out of nowhere, Crys, right where Ho’s plane crashed. And you were also Vietnamese. What was I to think? The obvious answer was that you were involved too. Maybe a honey pot for all I knew. I had to treat you as one of them. I had no choice.’
Crys looked at him in astonishment. It had never occurred to her that he’d seen her as anything but an American journalist – an obstacle between him and half a million dollars.
‘Around the time the plane crash-landed,’ he continued, ‘we’d heard rumours of something major being planned with a lot of money involved. Our guess is that Ho was carrying that money. Maybe he saw an opportunity to keep it for himself, or maybe the plan was always to get rid of the pilot and so cover his tracks. We’ll never know. But obviously Mr Chikosi was supposed to meet him and drive him to a rendezvous somewhere. He was lucky about the plane crash. If he’d met Ho, he would now be as dead as the pilot.’
‘And what was the money for?’ Søren asked.
‘We think it was headed here to Tshukudu. It was payment for all that horn that’s sitting in our vehicles right now.’
‘No!’ Crys exclaimed. ‘You mean that Bongani was supposed to bring him here to Tshukudu with the money?’
Mabula shook his head. ‘I doubt that. He was supposed to get back to you at the camp. He was just a link in the chain. But once the money went missing, that must have disrupted their plans. Especially as they were organising the big attack on Kruger at the same time. That’s why I was so desperate to trace that money.’ He glared at her. ‘You didn’t help much.’
Crys didn’t know what to say, so she kept her mouth shut.
‘And it fits with what Johannes heard Anton say,’ Mabula continued. ‘That Chu Nhan said the deal was off. Chu Nhan’s not his real name, but we believe it’s the nickname of the boss of the cartel in Vietnam.’
‘So, Anton was selling horn illegally to the Vietnamese, who were smuggling it out through their usual routes,’ Søren said. ‘What made you suspect Tshukudu in the first place?’
‘Just bits and pieces we picked up from informers. But we had no real evidence. We have now, but it’s rather late in the day…’
‘End Extinction also had information that some horn was leaking from South Africa – not poached, but smuggled from the farmers,’ Søren said. ‘We had no information pointing here specifically, but this is the biggest farm, and there were rumours it is in financial trouble. So, we had our suspicions.’
Crys remembered that her bungalow had been searched after she’d asked Anton about Michael. Afterwards, she’d found Anton standing outside the house smoking and making up stories about fireflies. Now Crys thought she knew the answer. He had to know if she was who she said she was, or if she was investigating the rhino-horn smuggling in some way.
‘There’s a diary upstairs that I found in the safe. It documents the money Anton took from Pockface and his gang,’ Crys said.
‘So, you went through the safe too,’ Mabula growled. ‘I’m not sure why we bother to have police at all.’ He couldn’t keep a straight face, however.
The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Eventually Crys asked, ‘But how does Dinh fit in? And Nigel Wood?’
It was Søren who answered her. ‘I told you we believed that there was something very strange about Rhino International. And I’ve been puzzled about why Wood would go to such lengths to find out about what Chu Nhan’s group was up to. I started thinking he and Dinh might be connected somehow to a smuggling mafia different from this Chu Nhan. After you and I spoke the other night, I warned Colonel Mabula that if I was right, Wood might have an ulterior motive. Obviously, he’d be happy about Chu Nhan losing men and money and face, but there was another possibility. If he somehow knew about the deal with Anton, and could get his hands on that horn, it would be a huge coup for him. Millions of dollars of horn for hardly any money.’ He looked around. ‘I must say that, after Michael’s story, it doesn’t seem as likely that Wood is involved. Maybe he was also duped by Dinh. As Michael was.’
‘Where is Wood now?’ Crys asked.
‘We’re holding him,’ Mabula replied. ‘If he had contact with Dinh last night, and we can prove that through cell-phone records, we’ll be able to arrest him. And, of course, we have Dinh. He’s facing a murder charge now. I’m sure we can persuade him to cooperate. We’ll find out the truth about Nigel Wood. And about Michael Davidson.’
They heard another helicopter approaching.
‘That’s the medivac chopper back,’ Mabula said. ‘It can take Davidson and Malan. I have a transport chopper coming for the rest of us from Phalaborwa. It should be here in about an hour.’
Crys just nodded, lost in her own thoughts.
She’d probably never know whether Nigel was completely above board. And now she knew that Michael was willing to compromise the principles he was always so strong on, and maybe discard them altogether.
She stood up and went to the window.
But could she judge him when she’d also done things she wasn’t proud of?
She turned back to face the others. ‘What will happen to him?’ she asked.
‘Davidson?’ Mabula said. He shrugged. ‘Depends. We don’t really have much, and Dinh’s word will be worth nothing. If he has a good lawyer and sticks to his story, maybe he goes home. Maybe he even gets to keep the ten thousand dollars. I don’t think he gets to keep his reputation though.’
She nodded and went to tell Michael that the medivac had arrived.
And to say goodbye.