Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 02 Page 3

  She climbed down from her truck and walked to the fence, She saw where the vehicle had crossed into the park, seemingly straight through the fence. It seemed to be a well used crossing. The area was worn down by what appeared to be many tire marks. So, there had been more than one vehicle coming through here in the past. A large shrub grew in front of one of the fence’s posts. She craned her neck to look behind it. The fence had been cut and was now held in place by a series of zip ties. There was a camo cloth bag filled with them tucked under the shrub and several, no, many cut and discarded ones lay on the ground nearby. This entrance had been the one the vehicle used to enter the park, certainly, but not it alone. Many vehicles had breached this fence in the past.

  “Who?” she murmured under her breath, “Who is using my park this way and what are they doing that keeps them from coming through the main gate?” She knew of the poachers, of course, but they were mostly outsiders from Zimbabwe hard up for money, and speculators from the south who had a bustling market in restricted goods. They could do better in the north where the surveillance was not so intense. But where there was game, there were those who would kill it. That was an historical fact in these parts. She jerked at the fence. It seemed solid. If you did not know about the opening, you would never guess what it was possible to do here. She debated returning to Mwambe to tell him about the gap, but decided against it. He would simply tell her the police were not in the business of securing the park. It was her problem to deal with.

  “I must find a way to watch this place at night. If I repair this fence, whoever is using it will simply cut a new way in somewhere else and it might take too long to find it. If they do not know that I know about it, perhaps I can find out who they are.”

  The gazelles, which had been watching her and presumably listening to her as well, seemed satisfied she had no bad intentions toward them. They lowered their heads and began to graze.

  Sanderson climbed back into the truck and drove away. She had some thinking to do.

  ***

  Leo Painter left Greshenko working the phones to the manufacturing plant in Finland. He had partially succeeded, it seemed. Whether the delivery date for new modules could be advanced would depend on another contract the manufacturer had with a shipyard, they’d advised him. With the current slump in the world economy, the possibility that they might switch their production line over to Leo’s project was viewed as both a certainty and a blessing. Blessings were not usually something ascribable to business undertakings with Leo, but in this case he guessed they were. He sometimes wondered about the presence of the Almighty in the sorts of transactions he’d engaged in, in his day. The shipyard was happy to postpone their build and the payments that would fall due for a few months and that would help them ride out the slump as well. It would be a win-win for all concerned. Leo left before Greshenko could fill him in on all the details. He’d heard all he needed to hear.

  He paced to the perimeter of the building site, pausing from time to time to look at the stark skeletal framework the builders had erected from different points of view. In his mind’s eye, however, he saw the finished structure, not the skeleton; glass and steel, thatch and wood trim, a combination of traditional and modern. He turned to walk back toward the workmen and noticed an unfamiliar SUV parked by his dumpster. Two men were hauling material from the rear of their truck and tossing it into the waste container.

  “Hey,” he yelled, “what the hell are you doing? This is private property.”

  The men spun around and looked at him. They exchanged some words he couldn’t hear and turned back to their task, working faster.

  “Hey, cut that out. Who are you?”

  One man, the taller of the two, heaved what must have been the last sack into the bin, gave Leo a two finger salute, and the two jumped into the truck and drove off.

  “Son of a…”

  Leo walked over to the waste bin and peered in. All he saw was rubble. Well, not quite. Some of the material seemed to be crudely molded out of some sort of plastic into cones. He picked up a stick and poked through what they had left. No garbage. That was good. People seemed to think a large dumpster like this one—a skip, his foreman had called it—was a public utility. If you weren’t careful it could soon be filled with garbage and that meant scavengers. In the States the worry would be rats. Here, an army of monkeys and insects large enough to carry off a small child would descend on the heap and it would take more time and cost more money to clean up than a modest war.

  He pulled one of the cones out of the pile and turned it over in his hand. He glanced back into the rest of the rubbish and inspected some of the broken cones. There didn’t seem to be anything to worry about. Some metal shavings, some powdery stuff. He dropped the cone beside the bin, then pushed it with his toe to one side to make a stop for the gate that stood open next to the road. The foreman had complained the gate kept swinging shut at all the wrong times. So, this would hold it. Problem solved.

  He closed his eyes and pulled up an image of the SUV, a white Toyota, fairly new. He had a semi-photographic memory; if he saw an object, a page of newsprint, or something similar, he could often retain a visual of most of the details for an hour or two. It was a trick that had baffled, amused, and occasionally annoyed people with whom he did business. A good memory and an eye for details were worth two MBAs—the degrees, or the people who possessed them, take your pick. The license number. He wanted the license number, just in case. He pulled a small note book from his shirt pocket and jotted down what he could remember. You never knew.

  Chapter Five

  The soldier who’d shot the gorilla had to fire twice more into the beast before it finally ceased its thrashing about and lay still. It required the help of three of his comrades to drag it out into the clearing where men and boys were busy widening the entrance to the “try dig” where the new vein of coltan had been exposed. In an hour or two it would be large enough for them wielding their shovels and pry bars to start chipping out the mineral that was so valued in the both the orient and the west. This would be a marked improvement over their last site which required they pan the minerals from a stream bed. Panning was slow and tedious work with a much lower yield per man hour and consequently more abuse from their captors.

  Coltan, the object of this illegal intrusion into the forest of eastern Congo, is the mineralized form of niobium, formerly columbium, and tantalalum in various combinations and mixtures. Along with the country’s other mineral wealth, it is mined and marketed to slake the burgeoning world-wide thirst for electronic devices and gadgets and, as an unintended consequence, helps fuel the seemingly endless conflict wars in the Congo. Wars having casualties rivaling those of the Holocaust, wars toward which western manufacturers and eastern entrepreneurs conveniently turn a blind eye, wars lost to the public’s attention by the media’s obsession with Al Qaeda, Somali pirates, and the chronic troubles in the Mideast. The world’s fascination with electronic devices, cell phones, GPS systems, DVD players, the list seems to grow daily, necessitates the ever growing exploitation of these minerals to make the small, efficient capacitors the devices require. Thus, boys and men, under the watchful eye of one Warlord or another, labor in the back country and forests to wrest coltan from the earth so this lust for instant gratification in the civilized world can be met.

  The men, les soldats, their camo uniforms now rumpled and sweat stained from the effort of hauling the dead gorilla from the bush, began the process of butchering it. They were particularly pleased they had bagged a male. Its genitalia would bring a big price in Korea and China. Some of the witch doctors in the local countryside and the moloi to the south in Botswana would pay a handsome price for even small bits. The rest of the carcass would be sold locally as “bush meat.” There would be some francs made this day.

  They had not thought they would bring down a gorilla so soon, and therefore, had not brought the necessary preservatives, not even salt, to package their prize. All these supplies bounce
d along in the beds of trucks headed toward them but still hours away. One of the men broke out a bottle of South African brandy and poured it over the various parts they’d wrapped in towels until proper containers and solutions arrived. They all agreed that the brandy could only enhance the efficacy of these bits and pieces if and when they finally found their way into oriental apothecaries.

  The men who’d been set to do the digging at the mine’s entrance kept their eyes averted from this activity. They were not offended by the brutality or the obvious breach of international conventions regarding mountain gorillas. Dian Fossey and The Gorillas in the Mist had not been a major part of their education. Brutality had become an expected ingredient of their lives since birth. Also, they knew that no game warden or NGO activist would dare confront these men back in the wilds of the Congo. Les soldats were armed and veterans of fighting around the country. They would have no compunction in killing any intruder foolish enough to object to their enterprise, including them. And anyway, isn’t it better to not know some things?

  Les soldats, their butchering done, spread out into the forest, their weapons off safety. Where there was one gorilla, there would be more. Gorillas were social animals and therefore easy hunting. Two stayed back to guard the women, to keep them from running off or possibly killing themselves. The men and boys at the mine would not leave. They wouldn’t dare, and where would they go?

  ***

  Kgabo Modise’s rise in the Botswana’s police force, from the Mochudi local constabulary, to CID, then to DIS, was not, strictly speaking, meteoric. He had, in fact, out-stripped his cadre of cadets entering the police training program and had achieved his current position rapidly, but it was as much the result of hard work and luck as karma. As a young man and student at Molefi secondary school, he had shown great promise. So much so that his teachers predicted a bright future for him in the law or civil service, following the footsteps of the many other bright lights from their school—high fliers who had gone on to become High Court judges, Permanent Secretaries, and parastatal CEOs.

  But then came his senior year. For reasons he never divulged, his enthusiasm for study, his school, and even his prospects dulled and unsurprisingly, the year ended with an unexceptional O-level performance. He brushed aside the urging by his principal, Mr. Basiamang to repeat the exams.

  “You will not be the first to gain entry to the university and the law after a second go at the exams,” he’d said, sure the young man would jump at the chance.

  But Kgabo steadfastly refused and instead enrolled in the Police Academy. His family was devastated. What had happened to this rising star? Mma Motsheganong said it was woman trouble. Mma Motsheganong had a very pretty granddaughter, Kopano, who married the local bottle store owner’s son, himself something of a bright light. Kgabo Modise, she said had pined after Kopano and when she jilted him for comparative wealth and ease, the heart went out of him. Modise never confirmed or denied this account but his mother was reported to have laughed very loudly when she heard of it.

  The Mochudi Police Department did not qualify as a prestige posting and worse, he daily faced his neighbors and fellow students, now graduates, and their questions. But he held his tongue and worked hard at his chosen profession. He bought self improvement books and tapes and studied. He did not pursue what little night life Muchudi offered and was never seen with a woman again.

  The big break for him came after his fifth year on the force. He had been chosen to attend an international conference for police—in America. His colleagues commiserated with him.

  “We,” they’d announced proudly, “have been selected to attend a similar gathering, but in France and as part of an Interpol briefing. Poor Modise,” they’d added. “He will be sent to work with the gunslingers and cowboys in Dallas, Texas, of the USA.”

  Modise did not share their feelings. He knew, for example, that whatever else might be said about Americans, and there was plenty that could be said, they as a nation still remained at the top of the heap when it came to productivity per capita. He and his generation were not averse to hard work, but the transition from a British Protectorate to national independence had been rapid and lacking in some respects, at least as to how one optimally managed systems and people. He would go to the conference as much to learn the secret of this productivity as to bone up on police procedurals. He did, however, learn a great deal about the latter.

  His companions had guessed wrong about his destination. Dallas was having such a meeting, but Modise was slated to go elsewhere. When his plane landed in Washington, he was met by several men who accompanied him to Quantico, Virginia, where he entered a total immersion curriculum in intelligence and counter-terrorism. He listened and he learned. He asked one agent from Phoenix if his fellow student attendees were typical of American police. He’d seen enough Hollywood police to have some doubts. The man from the American west had laughed and said no, these were the “top cops”—the best of the best.

  Modise set his professional goal at that moment. He would become Botswana’s “top cop.” He read everything he could lay his hands on about police and intelligence work. He sent away for CDs and DVDs. He listened to and watched them over and over. He kept to himself, took on extra duties and by dint of hard work and determination, he evolved into Botswana’s “top cop” and a rising star in Botswana’s intelligence Directorate, the DIS.

  Chapter Six

  Modise, when not immediately engaged in casework, had set himself the task of absorbing as much information as possible from all the sources available to him. He was so engrossed in studying America’s no-fly list, a book with more names, it seemed, than the entire population of Botswana, that he almost missed the knock at his door.

  “You are wanted in the conference room.” The new recruit who had been assigned as an intern in the office looked out of place in her too-new uniform and shiny belt. Most of the occupants on this floor had a “worn-in” look about them.

  “Oh yes? Do you know why?” It didn’t matter if the young woman knew or not. Modise would go anyway, but he was curious whether she had acquired some listening skills.

  “No, sir.”

  She hadn’t.

  He walked down the corridor that led from the president’s office with some trepidation. He knew there were some heavy hitters in the room, and there had been rumors. The conference room in use this day was located in a building separate from the presidential offices. The occasional but nonimportant leaks to the press had convinced the director general to move the meetings around from time to time. The room was rectangular and still smelled of tobacco from the old days, before the current president had quit and decreed all official meetings should henceforth be smoke free. Once in the room he found himself in the presence of the Minister for Security and Intelligence, the Vice President, the Commander of the Botswana Defense Force, the BDF, and the Director General of the DIS, Botswana’s equivalent to the fabled MI-5 of British Intelligence or America’s FBI. Clearly this would not be a routine briefing. Modise tried without much success not to feel intimidated.

  “Modise, sit please,” the DG said and waved him toward a chair at the table. Modise’s first thought had been to take one against the wall near the door. He couldn’t see himself on such a familiar footing with these important people. “No, no, Modise, here, at the table. You have been the subject of considerable discussion.”

  He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

  He spent the next half hour sitting quietly as the meeting reviewed the potential problems that might spill over into the country from the World Cup matches in neighboring South Africa, scheduled for the second and third weeks in June.

  “There will be opportunities for much mischief, to say the least,” the minister said. Modise nodded at this acknowledgement of the obvious.

  “His Excellency, the President’s chief concern,” the director said, “is the rather porous nature of our borders in the light of the tastes of some of the visitors who
will be attending. H. E., of course, has always been concerned with the incursions of poachers and perhaps hunters, which we can assume will increase as well. It is an obsession with him. Now we add this new element.”

  The men around the table nodded. The president’s passion for conservation was well documented and an occasional sore point with the Ministers who would prefer to focus on the economic and international matters which they believed to be far more pressing.

  “The people who will find their way to Botswana, for the greater part, will be the wealthy, team sponsors, owners, and political figures of varying importance. They are more than welcome, naturally, but I am concerned about what they may wish to do with their wealth and time while in our country.”

  “We are speaking of smuggling, contraband and…other illegalities?” Modise asked.

  “Smuggling? Certainly. That and all the sorts of things the wealthy indulge in…” The director’s voice trailed off.

  “Big game horns and…” Modise said.

  “Yes? Continue.” The DG had him in his crosshairs, it seemed.

  “Yes, and other things. Rhino horns, as you know, are processed into powders or potions and sold as aphrodisiacs to the Chinese. For the Arabs, they and other species are used to carve handles for their ornamental daggers, Jambiyas, Khanjars, and so on. Then there is the ongoing market for pelts from the big cats, not to mention various body parts used in their traditional medicine. Since the animals that supply these products are all on the endangered species list or are otherwise protected, the traffic in these items has become very lucrative and, I should say, a global concern. There will be many buyers and a short supply. It could get ugly. They will be trying to slip them in from the North, I think.”