Foreign Hostage Read online

  Isengwe’s passion shone through in her rage. She talked about these elephants like they were her own family. Perhaps, for her, they were.

  “Today… they are…”

  She turned, unable to speak, and walked away from Simon.

  Out of respect he did what she had asked, look at the carnage. Mothers, children, teenagers, matriarchs, all dead. He tried to imagine them as people. It wasn’t difficult to do.

  Composing herself, Isengwe returned. She plunged straight back into her lecture. “Elephants don’t stand a chance against people. If you are an elephant, you live in fear of guns. You know what guns can do to you, and yet you can’t do a thing to stop your slaughter and the slaughter of your family. The survival of their species is not up to them, Simon, it is up to people like us. So, choose, whose side are you on? Because from where I stand, I only see one side worth fighting for.”

  Simon struggled to find fault with her argument. His own rage felt after witnessing the carnage. He hadn’t expected his intense emotions, and yet, Simon was a patriot to his country. He wasn’t yet ready to divulge state secrets when they might be used against him and the people of his nation, even if they might save elephants. His mission came first.

  But he also needed to establish a middle ground if he were to keep Isengwe’s cooperation.

  And then he saw his answer.

  Crouching low, he picked a business card from bloodied earth. It advertised the Mango Express, a nightclub in the nearby city of Arusha, near to the base of Mount Kilimanjaro and only a few hours’ drive from their current position. A scrawled a telephone number on the back.

  Simon opened a encrypted communications app on his satellite phone, keyed in the details from the card and sent it to the ASIS spy masters back in Canberra. With luck, the intelligence analysts from their sister organization, the Australian Signals Directorate, could connect into the Five Eyes network of spy satellites, tracking stations and data-crunching servers, and find answers to who was associated with that number and the club.

  He told Isengwe what he had done.

  “You should have just asked. We already know the Mango Express. One day we hope to apprehend Mutunga there.”

  “Who?” Simon remembered the name from the detailed briefing dossier he had read before arriving in the country. Those notes had been comprehensive, except on this individual. Those notes had been scant.

  “Another myth.” She shrugged, “Mutunga. We don’t know his real name, or anything about his identity. All we have is his DNA, sourced from a shootout with him three years ago. A shootout where no one even saw his face. All we really know is that Mutunga is the head of the largest ivory syndicate this side of Arusha.”

  “So, if we go to this club, we might walk right past this Mutunga character and not know it?”

  “Exactly.”

  Simon flashed the business card at her. “Maybe tonight, we’ll get our chance.”

  Orszak burst into the clearing, his movements frantic, his eyes wide and jaw slack. “I now know what’s fucking wrong with this situation!”

  “What’s that?” Isengwe tone was soothing, gentler than it had been with anyone else Simon had seen her interact with.

  “Kuifie!” Orszak blustered. “He’s not amongst the dead.”

  Isengwe looked hopeful. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Who?” Simon asked. This name had been nowhere in his briefing dossier.

  They both turned and looked down on him like he had just materialized here from another planet.

  CHAPTER 2

  They drove fast for several hours in their open topped jeep. Isengwe behind the wheel, Orszak beside her and Simon in the back. The landscape seemed endless, a wild mixture of vast grasslands and intermittent bush, thorn and acacia trees, rolling hills and the occasional crocodile and hippopotamus controlled rivers. They skirted a thousand-strong herd of wildebeest moving like an army on a forced march toward their next grazing field. But everywhere they traveled, there was no sign of Kuifie, which Simon discovered, was a teenage bull elephant.

  Orszak explained that males left their herd sometime between the ages of twelve and fifteen, forever after leading a solitary life. Kuifie was about that age now. He had not been amongst the dead, or so Orszak claimed. There was hope the teenager had moved into the wider world before the massacre.

  “You know the names of every animal in the herd?” Simon asked, not ready to believe what he was hearing.

  Neither Orszak nor Isengwe said a word.

  Simon had his answer.

  They kept driving.

  In time, the sun dipped in the horizon and the sky shifted to deep blues and purples. If they didn’t find the bull elephant soon they would have to call it a night, wait twelve hours and begin their search again in the morning. Some poachers equipped with night vision goggles and scopes liked to hunt under starlit skies, so there was no guarantee for Kuifie’s overnight safety.

  “Stop!” Orszak commanded.

  Isengwe slowed, then parked the vehicle. The American leaped out, boots on the ground, M16 raised and advanced towards a copse of trees.

  Simon followed, wishing the man had given some indication of what he had seen. That was what professional soldiers did. They looked out for their team and kept everyone informed. Orszak had forgotten his discipline.

  As he advanced Simon checked the Glock 19 9mm pistol in its hip holster, then pulled back the charging handle on his AK-47, raising it for battle. He figured he might need both weapons before the night was through.

  “Keep the noise down, Ashcroft.”

  Simon nodded and continued his quiet, careful advance. Within minutes he noticed a large shape moving in the trees ahead, the same shape Orszak must have identified earlier. At first Simon suspected poachers, but this was a single creature and too large to be a person.

  “Don’t scare him bud,” Orszak commanded. “You never want to scare a bull elephant.”

  “Roger that.”

  The American was being condescending again, but Simon was in no mood to argue. It was more important to know if the elephant had injuries.

  They approached to within fifty meters of Kuifie. The animal was larger than Simon expected for an elephant of its age. Its youth was recognizable only in its tusks, not as long as others he’d seen. The teenager seemed to hide behind the trees, his eyes watching them through the sparse cover of the foliage.

  “See that Ashcroft,” Orszak too was struggling with the tears moistening his eyes. “Kuifie’s hiding his tusks behind the branches.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “These days it is. A good friend once pointed that out to me once. A friend who knew everything you could ever know about elephants. Kuifie knows bud, that people want his tusks.”

  Simon had spent much of his career in Africa, but never in a place where he’d seen wild, living elephants. Up close, Kuifie was an incredible sight. No wonder people paid thousands of dollars for safari vacations in this part of the world.

  The teenage elephant soon made eye contact. Kuifie was assessing whether Simon was a threat or a friend. Simon saw the intelligence, and sadness, radiating from the soulful stare. He remembered what Isengwe had said, about the fate of elephants being in the hands of people. He imagined what it would be like to be in Kuifie’s situation, to have lost his family and been powerless to do anything about it.

  Simon had a wife and two young daughters back home in Sydney, whom he rarely saw because his job kept him far away in the unsavory corners of the globe. He couldn’t imagine how he would cope if he found himself powerless to help his family whilst in danger. If he ever lost them, he did not understand how he would cope, or if he would even want to. Similar thoughts were likely in Kuifie’s mind right now. Only for the elephant, it wasn’t an abstract idea; it was its reality.

  “Look, Orszak.” Simon pointed with his rifle at the hind legs of the animal.

  Jack Orszak’s gaze fell where Simon showed. A splatter pattern of
blood had dried in the hot sun on Kuifie’s hide. “He was there. He was fucking there! Saw his whole family gunned down!”

  “He survived, though.”

  “He lost his whole fucking family.”

  “I know, but what do we do?” Simon countered, frustrated again with Jack Orszak’s constant aggressive negativity. “We found him. He’s alive. That’s a win.”

  “You know what happens when we leave him? There will be no one to protect him.”

  Simon paced. Despite the animal’s ‘humanness’ and the connection he felt with the animal, he remained wary Kuifie might charge them. The longer they were here, the greater the risk. The last thing he wanted to do was kill an elephant because it threatened him, or to end up being trampled because he felt sorry for it.

  “We stay.”

  “I don’t think that’s realistic.”

  “No?” Orszak spat.

  “Jack, I once had a friend who served with me in Afghanistan—”

  “You going to tell me a sad spy story now?”

  Simon nodded. “Just shut up and listen. My friend got caught up in some of the worst violence we encountered in the Helmand Province. It affected him badly. I mean, full PTSD. The kind of post-traumatic stress disorder you never get over. When he returned home, it didn’t take long for us soldier-buddies to realize he’d gone suicidal. He just gave up. We took it in turns to watch over him. Stayed at his place. Drank beers and talked shit, just to monitor him. You know what happened?”

  “What is the point of this story, Ashcroft?”

  “The point is, it didn’t work. We started skipping shifts, because we had to. Work, girlfriends, boyfriends, family and life got in the way. Our suicidal friend was alone more and more often, because we all had to get on with our lives. We couldn’t be there for him forever. We just couldn’t—”

  “Yeah, yeah, one day he killed himself. I’ve heard this story plenty of times. Kuifie isn’t suicidal.”

  Simon was about to say he agreed, but then he wasn’t sure. He did not understand what depths of feeling, anguish and torment the elephant felt right now. It was possible Kuifie was suicidal. Perhaps the only reason he hadn’t ended his own life was because he didn’t have the means, so kept going. The more he considered that elephants shared the same emotions as humans, the more he sympathized with their horrific plight.

  “Jack, the problem isn’t here. The problem is the people who hunt him.” Simon held out the business card, only just legible in the fading light. “I found this at the massacre. Mpenzi tells me this Mutunga fellow is the mythical head of a major ivory poaching syndicate. That he frequents this Mango Express nightclub. Maybe—”

  “Maybe he’s fucking his sister. Maybe he’s fucking his brother. Maybe he’s the boogeyman. I don’t fucking care. I’m not leaving Kuifie tonight, and if you have any balls for this kind of work, neither will you.”

  Simon paced, sensing the elephant’s agitation. From one perspective Orszak was right, as long as they were here they protected the animal but, were they safe? A traumatized, distressed seven ton bull elephant could trample or impale them with its tusks. Plus, if the poachers returned, they would not hesitate to kill Simon and Orszak to get to the elephant.

  “Ashcroft, you ever heard of Dr. Bridgette Emery?”

  “No?” He tried to remember whether her name was in the briefing files. He didn’t think it had been. All the names that kept coming up he seemed to have had no prior briefing on. “Who is she?”

  “You should have heard of her, if you’re serious about helping elephants.”

  “Let’s just say I haven’t had the years and mileage in this game that you have, Orszak, and leave it at that.”

  He nodded like he didn’t care what Simon had said. “Bridgette was a brilliant woman — a British zoologist. I’ve read all her books, her blog, her articles in scientific journals even when I didn’t understand them. She understood elephants like no one before her. The Dian Fossey of elephant research and conservation. Bridgette was amongst the first to identify the communications rituals of elephants. How they have gathered the scattered bones of dead relatives and carry them to a single location. How the curl of the trunk, or a step backward, or a fold of the ear is a subtle communication between other members of its herd—”

  “Now I feel you’re trying to prove a point to me.”

  Orszak ignored Simon and kept talking. “Bridgette was not afraid. She stayed out all night when she had to, watching over the herds. She was a believer too.”

  “Was?”

  Orszak looked towards the horizon. He was furious or sad, Simon couldn’t tell which. “Like Fossey, Bridgette was the victim of poachers.”

  “Butchers like Mutunga?”

  “Yeah. They executed her in Nairobi. The killer stepped up to her car while stopped in traffic, shooting her three times at point-blank range…” Orszak shuddered. “Once in the head and twice in chest.”

  “You knew her, didn’t you?”

  He looked to Kuifie. “I met her a few times, yes. It was Bridgette who inspired me to come to Africa, do my bit to protect these magnificent creatures.”

  Simon grew tired of this conversation so he nodded and said nothing. They waited several minutes as the light faded. While protecting Kuifie through the night sounded noble in theory, he knew it wouldn’t work. The elephant could wander off without them noticing. When it got dark, they wouldn’t be able to see well enough to shoot at poachers. And how many poachers hunted at night, anyway? He hoped Orszak didn’t have the fortitude to stand watch for the next twelve hours, because Simon wasn’t up to it, not when he felt there was a better use of their time.

  His satellite phone lit up, drawing his attention. A message icon flashed. Simon entered his standard nine-digit code to unlock the screen.

  The ASIS app beeped. He read, liking what he saw. The Australian Signals Directorate reported the telephone number being from an unregistered phone and pinpointed to a location in Arusha, the Mango Express nightclub. The number had received three calls today, from another unregistered phone that had called from the exact location of today’s massacre, around the time of the killings. That phone was heading east towards Arusha, with two hours head start on Simon and the others. ASD provided Simon’s phone with a new in-house app that relayed real time tracking on both phones on a map overlay.

  Simon told Orszak what he had learned, showed him the tracking app. “You still want to hang around, because I know where the poachers are. And it’s not here.”

  Orszak considered his options for a moment, then nodded. He turned and gave one last salute to Kuifie, and then they departed.

  CHAPTER 3

  Arusha, Tanzania

  The Mango Express thumped a DJ set that was a fusion of Afro-beats, jazz and techno trance. The crowds were a mixture of Western, Asian and African tourists. Some sipped cocktails and guzzled beer, others danced in the open-air court. The stars and the Milky Way provided ambient lighting, supported by strings of fairy lights on the sporadically thatched canopy and bamboo walls. There was barely enough illumination to douse patrons in more than shadows amongst the neon-intense splashes of color. The lengthy bar offered every spirit and beverage Simon could think of, and then some. Despite the smorgasbord of choices, he ordered a simple beer and asked who else wanted one.

  Both Mpenzi Isengwe and Jack Orszak nodded their affirmatives. None of them needed large quantities of alcohol inside them while they worked, but not to drink would invite suspicion. It took five minutes to push through the bar-hugging crowd and complete his order. To Simon’s surprise, Orszak returned to the table at the same time as Simon with three whisky shots in one large hand. He pushed a tumbler at each of them.

  “What’s this for?” Simon asked.

  “Drink,” he ordered. He lifted his shot glass in a toast. “To Spokie, may the old matriarch rest in peace. And to the rest of her family. May they all rest in peace.”

  “To Spokie and her family,” Isengwe echoe
d.

  Not wanting to seem insensitive, Simon chinked glasses with them both. His two companions were like old war veterans, drinking a toast to a fallen comrade. They threw the shots down in single gulps, so Simon did the same.

  Orszak then downed his beer and asked if anyone wanted another.

  Simon said no and went back to watching the crowd. Most of the patrons were from the twenty-something backpacking culture, gyrating to the music in tie-dyed clothing and trendy dread-locked hair. Some wore tight summer dresses, or shorts and designer t-shirts. The scattering of local women appeared to be prostitutes, although a few night have been out for a night of fun. But the group Simon was most interested in were eight well-dressed locals, older than the average patron, admired by well kept, young women in tight cocktail dresses, sharing their drinks and conversation in a semi-private booth. He’d glimpsed a semi-automatic pistol holstered under the jacket of one man. Checking the feed on his satellite phone app, he searched for the whereabouts of the two unregistered phones. The specific GPS coordinates pinpointed their location as being inside the group of men. One of them had to be Mutunga.

  Orszak returned with another beer and a whisky, stumbled then fell into his chair.

  “How much have you drunk tonight?”

  “Not enough!” he grumbled.

  Simon glanced at Isengwe to gauge her reaction. She seemed ambivalent to the American’s reckless behavior. Simon asked himself — not for the first time — what power did Orszak hold over her?

  “What’s on your mind, Ashcroft?” Orszak asked.

  He told them what he had seen.

  Orszak chuckled. “All this based on a business card you found at the massacre?”

  Simon nodded. “Do we call it in, or do you and I just walk on over and have a chat?”

  “Neither.” Orszak leaned back, threw his second whisky shot down his throat. Then, nursing his already half-finished second beer, he said, “I’m getting another drink.”