Chapter Five
7 June 2018
People’s Silk Warehouse
Shanghai, China
Rao Wei had to stop himself from running to the company warehouse when word came in that the crate had been delivered.
He had been ruthlessly keeping track of the progress of the Flower of Senegal since Habré had given him the name over the phone, tracking it as it chugged along through the Arabian Sea to Colombo, Sri Lanka; across the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Strait to Singapore, Malaysia; up the South China Sea to Taipei, Taiwan; and finally through the East China Sea to Shanghai, arriving seven days ahead of the vague arrival date Habré had provided.
It took another full day for the shipping container carrying his crate to be placed on the loading dock and his crate sorted out and put on a truck to be delivered to this warehouse.
But as soon he received the text message that it had arrived, he told his secretary to have a car ready to take him to the warehouse. He did not explain why, and she did not ask, which was why she had remained his secretary for all these years.
Upon arrival, he dismissed the entire warehouse staff for the day.
The foreman—whose name Rao was fairly certain was Hsu—hesitated. “Sir, the accounting department instructed us to have the inventory completed by close of business today.”
“Inform the accounting department that it will be completed tomorrow, on my authority. If they question it, have them call my secretary.”
Hsu pursed his lips. “Yes, sir.”
Rao appreciated Hsu’s dedication to duty, but he needed to do this himself.
After Hsu and his workers all left, Rao realized that it might have been easier to keep one or two of them around to open the massive crate. It required physical labor, something Rao detested.
But no. He preferred to keep the company’s less legal business affairs to himself. Allowing others to assist him meant also allowing them to participate in the profits. He saw no reason to share in those. Besides, the risk was all his. Additional help would only provide more opportunities for leaks. Rao had done his research. Most illegal operations were shut down by low-level functionaries who were caught doing one thing and then traded a light sentence for information on other illegal activities.
Rao was not about to let that happen to him. Bad enough the number of public officials he had to bribe …
So on his own, he found a crowbar and managed to pry open the crate.
After that, he had to pause for several seconds, winded. Rao was an executive who ate good food and smoked two packs a day. He spent his days sitting at his desk or in meeting rooms, his nights with his family at the dinner table or on the couch. The most exercise he got was when he walked to the elevator that took him to the parking garage, where his car was waiting for him at the elevator bank.
He was not suited to manual labor, and he stood for several seconds, hands on knees, stooped over, coughing, attempting to recover his breath.
Perhaps it might have been worth it to bring one manual laborer in on the deal.
Once he recovered, he inspected the interior of the crate and smiled widely. Habré did his work well. The tusks were cleaned and packed carefully, and mostly undamaged. A few dents and scrapes, but that was to be expected from elephants not in captivity. At the very least, Habré’s people did a good job of removing the tusks so the cuts on the end were clean.
Rao’s smartphone buzzed. With a sigh, he checked it, in case it was a matter of import.
There were two text messages. One was from his wife, which he ignored; the other was from one of his importers in San Francisco, expressing once again his urgent need for a clean tusk. “My clientele is eager for more merchandise,” his text said.
“Worry not, Mr. Tsing,” Rao muttered at the phone, “you’ll have what you need.”
Rao hefted one tusk that looked almost perfect out from the crate so he could examine it more closely in better light.
It was indeed unmarred. Somehow, the elephant that this tusk had been attached to had led a sedate life. The tusk was long enough to have come from a full-grown animal, but there were almost no scrapes or other markings.
“Beautiful,” he muttered, replacing the heavy tusk back in the crate. “Just beautiful. You’ll take this one, Tsing.”
From behind him, a muffled voice said, “The creatures you had murdered for those tusks were beautiful.”
Whirling around, he saw a man wearing a big coat and with an elephant-shaped mask covering his face.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“Those animals lived in peace in the veldt until your hired thugs destroyed them.”
Rao held up his smartphone. “Get out! I’m calling the police—”
“By all means. I am sure the constabulary will be fascinated by all the illegal ivory in this warehouse.”
Rao swallowed. The masked man was correct, of course. He couldn’t risk the police here, at least not the uniformed officers who would respond to an emergency call. All the high-ranking personnel he’d bribed would not be involved in responding to a break-in.
“What do you want?”
“I want the elephants that were massacred to give you a useless commodity to still be alive.”
The masked man started to advance on Rao, who stumbled sideways against the crate of ivory, dropping the tusk he’d earmarked for Tsing to the floor.
The masked man grabbed Rao by his arms.
“Failing that, I want you to pay for their deaths.”
Again, Rao swallowed. “And how do you intend to make me do that?”
“Painfully.”
Hsu Zhung exited the Metro and did the three-block walk to the warehouse the same as he did every morning. While he walked, he played the voicemail on his phone for the twentieth time.
“Mr. Hsu, this is Mr. Lin from accounting. It seems I owe you an apology, Mr. Hsu, as Mr. Rao did indeed authorize your staff’s departure for the afternoon today. Obviously, the termination proceedings I threatened you with will not be taking place, and I look forward to the inventory report by the end of business tomorrow. Good day.”
Hsu intended never to erase that message from Lin. The obnoxious windbag from accounting had been an annoyance for all of Hsu’s time with People’s Silk, and Hsu took tremendous satisfaction in the obsequious tone that he had been forced to take following his call to Mr. Rao’s secretary.
The foreman did wonder what was so important that Mr. Rao had to clear the warehouse for the afternoon, but Hsu hadn’t achieved his position by questioning his superiors.
Several of his staff were already waiting by the front door when he arrived. He muttered greetings to all of them, glad to see that they were punctual.
Once he unlocked the warehouse door, though, he was assaulted by a horrible smell.
“What is that?” one of the men cried, putting a hand over his face.
Wrinkling his nose, Hsu pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his nose and mouth with it, entering the warehouse cautiously.
Flies were buzzing about, which combined with the smell made Hsu fear the worst. There’d been a homicide in his apartment building when he was a child growing up. The upstairs flat had carried a similar stench, and there were flies buzzing just like this, too.
Turning a corner, he saw several elephant tusks on the floor, one of which was sticking straight upward. That one was covered in red.
A second later, he registered what the red was, and why it was sticking upward: it was protruding from Mr. Rao’s chest. Blood soaked his shirt and chest, with gore and bones and muscle visible surrounding the wound made by the tusk.
Mr. Rao’s eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling, his mouth also wide open, the flies zipping in and out, one landing right on his bloody tongue.
Running quickly back to the door, Hsu tried and failed to swallow down the bile. Before making it more than a meter, he threw up all over the floor and wall, and possibly on one or two of his staff.
One of the women pulled out her phone and called the police.
One of the men pulled out his phone and started taking pictures.
Wiping puke away from his lips with his sleeve, Hsu stammered, “Who—who would do this?”
“What,” the woman who called the police said, “kill Mr. Rao or be in possession of all this illegal ivory?”
Hsu had no answer for that.