In the Company of Killers, Bryan Christy [love story books to read .txt] 📗

to flourish in spite of all that was happening around him—the poverty, the corruption, the killing. Despite it all, Bernard kept his center. After a few days in Bernard’s company, Klay always felt a little less angry, and a little more human. For a while, he felt peace.

“Okay,” Klay said. “Yeah, I’d take his money. I’d take his elephant collars. But Askari drones? Those are people trackers.”

“I know. They wanted facial-recognition cameras at our gate. They’re building a database by tribe, tying it into a cross-agency police cloud. I drew the line at their face harvesting. They weren’t happy. I won’t be able to hold them off forever. We are a Perseus Group laboratory now.” He nodded in the engineer’s direction. “That one is our minder.”

“Do your donors know?”

“Our donors care about our animals, Tom. He came out here, you know. Terry Krieger. Very knowledgeable in the bush. Said he’s always loved elephants. Wants to give something back. They all do it. Come to Africa. Wanting to cleanse themselves of something . . .”

Klay’s jaw muscles knotted.

“Perseus’s drones have knocked the hell out of our poachers. Herd stress has declined. Birth rates are rising. Mothers are producing again.” Bernard kicked a rock with his boot.

Klay waited.

“After our latest annual report came out, Nairobi said to us: ‘Right. Done and dusted. Wildlife sorted. Let’s approve the north-south rail line.’”

“That’s the play?”

“Krieger supports us. Anything we need, he says. But I hear otherwise from Nairobi. His interest is the Chinese and they want the railroad.” Bernard turned to him. “A north-south rail line would run straight through our land, Tom. Destroy our way of life. My family would have to leave here. My mother . . .” Bernard paused. “Why don’t you write about that?”

Klay looked away. A troop of baboons had emerged from the trees and was crossing a field of dry grass, led by a very large male. A baby sat on the big male’s head, its tiny hind foot causing the adult to squint and swat it away.

“A story on Perseus Group?” Klay shook his head. “That’s outside of scope. I’m here for Botha.”

“You do remember Congo, right?”

Klay ground his back teeth, still looking in the direction of the baboons. “I remember,” he said.

“All that great intelligence you’re able to pick up in Washington. I thought maybe . . .”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe you could get someone important to listen.”

Klay turned and studied Bernard, wondering what his friend knew. “Look,” he said, finally. “I’m just a hack. I’d have to spend, what? Three years to get into Perseus Group? Two at a minimum. Even then. Even if they gave me the pages, even if I didn’t mind spending the rest of my life buried in lawsuits—because they’d definitely sue me—even then, there’s no one to act. Who would prosecute Perseus Group—world’s biggest private military company? No one. Not here. Not in Congo. Not in the US. Nowhere. And that’s just the corporation. There’s no way I could get close to Terry Krieger. Even if I wanted to.”

“Even if you wanted to?”

“I take on fights I can win. I’m not—” Klay struggled to find a word to convey his meaning. He looked down. An ant crawled across his boot. “I am not a fucking safari ant.”

Bernard smiled.

“What?” Klay demanded.

Bernard nodded toward Klay’s foot. “The ant never works alone, Tom. Didn’t you know that?”

Klay looked down again. Ants were swarming his boot. Several had their jaws locked into the leather. Klay knocked them loose with the toe of his other boot and stepped away. “Scale matters,” he said. “Look, take his money. Set some boundaries for him, like you have,” he added, quickly.

“If you say so.” Bernard increased his pace, opening the distance between the two men.

Klay had to jog to catch up. “Botha is our meat,” he said. “If we get him, maybe I can do a little good for you here.”

“Sure, Tom.”

After a moment, Bernard paused and turned to him. “‘Hack.’”

Klay shrugged.

“No. You said ‘hack.’ What if Botha hacked Voi’s collar?”

“It’s encrypted.” Klay saw intensity in Bernard’s eyes. “You don’t mean the transmission. You mean the access?”

Bernard nodded.

Klay considered the possibility. Voi’s collar was part of the TIPP program. TIPP was the Total Information Project for Pachyderms software designed by Perseus Group. It recorded the movements of all collared elephants across the conservancy. Someone with access to the TIPP app might be able to manipulate Voi’s given location.

Klay thought of an even simpler explanation. Technically, they weren’t tracking an elephant; they were tracking an elephant’s collar. “Move the collar, move the elephant,” Klay said.

“Move a dot on his app and you move them both,” Bernard agreed.

Klay puffed his cheeks, squinting in thought as he blew out the air. “Who has access?”

“To the software? Just Greg and whoever he works with at Perseus. Maybe some of the biologists. To the physical collar? Anyone, really.”

Either option was a hack of the Green Guardians’ system.

“If Voi is not here, but his signal says he is, maybe it’s because Botha wants us—”

“—where the elephant isn’t.”

They strode quickly through the trees to the Land Rover. Standing beside the vehicle, the Perseus Group engineer was typing on his phone again. Lekorere, the politician, wearing headphones, was also reading his phone. Lekorere smiled and raised a bottle of Tusker to salute their return. Bernard shook his head.

“Did you find Voi?” the engineer asked.

“No,” Bernard said.

“I told you we should have used the Askari drones.”

“He’s not here,” Klay said.

The engineer tapped his phone and opened Voi’s tracking app. “Look at his TIPP.” He handed Klay his phone. A small green dot in the shape of an elephant blinked on the program’s map. “Red means stopped. Yellow is streaking. Green moving normally. He’s right there.” The engineer pointed at Bernard. “You missed him.”

Klay backhanded the engineer with a withering look. He had seen Bernard glance—glance—at a clean stretch of granite and then describe in detail the poacher who had crossed the rock hours earlier, including his age, weight, how fast he was moving, and what he was carrying. Then,