Fighting to keep the liquid down, he checked his watch. Nine minutes had passed since he ingested the tainted rhino powder. He was standing at the precipice of death, but if the charcoal could sequester enough of the strychnine, he would likely pull through.

Cobus breathed a sigh of relief. He stared absently at the gulls soaring over the water, then at the trees beside him. He noticed a small yellow wildflower poking through a crack in the pavement nearby. Cobus had missed nature since he got to the city, and now he realized he’d been surrounded by it the entire time. He just hadn’t been looking closely enough. He suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of calm, as if he were home. Before he could finish the thought, his body began to jerk violently.

Cobus collapsed, curling up on the bench as he flopped like a fish on a dock. His mind was suddenly flooded with one single primal emotion: terror. He was about to die in a very bad way.

Then all was blackness.

CHAPTER 32 THE PETTING ZOO

CHAPTER 32
THE PETTING ZOO

chiang mai, thailand

Sun Tzu’s first rule of the risk mitigation business: know your client as you know yourself.

While Knight saw an incredible windfall in his future if he partnered with the triads, he also didn’t want to bet his career—and possibly his life—on a business that could be volatile and illegal. The tiger wine venture would work only if Lee and his father could deliver a steady supply of healthy tigers once the trade was made legal.

Chiang Mai was a half day’s drive from Mong La, and as good a place as any to start his due diligence. The Sky Dragon had revealed to Knight that one of his suppliers was a chain of private zoos in Thailand, and had suggested that Knight visit the zoos to see the condition of the tigers they would soon be using to make health tonics. The patriarch of the triad was probably not being totally forthcoming with the scope of his operation, but Knight was a skilled investigator. He was confident he could pull a thread once he had one in his grip. He would start in Chiang Mai and see where that took him.