Knight looked at the young girl. Though he was normally a man who reveled in shattering illusions and exposing lies, he didn’t have the heart—or lack thereof—to tell her the dark truth. Instead, he forced a smile. “They probably release them into the wild.”

Knight rose, surreptitiously pulling a small clump of fur from the drugged tiger to send for analysis. He needed to find out whether it shared any DNA with the tiger that had wiped out the SafariWorld population. If the infected cub had indeed come from this supply chain, it would be only a matter of time until the feline leukemia virus spread wider. Not only would Lee’s business ambitions be in serious jeopardy, but (and of more specific concern to Knight) Lee’s cats would be uninsurable.

Knight placed the fur sample in his folded visitor map as he pressed through a door into the staff area in back, searching for any sign of mature tigers. He made his way down a hallway, emerging onto a loading dock where a large tiger was being ushered into a cage. It paused as it approached the confined space. A worker struck its haunches with a long bamboo cane.

The tiger snarled and lunged forward, and the cage slammed shut behind it.

Then, to Knight’s surprise, a forklift transferred the cage to the back of a large green military truck. Knight angled for a view inside the truck and spotted other cages, stacked like small shipping containers.

A Thai worker suddenly got in Knight’s face, shouting for him to leave.

Knight put his hands out and projected ignorance. “Relax, buddy. I’m just looking for the bathroom.”

CHAPTER 33 THE VICTIM

CHAPTER 33
THE VICTIM

macau

A shopkeeper called the police after the body in the park across the street hadn’t stirred for five hours. The officer approached slowly, unable to spot any signs of life on the hulking Caucasian. The man’s body was lying on its side, feet still resting on the ground, as if he had been sitting one moment, then fallen over. His right arm dangled off the bench, revealing a small dragon tattoo on his inner forearm. The policeman immediately recognized it as the mark of the Sun Yee On triad.

When Cobus was a boy, his father had taken him and his older brother to the beach in Plettenberg Bay on the Eastern Coast of South Africa’s Cape. The section of coast extending from Plettenberg to Durban was notorious not only for its rugged beauty and perfect surf, but also for the large number of shark attacks that had left local surfers maimed or dead. One afternoon, as Cobus and his father straddled their boards, Cobus had asked his father what the chances were that a great white would come where they were surfing.