As the cop departed, Cobus withdrew a folded piece of paper from his pocket. He squeezed his eyelids, then opened the paper to see the inspector’s photo staring up at him. This woman, Cobus thought to himself, was unaware of the danger lurking in the blackness.

Cobus was now her shark.

CHAPTER 34 THE FARM

CHAPTER 34
THE FARM

thakhek, laos

In the week since his meeting with the Sky Dragon, Knight had been on a whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia. The patriarch of the Sun Yee On triad wanted him to partner with his son to protect their supply chain, but first Knight needed to do his diligence on the illegal tiger trade, from farm to table.

What he discovered through his travels was a vast archipelago of places just like Mong La—little black holes scattered throughout Asia that were run by organized crime and existed outside any international oversight. There was the Kings Roman Casino in the Golden Triangle in Laos, where Knight had been offered a “wild tiger banquet” that his Russian hostess finally admitted had been sourced from the “tiger zoo” across the street. There was Boten, a former truck stop turned casino boomtown that sat in a two-mile seam between Laos and China, legally part of neither. In this disavowed pleasure island, Knight saw every variety of wild cat for sale on the main drag. He interviewed the staff in these regions, unearthing stories of tigers being transferred by an enterprising general via Laotian military helicopters. Everything, everyone, everywhere was for sale or, at least, rent.

Though it didn’t pertain to tigers, Boten was also home to the most horrifying sight Knight encountered in his research. When he had announced his interest in traditional Chinese medicine, one local entrepreneur whose video shop featured a substantial collection of bestiality pornography informed Knight that Boten produced the finest bear bile in Laos—if you could call the de facto Chinese protectorate “Laos.”

Curious about the source of the bile, Knight paid the shop owner to tell him where he might find the farm. The man directed him to a nearby road, where he ventured up a hill, passing an abandoned ladyboy disco featuring chipped murals of transgender dancers. He continued several hundred yards down an overgrown dirt path in the forest that eventually ended at a small, dilapidated warehouse.