As he proceeded, peering cautiously into each room, he passed a frail child with a bald head, being wheeled in the opposite direction. He knew that rhino horn had been touted as a cure for cancer, and was glad to see this child surrounded by so much modern medical technology. China was modernizing, and endangered wildlife had been abolished from official traditional Chinese medicine. Though some still clung to the old ways, the use of rhino for purely medicinal purposes was in its death throes. This meant that the cartels had to develop a new sales pitch for the product, so they rebranded horn as a status-displaying luxury good for the new rich. This led to a boom in rhino-horn jewelry and the use of horn as a party drug (albeit a completely ineffectual one).

Passing a room in the cancer ward, Cobus saw a boy watching a Transformers movie in bed. Beside the boy, he saw the inspector curled up in a chair, sleeping with her head on her balled-up jacket.

The boy looked over to see Cobus standing in the doorway. Though he didn’t know the big Westerner, he lit up at the sight of the gifts in Cobus’s hands. Cobus put a finger to his lips, then pointed to the sleeping mother. The boy complied, and Cobus placed the balloon and the teddy bear on the table as he watched the boy’s mother sleeping. He noted the service pistol holstered on her hip.

Moments later, Cobus stepped out. Seeing no one in the corridor, he picked up the boy’s medical chart from its sleeve on the wall and photographed the pages of Chinese text with his smartphone.