The Suzuki crested a hill, and the driver pulled to a stop. “This the place,” he said.
Davis surveyed the surrounding mountain range, his shirt and pants soaked through with sweat. He turned to the driver. “This is the national park where the tigers live?”
The old-growth triple-canopy rain forest that once carpeted the hills had been clear-cut and burned, replaced with neat, serried rows of young palm trees.
“Yes. This the place. I show you.” The driver seized the map dangling loosely in Davis’s hand. “See, this is where we come.”
Davis exploded. There must be some mistake. “There are no tigers here! These are palm trees!”
“Yes, palm oil.”
“I don’t give a shit about palm oil! I need to find the tigers.” Davis withdrew a thick manila folder brimming with web printouts. “All these reports say there are tigers in this park!”
“That wrong. No more tiger. Tiger gone.”
“How long?”
“Last one. Five year.”
“No one has seen a tiger here in five years?”
“Maybe more. Not since farmers burn the forest,” the driver added nonchalantly, feigning a hint of remorse at the environmental devastation.
“You said you would take me to see the tigers!”
“You say you want to come to Bukit Barisan Selatan Park. I take you this place. I no say nothing about tiger.”
Hopelessness setting in, Davis leaned back against the SUV and slid to the ground until he sat with his head leaning back against the white door panel. He pressed a sweaty, cold bottle of water to his forehead. As the reality of his failure sank in, his chest constricted, each breath seeming to deliver only half the oxygen his brain needed. Though Davis was sitting on terra firma, he could feel himself drowning. The visceral terror of suffocation was only minimally reduced by the knowledge that he had been through the experience of panic attacks before and came out the other side alive. Davis closed his eyes and stuck his tongue between his teeth, desperate to regain control of his breathing before he descended into a full-fledged attack.
CHAPTER 17
THE SMUGGLERS
maputo, mozambique
Pham Kien spent the morning reviewing visa applications. Though the work was monotonous, and he rarely found cause to deny a request, on this particular day his body hummed with nervous tension, for he would soon be receiving a major delivery. He watched the clock tick down to noon, then left the building, passing through the reinforced steel gate and the guard post on the way to take his lunch break.
The message on his phone instructed him to drive three blocks east and park outside an abandoned construction site. As Pham waited in the car, he gripped the steering wheel, palms sweating, as they did whenever he received a text referencing bamboo.
Pham had grown up in privilege. His parents had been politically connected in Hanoi for decades. His father, a prominent construction magnate, had pulled some strings to get Pham the posting at the Vietnamese embassy in Maputo. It was a low-level job, but his father was optimistic. The job would allow his son to develop relationships that would aid them in the great land grab going on throughout Africa. All over the continent, foreign businessmen, primarily from Asia, were involved in expansive building and agricultural projects that would reshape the region.