Krieger would have paid whatever Botha asked for the property. He had been sending Botha money to support the Kimber for years. The Krieger family had hunted the Kimber for generations. The black rhino above the mantel in Krieger’s Missoula ranch had been shot by his great-grandfather on the Kimber, mounted by taxidermist Carl Akeley himself. If Botha wanted to turn over the extraordinary property, Krieger was more than happy to oblige. “I’m South African,” Botha had said, always overselling. “What do I want with Zimbabwe?”

Krieger brought in the House of Saud as a minority partner in the purchase. He didn’t need their money; he gave them a piece of the Kimber to cement a business relationship. The Saudis loved to hunt. They built a new main lodge and upgraded the airstrip, extending it and paving it in order to handle their larger aircraft. They erected mini luxe villas in various spots across the property. They added a warehouse-sized refrigerator with butchering tables large enough to handle multiple elephant carcasses. They built facilities for caping and salting skins, installed a freezer, and added a taxidermy studio with an apartment for their preferred artist. All the usual and appropriates throughout. But Krieger forbade them from touching the lodge and huts where he stayed. The old stone-and-wood structures had been used by his grandfather. He liked the camp as it was.

Along with its animals, what Krieger treasured most about the Kimber was its guaranteed privacy. According to the Kimber’s partnership agreement, there would never be more than two hunting parties on the property at a time. When Krieger was visiting, no one else was permitted. He and his family would be completely alone.

Still, he missed Botha. The plan had been to keep him around, use him as the lead PH, maybe even find him some investments, but Botha could not keep his scheming in check. By the time he got out of prison he had acquired land on either side of the Kimber, intending to turn the conservancy into a smuggling route. When Krieger asked him what he thought he was doing, Botha said, “I opened the Kruger park fence. It’s trophy-quality Big Five all the time now, Tots!” Botha pretending the expansion was to make the Kimber a better hunting property.

But Krieger could read a map, too. Through his acquisitions, Botha had created a banana-shaped corridor stretching from Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond mines south to the port at Maputo.

“That’s diamonds like my fist, Tots,” Botha had exclaimed when Krieger confronted him. “Russians right there to take it out. Or the Chinese if I want. Dig it up on Tuesday, I’ll have it under a jeweler’s loupe on the weekend.”

Krieger had laughed out loud. He’d caught Botha leveraging the Kimber to traffic diamonds and God knows what else, and Botha’s defense had been to pitch him an even bigger deal.