Klay looked down again. Ants were swarming his boot. Several had their jaws locked into the leather. Klay knocked them loose with the toe of his other boot and stepped away. “Scale matters,” he said. “Look, take his money. Set some boundaries for him, like you have,” he added, quickly.

“If you say so.” Bernard increased his pace, opening the distance between the two men.

Klay had to jog to catch up. “Botha is our meat,” he said. “If we get him, maybe I can do a little good for you here.”

“Sure, Tom.”

After a moment, Bernard paused and turned to him. “‘Hack.’”

Klay shrugged.

“No. You said ‘hack.’ What if Botha hacked Voi’s collar?”

“It’s encrypted.” Klay saw intensity in Bernard’s eyes. “You don’t mean the transmission. You mean the access?”

Bernard nodded.

Klay considered the possibility. Voi’s collar was part of the TIPP program. TIPP was the Total Information Project for Pachyderms software designed by Perseus Group. It recorded the movements of all collared elephants across the conservancy. Someone with access to the TIPP app might be able to manipulate Voi’s given location.

Klay thought of an even simpler explanation. Technically, they weren’t tracking an elephant; they were tracking an elephant’s collar. “Move the collar, move the elephant,” Klay said.

“Move a dot on his app and you move them both,” Bernard agreed.

Klay puffed his cheeks, squinting in thought as he blew out the air. “Who has access?”

“To the software? Just Greg and whoever he works with at Perseus. Maybe some of the biologists. To the physical collar? Anyone, really.”

Either option was a hack of the Green Guardians’ system.

“If Voi is not here, but his signal says he is, maybe it’s because Botha wants us—”

“—where the elephant isn’t.”

They strode quickly through the trees to the Land Rover. Standing beside the vehicle, the Perseus Group engineer was typing on his phone again. Lekorere, the politician, wearing headphones, was also reading his phone. Lekorere smiled and raised a bottle of Tusker to salute their return. Bernard shook his head.

“Did you find Voi?” the engineer asked.

“No,” Bernard said.

“I told you we should have used the Askari drones.”

“He’s not here,” Klay said.

The engineer tapped his phone and opened Voi’s tracking app. “Look at his TIPP.” He handed Klay his phone. A small green dot in the shape of an elephant blinked on the program’s map. “Red means stopped. Yellow is streaking. Green moving normally. He’s right there.” The engineer pointed at Bernard. “You missed him.”