The Great Zoo of China Page 2

  ‘It’s all expenses paid. Private jet. Swanky hotel.’

  ‘That sort of thing doesn’t impress me, Don.’

  ‘The Chinese asked specifically for you.’

  That stopped her.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They’ve read your stuff. Done their homework. They mentioned the pieces you did for Nature on the hunting behaviour of saltwater crocodiles and the Nat Geo documentary you did with Bill Lynch on alligator vocalisations. The Chinese asked for Lynch to go over there and write a piece on this zoo, but then he died in that plane crash. Now they want you.’

  CJ had been saddened by the news of Bill’s death. He had taught her everything she knew and had begged her not to leave the university after the incident.

  ‘They also know you speak Mandarin,’ Grover said. ‘Which is a big plus.’

  That had been CJ’s father’s idea. When she and Hamish had been little, their father, a humble insurance salesman with an insatiable curiosity and a penchant for dragging his two children away on unbearable camping trips, had insisted on them taking Mandarin lessons: ‘The future of the world is China, kids,’ he’d said, ‘so you should learn their language.’ It had been good advice. Their dad wasn’t rich or famous, but he’d been ahead of his time on that one. As for the camping trips, he would always dismiss their whining complaints with the cheerful phrase, ‘Hey, it’s character building.’

  ‘Photos, too?’ CJ had asked Grover.

  ‘It’s a full feature spread, kid. Come on, do it for me. The Chinese government is gonna pay me a king’s ransom for this. It’ll cover my bills for five years, and your fee will pay yours for ten.’

  ‘I want to bring my own photographer,’ CJ said flatly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Hamish.’

  ‘Goddamn it, CJ. So long as I don’t have to bail him out of jail for deflowering some senior minister’s daughter—’

  ‘Deal breaker, Don.’

  ‘Okay, okay. You can take your stupid brother. Can I call the Chinese back and say you’re in?’

  ‘All right. I’m in.’

  And so, a week later, CJ and her brother had boarded the private jet bound for China.

  At nine o’clock the next morning, CJ and Hamish arrived in the lobby of the hotel to find Na and the Maybach waiting for them in the turnaround. Na was again dressed in her perfect navy skirt-suit and wearing the Bluetooth earpiece in her ear.

  CJ wore her standard field clothes: hiking boots, tan cargo pants, black San Francisco Giants T-shirt and a battered brown leather jacket. Around her neck she wore a leather strap, hanging from which was a three-inch-long saltwater crocodile tooth: a gift from Bill Lynch. She wore her hair tied back in a careless ponytail. After all, they were just visiting a zoo.

  She and Hamish slid into the back seat of the Maybach, their destination: a military airbase twenty miles inland.

  While CJ was immune to the charms of expensive hospitality, Hamish wasn’t. Sitting in the back of the limo, he munched on not one but two packets of potato chips.

  ‘How cool is this, Chipmunk?’ he grinned. ‘Free mini bar.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch, Hamish.’

  ‘But there are such things as free plane rides, free penthouse suites in six-star hotels and’—a surreptitious glance at Na up in the front of the limo—‘free bathroom products.’

  CJ rolled her eyes. ‘You didn’t steal the hotel shampoo?’

  ‘And the conditioner.’ Hamish wore his tattered multi-pocketed photojournalist’s vest over a Bob Dylan T-shirt. He lifted the flap on one pocket to reveal four hotel-sized shampoo and conditioner bottles. ‘It’s Molton Brown. That’s top shelf.’

  ‘Why do you need shampoo? You hardly bathe anyway.’

  ‘I bathe.’ Hamish sniffed his underarms.

  ‘You’re an idiot.’

  ‘No. I’m awesome.’ Hamish settled into the seat beside her and resumed munching his chips.

  They couldn’t have been more different, CJ and Hamish, in size and in personality. The Bear and the Chipmunk, that’s what their mother had called them.

  It suited.

  Four years younger than CJ and a towering six foot three inches tall, Hamish was large in every way: a photographer and videographer who had done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, he lived large, partied hard, drank a bit too much and was always getting into trouble. He even had oversized features: a big face, square jaw, huge blue eyes and a great booming voice. He rarely shaved. He wore a red rubber WristStrong bracelet on his right wrist intertwined with a couple of hemp surfer wristbands.

  CJ, on the other hand, had always been the good girl: quiet, mature, unobtrusive and very academic. Having a near-photographic, or eidetic, memory helped with that.

  While Hamish went to war zones and parties, she’d worked away at the university, penning papers on her specialty, reptilian behaviour, specifically that of crocodiles and alligators. Among other things, it was CJ who had quantified the intelligence of big crocodilians, proving they were as smart as or even smarter than chimpanzees.

  Other intelligent animals—like chimps, wolves and hyenas—might set simple traps. Crocodiles often set traps several days in advance. If a six-metre saltwater crocodile saw you coming down to a riverbank at 7:30 a.m. for four days in a row to check your lobster cages, on the fifth day it would wait at the water’s edge, just below the surface, and pounce when you arrived. Crocodiles had extraordinary patience and amazing memories. Their ability to spot routine was incredible: sometimes they would set up ambushes based on the weekly, even monthly routines of their prey.

  CJ’s considerable professional success had not been reflected in her personal life. While Hamish had gone through a swathe of girlfriends over the years, CJ had not had many serious boyfriends, just the one in fact, Troy, and that had ended badly: immediately after the incident that had destroyed her face. Only Hamish had stayed by her side, her ever-loyal brother.

  ‘Is everything okay back there?’ Na said from the passenger seat up front.

  ‘We’re fine,’ CJ said, glancing at her brother’s stolen hair care products.

  ‘Remember, nothing is too much trouble,’ Na said as the limo turned off the main road and zoomed through the gates of the airbase without stopping. Clearly, Na had called ahead. ‘If you need anything, just ask.’

  The Maybach drove out onto the runway, where CJ saw the Bombardier from the previous day waiting for them, its airstairs folded open. Only today, CJ noticed, there was something different about the private jet.

  All its windows had been blacked out.

  CJ stepped warily up the airstairs.

  ‘Why black out the windows?’ she whispered to Hamish.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Hamish said, equally concerned. He carried his Canon EOS 5D digital SLR camera slung over his shoulder.

  Arriving in the plush main cabin of the jet, CJ stopped, surprised.

  Already seated there were two Americans, both men, one of whom was in the process of being interviewed by a Chinese television crew.

  CJ paused in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt.

  She had always been a good observer, a close watcher of things. It came, she guessed, from observing predators in the wild—you didn’t settle in to watch a croc or a gator without first assessing the surrounding area for other predators. Whether she was in a shopping mall, a meeting or here in a private jet, CJ’s eyes always swept the area for important details—and with her memory, she remembered everything.

  She saw many details here.

  A sticker on the television camera read CCTV: that was the Chinese state television network. The cameraman’s jacket was a cheap Lacoste rip-off, common in China. The female TV reporter looked like a stewardess on an aeroplane: crisp brown skirt-suit with the same CCTV logo on the breast pocket.

  The American being interviewed—and he seemed quite comfortable being the centre of attention—was a big-bellied man of about fifty with a carefully trimmed gre
y beard that had clearly been grown in an attempt to conceal his wobbly jowls, the jowls of a man who had enjoyed many long lunches.

  ‘That’s Seymour Wolfe,’ Na whispered reverently to CJ, ‘from The New York Times.’

  Na needn’t have singled him out. CJ knew who he was. Everyone knew who Seymour Wolfe was.

  He was not just a columnist at the Times, he was the columnist, the paper’s most well-known and influential op-ed writer. After a few successful books on twenty-first-century global affairs, he was regarded as the man who informed America about the world.

  He also, CJ saw, appeared entirely untroubled to be travelling in a jet with blacked-out windows.

  CJ heard snippets of what Wolfe was saying:

  ‘—I was here for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. What a spectacle! Things move so fast here. If the government wants a new high-speed train built, it is built. If it wants a new city, then a new city is built. It is just so dynamic—’

  ‘—China is the future and the rest of the world had better get used to it. One in five people on this planet is Chinese—’

  The CCTV reporter smiled broadly, almost fawning as she asked, ‘Are you excited about what you are going to see today?’

  Wolfe leaned back and smiled. ‘I’m not sure what to think, as I don’t yet know exactly what I am going to see. If China has re-imagined the concept of the zoo, then I am curious to see what she has done. I cannot imagine it will be small. I am . . . how shall I put this . . . officially intrigued.’

  The interview concluded and CJ and Hamish were ushered inside the jet.

  Na introduced them to Wolfe, before indicating the other, much younger man travelling with him. ‘And this is Mr Aaron Perry, also from The New York Times, from their e-news division.’

  Aaron Perry was about thirty and he had spiky black hair that had been carefully moulded into position with large amounts of gel. He wore serious thick-framed glasses, a designer suit and the attitude of someone who knew more than you did. He slouched in his seat. CJ hadn’t heard of him, but evidently Hamish had.

  ‘You’re the Twitter guy!’ Hamish boomed. ‘I love your shit, dude. Forget the paper, I get all my news from your Twitter feed.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Perry smiled wanly, apparently too cool to accept praise. He held up a small Samsung phone. ‘My office. Although not today.’

  ‘Why not?’ CJ asked.

  Na answered. ‘Our destination is a secure facility. It is covered by an electronic scrambling system. No cell phone signals in or out.’

  ‘And the blacked-out windows?’ Hamish asked. ‘You don’t want us to see where we’re going?’

  ‘Please forgive us, but the location of our zoo is a closely guarded secret, at least for now,’ Na said. ‘Not only must cell phone tracking systems be disabled, but even visual references. You will understand why when we get there. I am very sorry.’

  The blacked-out Bombardier didn’t take off immediately. Apparently, it was still waiting for two final passengers.

  As the plane waited, the Chinese TV reporter approached CJ.

  ‘Dr Cameron?’ she asked. ‘Dr Cassandra Cameron from the San Francisco Zoo? I am Xin Xili, China Central Television. Would you mind if I interviewed you?’

  ‘Sure,’ CJ said.

  The reporter gave CJ a quick up-and-down, her gaze pausing for the briefest of moments on the scars on CJ’s left cheek. It was not exactly a pleasant evaluation.

  When the interview began, the fawning smiles of her interview with Wolfe vanished.

  ‘You are an expert in reptiles, are you not, Dr Cameron?’ Xin asked quickly.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘One of the world’s leading experts in large reptiles: the Nile crocodile, the Australian saltwater crocodile, the American and Chinese alligators.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ CJ replied.

  ‘Not for much longer,’ Xin said curtly.

  She then signalled for the cameraman to stop recording, smiled tightly at CJ and turned away.

  CJ watched her go, perplexed.

  Just then, another private jet pulled up alongside the Bombardier, a smaller and much older Gulfstream.

  Looking out the open door, CJ saw that it had an American flag painted on its side plus the words: UNITED STATES DIPLOMATIC SERVICE.

  Two men in suits emerged from the Gulfstream and walked over to the Bombardier.

  The taller and older of the two—he wore a perfect grey suit, had perfect silver hair, a perfect tennis tan and perfect teeth—swept into the jet as if he owned it. He smiled broadly at everyone, the practised smile of a professional politician.

  ‘So sorry to keep you waitin’, folks,’ he said with a distinctly Texan drawl. CJ noticed he was wearing expensive cowboy boots. ‘I’m Kirk Syme, US Ambassador to China. Just flew down from Beijing. Got caught on the phone to the President. You know how it is when the boss is on the line. You gotta take the call.’ He indicated his offsider. ‘This is Greg Johnson, my chief aide from the embassy in Beijing.’

  Johnson was a younger and more compact version of Syme: about forty, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and sharp dark eyes. He carried himself in an odd way, CJ thought, tensed, hunched, like an athlete who seemed uncomfortable wearing a suit. He did not, she saw, wear cowboy boots like his boss, just regular brogues.

  With everyone present and accounted for, the Bombardier’s airstairs folded up and the plane taxied down the runway.

  CJ still felt a little unnerved sitting inside the blacked-out plane. It was claustrophobic and, well, kind of weird. It was a very trusting thing to do, to allow yourself to be flown to an unknown destination. But then, she told herself, she was travelling with some serious VIPs—the US Ambassador to China and two high-profile New York Times journalists—and they seemed perfectly fine with the arrangement.

  The Bombardier took off, heading to God-only-knew-where.

  The Bombardier flew for about two hours.

  We could be anywhere in southeast Asia, CJ thought. Thanks to the blacked-out windows, she didn’t know if they had flown in a straight line or in circles.

  The Chinese were very keen to keep the location of their new zoo secret.

  When it finally landed, the Bombardier taxied for a few minutes before coming to a halt at an airbridge. The six American guests disembarked to find themselves standing inside a brand-new airport terminal. The walls and floors gleamed. None of the many shops was open but they looked ready to go. The entire terminal, built to handle the movement of thousands of people, was eerily empty.

  High floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the landscape outside: spectacular mountains and moss-covered limestone buttes.

  ‘Ah-ha, we are still in southern China,’ Seymour Wolfe said. ‘If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say we are in the north of Guangdong province.’

  Na nodded and smiled.

  As she guided them all through the empty airport, Wolfe said, ‘This area is famous for these incredible landforms. Towering pinnacles and mossy buttes. There’s a well-known crater out here not unlike Meteor Crater in Arizona: it’s not as big as Meteor Crater, but it’s beautiful, perfectly circular, and over the eons it has filled with water, so it’s called Crater Lake.’

  Na said, ‘That is correct, Mr Wolfe. Crater Lake was created by a nickel meteorite that hit here about 300 million years ago.’

  Wolfe said, ‘Make no mistake, people, with its natural wonders and its industrial centres, southern China is a commercial juggernaut, the engine room of the entire country. The two mega-cities of this area, Guangzhou and Dongguan, are home to 60 million people. But fly a short way inland and the cities vanish and you essentially travel back in time to landscapes like this. Out here, you’ll find only small communities of rice farmers.’

  Three Chinese officials were waiting for them near the exit.

  They were all men.

  The first was dressed in a bright red blazer with a yellow tie. He had slicked-down hair and a pencil moustache and Na introduced hi
m as Zhang, the deputy director of the zoo. CJ noted that he had a peculiar nervous tic: he kept smoothing his tie, as if it had a crease he couldn’t flatten out.

  The second man wore a military uniform. The stars on his shoulders indicated that he was a colonel. He had no nervous tics. He stood with the firm, feet-apart stance of a commander who was used to being obeyed.

  Na introduced him as Colonel Bao, and when he shook CJ’s hand, he said in English, ‘Dr Cassandra Cameron? You are Dr Bill Lynch’s protégée, are you not? He actually visited our zoo. I was most saddened by his death.’

  ‘So was I,’ CJ said.

  The last Chinese man was easily the youngest. He was a lean, handsome fellow of about forty-five. He wore a stylish navy suit and a dark tie: the standard attire of a Communist Party member. He also had one singular physical feature: just above his right eye, he had a sharply-defined patch of pure white hair on his otherwise black-haired head, a condition known as poliosis. CJ had known a few people in her life who’d had poliosis and they’d dyed the offending patch of snow-white hair, making it disappear. This man had not done that: in an otherwise entirely black-haired country, his white forelock made him distinctive and he was evidently quite happy about that.

  ‘Why, hello!’ he said brightly to them all in English. ‘I am Hu Tang.’

  As Hu moved down the line of visitors, Seymour Wolfe whispered to CJ: ‘Don’t be fooled by his age. Mr Hu Tang is the most senior man here. Youngest ever member of the Politburo. He’s what they call a “princeling” of the Communist Party, a member of the Red Aristocracy, those Party members who trace their ancestry to great revolutionaries like Mao. Educated at Harvard, Hu Tang is part of the new wave. He supervised the construction of the Great Firewall of China, the system that censors the Internet here. Now he’s the head of the Department of Propaganda and a member of the all-powerful Standing Committee of the Politburo.’

  ‘They have a department of propaganda?’ Hamish said in disbelief.

  CJ ignored him. ‘The US Ambassador and a Chinese heavy hitter? What kind of zoo is this?’

  ‘I’m wondering the same thing,’ Wolfe replied.