Rare Breed

“I wonder how she cleans up?” MacKay said, while his blue eyes roved over her body. “Versace might look real nice on her.”

Wynne smiled sweetly at MacKay, though it was slowly killing her. “I’m afraid I’m all out of designer dresses. There isn’t much use for them in my line of work.”

A door opened and a beautiful woman in a strapless black evening gown glided through. The woman’s complexion was so smooth and white it looked transparent. Her dark curly hair fell in waves to her shoulders. She was model thin, maybe in her late twenties.

A cacophony of voices followed her into the foyer, along with the cloying scent of her perfume. She gently closed the door behind her and muted the sound. She stepped over to Hellstrom and touched his arm possessively. “Noah, dearest, we’ve run out of champagne,” she spoke in a British accent.

Slight annoyance flashed across Hellstrom’s expression, then it disappeared into his usual polite demeanor. “Jacqueline, you’ve met Mr. MacKay, but I don’t think you’ve met Wynne Sperling.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Jacqueline gave Wynne an uninterested passing glance, then her gaze settled on MacKay. “Jack, it’s always a pleasure.” Her smile turned sensual.

MacKay’s blue eyes glittered as he winked at her. “The pleasure’s all mine, darlin’.”

Did MacKay flirt with every woman within eyeshot? Or was Wynne picking up on a kinky factor between the three-some? Did they pass Jacqueline around like a pool cue? Maybe she’d found Hellstrom’s dark side. If she had any doubts that MacKay and Hellstrom were more than business associates, they were gone now.

The pool cue turned her attention back to Wynne. “And are you one of Noah’s customers?”

“I’m a ranger. We kinda work together.”

“Oh.” Jacqueline leaned so close to Hellstrom her breasts touched his arm.

Gracious as ever, Hellstrom said, “And she’ll be staying for the party. Wynne, I’ll have a servant show you where to freshen up—”

“Thank you.”

“I should change, too.” MacKay winked at Wynne and said, “I’ll definitely see you later, darlin’.”

Wynne wanted to say “Fat chance,” but she had to play the game. She watched him walk out the front door, grinning like a hyena. He must be staying in one of the guest quarters.

“My servant will show you where to go,” Hellstrom said to Wynne, then clicked his fingers.

A short slender African came running down the hall. His head reached the top of Wynne’s rib cage. He was enrobed in a white gauze tunic and scandals. The Pygmy looked more child than man. How he heard Hellstrom’s summons over the music and conversation puzzled Wynne. He kept his head bowed as he listened to Hellstrom’s orders.

Hellstrom spoke a dialect that Wynne recognized as one of several languages Pygmies used, then said to Wynne, “Tungana will take care of you.”

“Thank you.”

Tungana motioned for Wynne to follow him, but didn’t lift his eyes up to her face.

Wynne trailed Tungana down the hall, feeling Hellstrom and Jacqueline’s gaze on her. She wondered about the extent of the relationship between Hellstrom and MacKay, and when they were out of Hellstrom’s hearing range, she casually asked Tungana, “Is MacKay an old friend of Mr. Hellstrom’s?”

“Don’t know.” Tungana spoke in broken English and shook his small head.

“You’ve never seen him in Mr. Hellstrom’s company before?”

“Don’t know.”

Okay, she was getting the parrot message. He was loyal to Hellstrom and he wasn’t going to talk. A lot of people were loyal to Hellstrom, including MacKay, it seemed.

They passed the dining room, decorated in ornate antique French furniture. Guests huddled around a massive table laden with enough food to feed ten Zambian families for a week.

The memory of the tour flashed back to her, and she knew the next room they passed would be the music room. It had been in this room where Hellstrom had approached her, and she had felt his attraction for her. Had she been imagining it? He hadn’t pursued her in any way since. Maybe she had read more into it than really had been there. She was good at reading animals. But men? They were a whole different species.

A grand piano graced the music room’s center. A musician in a tux sat playing Bach now. Commander Kaweki’s balding head caught her eye, the chandelier light bouncing off his dark, shiny scalp. He stood behind the piano, speaking to Colette, his wife and another couple Wynne didn’t recognize.

Colette had short curly ebony hair and wide, impish green eyes. Her smile lit up her face. A simple, yet elegant black gown covered her hourglass figure. Colette was originally from France, but had worked as a missionary in Lusaka, the capitol of Zambia, before Kaweki married her. The only time Wynne ever saw the commander smile was when he was with his wife. He appeared enthralled by what she was telling the other couple now and didn’t notice Wynne and Tungana move past the doorway.

After they cleared the music room’s entrance, Wynne relaxed a little. She really didn’t want to explain to Kaweki what she was doing here until she’d had a chance to nose around.

“You really don’t have to show me the way,” she said. “Just point me in the right direction. I can find it myself.”

“Oh, no, no. BaK para would not like that.”

BaK para meant “master” in the Pygmy language, a term of fear and obedience. Wynne frowned as she said, “You know, Tungana, you’re employed by Mr. Hellstrom. He’s not your master.”

Tungana nodded, but still wouldn’t look at her.

“How long have you been with Mr. Hellstrom?” She asked as they slipped past an African couple, strangers to Wynne.

Tungana avoided all small talk by merely shrugging.

At seeing Tungana reduced to servitude and away from his home, Wynne couldn’t help but think about the life he’d left behind. Pygmies had a wonderful nomadic lifestyle, centered on their love for the forest world and their family. She had visited the Belgian Congo once when she first arrived in Africa. She spent several days with the BaMbuti Pygmies and fell in love with their warmth and gentleness and the simplicity in which they lived. The sad thing was they had existed for millennia, even ancient Egyptians wrote of seeing Pygmies in the heart of Africa, but now their hunting and gathering way of life was quickly eroding. The destruction of rain forests and the overhunting of food sources were taking their toll. Nothing saddened her more than the slow extinction of a once proud, self-sustaining culture. Part of the beauty of Africa was its diversity and even that was disappearing.

“Do you miss your family?” Wynne asked.

Tungana nodded, an unmistakable sadness in his eyes. Then he seemed to realize that he’d actually answered her and slipped back into self-protective mode.

The din of the party drifted away as he led her up a flight of stairs and into a deserted wing of the house. She recalled the area from the tour.

He paused before a door. “Tungana draw you a bath. You like?” he asked, his words clipped.

“I can manage alone. All I need is a hairbrush and a washcloth and towel.”

“Brush in closet.” He opened the door to the room and waited for her to step inside.

“Thank you. I can find my way back.”

The bedroom was done in a Spanish motif. Red wall-paper complemented the rich mahogany furniture and fourposter bed. A woman’s photograph hung above the bed. Her hair was coal-black and worn in a French twist. Golden eyes, similar to Hellstrom’s, stared out from the photo. Her dark hair accentuated her pale skin. The photographer had captured an isolated, detached gleam in the woman’s eyes. They reminded Wynne of a doll’s eyes, inanimate and blank. Wynne didn’t remember the painting on the tour and said, “Who is that?”

“BaK para’s mama.”

“Oh.”

Tungana walked to the closet and opened the door. A row of women’s dresses hung neatly in the closet.

“Wow, does Hellstrom keep those for his female guests?” It looked like thousands of dollars worth of designer labels.

“He best host.” Tungana nodded and seemed to be looking for one particular evening dress. He pulled out a slinky red gown and a pair of red heels.

The gown might fit her, but it was a little more revealing than she would like. It was ankle length and low-cut with rhinestone spaghetti straps. The same red rhinestones formed starburst patterns randomly all over the dress.

Tungana laid the evening dress on the bed. “For you?”

“But I don’t—”

“BaK para want you to wear.”

Leave it to Hellstrom to anticipate every female guest’s need by supplying them with dresses. If it would bide her some time to search the house, she’d comply. “All right.” She nodded.

Tungana left the room and closed the door behind him.

She pressed her ear to the door and listened as the soft tread of his footsteps faded.

She hurried into the bathroom. When she looked into the mirror, she didn’t recognize herself. A mud wrestler, after a fight, probably looked better than she did. She recalled MacKay’s comments about her cleaning up okay. Her female vanity wanted to show him just how well she cleaned up. But then she reminded herself, it didn’t matter what a woman looked like, he’d flirt with anything breathing and wearing a bra.

She scrubbed the remnants of mud off her face, neck, arms and her boots. Then she untied her hair. She brushed the bits of mud out of it around her face. There wasn’t much she could do about the limpness. Her hair always had the texture of thick straw. It hung down her back, stick-straight.

She quickly changed into the dress, wrapping her slingshot around her thigh and sliding her knife into it. The shoes actually fit her size nine feet, but the heels felt strange. It took a few strides to get used to them.

She surveyed herself in the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door. Wide hazel eyes stared back at her from an oval tanned face. She didn’t like the pronounced dimple in her chin and her mouth seemed too wide, genetic gifts from her father that couldn’t be helped. But her tanned skin was clear and glowed from the scrubbing—so she wasn’t drop-dead beautiful and her cheeks weren’t sunken and she didn’t have sticks for arms and legs like Jacqueline. She was built of sturdier stuff. She’d like to see Jacqueline freeing a baby rhino from a mud bog.

The thought brought a smile to her face as she decided she didn’t look half-bad in the dress. She had to go braless and a hint of her nipples showed through the lined silk. The dress actually clung to her curves in a flattering way, and the starbursts on the dress only made her body shimmer. Not bad. It was the first time since coming to Africa she had felt feminine. It felt pretty good. She cracked the door, checked that it was clear, then slipped back out into the hallway.

The moments ticked off in Wynne’s mind, keeping time with her heartbeat. She remembered one room that had been off-limits during the tour. Hellstrom had said it was his office, and they wouldn’t find anything of interest in it.

She reached the door.

Locked.

She heard guards laughing in the hall ahead of her. Before they rounded the corner, she darted into the opposite door. She was standing inside a linen closet. She moved so the shelves wouldn’t cut the back of her knees and she realized her dress was caught in the door. She couldn’t open the door. The guards were too close, their voices right in front of the closet. What kind of excuse could she use for being in there: “Can you point me to the ladies’ bathroom, I seem to be turned around.” That was lame. Oh, God!

She held her breath.

The voices faded.

She dared let herself breathe and opened the door.

A clear coast.

She stepped out, lifted her dress and pulled out her dagger. She shoved it in between the doorjamb and the lock. The lock clicked open.

Wynne stepped inside. A desk lamp bathed the room in dim light. It was a massive room. Shelves of books lined the walls. Above the shelves was a gun case that covered the whole perimeter of the room. Guns of every make and description were arranged in a collage of shapes, numbered brass placards beneath them. He must be anal about his guns.

African tribal masks formed a patchwork of color on the wall behind a massive mahogany desk. She recognized the local Bemba tribal masks, and the monkey shaped expressions of the Boa. They weren’t the mass-marketed copies bought off the Internet. These were aged, the wood cracked from wear. The real thing. Probably worth a fortune and sacred to the people who had made them.

Across from the masks, a computer and copier sat on a credenza. She didn’t have time to bring up the computer. Hellstrom probably had a code to open it anyway.

She stepped over to the desk. Books on Africa were stacked in piles. An Underwood manual typewriter—a dinosaur—sat in the middle of them. A spot had been cleared for a small mountain of typed pages. A manuscript? She picked up the first page and read: Musings of an African Safari Owner by Noah Hellstrom. Add author to Hellstrom’s accomplishments.

On the edge of the desk, she spotted a picture of Hellstrom standing over a felled elephant. She grimaced. Next to it was a photo of a couple. She recognized his mother, the same deadpan face from the portrait in the bedroom. The man wore the uniform of the British army, medals emblazoned across his chest and shoulders. He had a sour expression like his face would crack if he ever smiled. Hellstrom’s father?

Guards approached the door, talking.

She tensed, ready to jump beneath the desk.

They strode past.

She let out her breath and walked to a filing cabinet. She had no idea what she was looking for, but when she found it she would know.

LZCG ledgers were in the top drawer. Another drawer, more ledgers for his tour businesses and a row of books. She read the titles: Mein Kampf by Hitler, biographies of Churchill, Patton, Mussolini, Genghis Kahn and Alexander the Great. Did Hellstrom have a secret god complex?

Another drawer revealed old tax forms, business licenses and rubber-banded envelopes of past due notices on loans from the World Bank. There were a lot of them. Hellstrom must be in financial trouble. Three of them were from Springhill Mental Health Sanitorium. Why did he have past due notices from a mental hospital?

She spotted the drawer on his desk. She should have checked there first. Isn’t that where all the crucial stuff was always hidden?

She tried it. Locked. She grabbed the letter opener and worked the lock. James Bond made it look so easy. “Come on…” She jiggled the opener in frustration.

The lock clicked open.

“Thank you.” She peered inside and found a bundle of letters rubber banded together. The return address label read, Edna Hellstrom, Springhill Mental Health Sanitorium, Yorkshire, England. Were there some unglued genes in Hellstrom’s family? If only she had the time to read each one.

She found the rest of the drawer empty. So where would he hide illegal documents? She felt for a secret compartment on the desk. Nothing.

She closed the drawer and stood in the middle of the room and really looked at it as Hellstrom would. Something drew her gaze to the tribal masks, and a large mask near the bottom caught her attention. It was painted white, the facial features outlined in black. It was a striking, almost frightening, ngil mask. The male societies of the Fang tribe wore the gorilla mask during initiation of new members and for persecuting wrongdoers. It was a mask of dominance and retribution. If Hellstrom had a hidden narcissistic side, he would be attracted to it.

She lifted the mask, expecting to find a safe hidden behind it. What she found was a wooden sleeve secured to the back of the mask by screws. The open top-end of the sleeve revealed a blue folder, stuffed with papers.

She reached for the folder, but instinct stopped her. This was way too easy. She sniffed the leather pouch and recognized the woody scent of nuts: Physic nuts, to be exact. Africans ground the nut with palm oil to make rat poison.

Wynne grabbed several sheets of paper from the typewriter and used them as makeshift gloves to pull open the folder. It was stuffed with bills of lading for a company named LiBolo International Trucking. It had a South African address. Crates containing dry ice, some flown in from Zimbabwe, had been trucked to Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Malawi, Namibia and almost every city in Africa. Some even went to the U.S., England, and China. The bush meat would have been packed on dry ice, then shipped.

She’d found what she was looking for.

She had never seen such a well-organized, sophisticated ring. Usually the operations were kept locally. Dealers contracted and paid hunters up front for the number and kinds of meat. The hunters hired a crew of bearers to cut out the tusks, butcher the meat, and dry it. In villages near game-managed areas, there could be fifteen commercial poachers operating at any given time. After the kills, the hunters met the dealers and trucked the meat to marketplaces in Zambian cities where it was sold illegally. Wynne had been in on many of these stings, arresting the commercial poachers with the meat. But this dealer operation was outside of Zambia, so it hadn’t been discovered.

The bills of lading only proved LiBolo International trucked something on dry ice. Even if she could convince the Zambian government to investigate this company, proving Hellstrom was tied to it would be another hurdle. It would take prosecutors and accountants months, maybe even years, to go through international courts and subpoena the company records from South Africa. And she couldn’t take the paperwork to the LZCG board. It would be too risky without definitive proof he owned the company.

She heard voices in the hall. How long had she been gone? Fifteen? Thirty minutes? She had to hurry.

The voices were getting louder. They sounded angry. Doors were slamming.

Her hands shook and the ersatz paper gloves were getting in her way. Hurry, Sperling, or you’re toast. She managed to stuff the folder back in the wooden sleeve, crumple her makeshift gloves, clean side out. She tossed them in the trash, then plopped the mask back on the wall.

The door’s lock was turning. She ran to the door just as it opened.

Chapter 4

Wynne gazed into Hellstrom’s face. For a nanosecond they stared at each other with a wrong-restroom look.

Hellstrom recovered first and waited for an explanation.

“Sorry, I—um, was looking for the party and somehow got lost.” Lame city. He’d never buy that.

“A lost ranger? Don’t you have a keen sense of direction?”

“Only outside. Give me the outdoors and I’m fine. You can always find your way by the sun or the lay of the land. But in closed quarters, forget it. All the walls and hallways look the same to me.” Could he tell she was lying? It didn’t show in his face.

“I thought this door was locked.” His golden eyes probed her face.

“It wasn’t. I just walked right in.” Wynne wanted to step past Hellstrom, but he was holding the doorknob and blocking her way. “Now that you’re here, can you show me the way back to the party?”

His gaze fell to the red dress. For a moment her body held his attention, then his expression softened. “You look so different in that gown. Quite stunning.” He stepped inside and closed the door. “I thought the red would look good on you.”

“Thank you for letting me borrow it.” Wynne felt trapped as she watched him close the door. “We really should get back.”

“You’ve caught me.” He stepped closer, his eyes taking on a strange dynamic glow.

“Caught you?” Wynne tried to sound surprised, while her insides churned. Was this it? A showdown? If he knew she was on to him, he might move the operation. Or worse, eliminate her before she could find proof against him. Every muscle in her body tensed as she waited for his answer.

“Yes, my wretched attempt at novel writing.” He motioned toward his desk, his gaze glued to the dress. Or her body in it. She wasn’t certain.

“Novel writing?” Relief flooded Wynne as she glanced toward the desk. That’s when she noticed the mask…hanging crooked. Just a tiny bit off kilter. But definitely not how he’d left it. Oh, God! Had he seen it? From his angle, the stack of books on his desk blocked the bottom of the mask. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice.

“I really just stumbled upon your office,” she said. “So I really didn’t see much.”

“It’s fortunate the door wasn’t locked.” He cocked a brow at her and grinned, but it was a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I believe in fate. There are no coincidences. I was meant to find you at this moment.”

And I was meant to find those bills of lading. “I have to disagree. I think man controls his own destiny.”

“You speak your mind, don’t you?”

“I am pretty direct.”

“You’re one of a kind.”

“Not really.”

“I must disagree. Most women of my acquaintance flatter and dissemble. But you, you know your mind and are incredibly honest. I admire that. I think I can trust you with my secret.”

“Your secret?” She wanted to look toward the mask, but held his gaze.

“My writing secret.” There was an intimate depth to his voice that she’d never heard before.

“Sure, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thank you.” He smiled, his even white teeth gleaming. “At least not until I get it published.” He paused, his eyes dipping to her breasts. “Now that you know my secret, it’s only fitting I know one of yours.” He stepped closer, their bodies almost touching.

She could smell the starch in his white shirt, mixed with a musky aftershave and smoke from the party. A strand of straight black hair had fallen over his left brow, giving him a handsome, rakish look. If she didn’t know what a hypocrite and fraud he was, she might have been attracted to him. He was only a few inches taller than her and she was forced to look him straight in the eyes.

“I’m a pretty open book.” She shrugged and then pointed to his gun collection. When she did, she stepped to the side so that in order for him to face her, his back would be toward the mask. “I did notice your gun collection when I came in. It must be worth thousands.”

“It is, but you’re avoiding my question. You must have a secret.”

Wynne almost glanced at the mask, but forced her eyes back to his face. She had to give him something and make it sound convincing so she said, “Um, my mother and I are estranged.”

His expression turned inward. “My own dear mother is ill, I don’t see her as much as I would like.”

So the letters she had found from the mental institution must have been from his mother. She recalled his mother’s photo and the peculiar look in her eyes. Now Wynne knew the reason for it.

She really wanted to change the subject and get out of this office, but as long as it kept him occupied and not looking at the mask, she’d have to go with it. She sensed he didn’t want to talk yet and waited patiently.

After a moment, he came out of his musings, but dark shadows lingered in his eyes. “My father was a bloody bastard. He gambled away all of my mother’s inheritance. He died leaving her penniless. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother and I don’t mind aiding her now, but it all could have been avoided.”

She recalled the past due notices in his desk. How much aid could he afford to give his mother? He hadn’t paid his own bills or her mental hospital bills in months. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to sound sympathetic.

“Don’t be. It wasn’t the worst of my father’s contemptible qualities.”

“There’s more?” She really didn’t want to hear anymore, but she had to keep him talking.

“He had a wicked temper.” Hellstrom paused and appeared lost in bleak memories. After a moment, he said, “My mother stood up to him. Sometimes I wish she hadn’t.”

Wynne suddenly could see Hellstrom, a frightened little boy, cowering in the corner, while his mother protected him from a beating. This was getting way too deep for her, so she said, “I’m not that brave. I ran to the other side of the globe from my mother.” Wynne frowned at that self-realization.