Free White Bone by Ridley Pearson

Knox angled a remaining plastic tub to allow him a view of the woman, the screen door and a sight line through the open plastic sheet.
    “Please pardon the theatrics. Necessary, I’m afraid. I am no friend of this current government, nor do I trust the hotels. As to my name, my father was Russian. My mother Kenyan. So that’s out of the way.”
    “Understood.” It was the second time politics had been mentioned in the past few hours.
    Vladistok appraised him. “You will be better suited to take a room away from downtown. Something small, in the suburbs. Karen, perhaps. There are small inns. Fewer eyes and ears.”
    “You’re saying—”
    She cut him off with a finger held to her lips, and acted out a request for Knox to surrender his phone. Passing it reluctantly, the switchblade still warming in his palm, Knox watched as, to his horror, Vladistok stuck a piece of chewing gum over the microphone hole and, fishing a crumpled sheet of aluminum foil from her bag, wrapped the phone tightly before returning it to him.
    “Sorry. I’m a lawyer. Though I’m considered an activist—a label I detest.”
    Knox congratulated himself on his ability to read first impressions. “I run a small import/export company. I’m on a buying trip.”
    “Are you? Professionally, Mr. Knox, I am a legal consultant. Corporate security. But my life’s work is to get things right in the courts. To get the poachers tried. In five out of six cases, paperwork is lost; the case never comes to trial. Midlevel civil servants, paid small amounts to misfile, shred, divert. They are paid off by businessmen. Arab. Chinese. Somali. Elephant and rhino is big business. They use helicopters now. Automatic weapons. ATVs. It’s wholesale slaughter. Big business. And remember, the fewer animals, the higher the price for the tusk and horn. So with each kill, each harvest, they increase the value of the commodity.”
    “Crime syndicates?” Knox had seen automatic weapons in use on the battlefield; she’d put a picture into him he couldn’t stomach. Rhinos were bigger and slower than buffalo; elephants, ten times that.
    “That word is overused. Is there organized crime here? Of course. But it’s not like what you hear. It’s my belief that the influence of outside crime syndicates, not including the Chinese, is almost nonexistent in Kenya. There are certainly organized criminals in this country. The Chinese are the market makers for elephant tusk. Vietnamese for the rhino horn, though the Chinese export it. But overall, poaching is less connected to terrorism and outside influence than others would lead you to believe. This is what I told Ms. Chu.”
    Knox’s throat went dry. “Did you?” Grace would react more viscerally to the poaching than terrorism or corruption. She was made a child by the sight of a stray dog or cat.
    Maya looked into and somehow through Knox. Not a dead stare, not a flirtatious stare. More like some of Tommy’s looks. X-ray.Probing. “I met with her when she first arrived. We discussed many issues. My work with corporate security and Internet issues, as well as the recent failure of a major vaccination program.” Her face remained unreadable. An attorney, indeed. “As she explained it, that program was privately funded.”
    Knox had no interest in politics, humanitarian aid or theatrics. “Have you spoken to her in the past two days?”
    “I have not.”
    Wrapping his phone in the aluminum foil struck him as overly paranoid. Who was it she feared? Only the most sophisticated agency possessed the capability to listen in on digital phones.
    “You were in contact often?” Knox asked.
    Her eyes darted more quickly. “Three times, I believe. She sat where you are sitting.”
    Knox felt a little sick. “Okay.”
    “The clinic at Oloitokitok interested her.”
    “Tell me about the Internet protocol.”
    “She wanted to know the sophistication of spyware employed by the state, the military, outside agencies. I warned her