Elephant Ghosts

Characters appearing in the story;

The Premier: the head of state of Kenya.

Lupita: wife of the Premier.

Bruno: co-owner of the Wamsoli Game Reserve

Genevra: co-owner of the Wamsoli Game reserve, wife of Bruno.

Oginga Mwangi: head ranger at Wamsoli Reserve.

Nairobi: capital of Kenya.

Mombasa: large city port of Kenya.

Al Shebab: radical Islamist group.

Moses Kitaar: chief of Kenyan police.

Kibokomi: area of Nairobi

Joseph Michuki: Mombasa port security chief.

Kurt Wassinger: game reserve owner.

Inspector Zhiayou Ma: head of the plainclothes Hong Kong police unit called The Peacock team, tasked with preventing trafficking of people, rare animals, and art objects.

Ling Xiulan: expert in computational linguistics, member of The Peacock team.

Xiuping Yu: member, with Xiulan, of the Peacock team.

Ibrahim: Arabic speaking Kenyan plain clothes police agent.

The Sheik: owner of an Arab import export business.

Jabbar: his son.

Sudha Kibaki: Arab speaking Kenyan, go- between for Al Shebab.

Wambui Ongoro: female Kenyan police agent.

President Xi Jinping: president of China.

Wajid Abd Al- Rashid and Afzal Ammar: members of Al Shebab.

Sidyrya: area of central Mombasa, close to the Sakina mosque.

Kigali: sniffer dog for rhino horn – a female Rhodesian ridge back.

In Nairobi

He eased his large bulk into the bath and began to wash the dust and dirt from his body. The premier, no less, had been in the bush among the elephants and the rhino.

He had watched the elephants wade into the river and squirt themselves with water, luxuriating as he did now in the feel of the liquid on his body. They moved, the guide Oginga Mwangi had said, as a family; the matriarch, the aunts the young mothers and the calves. His wife had been delighted at the calves.

Previously in his mind the bush had seemed a long way from Nairobi. The poaching had seemed a distant thing, something that had always gone on. But now he was beginning to connect some threads.

He had always thought this animal loving thing to be a peculiarly British leftover, the big game hunters turned conservationists. But now some thing Oginga Mwangi had said

“We must not let them cut the throat of our culture or of our animals”. By them he meant the poachers, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, and Al Shebab.

He was right thought the premier, “this wildlife is our heritage; to be passed on to our children and grandchildren.”

Oginga Mwangi had also said “We do not own the land we loan it from nature and we share it with our brothers the animals.”

These deep truths the premier had not really absorbed until now.

His time in the bush had stripped away the trappings of modern European led Africa; the high rises, the fast cars, computers, modernisation. Out there on the reserve he had felt connected to something, to deep time, to the ghosts of his ancestors and of all the animals that had gone before.

He rose from his bath energised, invigorated. After his wife had helped him dress there was a phone call from Police Commissioner in Nairobi.

“A couple of things you should hear about chief,” said

Moses Kitaar. There has been another tourist killing - this time as young German woman in Kibokomi, and we have impounded a ship; a UN ship suspected of bringing in illegal weapons.”

“Is there a link?” Said the premier?

“Yes, I think it is all linked to Al Shebab.”

“Not to ivory poaching?”

“Probably that too.”

“Thank you Moses, keep me up to date as you investigate.”

The premier sighed. After his sojourn in the bush the affairs of state clamped back round him tightly.

His secretary entered.

“You have a meeting with the Ethics and Anti Corruption Committee in an hour, and the German ambassador urgently wants a meeting.”

His secretary slipped a graphic picture of a pretty young blond woman lying

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: alastair macleod
Bildmaterialien: alastair macleod: elephants in the landscape ; photos purchased from Dreamstime royalty free photos
Lektorat: alastair macleod
Übersetzung: cover typeset in effloresce
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 05.10.2015
ISBN: 978-3-7396-1676-6

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Widmung:
To the animals of Kenya and to those dedicated to saving them. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.