Keepers of the Lost City

25 Symbiosis

At last, Sam knew the truth and it was beautiful. Purdue would be ecstatic to know that his opposition were shooting blanks. However, he was still hired to deliver a report on the cruel wildlife ‘culling by poison’ down in Australia and he would have to do just that. When Sam exited the bathroom, Eddie and Louisa were ready to start. She was sitting in the chair, her legs covered in blankets, off screen, and Eddie was seated on her left having a cup of tea.

“Alright, everyone ready?” Sam smiled.

“Sure,” Eddie replied, but his colleague was still shocked from the news and was a bit more reserved.

“Welcome to Miss Louisa Palumbo,” Sam started, pressing the record button and setting his compact camera on its tripod, “from the Adelaide Department of Nature Conservation.”

“Thank you,” she replied, looking self-conscious.

“Now, Miss Palumbo, tell me what brings you and your colleagues to Edinburgh? You could have sued the Scorpio Majorus CEO from your own country,” Sam interrogated her with far less amity than he had before the camera started rolling. It took her by surprise and knowing now that Sam Cleave was a friend of Purdue’s only made it worse for her.

“We wanted to discuss the matter in person,” she replied tactfully, “so that we could get a better idea of the type of person who would use a prominent medical research facility as a launching deck for animal cruelty.” She was trying to antagonize Sam, and he loved it. “And we have proof that the poison is from Mr. Purdue’s lab.”

Sam was in a spiteful mood as it was, but provoking someone who is at the top of the shame game was a dreadful mistake on Louisa’s part.

“Tell me, for interest’s sake, Miss Palumbo,” Sam inquired, “which part of the department you work for subsidizes your travel and legal costs?”

Louisa’s eyes grew wider. She noticed Sam’s hard countenance, void of any geniality. She opened her mouth, but no words came. Eddie had arranged their travel expenses and liaised with the Legal Department, but she would look awfully inept if she could not answer with authority. To make her appear even more incapable, Sam kept swinging the bat. “Never mind. Let us concentrate on the apparently devious David Purdue, shall we? Tell me, Miss Palumbo, where do your respective organizations get their funding from? Church fetes? Bake sales?”

Louisa bore forward in attack, finally snapping at his patronizing smirk. “How dare you belittle our investors and generous benefactors? We have a network of businesses and private donors who help us conserve what is left of our beautiful wild, especially in this world of destruction for the sake of money! Greedy companies are destroying the environment and driving species to extinction. Companies like Scorpio Majorus, who secretly supply the poison that kills our wildlife!”

Eddie moved in behind Sam, signaling for Louisa to calm down, but Sam was having a great time drawing her out and watching her squirm. Red in the face, her chest was heaving in fury and she did not care that the camera captured her rant. Calmly, Sam mentioned, “Did you know, Miss Palumbo, that in the past four years, your organization received over 86 % of its funds from Mr. Purdue’s Global Wildlife Trust?”

She shrugged. “That would be a perfect cover to make him look like a saint, wouldn’t it?”

Sam persisted with facts Louisa was not even aware of. “Even though his profits from chemical patents are directed straight into veterinary research and conservation by his Global Wildlife Trust? So you are insinuating that Mr. Purdue is funding conservation agencies to cover the fact that he was involved in killing wildlife to obtain the land?” Sam hammered her into silence. “I don’t know what your span of logic allows you, Miss Palumbo, but my common sense dictates that if he wanted to destroy the ecology to buy off the land, Mr. Purdue could just… stop funding conservationists like you.”

She was speechless and furious, but she had to concede that the journalist was correct. It would be ludicrous to put all that effort into research and funding, only to claim what Purdue was already helping to keep from being claimed by poachers and their real estate mogul employers. Sam Cleave did not budge. He was anxiously waiting for her retort.

Suddenly Eddie’s cell phone rang, releasing Louisa from more embarrassment.

“Oh shit, sorry, mate,” Eddie told Sam.

“No worries,” Sam said, as he stopped the recording. “Miss Palumbo needs a break anyway.” He took note of her hateful glare, but he did not grant her the satisfaction of paying attention to her. Louisa knew that she was wrong and that she had no leg to stand on. In the background Eddie was pacing during his phone conversation, and while he was absent from hearing her, she elected to make right with Sam Cleave. After all, he was a powerful enemy, one she could not afford to have.

Softly she asked, “Is that true, Mr. Cleave?”

He did not look up from his equipment. “Is what true?”

“That Mr. Purdue is funding our campaigns,” she said. “Is it true or is it just something you made up to bury me with?”

Finally, Sam found something looking up for.

‘The toilet just flushed,’ he declared happily in thought. Purdue’s accusers were forced to fold with the hand they were dealt and without much effort, Sam reckoned, he had managed to get them to retract their lawsuit. “Aye, it is all true. I have the business licenses on file at your request, and I am sure Mr. Purdue will be happy to furnish you with access to his invoices and tax records for the trust he runs.”

“No, no,” she protested, still feeling like an idiot. “That will not be necessary. I honestly just… did not know…”

“Whose idea was this?” Sam asked sincerely, making use of her colleague’s babbling in the background to dig deeper off record.

“What?” she asked.

“To sue David Purdue,” Sam clarified. “Whose idea was it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really know, Mr. Cleave. I am just a spokesperson with a bit of conservation background.”

Sam’s demeanor, to her relief, slowly returned to the nice guy who came through the door and offered her his jacket. He asked, “What background do you have?”

“Me? Oh, I used to be a ranger,” she revealed coyly. Sam much preferred her modest behavior over the accusatory bitch she switched off for the moment. He also liked the sound of her being a ranger. One of the things he loved most about Nina was how she was unafraid to get her clothes dirty and wing the outdoors. Louisa Palumbo seemed to have that same quality.

“Oh crikey, we don’t need this shit!” Eddie moaned aloud over by the end of the dorm room. “Oh, Jesus!”

“What is it, Ed?” Louisa asked, perking up, but he continued shaking his head and whining. “Edward!” she roared softly, getting his attention for a second before he sighed into the phone. “Lis-s-… hey, lis… listen, Gail, who reported this? Who reported this?”

Sam and Louisa stared at one another, both baffled. Eddie quickly whispered to them, “They are finding poisoned livestock in New Zealand now too. Christ! Now it makes even less sense.”

“What?” she shrieked, but Eddie gestured for her to keep quiet as he tried to listen to the woman on the phone.

“Yes, Gail, I’m still here. What does the report say? Who reported it and do you have a number?” he urged. He speared toward the table to get a piece of paper. Sam pulled his Biro from his pocket and handed it to Eddie.

“Thanks mate.” The Aranda man jotted down some details, reading it back to the woman on the other side of the line. “So he is a vet, alright? Dr. Cecil Harding. And he is from Wellington. You say he is calling from Moana on South Island, right? We’ll get hold of him now. Thanks Gail!” he stuttered, hardly able to speak before hanging up the call.

His black irises swam in enlarged white, giving him an ominous appearance, reminiscent of the news he had just received. Eddie Olden stood dead still for a moment, but when he snapped out of it, he was distraught.

“How can it be happening in New Zealand?” he muttered. “They don’t have dingoes.”

“Harding. Did you say Harding?” Sam asked Eddie.

“That’s right,” Eddie affirmed, looking positively disturbed with the new problem this news presented. “This Harding bloke is a vet. He made an urgent report to the New Zealand authorities and wildlife organization in Greymouth on the west coast that the livestock and some family pets have been poisoned by the same poison we are tracking in our dingoes.”

“Where?” Louisa asked. “Were the animals poisoned in the conservation areas or randomly? Where exactly does he claim this is happening?”

“He said so far it was happening on his father’s farm, a place a few miles into the hills of Arnold Valley, near Lake Brunner,” Eddie reported from his notes. “Apparently his father has been missing for a week and along with his father’s disappearance, the animals started turning up dead, mangled, with Phospholipases A2 present in their blood and tissue samples.”

“Has his father reported anything like that before, maybe?” Louisa inquired, gathering up her blankets.

“Gail says the Harding’s only moved in a few weeks before. His father, the bloke that is missing now, inherited the bloody place! Ha! That would be my luck,” Eddie chuckled dryly. “We have to get there to see what is going on.”

Louisa sighed, and gave her colleague a weary look.

“So the lawsuit is dropped, I take it,” Sam presumed, waiting for confirmation from the Australians. “You know this is not the doing of a global scale scientific business, my friends, so stop wasting time — yours and ours.”

“Well, with this new problem surfacing,” Eddie admitted, “we cannot pursue this accusation anymore. Let’s not bullshit ourselves, Louisa.”

“I agree,” she assured him. “I fully agree, but to apply for the trip to New Zealand, we will have to put in an expense request to Management in Adelaide and that will take a week or more. Plus, we will have to present them with concrete substantiation that this new case is relevant to our culling problem.”

“That sounds like a lot of trouble to go through,” Sam remarked in his wise guy way, “especially for chasing a minor report from a vet in another country. That is a bit daft. I don’t think you have the resources that could help you nip this problem in the bud.”

Eddie was not stupid, but he was reserved in these things. It was Louisa that voiced what they both thought. “Okay, Mr. Cleave, what do you suggest and what do you want in return?”

“Easy on the caking, Lou,” Eddie warned her, thinking her flirting a bit too harsh.

“I’m not caking him, for Christ’s sake, Eddie!” she barked at him and turned back to regard Sam. “With the research you did on our claim against Mr. Purdue and his company, surely you will have found out that we do not have the necessary authority to pursue this new case. What are you driving at? And what is in it for you?”

Sam was ready to make them an offer they could not turn down. “Get warm. We are going to see a man about a dingo.”