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CHAPTER 059

The warehousewas located near the airport in Medan. It had a skylight, so the lighting in the room was good, and the young orang in the cage appeared healthy enough, bright-eyed and alert. He seemed to have recovered completely from the darts.

But Gorevitch paced back and forth, intensely frustrated, glancing at his watch. On the table nearby, his video camera lay on its side, the case cracked, muddy water draining out of it. Gorevitch would have taken it apart to dry it, but he lacked the tools. He lacked…he lacked…

Off to one side, Zanger, the network representative, said, “What are you going to do now?”

“We’re waiting for another bloody camera,” Gorevitch said. He turned to the DHL rep, a young Malay man in a bright yellow uniform. “How much longer now?”

“They said within the hour, sir.”

Gorevitch snorted. “They said that two hours ago.”

“Yes, sir. But the plane has left Bekasi and is on its way to us.”

Bekasi was on the north coast of Java. Eight hundred miles away. “And the camera is on the plane?”

“I believe so, yes.”

Gorevitch paced, avoiding Zanger’s accusatory stare. It was all a comedy of errors. In the jungle, Gorevitch had worked to resuscitate the ape for almost an hour before the animal showed signs of life. Then he had struggled to bind the animal and tranquilize it again-not too much this time-and then monitor the animal with care, to prevent the creature from going into adrenaline shock while Gorevitch brought him north to Medan, the nearest big town with an airport.

The orang survived the journey without incident, ending up in the warehouse, where he cursed like a Dutch sailor. Gorevitch notified Zanger, who immediately flew in from New York.

But by the time Zanger arrived, the ape had developed laryngitis, and no longer spoke, except for a raspy whisper.

“What the hell good is that?” Zanger said. “You can’t hear him.”

“It won’t matter,” Gorevitch said. “We’ll tape him and then dub in his voice later. You know, lip-synch him.”

“You’ll dub in his voice?”

“Nobody will know.”

“Are you out of your mind?Everybody will know. Every lab in the world will go over this video with sophisticated equipment. They’ll spot a dub in five minutes.”

“All right,” Gorevitch said, “then we’ll wait until he gets better.”

Zanger didn’t like that, either. “He sounds quite ill. Did he catch a cold somewhere?”

“Possible,” Gorevitch said. In fact, he was almost certain the ape had caught his own cold, during the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It was a mild cold for Gorevitch, but appeared to be serious for the orang, who was now bent over in spasms of coughing.

“He needs a vet.”

“Can’t,” Gorevitch said. “He’s a protected animal, and we stole him, remember?”

“Youstole him,” Zanger said. “And if you’re not careful, you’ll kill him as well.”

“He’s young. He’ll recover.”

And, indeed, the following day, the ape was talking again, but coughing spasmodically and spitting up ugly, yellow-green gobs. Gorevitch decided he’d better film the animal now, so he went to get his equipment from the car, stumbled, and dropped the camera in a muddy ditch. Cracked the case open. All this not ten feet from the warehouse door.

And of course in the entire city of Medan, they did not seem to be able to lay their hands on a decent video camera. So they had had to fly one in from Java. They were waiting for the camera now, while the ape swore and hacked and coughed and spat at them from inside his cage.

Zanger stood just out of range, shaking his head. “Christ, what a cock-up.”

And once again Gorevitch turned to the Malay kid and said, “How much longer?” The kid just shook his head and shrugged.

And inside the cage, the orang coughed and swore.