Wild Meat (16 page)

“
Sounds perfect. I can use the fuel. I’m driving to Arizona to see my parents in a little while.”

“You driving all that way in your condition? All jet-lagged out?”

“Looking forward to it,” Amy said. “I’ve always liked that drive. Besides, tomorrow’s my mom’s birthday. See you in half an hour?”

Rita’s news made it impossible for Amy to relax. She told herself that the thugs in the rent-a-cop uniforms were ordinary burglars, and that they probably wouldn’t be back, given the way Rita had reacted to them.

But it was also possible that someone – maybe owners of the commercial fishing boats that had gotten banned from the Sea of Cortez, or the developers closer to home whose project had been held up over erosion worries – found out who had been funding the activists that had done them damage, and had come either to spy or to exact revenge.

There was also the unhappy coincidence of her having arrived at the logging camp right after an American scientist had mysteriously disappeared. But if the government knew she’d been there, then why would they bother sneaking around? They could simply knock on her door and demand that she explain her visit to the camp. Whoever the phony rent-a-cops were, they probably weren’t government spooks.

For the first time ever, she thought about hiring private protection. She hated to waste any of her money – what Andre used to call the War Chest – on personal things, but this was the first time she’d ever felt vulnerable in her own home. She also realized that she hadn’t really recovered from the events in Equateur. A lot of the fear still flowed somewhere below the surface of her thoughts. She could afford private security services; she’d look into it soon.

In the meantime, she went to her bedroom closet, reached up to a cluttered shelf in the very back, and found a memento from Andre’s life that she’d never expected to need.

Amy was not a gun person, and neither had Andre been. But one of his extreme-sport friends came from a family that collected firearms of all kinds, from early pistols with powder pans to modern assault rifles. The guy’s father had once given Andre an eighty-year-old Finnish pistol that looked similar to the Lugers that German officers carried in war movies, although of an entirely different make. Along with the gun had come a lengthy discourse on its history, including stories of Finnish freedom fighters using the weapon in battles against both Soviet and German domination. She couldn’t remember the name of the model, except that it sounded like “latte,” so Andre had always called it the “latte burner.”

Andre had never registered the weapon, although he and the friend had gotten a bunch of ammo and fired it at beer cans in the desert a few times. Amy had joined them once. There were three boxes of ammo on the shelf now.

She loaded eight rounds into the magazine and set the gun on top of her refrigerator, covered it with a dish towel, and hoped she was just being paranoid.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Hugh Sanderson stepped into
his brother William’s office to be greeted with long, startled stares. The reaction was no doubt due to his rather unhealthy appearance, which he had warned Will about on the phone, explaining his current condition as the aftermath of his fictional bout with malaria. The stares were from his brother and from Wes Gimble, the young marketing man who had first suggested a green campaign to counter bad PR. The idea that Hugh should be its figurehead was also Gimble’s brainstorm.

The kid
had seen the storm coming, and at first, no one had believed him. Hugh remembered attending that meeting, watching the managers filling their coffee cups at the big brass urn. Meaty-faced William and that androgynous little pixie Gimble had been sitting at the end of the table, heads bent close, framed by the enormous aerial photograph behind them that showed a glowing expanse of Malaysian rainforest.

When Gimble
stood up and warned that activists were targeting Sanderson Tropical Timber, he had been met with scoffs.

“But ninety percent of our logging is done abroad,” had been the first objection. “How many people do you think they’re going to recruit to fly to Africa and lie down in front of the machinery?”

“The trees are over there,” Gimble had responded, “but the market for the wood is here and in Europe. And what’s headed our way is the mother of all boycotts.”

“How does anyone boycott a wholesaler of raw materials?” the CFO had said while picking muffin crumbs off the front of his shirt, nibbling on the occasional larger one. “Somebody buys an ottoman, the label doesn’t tell them who cut down the tree. How are they going to boycott us with no name recognition?”

“Creating name recognition is exactly what their new strategy is about,” Gimble had countered. “Their term for it is ‘unmasking.’ They keep hitting people on their email list with sound bytes, making sure everyone knows who we are, and dropping phrases like ‘bushmeat,’ and ‘clear-cutting.’ I don’t think a single company has ever been the target of so many of these groups at once. They’re planning a massive boycott of retail goods made with our timber. Manufacturers are going to start avoiding us like the plague.”

Less eye rolling than before.

“My proposal is that, before this attack goes any further, we
have a green image already in place to head off the bad stuff. We can start with infomercials and press releases. They’ll tell all about the free educational eco-tours the company’s conducting in Equateur and Cameroon and Gabon. We can talk all about the sanctuary we’ll be funding for orphan chimpanzees—”

“
Orphan WHAT?” had been someone’s reaction, causing sparkles of laughter around the room.

“I’m dead serious.” Gimble’s voice had cracked slightly. “They actually call them orphanages, so that’s what we’ll call them. This is not a major expense I’m talking about. Just a few hours of video production, a couple of free trips into the forest for some eco-tourists, and a few thousand dollars donated to one of these monkey farms. We’ll have interviews with people on the tours saying how much respect they’ve developed for Mother Nature, all because of Sanderson Tropical Timber. Clips of the wildlife we’re helping, maybe some pictures of sick animals being tended—”

Then a delighted cry:

“
Baby animals!”

Everyone had turned to see the speaker, a bulky, bald, pink-faced ex-football player from Accounting, staring into his imagination and smiling with a maternal glow.

“Baby animals drinking from baby bottles. Leeeetle teeny cubs with broken legs in casts….” He made a cradle with his arms, then shifted one hand to hold an imaginary bottle. “Like newborn baby giraffes shaking on those big, skinny legs….”

Hugh had known, just
known
, that they were going to ask him to be the public face of this campaign. For over ten years, he’d gotten the Equateurian government to grant the company virtually limitless logging rights. Now his brother and that little pixie would want him to make the greenies grin.

Barely a week after that meeting, demonstrations had been held simultaneously outside furniture retailers in three major U.S. cities, with “Sanderson Tropical Timber” scrawled on at least half the hand-drawn signs. None of the action had made network news, but local TV stations had picked it up, and the environmentalists’ mass emails to their supporters were roaring with triumph.

William and the board had quickly agreed to buy out two small, ailing chimp sanctuaries, one in southern California and another in Venezuela. They would insert ‘Sanderson’ into the sanctuaries’ names, and open them for public tours almost immediately.

“
Your part of the script goes like this,” Gimble had explained to Hugh. “It all started when you met some tourists and decided to show them the real Africa. After all, the reason you asked to be transferred to Equateur in the first place is that you wanted to experience the last unspoiled rainforest, see the greater kudu running free before it’s too late. And when you realized that poachers were using our logging roads to get deeper into the forest, and that they were living in our camps, it broke your heart.”

And more practical instructions from
William, regarding evidence of logging outside of official concessions: “Any logs lying out there where they’re not supposed to be, ones with our concession numbers stenciled on, get them out right away or grind the numbers off. And have people check for old machinery that might have our logo on it. Otherwise, these greenies go out there with hand-held GPS units and document where they find our stuff.”

“And get the hunters out of all our camps,” Gimble had said. “All the hunters. Pay them off, put them all on a cruise boat for a couple of months, whatever. Lean on the foremen and keep the poachers out.”

“How about I have the hunters run the eco-tours?” Hugh had said. “They know where the animals are.”

Gimble had turned to William and said, “You see? Absolutely no one in the world could pull this off better than Hugh?”

For the next couple of weeks, Gimble had studied everything Hugh would need to know about botany, geology, meteorology and tropical ecosystems, and about the principles of sustainable logging. Then he’d condensed it all for Hugh in an easy little primer.

Hugh had gotten it. He’d learned the meaning of all the important-sounding phrases: nitrogen tracing, plant respiration, carbon cycle. The animals didn’t live in the
jungle
, they lived in the
tropical, wet, broadleaf, evergreen forest
. The gibbons over in Southeast Asia weren’t monkeys, they were
lesser apes
. He’d spoken to the press and the environmentalists, promised to set an example for the rest of business, and gotten everyone smiling.

Two months later, subscribers to environmentalist email alerts had received a triumphant message from the
Unmask-the-Loggers Coalition
:

                           
Kudos to Sanderson Tropical Timber!

Sanderson is the first U.S. logging company to get our message and really respond to it.

Among other positive measures, they have agreed to allow observers from ULC member organizations to camp out at several of their logging sites and assess the impact of their operations. This is rare and highly laudable.

Click on the Sanderson logo at right to read what other measures they have taken to minimize their impact on tropical forests, and to help heal some of the planet’s most serious wounds.

And click
here
to say thanks to this responsible company and let them know you applaud them for taking the time and effort to adjust their approach to the forests. Finally, click
here
to let other corporations know you’ll be holding them up to this example. You’ll find a list of logging companies that operate in environmentally sensitive areas around the globe. Please take the time to ask them to do their part.

Hugh had called William the next day and said, “Now that I’ve gotten the ball rolling, why not let Gimble take over as the front man for this campaign, since he thought this whole thing up in the first place.”

William had refused to budge on the matter. “It works better if it’s family, Hugh. It ought to be someone named Sanderson who does this thing.”

For Hugh, the green campaign had been his worst experience since he started working for the company right after college.

* * *

And now Hugh was back at company headquarters, but this time, instead of slowly filling with dread at what was to come, he felt buoyed by the knowledge that he would soon be liberated both from his brother’s command and from his days of pretending to be a green crusader. Free from having to be nice to Gimble. From having to look at him, at his nearly translucent skin stretched over impossibly delicate facial bones and positively girlish jaw line, at his wide eyes that were always so desperate to receive the Sanderson brothers’ approval.

Hugh thought of a psychotic little snake named Eloy who worked for one of Lou Burr’s subsidiaries. Eloy was even smaller than Gimble, with a dopey little pointed beard that made him look like a cartoon, but one
glance at him told you he was as lethal as they came. Before Hugh could even think about controlling himself, he began laughing aloud at the image that came to him next.

“Everything okay, Huey?” William said, his tone suddenly sharp.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s just that…I…well, I’ve just recently met the perfect date for Wes here. A very dashing individual, much like yourself, Wes.”

William frowned with irritation. Gimble did a bit of nervous gazing around the room, then announced he was going back to his own office. He needed to make some calls and find a good makeup artist for Hugh’s photo-op later in the day.

“Can’t you lay off him just once?” William snapped when the door shut behind Gimble. “He’s been invaluable to us, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Hey, remember this one?” Hugh said, and recited:

“
I’m Gimble-him! I’m Gimble-she!

Happy, harmless and penis free!

No patriarchal earth-raper me;