Bear of a Honeymoon Page 7

  When a groundswell of agreement surged across the group, my husband knew enough to abandon an untenable position. "We'll talk later," he conceded, with a head-tip in Liam's direction. "For now, you'd better tell us about the cubs."

  Liam grinned. "Well, they're funny little critters—around the size of a chubby chipmunk," he said, extending his cupped hand to illustrate. "Toothless, eyes sealed shut, ears just fleshy tabs on the sides of their heads, and looking almost naked. They're about the farthest thing you could imagine from a full-grown bear. I call them the 'hummers and screamers' because when they're hungry or cold or frightened, they scream really loud. Probably so sleepy old mama can hear them," he said, looking thoughtful.

  "What about the 'hummer' part?" Helen asked.

  "That's from when they're nursing. They hum continuously. You can hear them outside the den."

  "It's called the 'nursing chuckle,'" Tovey contributed.

  "Another signal to mom?" I prompted.

  Liam nodded. "Probably something to do with keeping the milk flowing."

  "They sound adorable," Belle cooed.

  "Certainly tiny and vulnerable," the biologist agreed. "Even when they first come out of the den, the cubs are still only six to nine pounds. Up to half die in the first year. Some starve, but most are killed by wolves or coyotes or cougars—even other bears."

  The older woman looked stricken. "How awful!" she cried.

  "No. It's just nature," the former hunter observed, philosophically. Our guide agreed. "For awhile they still nurse, then gradually start sampling some of mama's food. In the first summer, she teaches them everything they need to know. That winter the cubs will den with her and stick around through the hard spring months. And then she'll probably be ready to breed again. Sometimes twins travel and den together that second year." Liam shrugged. "Then they go their separate ways."

  Helen seemed troubled. "That's all very interesting," she said, "but isn't it dangerous for you to get that close to the cubs?" She wasn't wringing her hands. But it was close.

  Liam gave a wry snort. "You sure don't want to get between mama and baby. But I'm studying blacks as opposed to grizzlies and they're much less dangerous. When mama black senses trouble, she usually shoos the cubs up a tree. She's not likely to attack without extreme provocation. The biggest thing with bears is not to surprise them. Just walking through the woods as we are now, noise is your best ally. A bear'll hear you coming and just disappear. If you really want to see one, you need to scout out where they're likely to go, then get there first and wait."

  "How—"

  "Sh-h-h-e-e-e-it!"

  A high-pitched shriek from the forest behind us shot shivers up my spine. Like the others, I spun in my tracks and strained to see what it meant. Almost instantly, one of our travel agent companions pounded into view, fumbling unsuccessfully with the fly in his jeans. The performance would have been hysterical if not for the green-tinged horror on his face.

  "Dead bear!" the man panted, doubling over like a triathlete at the finish line. His words escaped in tortured bursts. "Slit down the belly!" His shoulders heaved. "Guts all over the place!"

  I caught the glance that passed between our three experts before Liam spoke. "Poacher," was all he said, but it sounded like a Supreme Court verdict. The other two nodded.

  "We better get help."

  Chapter Seven

  Less than three hours after Liam confirmed his chilling prediction, we were travelling back to the site with reinforcement in the form of a wiry, blue uniformed, jock in his late twenties. Roy Friesen was the junior of only two conservation officers responsible for maintaining ecological law and order in well over 5,000 square kilometres of valley and mountain territory. Liam placed the call as we returned to the lodge and Roy arrived by the time we'd inhaled a bite of lunch.

  Thankfully most of the travel agents were still out golfing and missed the full effect of our excited return. But I was quite certain the happy hour rendition would be sufficiently embellished to take bragging rights over any thirty-foot putts. What a marvellous testimonial for the lodge. "Take a brisk walk in the woods. If you don't meet a bear, you can settle for a poacher."

  Though Brooke must have been freaked, she gave nothing away in our brief encounter before lunch. There hadn't been time, really. We were too intent on cornering Liam to beg a spot on the investigating team. After all, you could hardly confront two journalists with such a tantalising story and expect them to walk meekly away—even if they were on their honeymoon.

  Liam was surprisingly willing. He instantly recognised the potential benefit of publicising what he told us was an increasingly serious problem. And Roy was of the same mind, gravely reciting a litany of startling background facts as we bumped over the now familiar logging road in his government issue Suburban.

  Roy explained that the poachers' major objective was a fist-sized organ resembling a water filled balloon. The gall bladders are dried or frozen and sold as an important ingredient in certain Asian herbal medicines. Although a synthesised equivalent is available, an increasingly affluent market is willing to pay the price to get the real thing. And the price is the problem. When a single gall bladder can sell for up to $10,000, profit potential puts black bear parts in the big league.

  "You're saying the market's so big and so lucrative that people are going to the trouble of killing bears here and smuggling the parts to Asia?" Matt asked, as I scribbled barely legible notes.

  "We don't know the half of it," Roy confirmed, deftly wrestling the wheel as he spoke. "Remember the famous Air India terrorist bombing?"

  "Sure."

  "A suitcase was reported missing from the wreckage. It contained a thousand Canadian black bear galls! You wouldn't believe the tricks they've got. Undercover agents have found them dipped in chocolate and hidden with candy bars, and floating in bottles of Crown Royal." I groaned inwardly, thankful for my allegiance to Canadian Club. "The market's so hungry, guys are passing off pig galls and some of the real purists figure the only way to be sure is to kill their own bear. A guy in California just got fined ten grand for organising illegal hunts."

  "That doesn't sound like much when you're talking millions in the trade," Matt observed.

  "Pocket change," the CO agreed. "These guys treat the fines as a normal cost of doing business. It's always the same. Laws take a long time to catch up with the criminals."

  "And are they catching up?" I asked.

  Roy nodded, glancing at me briefly in the rear-view mirror.

  "Slowly. Up to the mid-1970s, bear hunting was about trophy hides and consumption. But the market for galls made all bears valuable, even the little ones. Galls could help a hunter partially fund his expedition. It wasn't until an undercover operation found one guy who sold more galls in a single season than the total legal number reported, that the lid finally blew off. As long as there's a legal avenue for trade, it's just too easy to launder poached parts."

  I knew exactly what Roy was talking about and mentioned what I'd learned about the illegal ivory trade.

  "Same thing," he agreed. "So the law was changed in the 1990s. Hunting is still legal, but not the trade in parts."

  "And CITES is involved now, too," Liam observed, picking up the thread where it crossed his area of knowledge about the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

  "Right. The black bear is listed as a species that may become endangered with extinction. In signatory nations, it's illegal to possess or sell a bear gall. Hunters have to leave the organ with the entrails when they field dress a kill."

  Letting that pleasant thought pass, I pressed on with the obvious. "If black bears are in danger, why is hunting still allowed?"

  "They're not in danger here," the biologist explained. "We estimate our population at well over a 120,000. And the legal hunt is only a few thousand a year."

  "Though a lot of us think the number poached may be as high as one for one," Roy added.

  "Even so, t
hose numbers are vast compared with elephants and rhinos, which are truly endangered," I said. "I still don't see the big deal."

  "The big deal isn't here," Liam replied, turning in his seat to face me. "It's in Asia. Populations there are in such trouble, the Chinese government has resorted to licensing bear farms to harvest bile from live bears." He gave a perceptible shudder. "You don't want to know about them."

  I suspected I did. But that discussion could wait for another time. "Then, you're saying the action on North American bears is really preventative and aimed at closing the laundry."

  "Right." Roy nodded. "Although we have plenty of bears now, we can't afford to be complacent. A few decades ago there were just as many rhinos in the wild. But today, they're on the verge of extinction."

  "And we don't want a repeat performance." Liam stopped abruptly and pointed out a sizeable granite boulder just off the track ahead. It bore a white chalk arrow drawn this morning as a marker.

  After Roy pulled to a stop, we piled out and helped him collect his gear. The cameras and tarpaulin seemed pretty straightforward, but the metal detector caught me by surprise.

  "What's that for?" I asked, ignoring Matt who was bobbing around like a royal-watching paparazzo, snapping shots of the preparations.

  "To locate shell casings," the CO explained. "This is a crime scene remember. Though I expect things got trampled down pretty good by your little tour group this morning."

  "Not at all," Liam assured him. "Just me and the guy who first found it. I didn't let anybody else get close."

  Roy's square features registered relief. "Good. Then we'll keep it that way until I've had a chance to look around. Please stay here. I'll call when it's okay to come over."

  We agreed, gathering around the chalk-marked boulder to wait for his summons. It was a fair length of time in coming, making us more than eager to see what he'd been up to. We found Roy a short distance into the bush, crouching over a man-sized black mound sprawled at the base of a tall pine. A nauseating stench completely overpowered the fresh woodland scent. I edged in tentatively, but the rapid-fire clicking of Matt's Canon continued unabated as we joined the young CO.

  We had some idea of what to expect, since the unlucky travel agent's description had been quite graphic. Still, my heart was doing a solo dance. As Roy stepped aside, I stopped short. A shiver gripped the base of my neck and bolted down my spine. Suddenly it was impossible to get enough air into my lungs. I took an involuntary step back, then steadied myself.

  "It's a juvenile," I heard Roy say. "First year on his own." He eyed me speculatively. "You okay?"

  "Yeah," I tried to sound convincing, but wasn't too successful because Matt's camera stopped clicking and his arm was suddenly circling my waist. "Really," I said, more firmly this time. "It was just—"

  "Actually seeing the poor critter?" Roy supplied.

  "Uh-huh. What happened to his paws?" I asked, referring to the four raw stumps that had caught me so thoroughly by surprise.

  "Paws are sold for soup," he said. "Not as valuable as galls, but worth the effort. The shooter'll get maybe sixty bucks each. Add that to the $300 for the gall and you've got a decent payday."

  "Hold it," I said, still working on the notion of bear paw soup. "People actually pay to eat that stuff?"

  Liam and Roy exchanged a wry glance. "How does a thousand bucks a bowl grab you?"

  It didn't grab me. I figured either Liam had lost his mind or I'd suddenly become hearing impaired. But Matt must have caught the same number because his jaw was dragging just as low as mine. He recovered first.

  "That's quite a gap in prices," he said with an impressive flair for understatement. "If the shooter, as you call him, gets $60 and the restaurant owner gets $1,000, what happens to the rest?"

  "Middlemen," Roy said, working around to get a better shot of the mutilated corpse. "Suppliers are next up from the shooters. They either collect the stuff from drop-sites or take it in directly. Suppliers usually operate out of a business like a general store or taxidermy or maybe a restaurant. They work the trade from their place of business. But, because of government inspectors, they usually keep the parts at their homes.

  "The top of the heap is the trafficker," he said as he stepped back for a final wide-angle shot of the site. "Those guys are really something. They're usually middle to upper class, often college educated, most have military experience and they all have a spider-web of contacts on both sides of the Pacific. They keep their suppliers secret to stop them from fixing prices among themselves and to keep other traffickers from poaching their guys. They transport the stuff in their own vehicles and market it, either locally or overseas."

  It was an impressive organisational structure, but what else could be expected with the number of dollars at stake. I glanced once more at the disfigured bear. "Do you have to deal with these very often?"

  "Up till last fall, not a one in this area. Now three in the last month." He lifted his uniform cap and, raking his fingers through the bristle, sucked in a noisy breath. "We've got ourselves a shooter, that's for sure. And he's using a dog."

  "How do you know?" Matt asked, voicing the question before I had the chance.

  "Tracks," he said, pointing along the ground. "And see how the brush is broken down over there. The bear came through at full tilt. The dog must've been getting pretty close, because he hightailed it up that tree."

  "Think the dog had a radio collar?" Liam asked.

  "Probably. It's the easiest way at night. You drive up close to an area where you know bears have been active, let the dog out, open up a brewsky, and wait. When the bear's treed, wander on over and shoot it down. Ten bucks says that's what happened to this fella."

  Liam nodded gravely. "Anything else you need around here?"

  "No. We might as well load him up and start getting back." The young CO paused for a moment, blue eyes fixed on the grotesque shape at his feet. "And let's hope he's the last one we have to take for a ride."

  Chapter Eight

  Cold, which had arrived as a companion to darkness, was surely the cause of my involuntary shiver. And though my narrow ledge served to isolate me from the terrors of the night, I was still acutely aware of their presence. Bears were active now, and cougars, and owls, and coyotes. They may have moved on padded feet or lofty wing, but their night creature sounds were as piercing in the crystal air as the pinpoint light of nameless constellations.

  Huddled in a primal ball, I struggled for both warmth and courage. When hope of imminent rescue had faded with the sun, I tried as best I could to heed my sturdily practical inner voice. It told me simply to survive the intervening hours of darkness. I could do nothing before morning. But I hate being powerless. It was a real test of will to abandon all thought of action and quietly resign myself to a night with my thoughts. Sleep would have been such a welcome escape.

  Not to be, though, I thought sourly, shifting my weight in a useless attempt to relieve the pressure on my bony hip. The prospect of rolling over was too miserable to contemplate. Bad enough for one side to be half frozen while the other, though warmer, lay pinned against an unforgiving rock bed. Reversing positions would only exchange discomforts. And the exchange itself would be a misery of warming and cooling. Better the devil you know, I decided, and resolved to turn my mind in another direction.

  With a conscious effort, I reset my mental projector and rolled film. It wasn't hard to recapture the image of the dark blue Suburban, government crests emblazoned on its doors, lumbering back toward the lodge. There was no conversation. We each pursued a private line of thought and parted company without fanfare when we reached the lobby entrance. Roy headed for town. Liam went in search of Tovey. Matt and I wandered into the lobby.

  My reporter's instincts were on full alert and I itched to text Ben a request for background information. But for the first time in my career, I hesitated. This was new territory. With Matt to consider, I couldn't just drop everything and charge after the story like a dog on
a new scent. Still, there was nothing for it. I am who I am and Matt knew that when he took the vows. Besides, it wouldn't take a lot of time. I could keep my ears open and gather information as we went along.

  "Matt," I began, suddenly, annoyingly, uncertain. "I'd like to contact Ben."

  He draped a casual arm over my shoulders, a camera lens jabbing my ribs as he pulled me close. "Ben," he quoted, mimicking my most professional tone. "Hot story prospect. Urgent you send everything possible on illegal trade in bear parts. Need background for on-site interviews. Copy follows."

  I gave him a jab of my own. But it was affectionate. Thank heaven Matt was in the biz. His veins might be filled with developing fluid instead of printer's ink, but at least he understood. "Thanks," was all I needed to say.

  "You owe me," he whispered, slipping his hand into the back pocket of my jeans as I pulled out my phone to text Ben. The prospect of paying up was more than appealing. But first there was work to do.

  When I finished tapping out my message, I looked up and caught a spokesmodel smile flashed in our direction by Rachel the front desk clerk. It was a smile that highlighted the sensuous pout of her full lips, emphasised the sculpted line of her jaw, and completely failed to connect with her slate grey eyes. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she enquired with detached courtesy, her encompassing glance stalled on Matt.

  Don't you wish, I thought cattily. But I kept it polite with a quick "No thanks," and hurried Matt away—right out the front door where we nearly collided with Adam, the friendly bartender we'd met the night before.

  Adam was the sort whose life history comes tumbling out between rounds. First generation Canadian, he'd learned his trade at the family's Chinese restaurant in the small Okanagan resort town of Peachland. Though slight, he was obviously fit and gave the impression of latent strength. With an open face and snapping black eyes, whose fire was apparent even behind heavy-rimmed glasses, Adam contrived to look youthful and ageless at the same time. It had taken only minutes to discover his passion for wildlife photography, forging an instant and unshakeable bond with my husband.