Damn.
He just had to keep that hoodie zipped!
Tamara Charter turned out to be good company. Funny, dry, and a good sport about losing to someone she didn’t know. He explained the sage grouse thing to her, outlining the measures that Michael had taken to contain the covey and protect the lek, and how the presence of the sage grouse seemed to keep the predatory birds away from the concrete airstrip as a whole.
“Take pictures,” she told him thoughtfully. “But if it looks like you’ve described, bird strikes shouldn’t be more prevalent than they are usually.” She grimaced. “And don’t ask me how often they happen in real life. Everybody thinks they want to know the answer to that question, but they really don’t want to know the answer to that question. Trust me.”
He laughed uneasily at that, because she was right, and then went on to mention the houbara bustard and to ask why somebody would be transporting eggs to Africa.
His words seemed to hit her hard, and he watched her swallow several times before seeming to come to a decision. She squared her shoulders and nodded to herself as though she’d crossed an obstacle, but she didn’t say anything immediately, instead gazing sorrowfully into space in a way that made Carl feel as though there was an infinite sadness just beneath the surface.
He didn’t say anything, waiting for her to speak first, and they lingered over their smoothies for a bit. It wasn’t until the gym cleared out a little that Carl realized how hard she’d been putting off their conversation.
“So,” he said, drawing the syllable out. “Do you need a rideshare, or…?”
“I have my own car,” she told him with a lift of her eyebrow that indicated he wasn’t being subtle. “And no, that’s not a come-on. I’ve got a perfectly wonderful boyfriend at home who doesn’t agree with my politics but loves me for arguing with him. So that awkwardness is over. But….” She tossed back the rest of her smoothie and sighed. “This situation. It’s complicated, and it sounds like something out of a sci-fi magazine. Do you know anything about hybrid birds?”
Carl grimaced. “I know that it happens in the wild, but it’s not considered really successful unless the offspring are fertile. That’s about it.”
Charter nodded. “Birds aren’t like Chihuahuas,” she said. “Everybody wants to see that Great Dane/Chihuahua mix, because wouldn’t it be a riot to see the little Chihuahua getting him a piece of Great Dane ass, right? But if you cross a predator bird with an indigenous prey bird, you can get an invasive species—one that could take out the prey bird, or worse.”
Carl’s eyes widened at the implications. “So instead of murder hornets, you get murder sparrows?”
“Scary, right?”
“Well, yeah.” He frowned. “Is, uhm, somebody trying to do that?”
She tapped her freckled nose. “What do you know about falconry in Arab countries?”
“Sport of kings,” he said promptly, thinking about the Souk at Doha. “One bird can make a family’s reputation.”
She nodded. “Indeed. And hybrid falcons are heavily ingrained in Middle Eastern falcon lore—kings with five hundred white gyrfalcons or falcons with color markings never seen in nature. A peregrine with legs like a harrier but the chest of an eagle. The list goes on. It’s really only a little step—but a dangerous one—to think about hybridizing, say, a falcon’s biggest prey bird.”
Carl frowned. “But why? Why would you do that? It would put the falcons at risk. Hell, it would put the whole ecosystem at risk.”
“And it would equalize families that could never afford a falcon, not in a million years. It would take away something that had only belonged to royalty and make it common, like a peasant, something easily exploited.”
“But that’s symbolic—the practical effect it could have! It could wipe out indigenous species. That’s insane!”
She nodded. “And now you see where things get difficult. We’re talking about using endangered species to start a war that would endanger more species. Things are really very delicate. We have no room for pity for a hybrid smuggler who lost control of his vehicle with three dozen falcon-slash-bustard eggs in the back.”
Carl gasped, reeling, and the first thing he wanted to do was deny that Matteo di Rossi had lost control of anything. He’d seen the photos; that car had been run into a cliff at a high speed, and to say anything else was to deny the truth. While it was obvious that she knew exactly which case he was talking about, was it possible Tamara Charter was selling him sunshine and bullshit?
Or had someone sold it to her?
But he wasn’t supposed to have seen those photos, and explaining how he’d seen them and who had analyzed them was not a place he wanted to go. After a shocked moment of opening and closing his mouth like goldfish, he remembered something even more important. “Matteo di Rossi was a big believer in preserving wildlife,” he said. “He donated a significant part of his own money to wildlife rescue. He would not have been part of anything that put any species at risk.”
Her eyes widened. “I did not know that,” she said softly. She sucked in a breath. “That’s… that is not information anybody ever gave me. Are you sure?”
Carl thought of Danny and Stirling, both of whom were some of the most skilled information gatherers he’d ever encountered. “My sources are impeccable,” he said. “Whatever he was doing with those eggs…. Are you sure they were hybridized?”
“That was the information I had,” she said. “Hybridized bustard eggs.”
“But were they hybridized-with-falcon eggs? I know the gene pool has been getting awfully thin. Like cheetahs, their resistance to infection and birth defects is getting low. I mean, hybrid falcon/bustards would be a disaster, but cross a bustard with, say, a sage grouse, and you’ve got a whole different bird.”
She tilted her head. “So… you think those bird eggs were for conservation?”
“Absolutely. Did you have a lab confirm the genetic material in the eggs?”
She grunted. “Of course. We had your lab confirm the genetic material in the eggs. Ginger Carson signed off on the report.”
Oh holy hell. “Before or after Mandy Jessup disappeared?”
“After,” Charter confirmed, looking at him quizzically. “But I don’t think it was connected. I mean, I always assumed that Mandy had discovered a terrorist group that was working toward destabilization in Qatar, but her disappearance was five years ago, and there’s been no follow-up incident. Hell, from what I’ve seen, there was barely an investigation!”
Carl suppressed a growl. “I was in Berlin,” he yelped defensively. “It was not my fault!”
And that made her laugh. “Oh wow. Is somebody feeling guilty?”
He sighed. “I was tracking down car thieves, and I was undercover. If I blew my cover a second time, I was never going to get my hands on those assholes. I-I don’t know. I thought they’d put their best people on it, but when I got back to the States, the trail was cold, and nobody could even give me a place to start investigating. I had no idea she was related to the egg smuggling thing until… well, her name came up.” He did not want to talk about how Ginger had practically sprouted another head and fangs.