Chapter 24
KANE
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“What the heck are you doing?”
I don’t move as Nolene, still in her gym sweats and wearing her ski mask, hurries over to a sobbing Amy to untie the ropes binding her hands and feet to the chair.
“Look at this mess! What’s got into you? You do something like this, you wait for me. We have to do it right, not go off on some half-baked terror tactics.”
I keep quiet as Nolene rips into me. I don’t look at Amy.
Nolene hauls Amy to her feet, disgust darkening her eyes. “I should make you clean her up.”
“I’ll do it,” I say.
“Like I can trust you to go near her right now.”
My lips tighten. “You can trust me. I’ll help.”
I reach for Amy, but she shrinks away from me, her eyes raw and wild. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you touch me!”
I drop my hand.
Steering Amy out of the room, Nolene mutters, “I can’t believe you had the cheek to give me the humiliation lecture.”
Only when the door closes behind them do I sink heavily onto the couch and yank the ski mask off.
What came over me? It’s a question I have no answer to.
All I know, is that in the shamed aftermath of my cruelty, I’m no better than the white-coated vivisectors in those pictures.
Why, when I’m fighting one cause, do I start compromising on others?
I don’t want the memory, not now, not after this, but my guard is down and I’m too weary to stop its intrusion.
There I am nearly six years ago, the vet on call at an all-night emergency clinic.
It was an unusually busy night. I can see myself so clearly, my green scrubs spattered with urine and flecks of blood from the night’s patients—a lab with post-operative complications, a cat hit by a car, with such severe head trauma she didn’t make it, and a terrier pup with Parvo.
My shift was ten minutes from finishing and the call came in. Ten minutes. I often wonder what trajectory my life would have traveled if I didn’t pick up the phone.
On the other end of the line, the nasally voice belonged to the spokeswoman for a well-known animal welfare group.
She explained that the head of the Hillview Biomedical Institute was leaving.
In a gesture of goodwill, he wanted to donate to them a number of baboons who were no longer needed for experimental purposes.
The welfare group wanted a veterinary report, but their regular vet was in hospital with appendicitis. Would I be willing to examine them?
No, I longed to say. All I wanted right now was a hot shower and the cool comfort of my bed.
But primates, particularly baboons, so rare in this part of the world, held a particular fascination for me so I arrived at HBI an hour later, the sun already blazing down on the inner-city high-rises.
Barbara, whose animated face in no way matched her nasally voice, met me outside the drab red-brick building.
Following stiff greetings in the reception area, Ivan Klaasen, the head of HBI, escorted us up several floors to where the primates were housed.
In the elevator, I studied the man. He appeared jaded and tired, deep lines bracketing his mouth, exclamation points for all the words spilling out of him.
“I’m leaving HBI in two weeks,” Ivan said. “I’ve accepted a post in Finland.”
From Barbara’s impatient expression, I could see the man’s personal life held no interest for her, but this was a political game she had to play. “Sorry to hear you’re leaving.”
“I’m not sorry to leave.”
As we walked down an empty corridor, fluorescent lights marking our progress, Barbara asked, “Ivan, how many primates are at HBI?”
“Roughly two hundred in total,” he said with surprising transparency. “Baboons make up most of the stock.”
“How many are we getting?” Barbara asked.
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen,” she repeated, her voice carefully neutral. “How long have they been here?”
“Coming up to eight years.” According to Ivan, the rest of the primates were currently in research projects or else scheduled for upcoming studies. Only these fifteen remained at “loose ends.”
Ivan stopped outside a door. “Here we are.”
The moment he pushed open the door, the din inside became deafening. I recognized the noise immediately, the hoarse, warning bark of baboons sensing a threat.
The windowless room was massive, the walls lined by cages. The smell, even for me as a vet accustomed to the stench of a practice, was overwhelming.
Remaining close to the entrance, Ivan gestured to a group of cages. “Your baboons are over there.”
Barbara and I stepped forward for a closer look.
“Eight years,” she said under her breath. “Eight years of sitting alone in a cage with nothing to do.”
Blinking the grains of exhaustion from my eyes, I ignored her whispered outburst and focused on the baboons. Male chacma baboons. I could guess why these hadn’t been used in any experiments. They were huge, no doubt aggressive and difficult to handle because of their size and strength.
“They’re not in the best shape,” I said. “Look at their hind legs. Inactivity has caused the muscles to atrophy. These three have lost most of their hair, probably as a result of stress.” I studied the baboons a minute longer. “The male on the far right has mutilated his arm pretty badly.”
Barbara shook her head. “They’re all caged out of touch. In the wild, baboons will spend hours grooming one another. For such social animals, the loneliness must be unbearable.”
I turned to Ivan. “Were these baboons captive-bred or trapped in the wild?”
He looked uncomfortable at the question. “HBI employs the services of a wildlife dealer who has a permit to capture baboons and fly them over to us.”
Barbara’s lips flattened. I could imagine how she was torturing herself, thinking that these fifteen baboons knew exactly what had been taken from them, that they’d once felt grass under their feet and sun on their faces.
There would be an official handover in two weeks, Ivan said. Although he insisted the baboons remain the property of HBI during that period, he agreed to allow Barbara to visit them each day.
After writing my report, I tried to get those fifteen baboons out of my head, but I couldn’t forget the despair in their eyes or the physical decline of their bodies as a result of laboratory life.
So when Barbara called me again a few days later, asking if I would perform surgery on the baboon she’d named Enzo, the one who’d mutilated his arm, I found myself saying yes.
“He might not be strong enough to survive such a lengthy operation,” I cautioned.
Barbara, however, was ready to take the risk. “His arm’s gangrenous,” she said. “It has to be done.”
So I organized an anesthetist and we went to work on the mess that had once been his arm. I would never forget the look on Barbara’s face when I told her Enzo had died on the operating table.
I held her in my arms while she mumbled brokenly, “He was so close to experiencing freedom, so close.”
Filled with guilt, I vowed to atone for my failure.
The next day, after finishing the graveyard shift, I chased away my fatigue and joined Barbara for her half-hour visit to the baboons. I helped her feed them fresh fruit and vegetables, and their childlike excitement told me how mundane their diet must have been.
I only meant the visits to last for two or three days, but after my fourth visit I found I was looking forward to seeing the baboons, to hearing some of them chatter and lip-smack when I entered the room.
What started out as cursory interest, then guilty atonement, had finally morphed into genuine affection for these imprisoned creatures.
A week later, with only three days to go before Barbara could take custody of the baboons, I arrived at HBI to find Barbara standing outside, leaning against the building’s brick wall as though she’d collapse without its support. Her eyes and nose were red from weeping.
“They’re all dead,” she managed to choke out.
I listened, in stunned disbelief, as she related how the new head of HBI, worried that Barbara’s welfare group would use the baboons to stir up negative press for the institute, overrode Ivan Klaasen’s objections and manipulated HBI’s Research Ethics Committee to sanction euthanasia for the fourteen baboons on the grounds that they were too psychologically traumatized to be rehabilitated.
Barbara had arrived this morning to discover all fourteen had been killed on site.
She dug out a tissue and blew her nose. “The committee completely disregarded the fact that the baboons were going to a sanctuary with experience in rehabilitating primates who arrive there mentally and physically damaged.”
And while she railed against ethics committees, saying they were a contradiction in terms, because the very same people who sat on the committees often sponsored the experiments, I stood still and silent beside her, my throat tight and my eyes burning with the tears I was holding back.
Animals didn’t need any more tears. They needed help. They needed action.
I knew that under the law, animals were regarded as property and therefore possessed negligible rights.
And in the end, standing on a cracked sidewalk in the pale rays of a morning sun, it was a simple decision.
If the law wasn’t on the side of the animals, on the side of care and compassion for them, then I wasn’t obligated to act within its constraints.
A simple decision, but one that has cost me so much.
Rubbing my eyes, I try to call up my swell of righteous indignation when I walked into Amy’s room and witnessed what she did, but all I can feel is the stranglehold of self-disgust.
I glance at my watch and groan. I’m forty minutes late for my scheduled call with Andries.
Andries answers immediately. “You’re late. What’s going on?”
“A slight problem this side.”
His voice sharpens. “Anything I should worry about?”
“No.”
“You can’t elaborate?”
“Not on the phone.”
There’s an impatient huff of air. “We agreed from the outset we wouldn’t meet until after July twenty-fourth. When this matter is resolved. We want to be sure we’re protected.”
We. Andries represents PAMS—The Prevention of Animals for Medical Science—a low-key animal advocacy group.
Only in operation for about a year, PAMS doesn’t favor the media spotlight.
Their preference is to work behind the scenes, funding activist groups.
Six months ago, Andries contacted me and offered to channel small amounts of funds to AFD on a regular basis.
Money is always desperately needed for our operations so I accepted his offer.
And then Andries proposed the kidnapping of a neurology professor’s daughter.
PAMS’s objective was to persuade well-respected scientist Graham Hutchinson to publicly abandon animal experimentation and support non-animal alternatives.
If the operation was a success, the publicity generated for the animal rights movement would be invaluable.
The permanent threat over his daughter would be enough to keep Hutchinson in line.
He’d be the poster boy for sound ethical science.
At first, I objected strenuously to PAMS’s proposal.
I wouldn’t kidnap someone. No way. It took four months for PAMS to wear me down.
What finally caused my caving was the promise of half a million in funding.
I’ve already received a payment of $50 000, which went straight to a friend’s animal sanctuary.
I could do so much good with the money. At least, that’s how I justified agreeing to the kidnapping.
That, and the vow that no harm will come to Amy.
But now, reviewing what I’ve done to her, I’m not sure I’ve managed to keep that promise.
“There’s to be no meeting,” Andries emphasizes again.
I swap the phone to my other ear. “I’m not proposing a meeting. I’m saying you don’t need to know the details. I’m handling them.”
Andries’s voice hardens. “Nothing must happen to the package. All right?”
“This was your idea,” I say, needling him. “You knew the risks.”
“If anything happens to the package, the deal is off.”
“Nothing will happen,” I say, tired of baiting him.
“Anything else?” he asks.
My mind drifts to Justin and Heather. Andries knows nothing about the teenagers and the undercover operation they’re involved in.
For whatever reason, whether it’s a desire to protect them or the less noble desire to stop Justin from tapping Andries’s deep pockets once he learned of the existence of PAMS, I want to keep that operation a secret for now.
“Nothing else,” I tell him.
After ending the call, I fill a bucket with soapy water, grab a cloth and brush, and closet myself in the entertainment room to scrub away all traces of tonight’s fiasco.
After I finish, I scan the news and find no mention of the kidnapping. It appears Hutchinson has fallen for my bluff and is keeping the police out of it, at least for now.
I check my email and make a few calls, filling the time so my mind will remain empty.
When I can’t fight the fatigue any longer, I stretch out on the couch in the formal living room and wait for Nolene to come downstairs.
I suspect she’s avoiding me, punishing me with her absence.
I scratch my jaw, stubble rasping. My mouth is furry, my clothes grimy, but I’m too weary to do anything about it. All I want is to find release in sleep.
As the night hours stagger into one another, I sleep fitfully on the couch. I surface at one point to find Nolene standing over me, a strange look on her face, but when I wake up again, she’s gone.
#
The morning comes too soon. I force myself to sit up, cradling my head in my hands, knowing I have to go to Amy and try to repair the damage I’ve caused.
When I enter her room, I stop abruptly, confused by the strange and shadowy darkness inside. A second passes before I figure out what’s wrong. The side lamp is on, but positioned on the floor, on the other side of the bed.
What is she up to now?
A tremor of apprehension twists in my chest and I flip the light switch. The air next to me shifts and I feel the sting of something sharp slice through my ski mask, gouging my scalp.
And I realize too late that once again I underestimated her.