Warren Murphy: The Last Dragon

It had been painful and annoying, and she had taken it all without complaint, sustained by sheer adrenalin.

The flight from London had gone well. And the stopover in Port Chuma, capital of Gondwanaland, former European colony of Bamba del Oro, and now sovereign nation on the brink of social and economic catastrophe, was interminable.

Now, trudging through the Gondwanaland bush, popping her daily antimalaria tablets dry, Nancy was nervous.

She would have preferred a more politically palatable sponsor than the Burger Triumph hamburger chain. But the nature of the expedition was not exactly National Geographic cover material.

The major colleges had been too broke. She had been laughed out of corporate boardrooms from Manhattan to L.A. Even PBS had said no.

Until that day she met with Skip King, vice president in charge of marketing for the Burger Triumph Corporation, in his thirty-fourth floor office in their world headquarters in Dover, Delaware.

She had felt foolish even requesting the meeting. But a colleague had suggested it, and then faxed her one side of a Burger Triumph food bag that looked as if it had been designed by a precocious child. It showed the planet earth and boasted of Burger Triumph's new biodegradable packaging that conserved seven million tons of waste annually, not to mention the gasoline conserved and pollution cut by dispensing with the old cardboard containers.

"Planet-pleasing packaging" it was called.

A note scribbled on the fax said, "They're rich, they're environmentally conscious. Why not try?"

"They're trying to rehabilitate their reputation," Nancy snorted. But she made the call and got an appointment for the very next day.

There, she had made a short self-conscious presentation and laid the unmarked manila envelope on King's desk. Wordlessly, he had taken it up, unwound the flap-securing string, and shook out the three eight-by-ten glossies that had been taken from an earth observation satellite from a distance of over one hundred miles above Africa.

King had stared at them for five silent minutes, going through them briskly at first and then slowly the second time. At the end, he set the three photos side by side on his desk and stared at them a long while.

His face was too sharp to be called handsome. It had a foxy cast to it. Or maybe it was more wolfish, Nancy had thought. The nose, the thin-lipped mouth, even the high-tolerance cut of his jet black hair was too severe.

He looked up, and his eyes, black as volcanic glass, regarded her without any emotion she could read.

"You say they're alive?" he asked tonelessly.

"There is just one, as far as we know."

"How big?"

"Judging from the photos, forty feet from nose to tail."

King looked down and frowned. "Most of it is neck and tail," he muttered in a vaguely disappointed tone. "How big would you say the body is?"

"Oh, less than half of that."

"Fifteen feet, then?"

"At a rough estimate."

"Tall?"

"With the neck lifted, we estimate-"

He shook his head impatiently. "No-how tall from underbelly to the top of the spine?"

Nancy had frowned. "Possibly eight feet."

Skip King took up a pencil and began making calculations on a notepad. He crossed out columns of numbers instead of erasing them, and when he got an end figure, he looked up and said, very seriously, "Probably weighs eight tons, not counting head, neck, and tail. Ten tons in all."

"That sounds about right," Nancy had admitted, thinking, This man is asking all the wrong questions.

But King seemed so completely professional. Button-down, no-nonsense, and thoroughly unruffled by the prospect of making zoological history.

"And you want Burger Triumph to fund your safari?" he had asked.

"Expedition. And we think it could be accomplished for less than two million dollars," Nancy told him.

"That include shipping costs?"

"Shipping?"

"Bringing the beast back alive."

"Back! How would we get it back? I mean, could we get it back. The government of-"

"Gondwanaland? Don't make me laugh. It's run by a tub of butter who's backpedaling away from Karl Marx so fast he's trampling his immediate ancestors. BT is a multinational company. We could buy Gondwanaland, if we wanted. Cheap. But it'll be a lot easier to grease a few official palms." He paused for breath, then said, "Miss Derringer, I believe I can get you an approval on this."

The suddenness of the statement had taken her breath away. Nancy had expected polite interest, and weeks-if not months-of corporate buck-passing until an answer was handed down.

"Are-are you sure? I mean, arrangements will have to be made about creating a suitable environment for the animal. And there is the question of a receptive zoo-"

Skip King raised a quieting hand. "Please calm down," he said. "All these things will be taken care of."

And they were. Within forty-eight hours, Skip King had called. His voice was smooth as champagne.

"It's set," he said, as if he were talking about a day trip to the Smokies.

"It is?"

"The CEO had sanctioned all the funding we need. A suitable transportation vessel is being chartered, and by the time we return with it, a climate-suitable habitation will be waiting."

"Where?"

"Somewhere near Burger Triumph World Headquarters. Maybe in it. We have a rather large basement."

"What!"

"We have a very large basement. It will be converted into a suitable temporary habitat."

"As long as it's temporary," Nancy had told him.

"We estimate we'll be able to leave in three to four weeks."

"Impossible."

"Not for us."

"Us?"

"I intend to lead this safari, Miss Derringer."

The statement floored her. But it had been delivered with such calm self-assurance that Nancy had been taken utterly off guard.

"Do-do you have any experience in this sort of project?" Nancy had stammered.

"Miss Derringer, special projects are my life."

"That's not what I mean. I meant field experience."

"Miss Derringer, I happen to be a graduate of the Wharton School of Business. I'm sure you've heard of it."

"Somewhere. And if you don't mind, it's Dr. Derringer."

King had sniffed thinly-the first hint of his true character, Nancy realized now. "And where did you go to school?"

"Oh, let's see. B.A. from Columbia-"

"A nice school, I hear. But no Wharton."

"-received my master's from Texas Technological University, and studied herpetology at the University of Colorado."

"You studied herpes?"

"Herpetology," Nancy said patiently, "is the study of reptiles. I've done extensive field work all over the globe for the Colloquium, and additionally I'm a member of the Crocodile Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources."

"Oh," said Skip King in a tiny voice. "Well, I graduated magna cum laude."

Nancy suppressed a sigh. Two could play at this infantile game, she thought. "Summa cum laude."

"Second place is nice, too," King said smugly.

"Summa cum laude means highest honors, Mr. King. Magna cum laude happens to be second place. And unless you want to contract a wide variety of pernicious tropical diseases," Nancy added firmly, "we're not going until we've been thoroughly inoculated."

There was a protracted pause on the line. When his voice returned, it was almost a croak.

"Does that mean needles?"

"Yes. Long, sharp ones."

"I hate needles." And his voice was so dead that for a moment Nancy was afraid he would call the whole thing off.

He hadn't. But now, weeks later, Nancy was beginning to wish he had.

It had started when he had shown up at the departure point wearing a "Safari Til You Puke" T-shirt.

Nancy was able to overlook that. But when they reached Port Chuma, he had insisted the native bearers wear Burger Triumph T-shirts and pith helmets-and address him as B'wana King.