The Real Thing (10 page)

Industrial espionage was a growing problem in the US, partly thanks to the proliferation of small electronic devices that could convey voice and/or video, yet were small enough to hide in a cufflink or lapel badge.

Like anyone who was very good at her job, but had two major disasters on her hands, Borkin was fuming, angry mostly with herself, but also with anyone who she felt wasn’t doing their job to the absolute best of their abilities.

Any of her staff seen shirking off home before the early hours of the morning were traitors in her view.

The Mad Russian, her staff had always called her, when she wasn’t around, but it had been an affectionate term. Now they were using the nickname in a totally different way. She was mad all right, she was downright furious.

Anastasia Borkin strode the length of the boardroom, unable to sit still in one place while the world was exploding around her. First the disappearance of three of the executives it was her responsibility to protect, and then the kidnapping of the two young New Zealanders they had brought in.

What was worse, she suspected they had a spy somewhere in the company. That meant tracking down everybody who knew the results of the taste testing, and anyone they might have told about it, intentionally or accidentally, and anyone
they
might have spoken to, and so on.

And she couldn’t let anyone know what was going on, not anyone. The whole thing had to be done with the delicacy of a brain operation, so as not to alert the spy that they were looking for him, or her.

Careless spies made mistakes, but spies who knew that hunters were on their trail, shut down their operations and were very careful not to make mistakes.

She had liked the two boys, which made the second kidnapping a whole lot worse. She had thought that Fizzer had a certain quality, of calmness and peace, which reached out and touched the people around him. Fizzer was destined for something big as an adult, she felt. And Tupai had a huge open smile and a wondrous enjoyment of life that was infectious.

But now they were also missing, and might even be dead for all she knew, and she was partly responsible.

‘We need a little more time,’ she thundered, wondering why the board couldn’t see sense.

‘There is no more time,’ hot-blooded Ricardo lashed straight back at her. ‘Either we start mixing today or we start running out of syrup.’

‘We’ll find them,’ Borkin continued as if Ricardo hadn’t spoken. ‘We, and we includes both local and state police, and the FBI, have been door-to-door every day. We’ve found eye-witnesses who can trace the car as far as Macon.’

‘What’s in Macon?’ Dolores asked, puzzled.

‘Nothing, unless you count Cannonball House and the Confederate Museum,’ Terry said.

‘Which,’ Borkin said, ‘makes it a good place to hide the two boys.’

Keelan looked up from a sheet of figures. ‘Or bury them.’

Borkin sank into her chair, and there was a general commotion around the table until Reginald held up a hand for quiet.

‘We asked them to come and help us,’ he said quietly, ‘and they did, no questions asked. We’re knee-deep in something, and we don’t know what it is, and because of that, because of us, those two boys are in a whole world of trouble.’

Ricardo cracked his knuckles loudly, and Reginald glared at him. Was there more than mere annoyance behind the expression, Borkin wondered, reading the subtle body language of the acting CEO.

‘And I liked those kids. Fizzer reminds me a bit of myself at his age, although he’s a damn sight more together and sure of himself than I ever was. He has good qualities. They both do.’

There was a silence. Reginald resumed. ‘But, whatever we feel about them, we can’t base the future of this company on your chances of finding them, no disrespect Anastasia. I’m afraid I agree with Ricky, we have to start those vats boiling, and if 733-23-B is the best we’ve got, then that is what we are going to have to go with.’

‘The public won’t accept it,’ Dolores said.

‘The public will have to accept it,’ Ricardo raged, ‘because the alternative is no Coke at all!’

‘I can find them,’ Borkin interjected, but by that time nobody was listening.

The debate rolled and crashed like a thunderstorm for the next two hours, before they finally took a vote.

It was close, but the decision was final. That night the great vats in three massive factories, in three different countries, began to churn.

They had crossed over the racing track and were following a dusty metal road that led away from it when Fizzer heard the pick-up truck.

At first he thought that help was at hand, but then realised the noise was coming from behind them.

‘Get off the road!’ Fizzer said urgently, his intuition buzzing. Tupai, who had heard nothing, obeyed without question.

A row of small bushy shrubs ran the length of the road and they dived into it, disregarding a few scratches and cuts, just a half-second before a large khaki-coloured pick-up truck slid around the end of the road and spurted down past them, gravel flying from under its wheels.

An arm hung out of the driver’s window, but the driver was looking the other way so they couldn’t see his face.

The two men standing in the back of the pick-up were unmistakeable though, hanging on to the bucking frame with one hand and pointing shotguns in the air with the other. It was the ugly twins, and they looked uglier than ever.

Fizzer and Tupai crawled on their hands and knees behind the shrubs. It was one thing to be brave when faced with a pitchfork, but quite another kind of bravery to face up to a shotgun. The kind of bravery they award medals for, posthumously.

The shrubs, which made a kind of hedge, offered quite good concealment, so they followed them until the road turned a corner and the shrubs abruptly stopped.

There was no other cover, apart from the occasional tree, anywhere nearby.

‘What do we do?’ Tupai whispered from behind Fizzer.

‘Wait,’ Fizzer said.

‘What for?’

‘Night.’

They sat for a while, and Tupai even lay down for a time in the relative safety of the small hedge.

‘Get some sleep,’ Fizzer said. ‘It’ll be a long night.’

‘How about you?’

‘I’ll be all right. You get some kip, I’ll keep an eye out for Curtis and the Brothers Grimm.’

And Tupai did sleep.

In the bowels of the three factories, in Ireland, Africa and Puerto Rico, ingredients were sliding down massive stainless steel chutes into huge mixing and boiling vats by the time Tupai and Fizzer finally ventured out on to the metal road.

A car started nearby, and Fizzer froze, one hand back in warning, but the car drifted off somewhere in the distance.

They started to walk, navigating by starlight, conscious of the sound of their breathing and the crunch of their footsteps on the unsealed road. They travelled about a kilometre, without speaking, before Fizzer said, ‘Sorry I dragged you into this, Tupai.’

Tupai placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder in the dark. ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, mate.’

A few more paces, then bright lights appeared in the distance burning fiery holes in the dark fabric of the countryside, and they heard the far-off sound of an engine.

‘Down,’ hissed Fizzer.

They scuttled off the road, dropping into a drainage ditch, mostly dry fortunately, which ran the length of the road.

The lights intensified until they could see two headlights, with a row of spotlights mounted on a rack above.

They buried their faces in the mud and weeds as the lights swept over their heads, but the vehicle did not slow. Fizzer looked up as it flashed past and saw a pick-up truck, although he could not tell from the back, in the dark, what colour it was, or who was driving it. They waited until it was a few hundred metres away before they crawled back out of the ditch and resumed their trek.

‘Do you think it was them?’ Tupai asked.

Fizzer shrugged. ‘Better safe than sorry.’

After a moment Tupai asked, ‘How do you know we’re heading the right way?’

The answer came back with a grin Tupai could hear but not see in the darkness. ‘We’re heading away from the ranch. That’s the right way.’

The truck, or a similar one, patrolled the road three or four times that night. A smaller vehicle, a car of some kind, passed them twice, and a loud Harley Davidson motorcycle breezed past once, the throaty roar of its engine unmistakeable from a long way off. Each time they took refuge in the ditch, and continued onwards as soon as the vehicle had passed.

One thing they realised, as the night progressed, was the sheer scale of everything in America. As light began to rise again over a range of hills to the east, the roads they had been following seemed no closer to ending than when the two had set out.

A tall row of poplars followed the road now, a windbreak for some barns and other smaller buildings now appearing out of the darkness with the coming of the dawn.

‘We’d better get off the road again,’ Fizzer said, eyeing the buildings with suspicion. They didn’t seem populated, or even dwellings, but if they were work buildings then they could attract visitors during the day.

‘Have we passed a McDonalds yet?’ Tupai asked as they slipped through the poplars. ‘Isn’t there supposed to be one around every corner in America?’

Fizzer nodded. ‘I’d even settle for a Burger King.’

‘Double whopper with cheese.’

‘Large fries and onion rings.’

‘Nope, lay off the onion. You’ve been eating canned beans for a week, the resulting explosion could be catastrophic.’

‘True.’

‘But a chocolate shake for dessert.’

‘Strawberry and banana mixed.’

‘Chocolate.’

‘Strawberry-banana.’

The other side of the trees was scrubland, green-brown grass and clumps of thorny weeds. A few metres away, a thicket of wild cane stretched along another fence. Behind it was a freshly ploughed field, where a massive metal plough and the tractor that pulled it rested in the half-light of the early morning.

They slept after a while from sheer exhaustion. The poplars provided shade, for the morning at least. They never made it to the afternoon, their peaceful slumber was brutally stolen by the sound of trotting hooves. The sound came, not from the road side of the poplars, but from the scrubland side where they were lying.

‘Follow me,’ Fizzer whispered, shaking Tupai awake, and they sprinted across the uneven ground to the cane thicket, pushing aside the stalks and making a path as deep inside as they could.

Fizzer, who was in front, looked behind to see Tupai quietly, but systematically, straightening and steadying the cane stalks behind them to conceal their passage.

The hooves sounded closer, and something slithered across the ground past Tupai’s feet.

‘Do they have rattlesnakes in Georgia?’ he whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ came the unhelpful response.

The hooves stopped at the cane thicket and a stick, or maybe a shotgun, began to beat the first few clumps. Whoever it was didn’t venture into the thicket though, and the sound of the hooves started again and gradually faded.

‘Why didn’t they check it out properly?’ Fizzer wondered.

‘Perhaps they know about the rattlesnakes,’ Tupai said with concentrated coolness, as there was another slithering sound near his ankles. ‘Watch where you step on the way out.’

‘You don’t want to stay in here? In case they come back.’

‘In a word, no.’

They both trod very carefully on their way out of the thicket, and the slithering sounds kept a safe distance from them, or at least they didn’t get bitten.

‘I suppose we should make a start,’ Fizzer said, looking both ways down the narrow lane. ‘No point in waiting around here for him to come back.’

Tupai shook his head. ‘Nah. I’m sick of this sneaking around. And we don’t know how far we have to go. We could be walking for weeks.’

‘So your suggestion is?’

‘We go for a tractor ride.’

Fizzer swung around and looked at the tractor sitting idle in the middle of the field.

‘What’s it doing there, do you think?’

‘I’d say whoever is supposed to be driving that thing is too busy looking for us.’

‘So we just hop on, start her up and make a run for it?’

Tupai nodded.

‘Simple as that?’

‘Simple as that.’

Of course it wasn’t.

Tupai managed to start the tractor all right, that part was easy, and Fizzer had driven one before, when his father had a job as a farm manager on a sheep station in the middle of the North Island. So they were soon rolling, heading towards an open gate at the far end of the field. First Fizzer had had to work out how to lift the plough, a solid metal apparatus attached to the back of the tractor, with sharp-looking tines curving down into the soil.

The plough rose and flattened itself against the rear of the tractor when Fizzer finally found the right lever.

They rumbled slowly across the field and out on to the road, where the tractor was able to pick up quite a good speed, the large rubber tyres with the deep tread making a buzzing noise on the hard metal of the road.