The Real Thing (4 page)

It was well-fitted out, as they say in the boat-building industry, with plush Canadian hardwood panelling, luxurious Turkish carpets, lacy French drapes and Italian designed bunks, which were not only very fashionable, but also very comfortable. In fact, everything on board the boat was very expensive and very stylish. The only thing was, nothing really went well with anything else. The drapes and the carpet competed for your attention, the Italian bunks were at odds with the Canadian hardwood, while the bunks and the drapes just turned their backs and refused to talk to each other at all.

Bing knew none of this as he slowly emerged from quite a pleasant dream, the details of which he could not remember – but then he never could remember dreams – and threw an arm across the slender, sun-tanned shoulders of Margie Alyssa Statham the third (wife). Except she wasn’t there.

Some people called Margie a trophy wife, behind his back, and whispers of that had reached his ears. He thought it was very unkind and made her sound like something he would mount on the wall in his study, next to the two stags and the black bear from his younger hunting days. And he would never do that to lovely, lively, sweet, blonde, quite-a-bit-younger-than-him Margie. Although he wouldn’t have minded putting the heads of Olivia and/or Candy, his first two wives, on the wall. Particularly Candy, who had run off with the actor from that soap opera and then turned around and sued Bing for millions of dollars,
and won
!

It was cosmic justice, in Bing’s mind, when the former wife of the soap opera star had then sued the cad for millions of dollars, and she had won as well. The world turned in funny ways sometimes.

But Margie, with the supermodel looks and figure, was not a trophy wife and it was quite unfair for people to say that about her. Margie loved Bing deeply, Bing knew, and he loved her back just as much.

But she wasn’t there. Instead, there was this annoying deep-seated throbbing that sounded almost like the engines of a medium-sized private yacht.

With that thought all the events of the previous day came flooding back. Bing sat bolt upright in bed, cracked his head on the underside of the fashionable Italian upper bunk, and dropped back down again, rubbing his forehead and cursing in words he hadn’t used since his younger hunting days.

He got up again slowly and fumbled around on the wall by the bunk until he found a light switch.

Subtle down-lights illuminated the cabin and his first thought on seeing where he was, was that whoever owned it needed a new interior decorator.

Clara Fogsworth and Ralph Winkler were seated in the comfortable, but garishly coloured lounge of the boat when he finally stumbled his way along the corridor and emerged into the room.

They looked like they were almost expecting to see him, at least they weren’t at all surprised, but Bing was shocked witless to see them. So shocked in fact that the first words out of his mouth were quite inane really.

‘Clara! Ralph!’ he said. ‘You can’t be here. We’re not allowed to travel on the same boat!’

Ralph rolled his eyes. It wasn’t the brightest thing to say after all, but Bing
had
just bumped his head on the upper bunk.

Clara Fogsworth said politely, ‘Hello Bingham.’ She never called anyone by their nickname, no matter how well she knew them. She continued. ‘I rather think that is the least of our worries.’

Bingham Elderoy Statham was no fool. He hadn’t become a millionaire by being a fool, and he certainly hadn’t got his seat on the board of directors of The Coca-Cola Company by being a fool. But, even so, it took him a few moments to put it all together in his mind.

‘We’ve all been kidnapped,’ he said, and then he realised. ‘They want the secret formula to Coca-Cola!’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Clara gently, but Ralph just rolled his eyes again, thinking Bing was being extraordinarily obtuse. Ralph tolerated fools marginally less than he tolerated first class service on a commercial jet.

Bing said, still in a state of partial befuddlement, ‘But why have they kidnapped all of us? They only needed one of us to get the secret recipe.’

Clara said, with a mildly disapproving glance at the man seated next to her on the overstuffed pink sofa, ‘Ralph thinks it’s in case they can’t torture the recipe out of any one of us, but I think he’s being melodramatic.’

Strangely, the word torture made Bing think about his ferret Olivia. But probably only because she had the same name as his first wife. There was a frightening thought. They could use the medieval rack, the fingernail bamboos, even the Chinese Water Torture, and he would remain as silent as the Sphinx. But put him alone in a room with his first wife for a couple of hours and he would have given up the secret formula, the pin numbers of his cash cards and even the location of the Holy Grail if he’d known it.

‘I think the truth is much less frightening, from a personal point of view,’ Clara continued, ‘but rather more terrifying for the company.’

Bing’s beleaguered brain cells started functioning properly then, and he realised the answer even before she said it.

‘They want the secret recipe all right,’ she said. ‘And they want to be the only ones who have it.’

Ralph harrumphed as if he still thought they were about to be tortured at any moment, but he conceded, ‘Without the three of us, without the secret recipe, we’ll be forced to use up all our reserve stock of the formula. That’ll only last about two months, and after that,’ he lowered his eyebrows and glowered at Bing as if it were all his fault, ‘there won’t be any Coca-Cola at all!’

A few thousand miles away, almost exactly the same words were being spoken by a swarthy, Mediterranean-looking gentleman named Ricardo Pansier.

In the corner of the boardroom stood a mechanical organ-grinder with a robotic monkey, and nobody knew what it symbolised, or what it was, or what it was doing there. But it had been there since forever, and nobody was brave enough to move it, in case it should turn out to be some incredibly ancient and valuable heirloom that had great significance to the company, The Coca-Cola Company.

The organ-grinder looked through glazed marble eyes at the heavily suited executives seated around the ornate polished walnut boardroom table in the ornate polished walnut boardroom of the company.

The robotic monkey wasn’t interested in the executives. It just stared at the organ-grinder and held out a little tin cup as if expecting a coin or two.

None was forthcoming.

Ricardo Pansier, Vice-President (Production), actually pounded the polished walnut of the table with his fist, which was no way to treat polished walnut.

‘Without the three of them,’ he proclaimed, ‘without the secret recipe, we’ll be forced to use up all our reserve stock of the formula. That’ll only last about two months, and after that,’ he loosened his tie with a rigid finger and unbuttoned the expensive pinstriped collar of his expensive pinstriped shirt, ‘there won’t be any Coca-Cola at all!’

Ricardo was no panic merchant. You don’t get to be VP (Production) for a company like The Coca-Cola Company if you are a panic merchant. So the loosened tie and the physical abuse of the quite innocent walnut table were probably about as close to panic as anyone had ever seen him.

The room was full of Vice-Presidents. Of course, no-one beneath that worthy rank would have made it past the ever-vigilant security guards stationed outside, cleverly disguised in collar, tie and rimless glasses, so that any one who entered the top floor of the Coca-Cola headquarters would think no more than, ‘There are some security guards cleverly disguised as office workers.’

And on a day like today, only a fire, earthquake, or a fall in the stock price would have admitted anyone less than a Vice-President into that room. A disaster beyond the imagination of any of them was about to occur, and that was certainly not for the ears of the great unwashed.

There was no CEO, which was unusual. There was no Chairman of the Board, which was doubly unusual, and there was no Vice-Chairman, which was even more unusual, unless you considered that, at that moment, the three individuals just mentioned were sitting on an overstuffed pink sofa on a medium-sized private yacht somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Which, just for the record, is a very big ocean.

Reginald Fairweather was a Vice-President, so he was at the meeting. And he had been a Vice-President a damn sight longer than Ricardo Pansier, who he considered to be a jumped-up upstart who had risen far too quickly through the ranks at The Coca-Cola Company and now held a position he was in no way ready for. R.G. Fairweather, as the nameplate said on the table in front of him, had been a Vice-President for over twenty years, and was considered next in line for one of the big three positions should any of them, Heaven forbid, fall vacant.

Except that, Heaven’s forbidding aside, all three positions seemed to be currently vacant and, in the eyes of most, that made R.G. Fairweather the man in charge.

‘Ricky,’ Reginald said, using the diminutive, although he would have glared at anyone who dared to call him ‘Reggie’. ‘Ricky, I don’t want problems. I want a solution. What are we doing to resolve this issue?’

The way he said ‘resolve this issue’ made it sound as though he were worried about a faulty pipe in one of the factories, or an employee in need of major breath therapy, instead of a problem that could conceivably put The Coca-Cola Company out of business.

Borkin, VP (Security), cleared her throat. ‘We know when and where each person was snatched. The FBI have the van from the Bahamas and the limousine from New Jersey. The Lear Jet has been cordoned off and we are awaiting a forensic team to reach it and start their analysis. But …’ She broke off a little uncertainly.

‘Yes?’ Reginald asked.

‘If it is anything like the other two vehicles, we’ll find nothing. Very professional job.’

‘But the police are searching?’

‘Police, FBI, Coastguard and Interpol are all active participants in the investigation,’ Borkin said confidently. ‘Plus I have two private detective firms following up some loose ends: one in the Bahamas, and one in New Jersey. We’ll turn up something.’

‘You may turn up three bodies,’ Ricardo intoned into a sudden silence.

Borkin shook her head. ‘That’s a possibility but, unless it’s proven to be true, we act on the assumption that they are still alive. All of us.’ She placed two hands firmly on the table top and stared at Ricardo. ‘And we will find them.’

Reginald nodded. Borkin was efficient to the point of ruthlessness if she had to be. ‘But will we be in time? Realistically, Ricky, how long have we got?’

Ricardo quietly ground his teeth every time he was referred to as ‘Ricky’, but Reginald had superiority, so he just smiled, put up with it and saw a very good dentist.

‘Each bottling plant has stock on hand. We have the central reserves. I’d say we could still be supplying product for, say, three months. Maybe a few weeks more, but that would be the end of it.’

‘Imagine that,’ said Dolores Whitaker, the widow of former VP (Marketing) Delaney Whitaker, who had taken over his seat on the board. ‘Imagine a world without Coca-Cola.’

‘It’s unthinkable,’ snapped Keelan McCafferty, VP (Public Affairs). ‘Coca-Cola is as American as Mom, God and apple pie! We can’t let this happen.’

‘Actually,’ Borkin pointed out, ‘I’m not sure that God is an American.’

But no-one listened as Keelan continued. ‘Isn’t there anyone else in the company who knows? Even half of it. Can’t we work it out? Can’t we guess?’

Ricardo said slowly, ‘People have been guessing at it for years. Nobody has got it right yet. I don’t see how we could expect to do any better. And, as far as I am aware, nobody else within the company actually knows. Reginald?’

Reginald nodded and shook his head at the same time, making a circular motion that confused everybody, including himself. ‘I’ve been at the company for forty years, and I haven’t got an inkling.’

‘What about that scientist in Japan?’ Dolores asked. ‘He claims to have the recipe.’

Ricardo shook his head. ‘I have one hundred and twenty three “recipes” sitting in a folder on my desk from people who claim to have worked it out. Maybe some of them have got it right. We could mix them up and see.
But how would we know?
’

‘Remember New Coke?’ Reginald said. ‘We did hundreds of taste tests and millions of dollars of market research before changing our formula to one that most people preferred, and which they preferred to all our competitors’ products. Yet it survived just a few months before public pressure forced us to change back to the original recipe. And that product was
advertised!
If we just pump out a new batch of Coke without telling anyone, and it’s wrong, there’ll be chaos. There’ll be a lynching!’

There was much nodding around the table, and a black mood of despondency settled. Borkin’s investigation was their only hope. But there was precious little time.

Terry Capper, VP (International), spoke up then. A small man with thick glasses who had hair growing out of his neck, tentacles of which crept out from his collar. He was intelligent, with three college degrees to prove it. He said, ‘Actually there might be a way.’

He passed around photocopies of a memo he had just received from a small country in the South Pacific Ocean, which most of those present mistakenly thought was an island off the coast of Australia.

‘There might just be a way,’ he repeated, but they were all reading the memo, and nobody paid him any attention, except the mechanical organ-grinder in the corner.

Flea’s parents were away that weekend, so Flea organised a party.

It said a lot about Flea’s parents that they were prepared to trust him, at just fifteen years old, to have a party while they were away, without trashing the whole house. But, perhaps, it actually said more about Flea. He was very mature for his age.

They had plenty to drink at the party. Three days after Fizzer and Tupai had been to see Coca-Cola Amatil in Mt Wellington, a courier van had turned up at Fizzer’s home. The courier-guy had unloaded three large boxes, which had turned out to contain cans and cans and cans of Coke, along with Sprite, and quite a few cans of Fanta. Cases of them. There was a box of collectible Coca-Cola badges and a short note from Harry Truman too, which said simply, ‘Thanks’.