The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics (14 page)

It gradually came back to him: they had all been gassed at the restaurant. So where were they now? Not at the Jin Jiang Tower Plaza Hotel. That had been thickly carpeted with the finest double-thick
tai ping
. He was in a totally dark room. But although there was no light, there was sound. He could dimly hear other people breathing, occasional stirring noises, dormitory sounds. Quite a few people were here—perhaps everyone from the restaurant. And there was something about the quality of the sound that suggested they were in a big space: a hall, a factory, a godown of some sort.

He pulled himself into a sitting position with some difficulty. His joints hurt as much as his head—not just from having spent an unspecified amount of time sleeping on a hard floor, but from the gas, too. It must have been very powerful stuff to knock him out so quickly, he reckoned.

Now his eyes were functioning, he closed them again, to make them more sensitive to the light, and then opened them as wide as he could and stared about him. There was a slightly greyer quality to the light ahead of him: there must be a window or door or something in that direction, emitting light through a crack. But nothing else was visible. He put one hand out blindly in front of him and felt something: hard, metallic, upright, tubular. Prison bars. He was in a cage or cell of some sort. Behind him, he heard slow breathing. There was someone else unconscious close by. He guessed it would be Joyce. Reaching out his hand, he felt a hideous, shaggy scarf and realised he was right.

But where were they? Had they been kidnapped by that mad young man for whom Joyce had made dinner? And what were they going to do with them? What did they want? The man had talked about ‘the slaughter of the innocent’. What did he mean?

A spotlight flashed on, burning his eyes. He covered them with his hand. It was a tightly focused beam, illuminating only him and leaving the rest of the room in darkness. He squinted below his fingers to look around, but could only dimly gain confirmation that he and Joyce appeared to be in a cage of some sort.

A voice seeped out of a set of speakers set into the ceiling of the room—a large, echoing space. ‘Good mornin’, Mr Wong,’ Vega said. ‘I trust you slept well. Better than most of the animals waiting to be eaten in the cages of yer bloody restaurant.’ That London accent again:
well
was pronounced
wair-oo
, and
animals
was
animoos
.

‘It’s not my restaurant,’ Wong replied. ‘It belong—’

‘Don’t bovver speakin’. I can’t hear you, mate. I can just see yer mouf flapping. I’ve gotta closed circuit TV camera focused on where you are, but I didn’t trouble with microphones. I decided I’d be better off not being able to hear you. I’m a famously soft-hearted man and may be driven to feeling a bit of sympathy by yer pathetic cries. But that won’t ’appen if I can’t hear you. So this conversation is going to be one-way only, awright?’

‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Wong shouted. Realising that he probably could not be heard, he spread his hands out, palms to the ceiling, in a questioning gesture.

‘Yes, of course you ’ave questions. I guess you wanna know what’s going down. Well, I shall make a presentation about that when the rest of yer mates ’ave woken up. Me drugs expert told me that it would be between nine and twelve hours for most of yer. You’ve woken up after only eight, so I imagine you’ll be feeling pretty dizzy. Tell you what, Mr Wong, I don’t want anyone to miss the fun, and I don’t feel like explaining myself individually for each one of yer who wakes up early, so I suggest you ’ave a little nap and then I’ll wake you all up in two or free ’ours’ time. Does that sarned like a good idea to you? Cheerio and goodnight.’

Wong decided he had no choice. Sleep would be good: his head was swimming. He stole Joyce’s scarf, folded it into a pillow for himself, and then almost immediately felt himself dropping back into a state of deep unconsciousness, his last thought being that he hoped he would wake with this awful headache gone.

The next thing he knew, the room was glaringly bright, there were shouts and calls and someone was crying. He blinked his eyes and wiped some dribble from his chin. He guessed that he had been asleep for another hour or two. He recognised the voice of the man shouting. It was Tun.

‘Let me out. How dare you put me in a cage like a common criminal. Let me out,’ he shrieked in Mandarin.

There was no response. As Wong’s eyes got used to the light, he realised that they were all in cages, each with one or two people in them, in a large, warehouse-type space. Each cell had its own spotlight beaming down on it. As people woke up, the lights were being switched on remotely to illuminate their cells.

Behind him, Joyce snored on. The gas must have hit her hard.

Tun turned around and saw Wong awake. ‘What’s going on, feng shui man? What idiot has dared to cage us? Is this some sort of hostage situation?’

‘Sorry,’ Wong said. ‘I do not know. I think we have been kidnapped, all of us. By the people with the masks who came into the restaurant last night.’

Tun shook his head in disbelief. ‘It can’t be. Who would dare to do such a thing? I mean, do they know who I am?’

‘Maybe they took you because they know who you are.’

This grimly uttered reply silenced Tun, who was clearly having visions of kidnappers demanding a portion of his large fortune.

‘But maybe not,’ Wong continued, to comfort him. ‘Maybe they kidnap you because you are rich, but maybe not. They kidnap me too, and I am not famous and rich. I am a poor man only.’ As he spoke, he scanned the room and realised that there were more than a dozen other prisoners. Were they all individuals from the restaurant? He thought he could see people whom he did not recognise from that meal. By this time, there were eight cages visible, and people were stirring, or sitting in a stupor, looking at Wong and Tun, the only two alert enough to have a conversation.

‘But who has done this? Who are these people?’

Wong shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I know nothing about them. But my assistant Joyce—she knows them. She made dinner for him, she said.’

‘Who made dinner for them?’

‘Here,’ said Wong, indicating the sleeping figure behind him. ‘My assistant. But now she is a victim, too.’

Tun shook the bars of his cage. ‘Let me out,’ he shouted, ‘or you will regret it. You will pay for this with your lives.’

There was a loud echoing click—the sound of a public address system being switched on.

‘Good mornin’,’ said the preternaturally calm voice of Vega. ‘I ’ope you slept well, Mr Tun. Or actually, to be honest, I don’t. I ’ope you slept really, really badly. And I hope you have a bloody terrible stinker of an ’eadache.’

Tun switched to English: ‘Who are you? Get me out of here. Now. Right now.’

‘I can see your lips moving, but I can’t hear what you are saying so you might as well shut yer mouf. How about some music to wake everyone else up? It’s really time for all the ’appy campers to rise and shine. Wakey-wakey.’

Bach’s
Brandenburg Concerto
began to pump through the speakers at loud volume. Over the next twenty minutes, most people woke up. As an increasing number of lights went on, the room began to reveal itself as an abandoned theatre. The ceiling was high, and the remnants of old stage lighting systems and pulleys were visible overhead.

As each cageful of individuals woke up, Wong and Tun did their best to brief them with what little information they had.

‘So we’ve been kidnapped by some lunatic gang?’ Park Hae-jin said, rubbing his eyes with his palms. ‘Are they Iraqis or neo-Nazis or what?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Tun. ‘Probably terrorists who want to hold us for ransom. My guess is that they are some sort of extreme fundamental Muslim insurgents. What do you think, Wong? From Iraq?’

The feng shui master shook his head. ‘No. I think they are vegetarians.’

Park blinked. ‘Vegetarians? What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Wong. ‘But my assistant seems to know them. And she is a vegetarian. So maybe they are, too.’

‘I thought vegetarians were Buddhists,’ Tun said. ‘Those people did not seem like Buddhists.’

Wong shrugged. ‘Other people are vegetarians, too. Joyce says that rock stars are all vegetarians.’

‘Maybe these people are rock stars. The guy with the gun—he had long hair. Greasy, dirty long hair. That Geldof guy, maybe.’ Tun evidently felt they were on to something.

‘But why would rock stars kidnap us?’ This was Tun’s partner, a thin Chinese starlet named Bingqing, who was checking her make-up in a compact mirror.

Tun said: ‘In the past, vegetarianism in Shanghai was associated with gangsters. Triad gangs. But these people—they are foreigners, no? You must wake up your assistant. See if she can tell us the answer.’

‘Yes, good idea.’ Wong kicked Joyce’s left leg repeatedly until she woke.

‘Ow!’ she squealed. ‘My leg. Ow. My head.’

‘You must wake up,’ her boss said unsympathetically.

‘
Cheese
. I’ve got a stinker of a headache. Where are we?’ Joyce’s eyes were puffy and her hair was a jungle. ‘This is like ten hangovers rolled into one. And I didn’t even have anything to drink last night.’

‘Who are those people?’ Wong barked at her, worried that this whole ghastly mistake might even be Joyce’s fault—and thus, by association, his fault. What if he had to pay compensation to all these rich people or something? It would mean bankruptcy. He needed to disassociate himself from her. ‘They are friends of yours, Ms McQuinnie?’

‘Are they Iraqi insurgents?’ Tun asked.

Joyce looked around. ‘Dear God. Where are we?’

‘Captured by those mad people who came to the restaurant last night,’ Tun explained. ‘They seem to have kidnapped the lot of us, can you believe it, young woman? Are they friends of yours? You had dinner with them or something, Wong said. Are they insurgents from one of the Muslim countries? I bet this is all to do with George W Bush. All the problems in the world these days seem to stem from him.’

Joyce shook her aching head. ‘No. They’re vegans. There’s this guy called Vega—’

‘I told you,’ Park said. ‘Vegans are Muslims.’

‘No, they’re not,’ Bingqing said. ‘I thought Vegans were like aliens. From
Star Trek
or something. The first
Star Trek
movie, remember, “The Curse of Vega” or something?’

‘Where do they come from, these vegans?’ Wong asked.

‘What? Oh, I don’t know. But there’s a group from London, and they’ve hooked up with some local groups here. He sounds like a Londoner. The guy with the gun?’ said Joyce, rubbing her temples. ‘Oooo, my poor head.’

‘But what
sort
of group are they?’ Tun asked, getting exasperated. ‘Are they like triads or mafia or something?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Joyce. ‘They’re vegetarians. Vegans are a type of vegetarian.’

Wong looked smugly in Tun’s direction. ‘I said, already.’

‘Vegans are people who don’t eat leather shoes, I think,’ Bingqing said. ‘I’ve heard of them. Is that right?’

‘They don’t
wear
leather shoes, usually,’ Joyce replied. ‘I’m not sure about eating them. I never heard of a specific ban on eating shoes. They don’t eat meat, eggs or dairy products.’

‘Clearly some sort of weird cult,’ Park said. ‘Eating shoes, not wearing leather, not eating meat—they sound like strange and dangerous people.’

Joyce opened her mouth to explain that vegans were not strange and dangerous people, but then shut it again. The Children of Vega definitely did seem to be strange and dangerous people. Look what they did to that poor French restaurant guy yesterday, throwing him onto the griddle thing. Where was he? He didn’t seem to be here.

Someone stirred to Wong’s left and a spotlight went on, illuminating a middle-aged Chinese woman he had not seen before. She sat up in her cage, rubbing her head and groaning.

‘Look,’ Wong said to Tun, ‘it’s not just people from the restaurant. There are other people here, too.’

Bach finished abruptly, in the middle of a movement, and the public address system burst into life again.

‘Mornin’, luvvies. Most of you must be awake by now,’ Vega said. ‘Stand by for a moment. The Court of Poetic Justice will soon be in session. The first ’earin’ will begin shortly.’ The sound clicked off again and they were left in silence.

‘We need water,’ Tun shouted.

‘Can I have coffee?’ Joyce called out. ‘I think I better have decaf, because I’ve got a really bad headache. I wonder if they have a Starbucks here?’

‘He can’t hear us. Can only see us.’ Wong pointed to small cameras in the ceiling, angled at the cages.

‘I’m hungry,’ whined Bingqing. ‘I couldn’t eat that awful food last night. I hate food that wriggles when you try to eat it.’

‘You can share this,’ said Joyce, patting a paper bag sticking out of the pocket of her coat.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a vegan wrap.’

‘No, thank you. I don’t like to eat shoe leather.’

Joyce shook her head. ‘It’s not shoes. I didn’t say vegans ate shoe leather. I just said there was no ban against them eating shoe leather.’

‘There
should
be a ban on them eating shoe leather,’ Tun said. ‘It’s not natural.’

Wong nodded. ‘This explains why they are a bit crazy. All the chemicals in the shoe leather. Makes them
ji-seen
, you know, crossed wire.’

Joyce gave up trying to explain.

There was a loud bang from the public address system as Vega switched it on again. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Bloody knockoff Chinese sound systems. Next time I’ll bring me own B&O system. Much better than this crap. You want breakfast? Put up your hands if you want somefink to eat or drink.’

Most of the people in the room raised their hands, although some of them were still feeling too queasy from the effects of the gas to even think about food.

‘I just want to go home,’ Bingqing shouted. ‘And have a nice long bath.’

‘So do I,’ said Chen’s wife Fangyin.

‘So do all of us,’ said Park.

Vega chuckled: ‘I could easily bugger off an’ slaughter some INNOCENT chickens and pigs an’ give you eggs and bacon. But I’m gonna teach you a lesson. Yer gonna starve.’