Mr Wong Goes West (25 page)

Wong and McQuinnie were roughly manhandled into the restraining chairs, their hands tied to the armrests.

‘You can’t leave us here for ever,’ Joyce said. ‘The plane will have to land sometime, and then we’ll spill the beans.’

Manks nodded. ‘True. But by then, unfortunately, you will be unable to cause us any more trouble. You see, we’ll tell people that one of the Pals of the Planet, Paul Barker, committed murder. Two other activists, friends of his, equally evil people, came on board the plane to cause even more trouble. We’ll tell people you made terrible threats to crash the plane and had to be locked up in the restraining room.’

He turned to the canister affixed to the wall. ‘This special gas release system sedates people locked in here. Unfortunately for you, it is going to be accidentally damaged, so that you get a much larger dose than is safe—sleep, delirium, brain
damage, possibly death, that’s what’s coming your way. If you’re alive after a couple of hours in this room, you’ll be babbling. What a tragic accident this is going to be. You are heading to dreamland, and you’re not coming back. Bon voyage.’

He switched on the device on the wall, which gently hissed, then Drexler took a large wrench and smashed the top off it so that gas sprayed out at a higher speed.

‘If it’s any comfort, this is the nicest way to die,’ the security chief said. ‘You just go to sleep and that’s it. They say the dreams you have are very nice.
Auf Wiedersehen
, suckers.’

Manks and Drexler left the room, sealing the door behind them.

For the next two minutes, Wong and McQuinnie yelled and shouted and stamped their feet, trying to attract attention. But the room was soundproofed. They could hear no one and no one could hear them. After another sixty seconds, the gas was starting to work on them and they felt drowsy and delirious.

Joyce felt herself going under. Everything was going white. And then she was asleep.

She heard voices. Her mother? Her sister’s voice, as a child? She saw the old house in which they had lived. She felt the panic disappearing, replaced by a sense of happy calm.

Then there was another voice, sharper, clearer—a male, calling her name?

‘Joyce? Jojo?’

She opened her eyes. It was Army Armstrong-Phillips, a handkerchief held over his nose and mouth.

‘Hello, Joyce. I’m afraid I followed you. Hope you don’t mind? I saw you racing along with Robbie. Would this be a good time to rescue you?’

‘I don’t know, what do you think, CF? Would this be a good time to rescue us?’

‘What?’ Wong asked.

‘Get us out of here!’ Joyce screamed.

‘Okay, okay, I was just asking,’ Army said as he unclipped their wrists.

They stumbled out of the restraining room and Army shut the door firmly behind them.

After a few deep breaths of fresh air Wong and McQuinnie turned and raced along the corridor, leaving Army behind in their wake, and were soon hammering on the staff toilet door.

‘Mr Jackson?’ the feng shui master called. ‘You in your room? Must talk to you. Very urgent.’

The door opened and the loud
slooo
sucking noise of an aircraft toilet flushing could be heard.

J Oscar Jackson Jnr zipped up his fly.

‘Excuse me. The toilet’s not just a secret entrance. It’s a working toilet, too. What’s the panic?’ said Jackson, somewhat indignantly.

‘We got some news,’ Wong said.

Jackson summoned them into his room behind the toilet. ‘Uh, just hold your breath as you step through. My stomach’s kind of weird these days. Special diet.’

In the envoy’s private room, the feng shui master explained that they had worked out how Seferis was killed, and how Barker had been framed for it. He explained how Manks and Drexler had tried to silence them.

‘Jesus,’ Jackson breathed. ‘That’s nasty. That’s really—’

‘Army saved our lives.’

‘Army?’

‘A close friend of mine.’

Joyce said she believed Kaitlyn MacKenzie was in on the scheme too. ‘I don’t think Paul tricked her into getting him
onto the plane. I reckon she approached him. It was all part of the set-up. That’s why she’s so reluctant to talk about it.’

Jackson tapped his pen on the desk.

‘I got some news for you, too. We’ve been in touch with the authorities in Hong Kong. They’ve confirmed that someone on the ground in the engineering team was found to be operating under entirely false documentation and has been detained.’

‘Danny Tang,’ Joyce said.

‘The police are going to email the details and a photograph to us so we can compare notes.’

‘There’s email on this plane?’ Joyce asked excitedly.

‘Kid, this is Skyparc. There’s
everything
on this plane.’

‘Can I check my gmail?’

‘No.’

‘What do we do now?’ Joyce asked.

‘Martial your facts. I’m going to call a meeting—get Sir Nicholas Handey and all the top people in on this. The truth had better come out and be spread as widely as possible before Manks and his people try anything else.’

Less than an hour later, the twenty senior-most people related to Skyparc Airside Enterprises were in the main upper deck conference room of Skyparc—the room Wong had feng-shuied just one day earlier. There was an air of excitement. Rumours were flying around that there had been an unexpected breakthrough in the murder investigation.

Sir Nicholas Handey was chairing the meeting.

Robbie Manks and Ryan Drexler were not present—under Oscar Jackson’s instructions, Sir Nicholas’s private bodyguards
had detained them and they were securely tied up in the flight attendants’ rest quarters.

Jackson was on his feet, explaining the situation into the microphone. ‘For many years, people interested in the environment have been aware of increasingly bitter and complex battles between the energy companies and the environmental activists. These have ranged from low-key protests at oil facilities, to letter-writing campaigns, to guerilla-type attacks. Fortunately, the vast bulk of the skirmishes have been good-natured. They tended to climax with a pro-environment banner being unfurled at some facility or other. They rarely involved violence or loss of life. The names we associate with such protests include Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Conservation Society, Pals of the Planet, and so on. But there were times when the temperature was raised a little higher, so to speak, with groups like Earth Agents, for example, who did not shun violence.

‘The emergence of all these groups, good and bad, resulted in an equal and opposite reaction. The energy groups hired public relations companies and spent vast amounts of money advertising themselves as the good guys, people who were just doing an honest day’s work and trying to keep your lights switched on so that families could feed their babies and so on. Just as most activists used wit and humour and a light touch, most companies fought back rather gently, with advertising campaigns. But just as there were extremists among the environmentalists, so there were factions in the industry who believed that a much tougher reaction was necessary: a reactive group that would share a characteristic with the Earth Agents—a total disdain for the law. I am a worker for a charitable foundation, but I also have a wide brief to keep up to date with developments on both sides of the environmental
lobby. My people have been keeping an eye on a secretive group known as Darkheart, set up by renegade elements in the energy industry, to react violently to violent attacks—or to attack first and describe it as “pre-emptive action”.

‘In recent years, the aviation industry has come under examination, because of the amount of carbon damage it does to the environment. So when this new plane was launched, there was some effort made to portray it as a “green” project, or at least “greener” than other planes: the idea being that if you had to burn carbon, this plane would do less damage than others. Rather wide claims were made. I am sure people like Sir Nicholas expected criticism of this project. A great many interested parties became involved in the discussion. And this was not just a debate of polarised opposites. There were many people in the middle. I guess the people I represent are among them. I come from a foundation led by one well-connected individual in particular, whom I shall not name. But my employer is at the same time very much part of the establishment. We want Britain and British businesses to thrive—but not at the expense of its environment, or the environment elsewhere on the planet. That’s why I am here.

‘We expected there to be a not inconsiderable amount of debate about this plane on its maiden world tour. However, we did not expect the shocking events of Wednesday: the murder of Dmitri Seferis. Nor did we expect some other revelations, which have only just become apparent in the past few hours.

‘We don’t really know the full details of what has been going on, but some very disturbing information has come our way. We are deeply indebted to Mr Wong here, and his assistant Ms McQuinnie, for their work in uncovering some very unexpected and deeply worrying information. As you know, Mr Seferis was brutally murdered on this aircraft two days ago. A man,
an intruder, was apprehended almost immediately afterwards. He has been charged with murder. But it has emerged that the obvious conclusion was not the correct one in this case. I will hand the floor to Mr Wong at this point.’

‘Floor? Not mike?’ the feng shui master said.

‘Yes. You have the mike. We just call it the floor. It’s just… well…what we say.’

Wong blew into the microphone to see that it was working before he started to speak.

‘Someone killed Mr Seferis. That person wanted everyone to think it was Mr Barker who kill him. But it was not. A small group of people came up with a plan. This is how we think they did it. First, one member contact Mr Barker and said she could arrange for him to get on board Skyparc so that he could cause some trouble at a partic’lar time. He is a activist and like to cause trouble. Second, one member of this group moved Mr Seferis’s desk on the plane, so that his back faced the seventeenth window. Third, one member of this group switched off the cameras that would have recorded scenes of the back staircase leading to the lower deck, where Mr Seferis’s room was. Fourth, one member of the group join the engineering team as a window seal expert, and removes outer covering from window panel, and takes out one rivet. He places barrel of gun through small hole. He uses a small-bore pistol to shoot Mr Seferis and kill him, shooting from outside the plane. He fire four shots. He then tell everyone he had seen Mr Barker shoot Mr Seferis.’

There was silence at the beginning of Wong’s address, but soon it was punctuated by sharp intakes of breath. Now people were starting to whisper animatedly to each other.

‘Plan very clever,’ the feng shui master continued. ‘They had eye-witness evidence that Mr Barker had got into hangar just
before the murder. They had video of him getting into plane. They had eyewitness who claims he saw him do the shooting. They had many people who said they heard the shooting. They had a video of him leaving plane after the shooting. But really he had nothing to do with it. He went on to the upper deck of the plane to cause trouble in a small way. He did not even go downstair at any time. He heard shooting and decide to leave. What is clear is that these bad people want him lock up for the rest of his life and they organise way of achieving that. The mystery is why they want Mr Seferis dead. After all, he was not a activist, but one of the people oppose to the activists. He was oil company executive, and had been one for many year.’

Joyce rose to her feet and took Wong’s microphone. ‘The theory I’ve got is that Mr Seferis had come to realise that all this stuff about global warming was true. He was showing signs of shifting to the other side. Or he was a double agent—a greenie who had penetrated the executive level of a big oil company. Or something like that. We don’t really have any evidence for this. But he was listening to
Biscuit Dunked in Death
by The Rogerers just before he died, you know, aha!’ The audience looked uncomprehendingly at her, not understanding the reference she was making.

Wong took the microphone back. ‘If it is true that Seferis is on greenies’ side, the plan very clever. The gang can get rid of two enemy with one shot. They get rid of Mr Seferis by arranging for him to be killed. They get rid of Mr Barker by arranging for him to be blamed for Mr Seferis’s death. Mr Jackson mention a group of dirty player called Darkheart. We believe this could be Darkheart project. Now I need to sleep.’

There was stunned silence at this. And then Janet Moore at the back started clapping. And so did Oscar Jackson. And so did Sir Nicholas Handey. And so did everyone in the room.

Sir Nicholas rose to his feet. ‘Mr Wong, Ms McQuinnie, we’d like to thank you for uncovering this deception. As an initial token of our thanks, we’d like to offer you something. May I give you the keys to the presidential suite? I think you’ll find the four-poster beds in that apartment very comfortable indeed. Normally, no one is allowed in there. But in honour of your achievement, I think it behoves us to reward you in that way.’