The Real Thing (2 page)

The second reason he was worried was that the jet seemed to be flying in the wrong direction. Candy – the second wife, not the ferret – always said he had a good sense of direction. But that sense of direction said he was going the wrong way.

He was supposed to be flying to New Jersey for an important meeting with Maxim Portugale of Stepan Co., the people who imported the specially treated coca leaves that were used to produce the secret Coca-Cola formula.

Ralph Alderney Winkler (the First) was flying to the same meeting.

Both he and Bingham were flying from LA, where they had been at a conference of Important American Business Leaders (IABL), at roughly the same time, and there were three spare lounge chairs, plus a small soft sofa, on the Lear Jet. Yet Ralph Alderney Winkler was not flying with Bingham. He was on a commercial flight. First class of course, but still a step down for Mr Winkler, who was accustomed to only the utmost luxury at all times. A bit like Olivia (the wife not the ferret).

The reason was that Bingham and Ralph were two of only three people in the world who knew the secret formula to the world’s most popular soft drink: Coca-Cola. There was a scientist living in Okinawa off the coast of Japan who claimed he’d worked it out, but The Coca-Cola Company denied this, and the scientist had no way of proving his formula was correct.

The Coca-Cola Company has its own laws, commandments you could call them, and one of them is this: the three people who know the recipe at any one time are never allowed to travel together, whether it is by limousine, boat, helicopter, fast camel or Lear Jet. The reason is obvious. If some terrible accident occurred and all three were lost, then the secret formula of Coca-Cola, and countless millions of dollars of company profits, would be lost with them.

There was another Lear Jet that was supposed to have taken Ralph Winkler, but a fault had developed with one of its engines, so it had to go for a maintenance check and was unavailable for the flight.

Which was why Ralph Alderney Winkler was sitting in a first class seat, on a Boeing 727, probably no more than a few kilometres from Bingham Statham in his soft leather lounge chair in the cabin of the Lear.

The third person with knowledge of the recipe was Ms Clara Fogsworth, an elderly spinsterish lady with gold-rimmed glasses and a heart to match, who was currently fly-fishing in the Bahamas.

Spinsterish she may have been, but a spinster she was not. She had buried one husband and still led a very active and exciting life despite her advancing years.

But back to Bingham, Bing, we should call him because we know him so well by now that we are almost friends.

He alternated worrying about Olivia, the surviving ferret, with worrying about why the plane was heading sou’west, instead of sou’east.

The pilot had been in to see him before take-off, as was considered polite, and he seemed a nice enough young man. Not one of the pilots that Bing recognised, but then there were a lot of them, and they changed quite regularly, so he didn’t know all of them by sight, not by any means.

After a while, though, the worry about the plane started to take over from the worry about the ferret, and he unbuckled his seat belt and wandered carefully forward to the closed cockpit door. It was locked, which was a little unusual, so he knocked.

There was no answer, so he rapped a little louder. Still no response. So he called out, ‘Hello. Excuse me, pilot.’

Still nothing. As he made his way back to his seat, the thought slowly crossed his mind that maybe he had been kidnapped.

Ms Clara Fogsworth knew she had been kidnapped. There was no doubt in her mind. Either that or she was on her way to a very unusual surprise birthday party. However, it wasn’t her birthday, and, even if it was, she doubted she would have been roughed up to the degree that she had been by the two thugs who had greeted her as she walked off the boat.

‘Roughed up’ is a relative term, which means different things to different people.

To Clara Fogsworth, the stern hand on her upper arm that had steered her firmly, but courteously, towards a waiting black van, had been the roughest treatment she had experienced in her life. Unforgivable, she thought. How could they?

How could he?!! she thought, with a double exclamation mark.

He being Mr Joseph Sturdee, a handsome, athletic man she had been dating for about three months. He was young too, only fifty-five, with the most devilish grin which made her go quite weak at the knees. Of his involvement in the kidnapping she had no doubt: he had led her straight into the hands, the
rough
hands, of the thugs.

That raised the horrible possibility of the whole three-month long romance being nothing but a set up. Ms Clara Fogsworth didn’t like to think about that too much though, because the whole affair had been quite a boost to her ego. He was, after all, a tall, handsome and
younger
man.

But, nevertheless, here she was, with her hands now tied in front of her with one of those dreadful, cheap plastic ties they use to tie up plants, sitting in the back of a black van with no windows, speeding to some unknown place somewhere in the Bahamas.

Rough treatment indeed!

In New Jersey, not all that much later, Ralph Winkler eased himself into the back of a long, black limousine. Not as comfortable as usual he thought, looking with disdain at the plain cloth upholstery. After having to endure first class service on the flight from LA, he really felt he should at least have had suede or leather seating in the limousine.

‘You’re from Stepan Co.?’ he asked the large man who squeezed in beside him, intending to complain.

The man nodded, but he can’t have been, or he wouldn’t have pulled that canvas bag down over Ralph Alderney Winkler’s head.

Fizzer was into Eastern Mysticism, and that’s how he got through those next two weeks. His dad said it was just a phase, the Eastern Mysticism, and he was probably right, but, true or not, Fizzer threw himself whole-heartedly into his meditation, yoga and martial arts training to take his mind off the catastrophe.

And it really was a catastrophe. It might seem like a small thing, getting a brand of soft drink wrong but it brought Fizzer’s world crashing down around his tastebuds. Everything he believed in, everything he told others about focus and perception and training, it was all gone. Just because he couldn’t tell one can of cola from another.

They’d gone back to the corner dairy and bought another can of Coke, except Fizzer said that it wasn’t Coke either. Mr Lim, the dairy owner, wouldn’t have a bar of that though. He said he just sold the stuff, he didn’t put it in the cans, and he didn’t care too much because Fizzer kept buying another can, taking one sip, and saying, ‘That’s not Coke either.’

As long as he kept paying for the cans, it was fine by Mr Lim.

Fizzer’s friends all rallied around and tried to support him as best they could, because he was their buddy, he was their mate, and they knew he was really distressed.

Jenny even joined Fizzer’s karate school, or dojo as they called it. She said it was for self-defence, and that was true, but, just as much, it was about simply being a friend. For some reason Jenny felt a bit guilty about what had happened, although it wasn’t her fault at all. It wasn’t even Phil’s fault.

Flea joined up at the karate dojo too, but he had reasons of his own. Flea used to go out with Jenny before Phil did, and he never totally got over her. Once Flea and Jenny had joined the dojo, Phil had to as well, just to keep an eye on Jenny and Flea. Which only went to show that he didn’t know Jenny half as well as he thought he did.

Tupai went along to watch a few times, although karate wasn’t really his scene. He much preferred boxing and hoped to be a professional boxer one day. They even tried to talk Jason into going along but he kept making excuses and avoiding it. He wasn’t much good at sports, Jason.

It was a Wednesday, seven-thirty-ish, and Tupai was sitting on the floor beside the padded mats of the dojo watching a bojutsu lesson.

CRACK!
The training bo smacked down on Fizzer’s padded helmet with a noise that sounded like his skull had been broken wide open. It wasn’t; it was just the noise the training bo made.

A bo is a big long stick. King Arthur would have called it a stave or a staff, and it was a common English weapon in the early days. But the big difference between the Japanese martial art of bojutsu and English staff-fighting is in the moves. The English just used to whack each other around a bit, if you believe those old Robin Hood films. But the Japanese had turned it into an art form.

The difference between a fighting bo and a training bo, is that the training bo has bamboo shafts attached loosely down each side. When you hit your (heavily padded) opponent, the bamboo smacks against the side of the bo and makes that cracking sound.

CRACK!
The upswing of the bo crashed up under Fizzer’s arm, knocking his own bo from his grasp.

Dennis Cray, the instructor, took off his helmet and bowed to Fizzer, who bowed back before retrieving his bo and scurrying to the side of the mat, where he sat with his legs crossed like the rest of the bojutsu class.

Dennis was the teacher, the Sensei of the dojo, and possibly the toughest man alive. He was a fourth dan black belt in karate, Okinawan Goju-Ryu style, an expert in bojutsu. He held a private pilot’s licence, and spent the rest of his time mountain climbing, caving, scuba diving, and he even combined the lot in a really dangerous sport called black-water diving, where he dived in underground lakes and rivers.

Dennis was due to go to Japan in a few weeks to attempt the 100 man kumite. That’s a karate event where you have to fight 100 opponents one after the other, and beat at least half of them. Very few New Zealanders have even attempted it, and only one or two have succeeded.

Fizzer had been learning bojutsu for months, but it was the first time for the others. They all seemed to enjoy it, especially Flea. Even Tupai found himself wondering what it would be like to swing that big stick around his shoulders and under his arms with the incredible speed and precision that Dennis did it. Maybe he would give it a go, he thought. Maybe next month.