The Chemical Reaction

by Fiona Erskine

  Here was an opportunity too good to miss.

  Time to go over Nicola’s head.

  Shingbo, China

  The modern tower block was unremarkable from the outside, but the interior decoration of the Shingbo hotel was anything but subtle. Jaq counted twelve chandeliers between the entrance lobby and lift. The two in her room cast a diffuse light onto the striped carpet, gilt dado rails, heavy dark furniture and fake fur throw covering the emperor-sized bed.

  The translator, Lai Lang, had been waiting in the lobby when she arrived, and assisted her with the check-in. A slight young man with a broad smile, he spoke excellent English. Dinner, he informed her, was booked for 6 p.m. in the same hotel, the head of the Shingbo Development Corporation evidently unable to wait for their scheduled meeting tomorrow.

  She spent the afternoon trying not to fret. How was she going to survive an intimate dinner with the very agency she’d been sent to hoodwink? What if they asked questions she was unable to answer? How soon would it be before they spotted that she was a fraud? Twigged that her motives went beyond the stated brief? Why had she agreed to do this? How had she got herself into this mess?

  She needn’t have worried. Mr Smiles, her translator, had failed to mention that dinner would involve a large number of people. As she entered the banquet hall at the appointed time, sixty men, and a handful of women, turned and bowed to her. The translator guided her to a circular table that seated twelve. Business cards were exchanged, and she was seated between the head of the development corporation and the deputy mayor of Shingbo.

  A waiter approached.

  ‘Do you drink alcohol?’ Mr Smiles asked.

  Jaq hesitated. There were times when it was easier to pretend she didn’t touch the stuff, especially when she needed her wits about her. Women in Asia could generally get away with refusing to drink; it was more difficult for men in a business setting, unless they invoked religious beliefs. But she sensed it might be a long and tedious night, and right now, she could really use a drink.

  ‘What do you recommend?’

  ‘I’d avoid the liquor, Moutai, it’s pretty strong. Wine?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  The waiter poured a splash of dark liquid into a large wine glass. Was she meant to taste it first? She looked around, but he had retreated with the bottle.

  The deputy mayor clinked his glass with hers and proposed a toast.

  ‘Zūnjìng de kèrén, huānyíng,’ he bellowed.

  The translator spoke more softly. ‘Honoured guest, welcome.’

  The plump man in the Chinese tunic continued to declaim, barely pausing to allow Mr Smiles to translate.

  ‘Welcome to our new industrial park, welcome to the seven hundred and sixty square kilometres of reclaimed land, to the seven new bridges, to the fifty-eight kilometres of new road, to the housing for one hundred thousand people. We welcome you from the bottom of our hearts and we hope that you prosper!’

  ‘I am delighted to be here,’ Jaq replied. ‘Thank you for the invitation.’

  Mr Smiles spoke for a few minutes. So much for Mandarin being a concise language.

  Ganbei!

  Bottoms up. Jaq copied the others and drained her glass, trying not to grimace at the sour taste of the liquid billed as wine, suddenly grateful that the serving was so small.

  ‘What did you say?’ she whispered.

  He coloured slightly. ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Something along the lines of, “it is an honour to visit your magnificent industrial park. I admire the effort that has gone into reclaiming the land from the treacherous estuary. I am impressed by the supreme skill of the engineers in designing and building the new bridges and roads and houses. Truly this is an enterprise of great merit”.’

  Jaq grinned. ‘Spot on.’

  An army of waiters brought silver platters heaped with delicacies, placing them on a rotating glass disc in the centre of the table. The deputy mayor leaned over and placed an iridescent wobbling lump of translucent putty onto her dish.

  ‘What is it?’ she whispered to Mr Smiles.

  ‘Jellyfish.’

  She suppressed a shudder as she tried to get her chopsticks to work, pushing the slithering raw mess into a cave under the raw vegetables that the Inward Investment Director was merrily piling onto her plate.

  Her glass was refilled, and it continued to replenish itself after each toast, the welcomes becoming more elaborate as each member of the deputy mayor’s team stepped forward to salute her.

  Ganbei!

  Although Jaq had a strong constitution, by the time the deputy mayor came to make the most important toast, she was feeling a little light-headed.

  ‘We welcome the beautiful big engineer to our industrial park. She has skin like a peach and hair like silk. We hope that she has good sense as well as height, and will not ask the questions that have no answers. That way, she will leave us as big and healthy as when she arrived,’ he said.

  Ganbei!

  Jaq stared at her smiling translator. Was that a threat? Or a challenge?

  She stood up.

  ‘Gentlemen, all questions have answers, whether we like them or not. I look forward to finding out more.’

  Mr Smiles translated.

  The assembled company smiled and clapped.

  Ganbei!

  ‘What did you say?’ she hissed.

  ‘Does it matter? They won’t remember a thing in the morning.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘“Gentlemen, you are as handsome as warriors, as strong as lions, as clever as scholars. I will take your advice in all matters, including which questions I should ask”.’

  ‘But it’s not what I said.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Enjoy the evening.’

  Enjoy was not the right word. Endure would be better. The banquet was about competitive humiliation. The food was not about pleasure, it was about who would be shamed first, who would be unable to overcome their natural revulsion as the dishes came around on the lazy Susan, who would gag and refuse. Dishes made from increasingly exotic animals, chosen for rarity rather than taste or tenderness. Dishes made with increasingly unusual body parts: feet, beaks, genitals, entrails, tentacles. Usually raw.

  At least some skill had gone into the presentation of the food. Sculpted vegetables adorned the tray of greasy testicles; sprays of wild flowers framed the plate of chicken feet. The drinking games were a cruder licence to bully.

  The man on her left was trying to toast one of the younger functionaries. Both men were already drunk, but the younger man was attempting to refuse more alcohol. A cry of scorn rose around the room, and men began thumping the table.

  Ganbei! Ganbei! Ganbei!

  The young man blushed and drained his drink in a single gulp.

  Ganbei!

  The moment he sat down, the next member of the mayor’s entourage approached him, demanding a toast. One after another descended on him. Now that they had identified the weakling, he became the victim. The pack scented a kill. A blood sport, appropriate entertainment for the collective state of inebriety. When he was carried out unconscious, the uproarious laughter guaranteed that he would be selected for similar treatment at future banquets, until he could get himself moved to some new post or had expired from cirrhosis of the liver.

  Jaq was longing to escape. ‘When can I leave?’

  ‘I’ll say you are tired. But first you need to return the toasts.’

  ‘I can’t face any more of that wine. Can I try the rice spirit?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He summoned a waiter, who brought a thimble and filled it from a glass jug. The clear liquid was oily and thick; it smelt of vomit, but tasted sweet. And packed a punch.

  ‘How strong is this? Like whisky?’

  ‘Stronger. Ready?’

  ‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’

  With her smiling translator’s help, Jaq toasted each of the dignitaries at her table in turn. As she moved from
one to the next, the waiter filled her small glass.

  Ganbei!

  She suspected she would regret it in the morning.

  The smartly dressed driver was already waiting in the lobby when Jaq dragged herself down for breakfast. Was she late? Had she slept in? She couldn’t remember the instructions from the night before. And now something was hammering in her head so loud she couldn’t hear herself think. She skipped breakfast and followed the driver. The car took them out of town, stopping at the Inward Investment Development Office. Mr Smiles was waiting.

  ‘Good Morning, Dr Silver. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Very well,’ she replied, although she wasn’t sure it was, strictly speaking, sleep. More like an alcohol-induced coma. She certainly didn’t feel rested. Everything ached. Nothing that a litre of water and a couple of paracetamol wouldn’t fix.

  The translator led her up a curving flight of stairs to a palatial meeting room. Under a dozen chandeliers, a vast mahogany table stretched in all directions, decorated with alternating flower displays and pyramids of fruit. Trumpeting lilies and towering gladioli were interspersed between crescents of melon, discs of pineapple, giant strawberries and miniature plums. Or were they tomatoes? On the table in front of each carved mahogany chair stood a microphone, a glossy brochure, an anglepoise lamp and a teacup. She blinked at the bright light and attempted to suppress her nausea at the esters and terpenoids emanating from the ripe fruit.

  People filed in to take their seats. Some she remembered from last night. Additional participants, younger and with a more even gender distribution, sat on two rows of chairs between the table and the back wall. There must have been a hundred people in the room.

  After everyone was seated, the deputy mayor entered the room, flanked by the Director of Inward Investment. Tea was served to those at the top of the table. Jaq sipped it gratefully.

  After much fussing with cables, the video started, a lavish one-hour production with dramatic music and English subtitles. It was replete with details of the industrial park. Far too many details. Jaq might be an engineer, but she was not terribly interested in learning how many tonnes of concrete or metres of copper cable had gone into the park. She was more interested in visiting Krixo.

  Once the video had finished, the speeches began. Jaq barely listened to the translation. Every speech seemed to be repeating the numbers in the video. She tried not to wince each time the other participants in the room broke into ear-splitting applause.

  Swish, swish. At the softer noise behind her, Jaq turned to see a cleaner, face turned away, hunched over a rustic birch broom. She seemed to be sweeping the room mid-meeting. Jaq looked at the deputy mayor, in full flow now, half expecting him to wave the old woman away, but no one else seemed bothered by the interruption. Such menial staff must be invisible to the important men and women around the table, in the same way they ignored the two pretty attendants topping up the teacups every time anyone took a sip. Her thoughts were interrupted as the translator paused, staring at her expectantly. Clearly, she was supposed to say something in reply to his effusive welcome.

  She clicked the button underneath her microphone. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Mr Smiles made a long speech.

  The young man was good at his job, a cultural as much as a linguistic go-between. Whatever it was that he said was met with approval and a round of deafening applause.

  The chairman spoke again.

  ‘The committee would like to hear about your company and your potential project.’

  Damn you, Sophie Clark, for forcing this charade. Jaq cleared her throat.

  ‘I work for a company that is exploring an investment in China.’ She read from the spiel that Vikram had prepared, pausing to allow Mr Smiles to do his stuff. ‘We are particularly interested in the Special Economic Development Zone No. 2.’

  A quick exchange of glances, then a heated conversation began.

  Jaq tried to focus on the body language, but the noise of the old woman directly behind her, the swish-swish of her unnecessary broom, was strangely disconcerting. Perhaps because she seemed to be focusing on such a small area. Had Jaq spilled something? Stepped on something smelly that needed clearing up? Jaq glanced at the floor and lifted her feet to inspect the thick crêpe soles of her safety boots. All clean. Could it be because she was a foreigner? Preventative infection control?

  The chairman stood up and directed a burst of noise at her, more like machine-gun fire than his previous mellifluous oratory.

  ‘Zone No. 2 is full,’ Mr Smiles translated.

  Funny. It didn’t look exactly full yesterday. But perhaps the empty land was already reserved. That settled that, then. No future for Sophie’s expansion plans.

  Jaq shrugged. ‘But there is space in one of the other new zones?’ she asked.

  The chair beamed. ‘Of course.’ The incomprehensible language became softer again. ‘The committee would like to ask you some detailed questions about your project.’

  Here goes.

  ‘What is the turnover of your company?’

  Vikram had warned her about this. His little consultancy would appear puny in comparison to some of the giants in this zone.

  ‘I’m afraid that is confidential. It’s a private company.’

  ‘And the projected capital investment?’

  At least she had an answer for this one. ‘About ten million dollars.’

  A young woman tapped at a calculator and announced a number in renminbi to the assembled company. There was a general murmur. Excitement? Disappointment?

  She decided to ad-lib. ‘But with the long-term potential for ten times that figure.’

  They brightened visibly as this was translated.

  ‘How much land?’

  She looked at the brief and applied a factor of ten.

  Again, the crestfallen looks.

  ‘Initial or final?’

  ‘Initial,’ she lied, and they brightened up again.

  Jaq tried to concentrate as they explained the mechanisms for foreign investment, the cost of land and services and the legal framework. By the time they broke for lunch – a more intimate gathering of only fifty people – she was ravenous. Hungry enough to eat the bony fish in a cloying, sweet sauce, slices of chicken with skin and bone and entrails still attached, strawberries with salt and vinegar and a dessert of sugared tomatoes. She passed on the offer of rice – served last and only to those still hungry – feeling much better disposed.

  A Chinese man in a Western-style dark suit entered the room. Unusually tall, with a striking triangular face, he strode across the room as if he owned the place, a Bluetooth earpiece winking in his ear. As he stopped to whisper in the ear of the deputy mayor, the scent of star anise reached her nostrils.

  The deputy mayor bellowed something at Mr Smiles.

  Jaq watched closely as he translated. Conflicting emotions passed across his face.

  ‘Pang Mo made a detour on the way here, yesterday?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your driver.’

  ‘Yes, I asked the driver to go past the Krixo site.’ She pulled the brochure from her bag. ‘I have heard a lot about it.’

  Mr Smiles stuttered as he translated. A young man, barely out of university, he had not faltered until now. The deputy mayor appeared to bat his words away with abrupt hand gestures before barking back.

  ‘We have no Krixo site in the industrial park,’ Mr Smiles translated.

  Jaq held up Sophie’s brochure. Krixo was written in English on one cover and in Chinese characters on the other. She held it out towards him.

  He didn’t take it, didn’t even look at it.

  ‘You are mistaken,’ he said, smiling at her determinedly.

  The deputy mayor turned away.

  Jaq turned to her other neighbour, a portly young man. He reminded Jaq of a pink grapefruit, his skin rosy and pockmarked with large greasy pores. She handed him the Krixo brochure.

  His small eyes narrowed and he p
ursed his thick lips.

  The man in the dark suit grabbed the brochure from him and tucked it inside his suit jacket.

  ‘Be more careful,’ he said in perfect English before turning and walking away.

  ‘Hey, give me back . . .’

  Mr Smiles put a hand on her arm and whispered in her ear, ‘Leave it for now.’

  ‘Who the hell was that?’

  ‘Police. Best not to cross.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’ll try and find out what is going on.’

  Mr Smiles had not returned by the time the tour started. A new translator took his place, a sour-faced woman with English as precise as it was unimaginative. Not that there was much call for erudition, the litany of dates and numbers remorseless as they toured Zones 3 to 5. Jaq dutifully admired bridge pontoons and drainage ditches, river port foundations and tunnel excavations, asking a stream of trivial questions to keep herself awake as they toured half-built worker accommodation.

  ‘Tomorrow we will visit the technical school and new hospital.’

  ‘And some working factories? I’d be interested to speak to other tenants. Maybe one or two of the foreign joint ventures?’

  The woman conferred and then assented. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  At the end of the day, she was returned to the hotel. Another dinner was planned, but she excused herself, claiming pressure of work. Not entirely a lie; the UK would be waking up now and she had some calls to make.

  Mr Smiles was waiting for her in the hotel lobby.

  ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘Sure.’ She led him to the bar. They ordered soft drinks.

  ‘What is your connection with Krixo?’ he asked.

  She studied his face. Had he looked so pale and drawn this morning? She hadn’t been in a fit state to take any notice.

  ‘The company is headquartered in the UK, close to where I live.’ Not a word of a lie. ‘It’s very successful, could be a good model for our project here.’

  ‘But you are mistaken. There is no such company in Shingbo.’

  ‘You are mistaken. There is. I saw it.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not any longer.’