The Purple Contract

by Robin Flett

  'I hope so,' Wedderman said. 'I hope so.'

  'For goodness sake, come down from there!'

  The reply was unintelligible.

  'Down here, now!' The warning came clearly through in the tone of voice. A slithering noise ensued and then the scrunch of gravel underfoot. Back on the concrete path and reluctantly trailing after his father, the young boy looked back with longing at the huge structure towering over his head. If it wasn't there for climbing, then what was it for?

  The Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre stands alongside the River Clyde, close to the city centre. An enormous building, it was constructed specifically to replace the ageing Kelvin Hall as Glasgow’s principal venue for indoor sporting events, exhibitions, Trade Shows and the like. Mike Hollis stopped on the footpath leading from the sprawling car-park and followed the boy's eyes upwards. The enormous derrick crane was painted in alternate red and white segments. By the look of it, it had spent many a year in the salt-laden environment of the North Sea, and had no doubt enjoyed an interesting existence. Certainly it was no longer usable for anything other than it's present purpose as an advertisement for the oil Expo. Maybe that was better, he supposed, than the scrapyard.

  Still clutching his ticket in his hand, Hollis stood in the entrance hallway before the large backlit screen displaying the list of exhibitors and their Stand numbers. Alongside it stood a multi-coloured plan map of the exhibition areas. It was no surprise to see that NorthTek had purchased a prime slot more or less in the centre of the maze.

  'Are you in the Trade, sir?' The casual rubberneckers turned up in open-neck shirts and sweaters. This one wore a business suit and was studying the list of exhibitors very intently. Just what she had been told to look for.

  'Yes, that's right.' Hollis smiled down at her, she was barely out of her teens and had an engagingly earnest expression. 'I'm hoping I might be able to pick up some business today.' He wondered what her reaction would be if she ever found out the nature of the business in question.

  'Oh.' The girl tugged her dark blue blazer straighter as an automatic reflex under the scrutiny of the grey eyes. 'I'd better give you one of these, then.' She handed him a plastic folder filled with leaflets, stickers, badges and other promotional material. 'Enjoy your visit to the S.E.C.'

  'Thank you.' Hollis watched the tight skirt bobbing away in search of further targets. The legs under it appeared to go on for ever. Smiling at himself he walked through the cavernous doorway leading to the main exhibition hall and disappeared into a solid wall of people.

  Wedderman drew a line through another entry and threw the pencil down in frustration. It was all very well the boss telling him to prune the list of potential targets but the responsibility was awesome. Suppose the real target was in fact this poor soul he had just removed from consideration. Hadn't he just signed this man's death warrant? Put him, if you like, into the cross-hairs in a telescopic sight? The realization brought sweat to his forehead and for a few seconds he wavered on the edge of erasing the pencil line again.

  'Get a grip, Frank. Get a bloody grip.' he muttered in annoyance. He wasn't enjoying this experience at all. Hell's bells, why couldn’t someone else have caught this one?

  'Sorry Frank, what was that?' The man at the adjacent desk looked up from his keyboard.

  'Nothing,' Wedderman sighed, frowning at the sunlight flooding in through the slatted window blinds and casting oddly-shaped shadows across his desk. Christ, he wished he could walk out of here and take the kids to the park for the afternoon. Just get up and go and hide somewhere quiet until the fuss died down and all this nonsense was forgotten and then––

  'Talkin' to yourself, Frank. They'll cart you off to the nuthouse if you keep it up you know!'

  'I should be so lucky!' Wedderman muttered grimly, picking up the pencil and starting again at the top of the first page.

  When he looked at his watch, Hollis was amazed to see that well over an hour had passed since his arrival. He had not yet finished a circuit of the outer ring of trade stands, backing up against the walls of the exhibition centre. It was all so damned interesting, that was where the trouble lay. Hollis was an intelligent and sophisticated man, with an inquiring mind that eagerly grasped at anything new––the more complicated the better. He knew from past experiences that he could spend hours browsing around in here, wandering from one stall to the next, playing with every gadget and tool. Even the less relevant stands had their fascinations: such as the one giving demonstrations of an ingenious multi-purpose utensil that could apparently replace every kitchen gadget short of the washing machine.

  His stomach was also making its presence felt. Breakfast had been a long time and many miles ago.

  That, at least, posed no problem, there were plenty fast-food stalls here. All of them doing a roaring trade to visitors and exhibitors alike. Standing in line at the nearest one, Hollis bought what these people fondly called a hamburger, and a paper cup of scalding hot coffee.

  While he ate, he finished the outer circuit and arrived back where he had started at the large entrance door. This was all very entertaining but it wasn't what he had come here for. He re-checked the position of the NorthTek stand on the display board and strode off purposefully through the crowd.

  You couldn't really miss it. Give them that.

  Hollis stood back as far as was feasible in the crowded hall and absorbed his first impressions of a major player in the oil industry. The large glitzy tricorn shaped display simply overflowed with TV screens, rotating coloured spotlights and laser-generated pulsating signs. Most of the TV monitors were running interactive computer controlled demos where visitors could explore the innards of drilling platforms and refineries in a virtual reality world. Needless to say these were more or less permanently occupied with a jostling pack of youngsters.

  Hollis wandered up and stood behind three teenagers who were totally engrossed in one of the monitor screens. A computer generated aerial view of an oil drilling rig rotated around the screen as the boys flew a simulated helicopter landing onto the fragile-looking steel-mesh helipad. Looked like fun.

  'I could play all day with that, but I can't get near it for the visitors!' The words eerily echoed his own thoughts.

  Hollis glanced round at the source of the voice. One of the company's representatives had come over, no doubt keeping an eye on the kids. He was a young man, early thirties with curly black hair and moustache, wearing the obligatory pinstripe suit. He stood with his hands behind his back and a half-smile on his face, eyeing the helicopter approach critically.

  'You should market it as a game, you'd make a fortune,' suggested Hollis.

  The rep grinned at him. 'We have thought of that, but it's not really our thing, is it?'

  'Suppose not. Keeping you busy I see.'

  'It's been going like a Fair all week, thank God we finish tomorrow!' His eyes were never still, roving around the stand, constantly checking. There were just two of his colleagues also on duty to cope with the constantly moving and shifting crowd. Better him than me, thought Hollis. Some of these kids would have the computers pulled from the consoles and out the door given half a chance.

  'You in this business?' He had spotted the intro pack Hollis was still carrying in one hand.

  ‘That’s right.’ They moved away from the screens under pressure of incoming bodies and found themselves standing beside a raised hexagonal-shaped display platform in the middle of the floor. 'Used to work with Shell in the Gulf of Mexico until the Mayaki Roo blew up one of the rigs.'

  'Jesus, you were on that one?'

  Hollis shrugged, making it up as he went along. 'I got lucky, I was on leave at the time. But three of my buddies were killed. After all the empty threats and sword rattling everybody thought they were just mouth. Then they took the rig out and it shook a lot of people up I can tell you that.'

  'I should think so.' The rep shivered, he had a good imagination and he could picture a similar scene out in the North Sea one winte
r's night … 'Bloody terrorists!'

  'Anyway, I thought things would be a bit safer in the UK so I moved over here and started freelancing.'

  'Difficult to get into sometimes.' The rep looked suitably sympathetic. Freelancers were customarily regarded with some suspicion as misfit troublemakers. Occasionally with just cause.

  'That's what I found all right.' Hollis was looking at the dull steel cylinder with a flattened bulge at one end lying on a polished wooden stand on top of the column. Finally it dawned on him what he was looking at. 'Is that––?'

  The rep nodded. 'That's the one. Doesn’t look much, does it? We thought we'd bring it along and let the folk have a look at it before it goes off to a glass case in the museum.'

  'Aren't you afraid someone will steal it?'

  The rep laughed. 'Not worth stealing. It's just the prototype, the one we worked the bugs out on. It doesn't bear much resemblance to the latest incarnation. Even the ultrasonic filter unit here in the base has been redesigned several times.' He lifted the thing off the stand and handed it to Hollis for inspection.

  The filtration unit was lighter than Hollis had expected from the look of it. It was a stainless steel tube about 50 centimeters in length. The bulbous box containing the filtration unit added another 15 centimeters and finished in a stub tube obviously intended to connect to other equipment or piping, although a cap had recently been fixed over it, presumably for display purposes. The longer tube, however, was still open at the end.

  'So there's nothing here that could be of use to a competitor, if that's what you were thinking.' The rep smiled at the small crowd that had gathered round them, listening to the conversation. 'The truth is it would have been junked if the Man hadn't come along wanting it for his museum.'

  'I suppose so,' said Hollis, trying to sound impressed. 'Good idea to put it in a museum, though, it must have been a milestone in this technology.' He handed the prototype unit to a young man standing next to him who was clearly itching to get his hands on it.

  'It was the beginning of this technology. This was the first successful attempt to produce an organic molecule filter by purely ultrasonic means. No moving parts at all, so nothing to wear out or need replacing, and therefore vastly improved efficiency and reduced costs for everybody concerned. You can see why it proved so popular.'

  'Sure.' They watched the young man rotate the object in his hands, studying it from all angles and finally looking down the long tube curiously. 'I suppose you're going to gold-plate it or something for the presentation,' commented Hollis cynically.

  'Heaven forbid!' The rep was horrified. 'He would certainly have our collective nuts off if we did that. The whole point is the historical significance of the thing as an artifact.' He shook his head. 'No, it will be presented just as you see it. No more, no less. Mind you, I suppose we'd better give it a rub with a cloth or something to get rid of all these plebeian fingerprints!'

  Hollis was careful to say nothing, but another piece of the jigsaw clicked into place in his mind. Prince Charles had never fully recovered from the debacle of his failed marriage and the world-wide media exposure that followed. Then he had made the even bigger mistake of trying to force acceptance of his mistress on the British people and arrogantly ignoring their universal disapproval. Had some of these same citizens decided enough was enough? It wouldn't, after all, be the first time a British monarch had lost his or her head after having incurred the wrath of the serfs.

  Respect, he thought. Take away the respect that screens their appallingly privileged lifestyle, and tolerance quickly follows. At that point you’re just a few pounds of pressure on a trigger away from a revolution …

  The filter unit was being passed around the crowd, each person inspecting it eagerly now that they knew what the darned thing was. A display card beside the wooden stand gave the details clearly––but who ever bothered to read the labels?

  Hollis became aware that the rep was holding something else out to him. 'If you're interested, this brochure will tell you all about the filter, "from conception to contraption" as our engineering manager says. It concludes with a preview of the presentation in Lyness in August. Some nice photos in there too.'

  Hollis flicked through the glossy booklet, expensively produced and liberally sprinkled with colour photographs. Two of the teenagers had tired of the helicopter simulator and were now tapping the filter unit experimentally, looking at it curiously from all angles. Hollis watched the taller of the pair close one eye and squint down the mysterious tube.

  ‘Thanks, that's great.'

  The rep nodded. 'No charge, if there's anything else you need just give me a shout.'

  'Right.' Hollis eased out of the crowd, who were now animatedly talking amongst themselves. The filter was still doing the rounds, and regardless of his comments about the pointlessness of thievery, the rep was keeping close track of it. And quite right, Hollis thought wryly. How would he explain to his bosses, never mind Prince Charles, if he mislaid it at this point?

  A middle aged woman and her husband now had possession of the device. She hefted it in her hands, almost dropping it and making some comment Hollis could not hear, presumably about the weight. Both of them in turn looked down the protruding tube and laughed.

  Mike Hollis went cold with shock.

  He moved further back, until he came up against the inner wall of the tricorn section, and stood in dumbfounded silence. His mind reeling with what he had seen, and the idea that had swamped him like a searchlight. He stood like that for many minutes, unnoticed or ignored by the moving crush of people coming and going. He watched the filter unit pass from hand to hand, from person to person. And most of them, not all, but most of them looked down the long tube curiously. Hollis swallowed, trying to get some saliva back into his dry mouth. Human nature.

  It was human nature to question, to search for knowledge and investigate the world around them. To look inquiringly into the dark and wonder what was in there. So it was when you gave someone an unknown cylindrical object to look at. Sure as God made little green apples most would look down the inside just in case they might discover the end of the rainbow. Maybe they expected to see an express train coming out of there.

  Or a bullet.

  Would Charles do the same when it was handed to him during the presentation? Would his mind be occupied with other things, or would human nature make him stare into the dark opening just like all the ordinary folk surrounding Hollis here in this exhibition?

  Hollis dragged the brochure out of his pocket and checked it more thoroughly this time. Sure enough, there was a full spec sheet included giving dimensions, weight, materials etc. Even the thickness of the stainless steel plate used to form the casing. Some good close up photographs too. Hollis carefully inspected those for detail and clarity––damn, why hadn't he thought to bring a camera! He produced a pen from his inside jacket pocket and drew a quick but accurate sketch on a blank space on one of the brochures. Drawing the stub end as it appeared now, with it's welded cap cover.

  By the time he had finished the crowd had dispersed and the prototype filter was back on its stand. Hollis carefully checked it again, this time looking for machining marks or other blemishes––anything not mentioned in the advertising brochure. Fortunately the rep was busy on some distance away. He may have been puzzled at the sight of a visitor frantically scribbling down notes on the back page of his company's cherished literature.

  That done, Hollis waited for a vacant computer terminal and moved in quickly to the empty place. NorthTek's Lyness operation had only recently been opened, and sure enough it was included in the Virtual Reality walk-round tour. The wonders of modern technology were conspiring to change the course of history.

  ‘Gotcha,' he muttered.

  Forty minutes later he crossed the busy car park to the Range Rover, ignoring the light rain which had begun to fall. Slumped in the driver's seat, he began carefully drawing a sketch map of offices, workshops and corridors into a spiral boun
d notebook.

  'Korak Mintushi?'

  'I think that's how you pronounce it.'

  'What is it?'

  'Who, sir. Japanese rock singer or something, I gather. He'll be over here in June to be presented with a Gold Disk by his record company.’ Wedderman slid the file across the desk. ‘A million sales of a CD called––'

  'I don't give a hoot what it's called.' Chief Inspector William Durrant grimaced at the photograph attached to the document. 'Are you seriously telling me that this bloody pop-singer is in danger of his life?'

  'There have been threats.' Wedderman confirmed. 'It seems he's connected through family to the bunch of fanatics that released nerve gas into the Tokyo subway some years ago. Some of the victims have powerful relatives, and blood feuds have been a way of life in Japan for centuries.'

  'All right.' Durrant sighed and laid the papers aside and took up another set. 'Yes, now this one is a prime candidate, sure enough.' The plump smiling face of Senator Jeffrey Villiken of Montana looked cheerfully out of the photograph.

  'Probably first choice right now.' Wedderman agreed. 'The Republican politician most hated by the "black vote". Hated even more by the North Koreans after publicly humiliating them on numerous occasions on civil rights issues––which isn’t exactly difficult.'

  'He’s not over-popular here either, after telling the PM on live television that the UK has become a parasite on the back of world economics!’

  'And a bit later, told him to stop being a Euro-sucker and remember his historical allies!' Wedderman chuckled. The Senator from Montana was world-famous for his outspoken, forthright views. Frequently expressed in the most public manner possible. 'He seems to genuinely enjoy insulting people.'

  'He certainly believes in calling a spade a fucking shovel. Tact is not his strong point.' Durrant heaved another sigh. 'All right, we’ll pencil him in at number one for the moment, what else have you got?'