‘It ain’t first class,’ said Drexler.
‘Is this for people who are naughty?’
‘Exactly right,’ the security chief explained. ‘Welcome to the jailhouse. Normally, if you get someone rowdy and out of control on a flight, we strap them into their chairs and leave them where they are. But this is no fun for people sitting around them. On Skyparc, though, we have our very own little prison built in. We call this room Alcatraz.’
‘Do you have a judge and jury as well, to see if they are guilty?’
‘Nah. Planes are cities in themselves, with their own laws—really, I’m not joking. We have a lot of laws that don’t apply to the ground. It’s because of the safety angle. We are allowed to restrain people, even sedate them. All that would be illegal down on the ground.’
‘How do you sedate them?’
‘Actually, we won’t usually need to. Ninety per cent of the problems on planes are caused by alcohol. It might drive them wild for a while, sitting in here, but then they will collapse and fall asleep. If not, we have a gentle dose of sleeping gas built into the chamber—in case we need it.’ He pointed to a small canister, attached high up on the wall, well out of reach of anyone strapped to a chair.
‘Turn this on and the room will fill with gas. They will sleep off the rest of the flight, whether they want to or not. Now come and see my aforementioned secret chamber,’ Drexler said as he twirled an imaginary moustache like a B-movie baddie.
Twenty metres down the corridor, they went through a small door into a sunken room filled with monitors. Drexler flicked a switch and a screen showed a bird’s eye view of a larger room containing desks and a chalked outline of a man.
‘There: the scene of the crime.’
‘Jackson said you might be able to print some photos out for me. Can you?’
‘Sure: anything for you,’ he said as he sent the images to print.
‘How come you didn’t film the murder?’
‘When the plane is empty, we just have the cameras showing the doors and the staircases on.’
‘Can you zoom in on the victim’s desk a bit?’
‘Yeah. He was a pretty messy bugger.’
‘He didn’t know that he was going to attract all this attention. Hey. Weird.’
‘What?’
‘Look: that CD box.’
‘A lot of people listen to CDs while they’re working.’
‘Yeah, but you know what that is, don’t you? That red cover—it’s unmistakable.’
‘Don’t care much for modern music, to tell the truth.’
‘That’s Biscuit Dunked in Death by The Rogerers.’
‘Any good?’
‘Good? It’s brilliant. It’s the album of the year. Maybe the decade. You have to get it. You can hear mine if you like—I have it on my iPod. But…’
‘What?’
‘It’s kinda weird that he’s got it.’
‘You think oil company executives don’t have good taste in music?’
‘It’s not that. It’s just that—well, the lead singer is Stongo, you know? Stongo is a mad keen global warming activist? He’s always in those concerts for climate change, and he even dedicated the album to “good guy scientists trying to stop us poisoning the planet”. It’s not the sort of thing you’d expect an oil company man to like.’
‘Maybe he was studying the enemy’s tactics.’
‘Yeah. I guess that would make sense.’
Drexler moved his chair closer, so that he was sitting uncomfortably near to her. She could feel his warm, slightly alcoholic breath on her shoulder. He placed his hand casually on her thigh. ‘I keep some drinks in here. I have my own special brew. You like Red Bull?’
‘Sure. But—’
‘You’ll love my special brew. It’s like Red Bull to the max. Gives you a real zing.’
‘I gotta go,’ she said. ‘See my boss. Do some work.’
‘Don’t rush off,’ said Drexler, grabbing her arm. His hand was damp. ‘We got all the time in the world.’
‘Deadlines, deadlines,’ said Joyce, pulling away from him. She snatched the photos from his printer and rushed out the door.
Arriving back at their table in Food Street, Joyce was pleased to see both Wong and Jackson waiting for her. The geomancer had his fingers laced together.
‘How come you two both say you know that Paul not guilty? He look very guilty to me. No other suspect.’
‘He kind of told me,’ Joyce offered.
‘I thought he is not saying anything.’
‘He said it to me in a sort of code.’
Jackson stood up. ‘Okay, guys. Come with me. We’ll discuss this in my private office.’
He led them to what seemed to be the staff toilet. Joyce was surprised when he stopped there and pressed on the door.
‘We’ll wait here?’ she asked.
‘No. I want you to follow me.’
Wong explained: ‘There’s a secret room behind the toilet.’
‘You know?’ Jackson asked, his eyebrows rising.
The feng shui master nodded. ‘Of course. I spent six hours studying plane blueprints. Easy to spot secret rooms. I know every part of this plane.’
‘I thought this room was not shown on the plans?’
‘It is not shown on the plans. But the rooms around it are shown on the plans. Easy to spot missing section.’
Jackson entered the toilet, used a keycard to open a hidden door in the inner wall, and went into a private chamber. Wong and Joyce followed. They all sat down around a table in the room that was windowless but brightly lit.
Jackson tapped his fingers on the table. ‘Story time. Some years ago, the US military’s psychological warfare department started a new assignment, called RD 13c (i)77. These departments have existed on and off for many years. But in what came to be called Project 77, some very interesting work was done on the concept of subliminal messaging.’
Wong looked blank.
‘That’s when you show some conventional media to someone—movies, music, television, whatever. But hidden within the media are messages that work on the target at a subconscious level. It may be images or aural statements run at high speed, or it may be material shown at frequencies not normally detectable by our senses working at their normal levels. The curious thing about this project was that it was not aimed at the enemy. It was aimed at our own people. The idea was to combat what was seen as the spreading liberalism in the country, the leftism, the hedonism, the multiculturalism and so on.’
‘Sounds a bit right wing,’ said Joyce.
‘Very right wing,’ agreed Jackson. ‘This was the military, remember? They decided that it would be good if the American people were a tad more xenophobic than they were. Obviously, they couched it in positive language. They told their financiers that these programs were vital for ensuring homeland security, but in fact the main thinking behind it was to defend military budgets. If people felt worried about their homeland, military budgets would continue to rise forever more. Project 77 was a clever and innovative plan. It just had one flaw.’
‘Which was?’ Joyce asked.
‘It didn’t work.’
‘Ah. That must have sucked for them.’
‘It was really a problem of knowing what messages to send. If they sent pictures of death and violence, people got depressed and the fight went out of them. If they sent pictures of children and the American way of life, people felt sentimental and soft. Soldiers who were subjected to the stuff wanted to drop their guns and run home to spend time with their mums. There was no easy way to send a specific message that military expansion had to be encouraged as the only way to preserve the American way of life. They worked for months on getting suitable material. But, even then there were problems: individuals decoded the same images differently. Some people were softened by images of babies, while others were repulsed. Some people were cowed by messages of violence, while others were excited by them. The whole project was too unpredictable and produced such mix
ed reactions that it was eventually scrapped.
‘But one of the scientists working on it noticed one constant—pictures of families or similar loving relationships produced a uniform effect of peacefulness and positivity. Similarly, images, sounds or messages indicating green, rural landscapes produced calm, positive effects. This scientist fell in with some psychologists working on psychosomatic effects of emotion and the project quietly restarted—but this time it was in private hands, not the military’s. In other words, the project only worked really well when it was used to promote a simpler message, and one opposite of what the military wanted: a message that families, peace, love, and a clean, natural environment full of happy humans were good things.
‘To cut a long story short, some powerful and well-connected individuals who shared an interest in promoting peace took an interest in this work. Various private meetings were held, and a concept was born: Operation Nice was the nickname we used for it—sort of self-mocking, but that’s the kind of people who are involved. We could laugh at ourselves. The idea was to turn this subliminal campaign into a small, hard-to-detect virus and stick it in the places where it would do most good.’
‘On television?’
‘On television. At the movies. On mobile video—yes, all of these were discussed as dissemination routes. But there was a problem. However much good it might do, it was borderline illegal. It was possibly dangerous. And it was unpredictable. Everyone agreed it would be wrong to blast it out to the world in general. It seemed wiser to target only the people who needed to be targeted. To see if it could be a weapon that could calm the hawks who had taken over the world. So a very narrow target was chosen: business people in industries associated with global warming, the destruction of the environment, military spending, and so on. A program was designed—this is the brilliant bit—to spread the message as a virus and which then ran in the background on PowerPoint presentations. So while business executives all over the world were talking about profits and GDP growth and annual dividends, they were gently being subconsciously reminded of a different set of values. These were the people who needed to be reminded of the human and environmental cost of the profits they made.’
‘People like the senior executives of BM Dutch Petroleum?’
‘Exactly. Paul was one of our operatives. He told us that he had met someone who could get him onto Skyparc, where he could put the Operation Nice virus directly onto the computers on its Hong Kong stopover, just before a meeting at which the top leaders in aviation in Asia were treated to a PowerPoint slide show.’
‘I don’t get it. Are you really saying that they would watch these PowerPoint shows and want to cancel their projects?’
‘Oh no, it worked much more subtly than that. Typically, the first time someone sees a presentation of any sort containing an Operation Nice subliminal message, they get nothing out of it at all except perhaps a slight feeling that they should phone their families at coffee break. We’ve actually measured this result. On test runs, people at conferences do tend to go and phone their spouses or children. The second or third time you are subjected to these subliminal messages, then you might feel drawn to ask questions to the speaker about how human values and profit-centred business values could be brought closer together. Eventually—or so the plan is—business people will start to make decisions that favour humanity and the environment over and above paper profits. That’s the long-term aim.’
‘It’s an amazing project. If it works.’
‘We don’t really know how well it will work, or whether it will work at all. It makes people more emotional, tugs at their heartstrings a bit—that much is sure. Above and beyond that, we’re not sure whether it would really change the way the world worked. But we decided it was worth trying. The world has become steadily more dangerous over the past decade. Someone had to do something. So we greenlighted it. The Nice virus is being rolled out around the world this week. It’s really a matter of seeing what happens. The results will not be obvious or dramatic, but should, hopefully, make a difference over the next few months or years. Interestingly, it coincides with a massive rise in the number of women in power, which we think will also have a similarly positive effect on the way the world works. Take the United Kingdom or the States for example. Twenty-five, thirty years ago, less than forty per cent of people going to university were female. Now the figure is fifty-seven per cent and climbing. Similar figures can be found in most developed countries. And there have never been more women in national leadership positions than there are at the moment. It’s no longer unimaginable that women will fill the most powerful presidential job-slots on the planet. This is all part of a quiet movement that could see the world becoming a gentler, less aggressive place.’
Joyce leaned back in her chair.
‘So that was what Paul was here for. He wasn’t here to kill anyone. He just wanted to doctor their computers. So how come he can’t tell the police that?’
‘He’s being loyal. Operation Nice has taken three years to put together. We’ve also been very successful indeed in keeping it under wraps. Paul is risking his own future to make sure that it stays secret. We owe him a tremendous debt.’
Wong, who had been sitting silently listening up till now, said: ‘But why did he go downstairs to shoot the other guy?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I’ve spent a lot of time with Paul over the past year, and that is something that doesn’t add up. I reckon Paul was somehow framed for the oil executive’s murder. I don’t know how. But I do know this: almost no work was done to find “the real killer”. Police assumed they had the right guy, and Paul was saying nothing, not even denying that he was the killer, and the airline company did not want more investigative work to be done anyway, so why bother taking it any further?’
An hour later, Wong was in the penthouse office of Sir Nicholas Handey, chairman of Skyparc Airside Enterprises. They had been talking about the business scene in China—or rather, the British aristocrat had been talking, and the geomancer had been half-listening, giving an occasional nod to be polite. Sir Nicholas explained that his people had calculated that between now and 2025 China alone would need some two thousand eight hundred large aircraft.
‘China is already the second biggest purchaser of aircraft, after the United States. It may well become the biggest before we know it. Do you know how much it costs to buy two thousand eight hundred large aircraft, Mr Wong? Well, I’ll tell you: upwards of three hundred billion Euro. That’s a considerable sum of money by any measure. Now there have been several statements by the Chinese government that they intend to finance a state-owned enterprise to build a Chinese large passenger aircraft. Are you familiar with such statements?’
Wong, realising that some sort of answer was expected of him, tilted his head to one side, narrowed his eyes and touched his nose, hoping that this would indicate some sort of sophisticated response.
‘You may well find such statements provocative. They certainly worry the bigwigs in Toulouse and Seattle,’ Sir Nicholas continued. ‘But they don’t worry me in the slightest. It has taken forty years for Airbus to have developed its family of super-jets. So I cannot see the Chinese producing anything significant until 2025 at the earliest. Furthermore, we are cementing relationships with the Chinese to ensure that they see us as partners. We’ve already started a programme of assembling the A320 short-haul jet in China. This will ramp up until we are rolling three or four A320s annually off the production line on the mainland by 2011.’
The feng shui master’s eyes drifted to the stunning panorama captured in the windows. For some reason, the view of clouds and mountain peaks seemed far more beautiful through a large, rectangular window than the normal, tiny oval ones of most planes. A shaft of sunlight entered the room, making its occupants blink.
‘I’ve always been lucky in business,’ the tall, white-haired business leader continued, gesturing at the window. ‘I always seem to end up in the office with the nice v
iew. It’s nice to be able to enjoy the same privilege in the air.’
Wong glanced out of the window and suddenly looked rattled, his eyes squinting and his mouth a twisted frown.
‘Is anything wrong, Mr Wong?’
‘This mountain has been moved.’
‘What?’
He pointed to a gleaming white peak sticking out of a sea of blue-white cloud. ‘This mountain has been moved. Before it was over there.’ He pointed to the other side of the plane.
‘It can’t have been moved. It’s probably just a different mountain. Or we’re taking a different route.’ Sir Nicholas leaned over and looked out of the rectangular window. ‘Oh, I see what’s happening. No need to worry, Mr Wong. We’re just taking the northern route over China, that’s all. I’ll check with the pilots if you want to know for sure.’
Wong continued to look agitated, so Sir Nicholas asked one of his staff to call the pilot to the room.
‘I think pilot will be busy, flying the plane,’ the geomancer said.
‘We have three, maybe four trained pilots on a flight like this,’ Sir Nicholas explained, smiling. ‘It’s not unsafe to ask him to leave the controls for a while.’
The pilot, a large Irishman named Captain Eamonn Turlough Daniel Malachy, arrived within a minute to fill them in on details of the altered route. ‘Orders from the MOD, sir,’ he explained. ‘Ministry of Defence. They asked us a couple of days ago to take this route. We cleared it with the relevant authorities, so there should be no problem at all.’
‘But why did the MOD want it changed?’
‘Nothing serious, I think, sir. They just thought there would be better security to fly this way, although it takes around ten per cent more time. There’s been a bit of unrest in some of the countries over which we would fly normally. Not enough to prompt us to change all our routes, but for this plane—a VIP plane carrying VIP passengers, if I may say so—we thought it best to take extra precautions.’
Sir Nicholas turned to the feng shui master. ‘Is that all right, Mr Wong? Nothing to worry about, just a technicality, it seems.’
Mr Wong Goes West Page 15