Hadley, page 18
“Why has Joe put you up to this?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“I see you are confused,” the man said. “I have been explaining to Mr Bond how I have to let you both die. Perhaps you would care to assure him that not even the mighty CIA can help.”
I tried to collect my thoughts. I remembered the phone call with Baxter. I remembered that the press was saying I had been taken hostage. I remembered the gas coming through the air-conditioner.
“Chris?”
“Oh dear. Perhaps, Mr Bond, you could explain what is happening. The tide, after all, is rising.”
Torment turned as far as he could towards me. “The thing is, Felix…”
“Felix?”
“Yes, Felix. You are Felix Leiter, are you not? My trusted friend and CIA agent who always turns up just in time to get me out of all kinds of trouble?” Then in a whisper out the side of his mouth: “Say yes, you bastard. You are Felix Leiter. I am James Bond. This is one of those fucking vampire people, I’m sure of it. He’s gone mad.”
“He hasn’t gone mad,” I said. “He’s just obeying orders.”
“My dear Mr Leiter,” the man began. I felt dizzy. “It would appear you are in urgent need of clarification which I am duty bound to provide.”
“I want my mum.”
“Obviously some sort of clever code, Mr Leiter, but it won’t help you now.”
“Nurse!”
“As I have explained to Mr Bond, I am about to leave the island but I am afraid it would not help my business interests if I were to allow you to follow.” The man, definitely one of the Pattinson people, checked his diver’s watch. “It is now 0700 hours. As the sun rises in the sky, it will catch the lens you see in the opening directly above your heads at such an angle, and in exactly seventy-two minutes from now, that beam will be magnified and focused into a laser-thin shaft of light which in turn will activate a solar cell. That cell will activate a switch mechanism which will send a signal down these wires to tell that computer…” Pattinson pointed at a box wedged in the eaves, “…to turn itself on.” I tried to catch Chris Torment’s eye. Planet Hula-hoop, I wanted to tell him, was in alignment with Planet Fruitcake. “Once the computer is activated, it will decode a pre-sent email which will instruct it to…” Pattinson paused.
“Is there any chance…”
“Silence, Mr Bond. The pre-sent email will instruct the computer… to make a beeping noise.” I could not stifle a yawn. “I hope I am not boring you, Mr Leiter.”
“Sorry. Please go on.”
“That noise will in turn activate the spring mechanism which will fire the crossbows aimed at your head.”
I found myself drumming my fingers on the sand. This was plainly ridiculous.
“I congratulate you, Largo. You seem to have all bases covered. May I ask one question?”
“Of course. Bear in mind, though, that it may be your last.”
“Above your head, within reaching distance, there is a jar of transparent liquid. Can I ask what that will do?”
“That, my dear Mr Leiter, is water. It is for drinking in case I get thirsty.”
“I see.”
“Can I say something?” said Torment.
“Of course, old Mr Bond. Bear in mind, though…”
“Yes, it may be my last thing I say, I know. But you didn’t tell, er, Felix that death may actually be slow.”
“My apologies, Mr Leiter. Mr Bond is correct. I am sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that we are in the boathouse. The boathouse is on the beach, a hundred yards nearer the sea than it was before. If you are still alive when the tide comes in, you will then surely drown.”
“Largo.”
“Yes, Mr Leiter?”
“Sun’s up. Shouldn’t vampires all be in their coffins by now?”
“It is certainly time for me to go.”
“Why have you done all this?” Torment asked. “Your acting is awful, by the way. You’ve got as much chance of becoming James Bond as…” He couldn’t think of a name.
Largo, aka Pattinson aka Bob the Builder as far as I knew, strapped on the air tanks and put on his mask. He climbed over the side of the speedboat and mumbled some final words which were unintelligible through the glass.
“Take the mask off,” I said. “We can’t hear you.”
“Take it off!” Torment added as though addressing a stripper. The man fumbled with the strap and took off the mask.
“I said I’m putting on a part. Just wanted to have some fun. Joe said you would like it.” He replaced the mask and left the boathouse, fastening the door behind him.
“Lunatic,” Torment shouted after him. “Where is Joe? Loser!” Another explosion rocked the boathouse, sending dust down from the beams as before. “I am never going on any mercy mission again. I’m never leaving England.”
“Do you think this mechanism of his really works?”
“His mechanism is a joke. There’s no mainstay for a start.”
“Mainstay. That’s a good word. You know about this sort of stuff then?”
Torment shrugged his shoulders as much as the manacles allowed. “I’m not completely stupid. The trigger to this device, if there is any device, seems to rely on the sun hitting that glass at a very precise angle. And a bomb has just shaken the whole structure.”
“That’s good. So we will just drown.”
“If he has moved the boathouse nearer the water as he said, then I suspect our hands and feet are pinned down to wood under the sand. He, or they, have had no time to lay cement and I don’t see and concrete weights. If the tide does come in, I suspect we will float.”
“We will float out to sea in the boathouse with this nice speedboat and not be able to move.”
“Hopefully someone will see us.”
“I am sure the Sri Lankan air force will see us. Then they can blow us out of the water. Maybe Joe will blow us out of the water.”
“The cup is always half empty for you, isn’t it, Hadley?”
“What are you talking about? There is no cup.”
“You got us into this bloody mess, you find a way out.”
“Joe got us into this mess. What about the lovely Linda? Won’t she be looking for you?”
“I’m feeling horny.”
“Totally inappropriate, given the circumstances. We are manacled to floor of a boathouse with crossbows pointed at our heads. The sun is rising. I reckon we have about half an hour left.”
There was a knock on the door. Torment and I shouted “help” in unison.
“Hello, can I come in?”
“Help!”
Whoever it was now was putting an arm to the door. Once, twice, then in he came, rocking all the optical equipment above my head. The jar of water fell and smashed on the prow of the speedboat. I had my eye, unblinking, on the crossbows.
“Hello there,” said another Robert Pattinson. “I have no idea what you are up to but it looks groovy. What are you looking at?”
The violence of the entrance had altered the tilt of the boathouse and a narrow, laser-like shaft of sunlight bore down on the solar panel. Torment and I could not take our eyes off the crossbows.
“Vampire man, whoever you are, turn off the computer!” Torment said.
“There’s no time to do anything!” I said.
“You mean that thing up there in the roof beams?” This was the second Pattinson. “I can’t reach it.”
“Turn the fucker off!”
“Perhaps if you had a step-ladder or…”
“It’s flashing a red light!”
“Is that some sort of a signal?”
“It’s making a clicking noise. Hit those crossbows! They’re aimed right at our heads!”
“Well, actually I have a key to unlock you.”
“Too late! Listen!”
The computer had logged itself on. It went: “Beep, beep, beep.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Torment said.
“Tell Maria I’m sorry!” I said.
“Hadley, I’m sorry too! Pattinson, tell Maria I’m sorry!”
“Why are you sorry?” I asked. “You said nothing happened.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the look-alike. “It seems the computer has turned itself off again.” We looked at the crossbows. All was still. The shaft of light had gone. “The red light has stopped flashing. Actually, I have a key to unlock you. But only if you’re ready. I can go away and come back if you like.”
“Quick, man, quick. Where did the key come from?”
“It was on the table in the house.”
“Along with a little bottle with a label that said ‘drink me’?”
“Are you thirsty, Hadley?”
“I am, Chris, as it happens, but actually that was a subtle cross-reference to ‘Alice in Wonderland’, which right now makes a lot more sense than any of this. Where is Joe?”
“He’s gone,” the look-alike said, as we rose unsteadily from the floor, stretching our arms and massaging our wrists. “Everyone has gone. Was this little game lots of fun? Joe said it would be lots of fun.”
The house was deserted, the outhouse was deserted. Everyone had vanished and the helicopter next to the house had gone. The DVDs had been cleared away, as had the sat-phone and the golf machine. All in a matter of hours. Chris Torment and I hitched a lift back to the mainland with the army.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BACK IN HONG KONG, Baxter took me to lunch at a Thai restaurant on the Wanchai strip. I could see the Rawhide Club over the road, shuttered in the shade. The only time I had been this way in daylight was after dawn, when the noise of the trams a block to the south drowned out the sound of expats. I did not call Maria. I had spent an hour composing an email to Baxter to explain what had happened but didn’t know what reaction I was going to get.
“Have you seen the papers today?” Baxter began.
“No. Just got up, to tell you the truth.”
“Have you heard about your movie being shelved?”
“Shelved?”
“We only did a short piece, but the newspapers have more.”
Baxter threw down a copy of the Hong Kong Express. I read:
The curtain went up on Act 3 of the comic drama surrounding the movie ‘I Love Hong Kong’ on Tuesday, when its exasperated director said its release had been pushed back indefinitely.
“What?”
For those unfamiliar with the story so far, Act 1 had a supposed attempt on the life of the leading actor, Chris Torment, by a Chinese-Sri Lankan separatist group that doesn’t exist.
Act 2 detailed the was-he-or-wasn’t-he-kidnapped drama in the Sri Lankan war zone amid rumours of strange, if not highly decadent, goings-on on the island of Macho.
Act 3 began with director Adolf Lee saying the release date had been put back for financial reasons, prompting speculation on whether it would be released at all.
“What reason did they give?” Baxter asked.
“Didn’t read that far.”
I read the caption under an unflattering picture of Adolf Lee with flailing arms.
“Someone appears out to get us,” it read.
I found the full quote in the story:
Lee said production was well under way, with the only filming left to do being that of the mist over the Peak now the humidity had arrived.
Then the phone call came from head office in Los Angeles, citing unspecified budgetary problems.
“We have been running under budget. I don’t understand,” Lee told the Express. “Someone appears to be out to get us. Everyone who has been involved with this, who has seen the rushes, has applauded it. It is a watershed for Chris Torment and Panda Koo.”
“This is Joe again,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure about anything. But he has the power. If Chris is as good as they say, then it all makes sense.”
Baxter studied the menu. “I don’t know if you have had time to read your emails, but the bosses in London are very grateful that you, how shall I put it, kept your head out there.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“They feel that Shrubs came out of this looking good, with many other agencies and papers picking up on the rumours and pictures. Even the Chen guy you managed to knock down as a story.
“But they did wonder if you could have made more of the sense of this guy holding you both against your will.”
“But we weren’t, Rodney. The source for that story, this guy Chen, was a stooge as you say. He was put up to the so-called assassination attempt.”
“Set up by Joe?”
“Yes.” I sat back in my chair.
“And we know next to nothing about Joe.”
I sighed. “I met him years ago, on my first paper, as I have said. The person who knows most about him is probably Panda Koo.”
“The Cantonese girl?”
“The actress, yes. She is under Joe’s direct control and will never say anything against him.”
“So tell me again. I have to get it clear for London: you say that this man, Joe Stein, is a big noise in the movie world, but that no one has really heard of him?”
“I am afraid so, yes.”
“No one can find his name or his company online.”
“Correct.”
“Yet he has been tracking you, on and off, since you first started out in this business.”
“It’s possible.”
“And his over-riding concern is stopping Chris Torment from becoming James Bond.”
I opened my palms on the table, as if to say: I know it sounds crazy, but that’s about it.
“So he re-introduces himself to you in Hong Kong, fills your head with lots of bad things about your school buddy…”
“He wasn’t my school buddy.”
“…and asks you to help ruin his reputation.”
“I made clear I wouldn’t do anything unethical. That’s as much as I had said when you sent me off to Sri Lanka with him, which, as it happens, came a day after he had suggested the idea to me.”
“I hope to God you’re not suggesting we’re involved in this little charade as well.”
“Of course not.”
“Let’s stay with what we know for now. I want to be able to write it down in chronological order. With bullet points. You go to Sri Lanka, to Jaffna.”
“Yes.”
“Then the brigadier takes you off in a helicopter, away from the press crew, with Torment.”
“He said it was Shrubs’s idea. It also made sense, as we were trying to track down the Chinese group.”
“Which doesn’t exist.”
“Exactly. Even the brigadier suspected as much.”
“I’ll come to that. Joe turns up at a hotel during a Robert Pattinson look-alike competition at another hotel, causes a lot of explosions, wrecks the hotel and whisks you and Torment off to another island.”
“I know it sounds implausible.”
“Don’t stop me, I’m on a roll. On the island, he tells Torment he wants to toughen him up to help him become the next Bond. Torment says terrific. Exit Torment to some sort of cell. Then stories start appearing saying Torment has been kidnapped, there are attempts on his life, then pictures arrive of Torment in some sort of automobile sex game…”
“No automobiles.”
“…You write a couple of stories saying he hasn’t been kidnapped and then you yourself get kidnapped…”
“Well, that’s debatable. I got tied down in a boathouse with Chris. It was a game. Joe had wanted me to write lies; to make out Chris was gay, or something like that, to smear him.”
“…and get tied up in a boat shed with a crossbow aimed at your head. Then…” Baxter paused for a drink of water. “…then one of these Robert Pattinson people turns up with a key to save you.”
“That’s true. A Robert Pattinson clone.”
“One of his clones. I see. And then a computer goes beep.”
“The computer went beep before we were saved.”
“But absolutely nothing happened. And perhaps the weirdest part of the story is that your chum Chris Torment can corroborate this.”
“Yes. Certainly the last bit.”
Baxter stared at me. First into my left eye, then my right.
“Shall we have a drink?”
“Sure.”
“A beer?”
“Thanks.”
“Waiter, a San Mig and a double Scotch.” Baxter turned back to me. “Barring the possibility that this is all a crock of shit, could it be that you may have stumbled on to a huge story?”
“It could. And I am the only one with it. But I’m not sure we could ever write it. Joe wouldn’t let us.”
“Could it also be that, before all these extraordinary things started to happen, you could have established that there was no such thing as the Chinese liberation group with the silly name?”
“We all tried. We had Chen; we had people talking about the group. We couldn’t just ignore them.”
“It was a hoax. There’s a learning curve here. About how not to fall for a hoax. If we have a drill, we must reinforce it. You can give a course. What has happened to Joe now? Is he in a secure asylum?”
“Again, we don’t know. He cleaned up thoroughly before he left. He had a helicopter on the island which had gone when we were released.”
“But we know what happened to Chen.”
“Afraid not.”
“No, I am telling you. We know what happened to him. All charges have been dropped. Not even done for wasting police time. He has powerful friends.”
“Obviously.”
“He was last seen heading to a restaurant down the road with a bunch of his mates. He was laughing at the time.”
“Laughing all the way to the banquet.”
“Nice.”
“I’ve used it before.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Baxter knocked his drink back in one. “The punter doesn’t know.”
BAXTER TOLD me to take a couple of weeks off. Shrubs had holiday homes dotted around the outlying islands for visiting executives. I was to take a psychological evaluation and could choose a retreat free of charge.
