NEW JERSEY – 13 APRIL
‘Goddamn it,’ cursed Takar el Sayden as he slammed his fist into the metal up-and-over door on his double garage. He pressed the button on his Lexus key fob and the electric motor whirred into life and the large door began its slow journey upwards. As it passed eye level, Takar noticed three dents in the door caused by the gold rings on his right fist. Everything had been going so well. And now, his world had been turned upside down.
The call to his cell phone had come at about ten the night before. He had instantly recognised the low calm voice as belonging to the man who had hijacked him in his car a few days ago. The stranger was going to call to his office at the Quick ’n’ Tasty production facility tomorrow morning at half nine. He was to follow the man’s instructions and no harm would come to his family. He had an impulse to call the cops, but he dismissed the idea as madness. He knew exactly the calibre of people he was dealing with. The cops could never protect his wife and kids here in New York – let alone his parents and family in Tripoli. His proud uncle, Abdel Moamer, had probably tried to face down these bastards and been mercilessly shot. Takar el Sayden slid onto the cream leather seat of the Lexus and the engine purred into life. As he drove down the driveway, he waved to his two girls, Farah and Jasmin, who were already out playing on the swings.
‘Bye, Daddy, love you,’ they called and blew kisses. He blew kisses back through the open window.
Goddamn. Goddamn.
The silver RX accelerated smoothly into the New Jersey morning traffic. For once Takar didn’t turn on the radio. He needed to think.
The new Quick ’n’ Tasty production facility was in a 1980s industrial park near Newark airport and Takar was very proud of it. He’d taken over this business with just six restaurants in Manhattan, all down near the financial district. His menu of home-cooked chicken, lamb, pizza, pastas and salads had been an instant success. He’d found himself meeting a growing demand for good-quality food, freshly cooked and served quickly. He soon realised that New Yorkers didn’t like waiting around for anything. He got upset when people described his restaurants as ‘fast food’. He liked to call it ‘quick service’. He was even more upset when McDonald’s, Burger King and all the rest also abandoned the ‘fast food’ tag and began calling themselves the ‘quick service’ industry. No matter, because, whatever he called it, Takar el Sayden had the formula just right, as testified by the long lines of hungry customers for his tables and at his takeaway counters.
With the financial backing of his father in Libya, he had opened a seventh restaurant on Pie Street. A month later, he opened two more restaurants on Wall Street and then things really took off. Quick ’n’ Tasty restaurants spread rapidly through Manhattan and Takar el Sayden and Tasha worked twelve-hour days and often longer in the early years. As the chain mushroomed, the cash rolled in.
The other big step forward had been in 1994. They were at sixty or so restaurants and each restaurant was preparing its own food each day, in its own kitchen. Takar knew that this was inefficient – the whole process of each restaurant ordering in its own supplies as they needed them was a logistical nightmare and his accounts department was overwhelmed trying to handle all the different suppliers. Takar and Tasha knew they had to centralise production and minimise the number of suppliers to strengthen their buying power, and then to deliver to each restaurant from a central depot. He remembered the day well, 10 June 1994. He’d spotted an advert in the real estate section of The New York Times – a big pizza making company out by Newark had gone bust and a liquidator had been appointed. The advert read:
liquidators sale
Modernised food production facility approx. 100,000 sq. ft.
On three-acre site. Full inventory of one-year old food production equipment.
price $14m.
Wow, he thought. It’s too big, we can’t afford it. But we gotta have a look.
Tasha went with him and it blew them away. It had everything they would ever need, from cooking equipment and utensils to huge stainless-steel machines for preparing meat, commercial peelers and ovens. There were vats for blending sauces, cheeses, you name it. Almost for the hell of it, they had offered nine million dollars. He couldn’t believe it when the liquidator had come back to say they had a deal. That June, 1994, New York was in a state of distraction – the Rangers had just won the Stanley Cup, the soccer World Cup Finals and the World Gay Games were both on in Manhattan and O.J. Simpson had just been arrested. With the summer vacation looming, the bank wasn’t going to let a cash deal slip through its fingers. He was in business.
The Newark facility had proved a huge success. The more restaurants Takar could open, the more food he produced. Most of the production happened overnight and the delivery vans went out with the food from about 5 a.m. They invested in a computerised system that connected the production facility to every one of the restaurants. Every time a till rang up a sale of a chicken breast and fries, a salad, or a sandwich, the system registered the sale on the inventory back at base. Each night the computer calculated and printed out instructions on exactly how much food needed to be delivered to each restaurant, and when. Takar el Sayden loved that production facility and he took great pride from walking around it, watching all the food being prepared. The party they threw when they got to one hundred restaurants went on for three days. Then, because the vans were travelling to Manhattan from Newark, it made sense to open some restaurants along the way in New Jersey, and that success had prompted their expansion out into the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. Today, two hundred and fifty-two outlets – bigger in the region than KFC, Wendy’s and Taco Bell and gaining fast on Subway, McD’s and Burger King. Fifteen years of creating the American dream and now this damn stranger was screwing with his life.
He pulled into the car park at ten to nine and was soon at his desk in his modest office on the first floor. There were two green chairs for visitors and the walls were covered with framed food industry awards and pictures of Takar’s family. He was nervously drinking his second cup of coffee when his secretary buzzed to say he had a visitor – ‘A Mr Ali.’
‘Send him up, please,’ said Takar, noticing that his voice nearly cracked.
The door opened and Takar instantly recognised the same man who had appeared in his car the other day – the middle-eastern appearance, the thin black moustache and those pock marks on his face. He was carrying a large briefcase and he offered a polite smile but no handshake as he sat down. Takar was glad. He didn’t want to shake hands with this man.
‘Good morning, Takar,’ said Ibrahim Fallah.
‘Look, what the hell is this all about?’ Takar whispered, spinning the rings on his fingers around in circles, one by one.
‘Relax, my friend,’ said Fallah.
‘I’m not your friend,’ Takar hissed through clenched teeth.
‘True, Takar, true, but it is better that you do not become my enemy.’
Takar fell silent.
‘Again, I assure you that no harm will come to you or your family, if you follow my instructions.’
Takar nodded slowly.
‘Your business has been a great success and it is about to go from strength to strength. As I said, you will be rebranding your restaurants as BurgerFantastic.’
Takar flinched. He couldn’t have thought of a worse name.
‘A bank account has been opened in your name, using your passport, at the Bank of America branch at 1109 Wall Street.’
Fallah handed over four pieces of paper from his briefcase. One was a copy of the photograph page from his passport. Jesus, how the hell had he got that? The next two were copies of his home electricity and gas bills. For chrissakes! He felt the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. The fourth was a copy of a bank statement in his name. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw that there was only one entry – a deposit, made two days ago, of twenty million dollars. What the hell was going on?
Fallah spoke again, quietly and calmly. ‘There will be a bit of change to your daily routine, but in two years or so everything will return to normal. Remember, my superiors are simply conducting an experiment. They want to see how many burgers you can sell. The more you sell, the better things will go for you.’
Fallah held his gaze and Takar nodded again.
‘And, we will make it easy for you because we are giving you as much money as you need to market your new brand of burgers. And you are to sell them cheaply, to help your sales. You can keep all the money that you take in.’
Fallah took another bound A4 document from the briefcase and pushed it across the desk.
‘This is your marketing strategy. You are to visit the offices of Dynamic Communications at Broadway and West 43rd – Times Square. The contact details are on the back. Call them in advance. Ask for Victor Dezner or Katie Keller. The brief explains the launch of BurgerFantastic, where your outlets are, your pricing policy, low price deals, promotional offers, super-size deals – the whole lot. As you know, your target consumer wants good-quality produce served fast. You are simply continuing to target your usual market: office workers, parents who are too busy to cook a home meal, younger people looking for a tasty lunch. Tell the agency you want to launch in six weeks. They’ll bitch and moan but tell them you have a two-year budget of a hundred million dollars and that if they can’t help you, you’re going straight to Saatchi & Saatchi. They’ll do it.’
Takar nodded again and stayed silent.
‘Pay them everything they need from your new account,’ Fallah said. ‘When it starts to run short, let me know. I’ll be coming here to see you every week – same time.’
Christ, this is like a bad dream.
‘The only other thing you’ve got to do,’ Fallah said, ‘is to continue to visit your production facility here, every night, as I know you do anyway. Every night, you must empty a bag of this powder into each vat of the sauce that goes on the burgers. Do it before the sauce is blended, to make sure it is mixed through.’ He took a clear plastic bag of white powder from the briefcase and put it on the desk. ‘If anyone asks, you can say it’s a secret ingredient – just like McDonald’s, eh?’ Fallah raised an eyebrow and looked almost amused.
‘Yeah – just like McDonald’s,’ said Takar tersely. Allah, what is going on?
‘I will bring you these bags every week,’ said Fallah. ‘As soon as it is time to start. I assure you, it is harmless.’ He pulled open the top of the bag, put his finger in and scooped out a thin line of powder. He ran his tongue along his finger and took the powder into his mouth. ‘Try some,’ he offered, holding the bag out.
Takar poked his finger in, crooked it around some of the powder and dropped it on to his tongue. It was tasteless.
‘Every night, without fail, one bag in each vat of sauce.’
Takar nodded sullenly.
‘And, in two years, I disappear, you never see me again and life goes back to normal.’ Fallah opened the briefcase again. He slid a brown A4 envelope on to the desk.
‘Go and meet the marketing consultants and I will see you here next week. Thank you for your time.’
Fallah stood and, as he went out the door, he paused, looked back at Takar and said, ‘The weather here is much better than in Tripoli.’
Then he disappeared.
Takar turned the envelope over in his hands. He hesitated, then opened it and pulled out a set of black and white 8x6 photographs. The first three were of his girls, Farah and Jasmin, at a birthday party in a friend’s garden. The next three were of his father, mother, sister and brother. They were sitting around a circular table, outside a restaurant, which he recognised. They were all laughing as his father blew out candles on a cake. It was his father’s birthday yesterday. The umbrella over the table was up to protect the party from the rain.
‘Bastard,’ whispered Takar as a shiver accelerated down his spine.