Vice-President Borkin lay on the floor of room 202a of the Coca-Cola tower and watched the comings and goings through the main doors of the Corporate Headquarters just across the plaza.
It was a smallish office, much smaller and more spartan than her own, and she thought she kept hers fairly bare. Here, there were no pot plants, family photographs or personal knick-knacks, any of the individual stuff that made an office feel like home.
John Gregor, whose office it was, was on a long wild goose chase around the building, thanks to some inventive storytelling.
Her powerful binoculars brought the reception area so close that she felt she could reach out and touch it.
A few advertising agency types entered and waited at the reception desk until whisked away by someone from marketing. A few staffers left, heading out for what she couldn’t imagine, unless they had appointments outside. They certainly weren’t stepping out for coffee and bagels, as the best cafeteria in the whole of downtown Atlanta was situated on the top floor of the building she was lying in.
The carpet, which felt luxuriantly soft when you were in the usual position, i.e. standing on it, was starting to get spiky and scratchy against the skin of her elbows.
A tall man, head and shoulders above those around him, got out of a large white van and ducked his head as he walked through the doors of the building, three or four hangers-on hanging on around him. He turned in her direction for a moment and, in the crystal disc of the binoculars, she recognised him as a basketballer they were signing up for an endorsement package.
The van pulled away, but was almost immediately replaced by another, this time with the distinctive purple and red logo of FedEx in large letters on the side.
The driver collected a package from the side door of the van, before sprinting up the steps into the building. Why did couriers sprint everywhere? she idly wondered, but then a sudden movement within the building interrupted her thought.
A dark-suited shape emerged from around a corner and intercepted the courier on his way to the front desk. It was a man, that much she could see, although his face was obscured by one of the floor to ceiling transparencies of Coca-Cola employees. The idea, known as the Glass Quilt, had started off as a temporary morale booster, but had proved so popular they kept bringing it back, with different staff members and different stories.
Right now it was standing in the way of identifying the person responsible for a whole lot of grief, and she wished they’d never thought of it.
The man in the suit signed for the package and turned to head back towards the elevators. Just at that moment he moved away from the giant photograph and his face was clearly visible, clearly identifiable in the focus of her glasses.
Strange, she thought to herself, I never would have suspected him at all.
Three thousand miles away, Fizzer, Tupai and Dennis met a delightful young lady named Kate Fogarty in an Italian bakehouse across the street from a huge, glass-fronted office block which housed Corker Cola Aust. Pty Ltd.
The aroma of fresh bread and cappuccino coffee wound around them as she sat down at the small, wrought iron, marble-topped table by the window, smoothing her long straight hair behind an ear with a casual and well-practised gesture. Outside, the sun had just risen past the side of the Corker Cola building and the early morning rays were washing the table in a rich honey glow. It was a peaceful tranquil morning, with no hint of the dangers that lay ahead.
Kate, she explained, had been Harry Truman’s personal assistant at Coca-Cola Amatil in New Zealand, and they had got on well, but she had wanted to move upwards, not to remain a PA for the rest of her life, and he had encouraged her to complete a Marketing/Communications degree part-time. Now she was a rising executive in Coca-Cola Amatil in Australia.
She had plenty of good things to say about her former boss, and Fizzer felt Harry was right to trust her.
‘I bought the three cellphones,’ she said. ‘They’re connected and working; I’ve tested them. The hired car you asked for is parked on the street outside, it’s a silver Commodore, you can’t miss it.’ She held out the cellphones and car keys.
‘And here’s the cash you asked for.’ She handed over a plain white envelope.
Fizzer took it and glanced briefly inside. ‘Crikey,’ he said. ‘There must be a couple of thousand dollars in here. I only asked for five hundred, in case we needed to pay for taxis, or accommodation or anything.’
Kate shrugged. ‘That’s what he sent.’ She looked curiously at the two boys. ‘He seems to think very highly of you both.’
Fizzer smiled to cover a small feeling of embarrassment. It seemed that quite a few people were putting a lot of stock in him and Tupai. He hoped they were going to be able to live up to it.
Kate rose from the small table. ‘I’ve got to get to work. Harry doesn’t want me to be late today; he said it was essential that I do nothing out of the ordinary. But he wouldn’t tell me why.’
She waited for a moment and, when no explanation was forthcoming, said, ‘But I expect I’ll find out all about it in due course.’
After she was gone, Fizzer rose and said, ‘Time for Daniel to enter the lions’ den.’
Tupai nodded and pushed his chair back. Dennis said, ‘I’ll go and find the car.’
They quickly discovered that the huge street frontage and the great Corker Cola sign on the building was just a façade. It was a real office block all right, and it was full of offices, but very few of them belonged to Corker Cola. There were lawyers, accountants, a large firm of civil engineers, a lifestyle investment company and an insurance broker to name a few. Corker Cola, it seemed, paid for just half of the fifth floor, plus the naming rights to the building, which made the company seem to be much larger than it really was.
Whoever designed the atrium had gone in for potted plants in a big way. It was part entrance way and part jungle, with ferns, trees and shrubs arranged in clumps, even a small stream ran underneath plastic floor panels.
Fizzer was nervous, although he tried hard not to show it. They were walking into a nest of vipers for all he knew, but someone had to do something, and there really wasn’t anybody else.
A brass panel by the lift gave the names of all the firms and their floors and there were a lot of them, so it took a couple of moments to search through and find Corker Cola. Satisfied, they returned to the entrance way and took seats on a long vinyl sofa in fashionable shades of dark blue and burgundy. A rack of magazines stretched along the side of the sofa, and Fizzer picked up a copy of Time.
‘What now?’ Tupai asked, idly leafing through a National Geographic. It had an article on the lost-and-found-again Incan city of Macchu Picha, perched high on a mountain top in Peru, and he showed the photo to Fizzer.
‘Wait.’
‘What for?’
‘I’m not sure. But anyone who is going into or out of Corker Cola has to pass through this entrance. So we wait. And watch. And listen.’
Tupai shook his head. ‘We can’t just sit here and hope that a clue is going to fall over us. We have to do something.’
Fizzer turned his head slowly to look at his friend. ‘You could be right. But let’s give this a try first. I have a strange feeling that we are right where we need to be.’
Tupai raised an eyebrow for a moment, before nodding and sinking back into his National Geographic.
People came, people went. Tall people, short people, thin people, fat people, young people, old people, and a range of ethnic varieties that you would never have seen in one place in New Zealand. Sydney was a great melting pot.
The morning passed. So did two more copies of National Geographic, a Sports Illustrated, a Newsweek, and even an Australian Women’s Weekly, which promised an interesting exposé on the British Royal Family, but turned out to be just a rehash of several stories that had been on the news a few months ago.
Eventually, by rooting around through the piles of old magazines, Tupai found a fairly recent issue of Pro-Boxing and that kept him happy through till lunchtime, when Dennis brought over a couple of rolls from the Italian bakery.
Fizzer didn’t turn a page. He’d opened it to an article on the US President and that was the page it stayed at the entire time they were there. Fizzer focussed. He made himself aware of the room, every tiny facet of it.
He breathed deeply and recited some meditation phrases under his breath until his breathing slowed and his heart rate began to drop. Then he started to ‘pick up’ the room. First the walls and the polished marble tiles, the rotating glass door. Then the furniture, every piece, its position, its fabric and construction. The plants, the way the leaves moved in the light breeze when the main door turned, the twisting of the trunks. The position of every leaf on every branch on every plant. The arrangement of the bark that covered the base of their pots.
Once he had picked up the room he was able to discard it, aware of it, but only in the background, like the sound of his own breathing, or his heartbeat. By becoming aware of the room he was able to eliminate it.
Then he started concentrating on sound and movement. Their view was towards the lifts and the centre of the room. No-one could exit without being seen by him.
He concentrated. He focussed his perception. He concentrated on the low hum of the air-conditioning until he became fully aware of it and was able to send it to the background and eliminate it from his consciousness. He saw all the people coming and going, he heard them, heard the low conversations about mundane topics, the day-to-day trivia of people on their way to and from work and business meetings.
He could hear the breathing of people as they entered, hear the sound of their watches ticking, the rustle of their clothing. He observed the angle of their heads, the way they held their hands, the young lady, barely pregnant, nervously twisting her wedding ring, the smooth young entrepreneur in the suit that belonged to somebody else, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together as if he had just picked his nose.
He felt the disturbed air of their passage and discerned the mixture of sweat, shaving lotions and perfumes, cheap and expensive, which wafted past.
He listened to snatches of conversation, waiting for a key word that would let him latch on to one of the conspirators. ‘… told you she was a little poison piglet who …’, ‘… and he emailed it to his supervisor, not realising that she was her aunt …’, ‘… OK then, I’ll meet you at the …’
He didn’t eat the roll that Dennis brought, and he ‘picked up’ the sounds of Tupai eating his, so that he could eliminate them from the universe that surrounded him in the spacious well-foliaged atrium.