Mr Wong Goes West (21 page)

‘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 view. 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.’

Wong still looked unhappy. ‘I was told this was the route,’ he said, pulling out a scribbled diagram from his bag. Attached was a map from the inflight magazine.

‘That’s the normal route,’ agreed Captain Malachy. ‘But we’ve just changed it a bit. We still get from the same A to the same B.’

‘Does the route matter? Surely the destination is the key thing?’ Sir Nicholas asked.

‘Every person has directions which are lucky at some times and unlucky at some times. This plane…it is good luck for this plane to travel east or southeast, but bad luck to travel northeast.’

‘But sometimes you just have to go from A to B, Mr Wong, and there are no choices.’

‘There are always choices.’

‘What if your clients move office from north to southeast, and that is a bad direction for them on that date? You don’t expect them to abandon their new office and buy another one in a good luck direction, do you?’

‘I will not ask them to do that. But I will ask them to make their journey a bit longer so that they arrive from the right direction. Sometimes I send them right out of town, many mile, and then they come into town from a different place. If their good luck is ensured by them arriving from the southwest, I will tell them to leave their office and travel due south, and then approach their new office from the luckiest direction.’

‘I see. Well, it doesn’t look like there’s much we can do about it now. The decision has been made, and you can’t really change these things once you are in the air—unless of course there’s a major emergency of some kind. How bad is the bad luck?’

‘Pretty bad,’ said Wong. ‘
Shar
number five.’

‘Well, this may be a good test of just how valid feng shui is,’ put in Captain Malachy. ‘If we have a safe journey, it may be a black mark for you, Mr Wong.’

‘That means the odds are very much in our favour,’ said Sir Nicholas. ‘Accidents are thankfully rare. But I do want to make sure you feel comfortable. Is there anything you can do to alleviate the bad luck?’ he added, hoping to mollify the feng shui master.

‘I try,’ said Wong. ‘I walk round a bit and take a look.’

In the days of the Early Sung, a Prince who was heir to a throne approached a wise man who lived in a cave.

‘I want to learn how to be the greatest of kings,’ said the Prince. ‘Which kings should I visit and what gifts shall I bring them?’

‘Visit no kings,’ said the wise man. ‘Get rid of your rich robes, fine crown and expensive sword. Dress as a poor man and visit each of the Nine Kingdoms carrying only a crust of bread.’

So he did.

In each of the kingdoms, he was treated badly, except for the ninth one, where all were treated equally. When he returned home and took the throne, he declared that the laws be rewritten so that they protected people who had neither land nor money.

He said: ‘When we look after the rights of the least, we look after the rights of us all.’

Blade of Grass, the only way to protect the rights of a community is to protect the rights of the individual.

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by CF Wong.

Joyce was walking along the corridor as fast as she decorously could when she encountered a familiar face: the helmet-haired, impeccably dressed Kaitlyn MacKenzie. The Queen’s soon-to-be newest employee made no sign of recognising Joyce, but allowed her eyes to drift across her and move on. This sort of behaviour always annoyed Joyce, so she made a point of stopping, turning and catching her attention.

‘Hey! Hi, Kaitlyn. Remember me?’

She stared.

‘We met like, yesterday?’

‘Oh, yes, hi, uh…’

‘Jo. Enjoying the flight?’

‘It’s all right. I’ve seen it all before.’

‘How’s your new job? I haven’t seen much of Robbie Manks. Where’s he sitting?’

‘He’s with me. We’re in the Leopard Lounge, on the top deck. With a young man you’d probably like to meet.’

‘And who might that be?’

‘Oh, just a member of the royal family. Not that we are supposed to talk about it.’

Joyce knew that this was the moment to make a glib joke but was struck dumb. A member of the royal family! A young man. A young
man
. Could it be? Was there the slightest chance that it could actually be…? There was no choice: she had to ask.