‘Er, yeah that’s me.’ The man had his grey top hat in one gloved hand; in the other was a note.
‘A young man was asking for you earlier, but he decided not to wait. He asked me to give you this.’ He handed the note to Patrick, who took it and then went to his pockets in search of a tip. He only had the red Hong Kong 100 dollar notes on him. The doorman saw this dilemma play out on Patrick’s face and smiled.
‘Do not worry.’
‘Later, I’ll …’
‘Of course.’
Eric Fung had wasted no time in taking Patrick up on his offer to talk, but it seemed odd that the kid would come all the way to his hotel just to leave a message. If he wanted a face-to-face conversation then surely here was as good a place as any? Patrick found an empty armchair, unfolded the note – a page ripped from a school exercise book – and read. In a neat hand, all capitals, Eric asked Patrick to come and meet him at the Lennon Wall. Eric would be there for the rest of the night, but he asked that Patrick come ‘as soon as practicable.’
How soon was practicable? His colleagues were in the bar, he wanted to call Rebecca, he also desperately needed a good night’s sleep. Not for the first time that day, for maybe the hundredth time that week, Patrick asked himself what William Carver would do.
There was a row of the distinctive red and white cabs on the street outside the Headland and Patrick took the first one. As he climbed in, he realised that he wasn’t sure where the Lennon Wall was. He didn’t need to know – his ruddy, round-faced driver was well aware.
‘John Lennon out of the Beatles. Imagine …’ He hummed a couple of bars of the anthem, grinning at Patrick in his rear-view mirror. ‘Students are making a wall, they are calling it for him. It’s at the Government offices.’
‘Right. That’s where I need to get to. Can you drive me there? Or near there?’
‘I try yes, but so much traffic. This protests are very bad, bad for reputation, bad for business.’
The cabbie got Patrick within a hundred yards and charged him 200 Hong Kong dollars to do it. Maybe the protests weren’t as bad for business as all that. Once out on the street, Patrick had simply to follow the crowd. He’d seen pictures of the Lennon Wall on social media, but they hadn’t done it justice. The paper mosaic already reached halfway up the concrete steps to the Central Government Complex and it was growing all the time. It was a rainbow of bought or homemade Post-it notes, each carrying a message of defiance, encouragement or hope. A mix of young activists and tourists were crowded around the wall, reading the messages and adding their own. Patrick read a few of the lemon yellow and dayglo pink notes near the foot of the wall.
Change always appears Impossible – until it is Done
Start where You Are. Use what You have. Do what You can!
He found himself briefly thankful that Carver wasn’t there with him. Many of the messages were the sort of banal motivational quotes he remembered seeing on student walls around exam time. If the content hadn’t pushed Carver over the edge then the random use of punctuation and capitalised text surely would.
It will not be Easy! But it will be Worth it
He wandered around and soon spotted Eric, deep in conversation with a group of students his age and even younger; these new recruits to Scholastic were listening intently as Eric Fung spoke, and nodding vigorously. Patrick wondered how old Eric was? Seventeen or eighteen at most – surely a little young for an oracle or the leader of any revolution worth the name? He waved a greeting, then walked off to read a few more of the messages and check out the crowd. He was annoyed at himself for not bringing his recording machine and collecting a few interviews; some of this audio could have been useful. He got his phone out instead and walked up and down the line, taping overheard conversations, the sound of people reading the messages in English and Cantonese. The quality wasn’t great but it could work as wild track. Eric caught up with him at the top of the concrete steps and they gazed down at the crowds, which were continuing to grow, despite it being almost nine p.m. now. The humidity had eased, but it was still warm and most people were in shirtsleeves. Eric pushed the thick glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
‘Our protest is becoming a tourist attraction.’
‘It certainly looks like it.’
‘I have even seen some Chinese tourists here, although they are being careful. They cover their faces.’ He pointed at a group of well-dressed Chinese sightseers, all wearing green surgical-style masks. ‘You see?’
‘I see. So they’re worried about facial recognition are they?’
‘Yes. They’re right to be worried, the Chinese authorities are getting better at that kind of thing all the time. Soon we will all be wearing masks.’
Patrick looked up to his left at a clump of CCTV cameras bolted to a thick grey metal pole, four or five cameras pointing in various directions. Eric shook his head. ‘We don’t have to worry about those cameras though. One of my comrades climbed up and sprayed black paint over the lenses last week.’
‘The authorities haven’t sent someone along to clean them?’
Eric shook his head. ‘Not yet, I’m sure they want to, but we are always here and we also have cameras. Policemen repairing their CCTV right next to the John Lennon Wall would get lots of YouTube hits I think.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Have you read the George Orwell book, 1984?’
Patrick made a vaguely comical sort of harrumphing sound. ‘What? Of course I’ve read it, I mean not for a while but, yes …’
‘I have read it several times now. He was English, like you.’
‘I know that George Orwell was English, Eric.’
Patrick was beginning to regret coming down here; it had been a long day and Eric was starting to annoy him. There was something unsettling about his direct way of asking questions, something almost accusatory although Patrick had done nothing wrong.
‘I came down here because you said you wanted something. So what is it? It’s been a long day.’
As thick-skinned as he was, Eric picked up on Patrick’s tone.
‘I apologise, I understand. It is just two things really, it was one thing but now it is two.’ Patrick tried to hide his impatience.
‘Right, so item one …’
‘Item one is your offer to talk about what you saw in Turkey, Egypt, Bahrain and all of the other places. We are particularly interested in communication. The different types of encryption that protestors use to talk to each other.’ Patrick noted the switch into first person plural.
‘We?’
‘Scholastic. And the wider movement.’
‘Right.’ Patrick already felt uncomfortable with the way this conversation was going. The plan was that Eric would be his contact and source of information – not the other way around. Having said that, he’d chosen a topic that Patrick was interested in, one that he’d thought a lot about. He had bored on about encryption to various colleagues and even to poor Rebecca often enough in the last few months. ‘Encryption’s a big subject Eric, it varies a lot from place to place.’
‘Okay, say in Turkey for instance?’
Patrick sighed.
‘In Turkey, everyone uses encryption apps on their phones now, at least everyone with any brains. At the beginning they were just using their regular mobiles and when you buy a mobile phone in Turkey you have to give them your national ID number.’
Eric shook his head as Patrick continued.
‘It was the easiest thing in the world for the authorities to work out who’d been at what demo. When and with who. At the start the students felt safe because of the numbers. There were tens of thousands of them and sure enough the police let them get on with it. The authorities waited until the odds were better. They monitored everything, collected the data and came back and picked off the protestors much later.’ He paused. ‘This is common knowledge though Eric, you can read about this.’
The young student nodded again.
‘Yes, I know. But what
sorts of encryption did they try? What were the names of the apps they used? Which ones worked? This is what we need to know about.’
‘Right.’ Patrick paused. ‘So I’m going to have to think about this Eric.’
‘I understand, but you do know about these things, you have seen them, heard them. Maybe you kept a diary?’
Patrick shook his head.
‘I don’t keep a diary. Not really.’ He watched as Eric removed his backpack, opened it and found a school exercise book.
‘I have made a list of questions for you, if you could look at them and see which ones you can answer for us? You can take these away with you.’ He pulled the middle pages out from underneath the staples. It was an extensive-looking list of questions, each one written in capital letters and numbered. Patrick turned the page.
‘Twenty-eight questions?’
‘Yes. These are the sorts of things we will need to know if we are going to succeed …’ He gave Patrick what was clearly meant to be an encouraging smile, but to him it seemed nothing short of patronising. ‘I’m sure that a lot of what you have seen can be helpful for us.’
Patrick folded the list up and put it in his jeans pocket.
‘I’ll have a read of these and I’ll think about it. I’ll do what I can.’
Eric held out his right hand and Patrick shook it.
‘Thank you.’ He paused. ‘I was reading some of the messages on the wall earlier and now I remember one message that I think is relevant – If you’re not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.’
Patrick nodded; his most pressing problem was that Eric was really starting to piss him off. Sanctimonious little—
‘Yeah, I’m familiar with that one too, thanks Eric …’ He tried to remember where it originated, the US Civil Rights movement maybe? He could look it up later. ‘I’ll have a think and maybe you message me tomorrow, or come by the hotel if you like.’
Eric shook his head.
‘I will message you. We can meet again back here, or somewhere else in the city. But not at your hotel.’
‘If you’re worried about the secret police then we can always meet in one of the bars, it’s too loud in there for anyone to …’ He stopped. Eric was shaking his head.
‘It’s not the Chinese police. We know who they are. Where they are.’
‘What then?’
A look of concern clouded the young man’s face.
‘This was the second thing … item two. The American newspaper reporter, the one who was at the demonstration with you, he is staying at the same hotel as you. I saw him.’
‘So what? There are loads of journalists staying there.’
‘He’s the reason I left. I do not trust him. He took a mobile phone.’
‘What?’
‘One of my comrades agreed to be interviewed by him, she was sitting down on the road, her phone was in a rucksack at her feet. She stood up to check some detail that he asked her to check with a colleague. After the interview was finished, she looked for her phone and it was gone.’
Patrick shrugged. ‘Anyone could have taken it.’
Eric shook his head.
‘She was surrounded by comrades. He was the only person there we did not know.’
‘Why would he want to take a phone? He’s an American news guy, he’s probably got at least two or three phones of his own.’
‘I don’t know. But he took it. Maybe he is an American news guy, as you say. But that isn’t all he is.’
Back in the Purple Bar at the Headland Hotel the drinks had clearly been flowing. Brandon was stretched out on a chaise longue waving a highball glass around in front of him as he spoke. Viv spotted Patrick, detached herself from the group and walked over – a little unsteady on her high heels.
‘Hey radio boy, where’d you disappear to?’
‘I had to go back down into the centre, the Lennon Wall.’
‘More interviews?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You work too hard.’ She pointed back at the gaggle of hacks. ‘We might be moving on soon too.’ Apparently Brandon was trying to persuade the group to catch a cab to Lan Kwai Fong. It was not an area that Patrick was familiar with; Viv filled him in. ‘It’s party central. He keeps going on about meeting Suzie Wong down in Lan Kwai Fong.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘She’s not an actual person. She’s some character in an old film that Brandon’s completely obsessed with.’
‘Are you gonna go along?’
‘Maybe …’ She glanced back at the group. ‘It depends what other people are doing.’
‘One person in particular.’
Viv’s look slid sidelong into his.
‘Yeah. But I’m not sure I’m making much progress in that direction. Colorado Dan seems more interested in talking about you than me. He kept asking where you’d gone to. He says you helped him out at the demo earlier.’
‘Not intentionally.’
‘He wants to buy you a drink.’
‘I dunno Viv, it’s been a long day.’
She took hold of Patrick’s arm.
‘Come on, be a pal. It might count in my favour if I can get you to come say hello. Just one drink, I swear.’
Patrick looked at his watch. He’d missed the chance to call Rebecca and one beer might cheer him up, take the edge off the day and he could make his own mind up about Dan: salt of the earth news guy or petty thief and who knew what else? He allowed himself to be pulled across the bar in the direction of the smiling American.
9 Well and Good
PUBLIC SQUARE HQ, CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA
Jags quickly realised that the good things that Elizabeth Curepipe wanted to do in Brochu were going to mean a whole load of aggravation for him. He listened as she laid it all out.
‘From what I read, it’s a pretty matriarchal set-up they’ve got going on down there.’ Jags shifted in his seat.
‘Well, it’s a mining town …’
‘I know that Brochu is a mining town, Jags …’ There was a flash of irritation in her voice. ‘That’s what makes it so interesting. You’ve got this macho industry – mining – but it looks like it’s the women who are running the place. I generalise, but you see what I mean?’ Jags stayed silent. Elizabeth didn’t understand. Brochu was a copper mining town, the mine was all it had and the vast majority of its menfolk worked in the mines. There were an average of thirty-five accidental deaths each year and if a mining accident didn’t kill you then disease would – few miners lived to see fifty. Brochu was matriarchal because the town’s men were either dead or dying. ‘So I want Public Square to make the most of the fact that we’ve got all these good, strong Chilean women down there. I want us to build on that.’ She smiled that smile. ‘I’ve put together a one-pager for you.’
Jags read the one-page summary carefully, word by word. He was only two paragraphs in when Fred piped up.
‘Looks good to me, Lizzie …’ He reached over and fed his copy to the shredder. ‘… really good.’ He smiled at his wife. ‘Ambitious, exciting, I vote yes.’ Jags didn’t get to vote on the new plan, he was just the sucker who had to put it into practice. He finished reading the summary.
Public Square would build a combined crèche, community centre and museum in Brochu. Elizabeth had identified an old farmhouse that was big enough and well-built enough and could be modified. Jags knew the place that she had in mind, it was overpriced but he could sort that. Her plan was to provide a crèche for the mineworkers’ children while turning the barn into a museum. This would tell the history of the region, it would celebrate the contribution that mining and thereby the Curepipe family had made to the area, it would also exhibit some of the many petroglyphs that had been found and dug up during the construction of the huge dam. Public Square currently had these ten-thousand-year-old rock paintings crated up and in storage in Santiago. This menagerie of llamas, pumas, two-headed lizards and flightless birds would be given back to the people of Brochu. The wh
ole project would be staffed by local people, properly paid.
The difference between this new approach and the way Jags had been running things – under Fred’s instruction and ever-watchful eye – was the difference between black and white, but Fred appeared unbothered. He chose his battles carefully when it came to Elizabeth and he clearly wasn’t interested in fighting this one. Jags finished reading and turned over, in case there was any better news on the other side. There wasn’t. He could feel Elizabeth’s eyes on him.
‘You know Brochu better than anyone Jags …’ Any of the three people in this room was what she meant. ‘So what d’you think of the plan? Do you think it can work?’
‘I guess.’
Elizabeth laughed.
‘That’s not the most wholehearted endorsement I’ve ever had, Jags.’
‘It can work. With enough time and the right people then yes, it can work.’
‘Fabulous, let’s fast track it then. Fred will okay any funding you need. Did you tell him about London yet?’ Fred shook his head. ‘I need to be in London next week for a few meetings, some interesting stuff, a new partnership I’ve been working on. And I’m giving a speech about my dad. My little team is all coming along, but I’d like you around too. If that’s possible?’
Jags nodded. He hated her little team just as much as everyone on it loathed him.
‘It’d be a pleasure.’
‘Have you got a decent raincoat?’
‘I’ve got something waterproof.’
‘We’ll get you a raincoat, a proper Savile Row raincoat.’ She smiled. ‘When were you last in London?’
Jags puffed out his cheeks.
‘Oh Jeez, long time ago.’ This was a lie. Elizabeth looked Jags up and down. He lied well, but Fred decided to intervene anyway to avoid any unwanted supplementary questions about Jags’ trips to London and what they might involve.
‘Lizzie, I need to take Jags over the road for a half hour or so to show him one or two of these new things we’re working on. I’ve got a few security-related questions I’d like him to ponder.’
Lizzie raised an eyebrow.
‘Wow! Jags, Fred’s gonna let you take a look inside his man cave, you are privileged. I have to make a written application a month in advance to be allowed in there.’
A Cursed Place Page 7
