NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) (19 page)

Two hours later

Sascha and Ikaros sit quietly on either side of Samuel aboard a half-full plane mainly consisting of journalists, diplomats and other foreign workers and their families.  Now climbing towards the stratosphere, Sascha looks out the window and catches her last glimpse of Africa as they head due north for Europe.  "What's Germany going to be like?" she asks softly and to no one in particular.

Ikaros hears this and looks over at her, spotting a small trail of tears running down her left cheek.  "We can't escape from it … but at least we've still got somewhere to go."

"I just don't want it to be all for nothing, you know?"

Ikaros doesn't reply, unable to reassure himself, let alone her.

Distracted by her words, Samuel looks up from his book and straight into her eyes.  "Don't worry.  I won't allow something to happen about you.  I'll take care of you."

Sascha smiles at him but, like Ikaros, feels slightly disquieted by such hopeful words, but then decides to allow herself to be comforted by the naïve determination evident in his eyes.  Her thoughts return to her imminent graduation and her thesis, which now only needs finishing touches after spending all of her spare time on it while in Abuja, much to the displeasure of her supervisor, who insisted for the first few weeks that she return immediately but eventually acquiesced when pleaded with so intently and persistently by her; he has since been helpful and even assisted in negotiating the terms of her absence with the departmental committee.

Ikaros takes a sip of beer as he looks out at the curvature of Earth and thinks about what needs to be done on returning to Germany if his now-almost-completed book has any hope of gaining a decent-sized readership.

Chapter 15

Hong Kong: nearly two years later

Feeling curiously relieved, Ikaros sits in the back of a taxi as it weaves through the densely packed buildings towards his hotel, the air-conditioning keeping him protected from the rising humidity of the day.  Having just arrived forty minutes earlier direct from LAX, Ikaros mulls over his conversation with Henry 38 and nods in agreement with himself that this really is where things are likely to get moving in a direction he can do something with.

• • •

Once settled, the first thing he did was to find an assistant who could help him negotiate with the local real estate companies.  He posted notices in some shops located in a few local districts not far from his relatively cheap hotel and asked a few people he ran into whether they knew anyone who could help him out for a few weeks.

After three days, he'd received seventeen enquires by phone.  By the next morning he decided on an applicant named Yanyan, who, just a bit younger than himself, was high school educated, living in a small apartment with three friends, in between jobs, and reluctant to return formally to the workforce after having had a series of terrible bosses intent on paying her and her colleagues too little and working them much harder than they should have been expected and required to; being in increasing need of finding some rent money, she was happy to take such a seemingly easy job that could tie her over for what she expected would just be a few weeks before she really had to make up her mind about what to do next with her heading-nowhere life.

Late one Tuesday afternoon, two days after Yanyan started work, Ikaros signed papers with an estate agent who was to help him firstly to find a decent apartment and then appropriate office space.  Even with only a few requirements in mind, finding an apartment was quite difficult in itself as they were in such high demand; Yanyan had been dismayed for some time by the rapidly rising rental prices and the poor quality apartments that would have been a fraction of the cost only a few years earlier yet were still considered expensive then. 

Acquiring an apartment was nothing compared to locating appropriate office space, which was only exacerbated by Ikaros's stringent criteria, which he refused to budge on.  After a frustrating two-month search, the agent, who was just about ready to hand the job to someone else out of frustration, finally found a building that was about to be put on the market and that also had four tenants on the top floor, all with leases due to expire over the following few months.  Situated overlooking Victoria Harbour with its sixty-three stories providing it with a competitive presence among its many imperious neighbours, Ikaros was eager to take a look at it.

• • •

Late afternoon

From the other side of the harbour, Ikaros and Yanyan stand looking across at the building under consideration.  She glances at him, desperately hoping he will like this one as she's kind of getting sick of continually searching with no result; she's also quietly confident that this is the best one so far and appreciates that perhaps he was right to have passed up on all the others.  "What about this one?" she asks hopefully, trying to be encouraging, but not too much so.

"Do you like it?" deflects Ikaros quietly and impenetrably.

Yanyan nods enthusiastically.  "I think this one's definitely the best we've seen."  She listens to Ikaros's silence and worries that she's trying too hard.

Ikaros thinks about it for a moment.  "Yeah, okay.  Let's sign the papers, then."  He glances at Yanyan, grins and adds, "I'm sick of looking, too."

"Oh, good!" she blurts out, betraying her sense of relief caused by the mounting frustrations of it all.  She giggles with slight embarrassment at this, then quickly moves on to start chatting about other things as they walk towards the subway to catch a train back to the agent's office.

Ten weeks later: 8 a.m.

On the top floor the building, Ikaros stands alone in one of the four deserted open-plan office spaces quietly watching all the ships, tugs and small boats sailing up and down the harbour far below; he makes a game of spotting the occasional old-fashioned junk among them.

The lift door suddenly opens and Yanyan exits swiftly and walks up to stand by his side.  "You happy now?" she asks, having witnessed the uneventful waiting period and Ikaros's quiet, brooding impatience.

"I will be when the sign's up."

"They should be done by lunchtime, I expect."  She heads for the laptop sitting on the sole desk on the entire level.  "The plane will arrive in just over an hour.  We should probably get going now."

"Yeah, sure."

After Yanyan shuts the lid of the computer to put it into hibernation, they proceed to leave the building and catch a taxi to the airport to meet Sascha and Samuel, who have been living in Berlin since they returned from Africa and haven't seen Ikaros since he set off on his book tour just over sixteen months earlier.

Mid-afternoon

Standing by the same window in the 'office,' Ikaros and Sascha look out at the view while Samuel, now eight years old, presses his forehead up against the window, intrigued by the distance to the ground as he's never been anywhere near so high up in a building before.  Ikaros notices his intensity and smiles.  "What do you reckon?"

Without looking away, he replies quickly, "Will the water ever come up this high?"

Sascha giggles at the thought.  "No, baby … it definitely won't."

"Then, I like it."  He considers their situation for a moment, then suggests, "Maybe we should live up here just in case, though."

Ikaros follows Samuel's gaze down to the retaining wall that stops the now-over-six-meter rise in water levels from flooding the city's streets.  "Don't worry.  These retainers are the best in the world.  That's why we're here.  Anyway, our apartment's up the hill a bit behind us, which is probably like being on the eighteenth floor or something," he says while rubbing Samuel's back comfortingly.

• • •

Just above them, firmly attached to the roof, was the newly erected sign, which didn't get much attention while it was going up but, once the job was done, started gaining quite a bit from those, mainly tourists, on the other side of the harbour looking across at the late-afternoon view.  Disgusted and a bit perplexed by the aberrant corporate logo, many of the observers attempted to ignore the anomaly and continue on with their touristy experience.

As dusk approached, and the night sky became ever darker, the lights of the company logos on all the buildings lining the harbour lit up and competed for dominance and attention, punctuating the darkness and standing in stark contrast to the tens of thousands of soft lights emanating from office and apartment windows; in contrast to this was one sign that would have disappeared until morning if it weren't for the lights of the buildings behind it being blocked from view and providing a rough outline of a dark space and an even more unsettling presence throughout the evening.

Before sunset, several news teams started arriving and aimed their cameras across the harbour at the new arrival on the scene; by early morning, not only the Hong Kong newspapers and broadcasters but also many from all over the world had reported on, and raised questions about, the ominously large, black circle hanging above four audaciously conspicuous and carefully selected words —
The Global Domination Corporation
— words that immediately seemed to lay claim to more than just their small and curious spot in the cityscape and the typical corporate competition found overlooking the harbour.

Chapter 16

7:15 a.m.

Ikaros and Sascha start to get out of a taxi just in front of their office building.  Already waiting for them is a local reporter and her cameraman hoping to get the first interview with those responsible; she ambushes them as they step onto the pavement and asks, "Are you the owners of the Global Domination Corporation?"  Without really giving them time to answer and realising that they probably are, she continues, "I'd just like to ask a few questions.  Firstly, why did you …"

Since they decided to arrive early to avoid what will likely be there later on, they're slightly taken aback by her eagerness and are unprepared and unwilling to say anything, so they just ignore her barrage of questions and walk causally to the doorway of the building without saying a word.  After Ikaros and Sascha pass through the entrance, the two guards forcibly prevent the reporter and the cameraman from following, escorting them towards the pavement and ordering them aggressively and presumptuously to move on.

Waiting by the lifts, Ikaros turns and looks out at the reporter dealing wilfully with the two guards.  "We need to get more security."

"We may have to move in here after all," responds Sascha dryly as the lift doors open and they start to enter.

• • •

By mid-morning, gathered outside the entrance to the building was a crowd of reporters, cameramen, photographers, and several groups of speedily mobilised protestors who were all in search of a statement from the so-called Global Domination Corporation; by noon, the crowd had swelled to over eight hundred with many chanting their demands and waving their makeshift banners containing a range of slogans that demonstrated the extent of their indignation and disapproval.

During the crowd surge, a small force of thirty guards arrived after Ikaros asked Yanyan — who was out exploring with Samuel for the day — to contact their contracted security firm for reinforcements; this unfortunately proved to be wholly inadequate.  Although Ikaros was hoping for such a result from his actions, the emerging circumstances were considered a hindrance and embarrassment by those in the other companies occupying space in the building.  As a result, the police were soon called in by one of the CEOs to break up the crowd and return order.  For more than twenty years in Hong Kong, authorities had not tolerated public gatherings of any kind — least of all protests and violence; it was therefore to be expected that on arriving at the scene and jumping out the back of four large personnel carriers, the riot squad, wearing protective clothing, carrying shields and wielding electric-shock batons, would immediately begin using brutal force on all those who happened to be in range.

Having been notified of their arrival, Ikaros peered through the windows and through the row of guards protecting the entrance on the outside, but he was only able to catch glimpses of the ensuing chaos and violence as protestors and the media alike quickly attempted to flee the scene; this was particularly difficult due to the fact that the riot squad was coming from both directions along the street, effectively closing it off and forcing the crowd to make its escape by passing through the violent phalanx without being electrocuted, kicked and beaten, and eventually dragged roughly to one of the six people movers present and thrown in.  Nevertheless, due to their large numbers, many did make it through, which enticed certain members of the riot squad to chase some of these terrified people down side streets and into neighbouring buildings, determined to electrocute, beat and cuff at least one each.