24.00 NZD
Category: Fiction
Benjamin Sword Hoppner, philanthropist and visionary, has created his own utopia in the Central American cloud forests, governed by a strict moral code. He's promised financial support to anyone who can satisfy him of their good character. And Mark Weston is determined to do exactly that. Journeying thr
Benjamin Sword Hoppner, philanthropist and visionary, has created his own utopia in the Central American cloud forests, governed by a strict moral code. He's promised financial support to anyone who can satisfy him of their good character. And Mark Weston is determined to do exactly that. Journeying through country still devastated by war, Mark reaches Hoppner's isolated "perfect society", only to discover that his generosity comes with terrible strings attached ...
"A chilling thriller" The List
Before I get to Hoppner, I should probably say something about my own morality. I like truth - telling it and hearing it. Funny to think you'll have to take my word on that, but then I'm told humour is a virtue. What else? Temperance? Simplicity? Prudence? All good things in moderation, I suppose. Some bastards really test my tolerance, others my sense of justice and my willingness to forgive. And though I used to believe I was reasonably courageous, I have to admit none of this would have happened if I'd had the courage to deal with my own demons.
Has it changed me, this brush with virtue? The odds are against it: our vices are pretty deeply rooted. Am I a better person? Perhaps it's a sign of humility that I don't think I'm in a position to judge. But then if I was truly humble I wouldn't be congratulating myself on my humility, would I? Work that one out.
Think too much about right and wrong, try too hard to be good, and you end up going crazy.
There is only one flight a week from London to Santa Tecla. The day I chose to fly, the plane developed a small technical problem. What exactly the problem was, I never discovered. But it caused a delay, and the delay led to a meeting. And who knows how different things might have been without that?
'Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain once again. We've made a few tests and I'm afraid the situation remains the same. Our instruments are indicating a potential problem in the cargo hold.' His announcement, delivered a long way above the Atlantic, might have been expected to induce a minor panic among his passengers, but the captain's voice was so reassuringly calm that most of us barely blinked. Was there a fire? Had the cargo shifted dangerously? No one seemed to care.
'It's unlikely to be anything serious, but your safety is our primary concern, so we've taken the decision to divert to the nearest airport.'
It was hard to imagine anywhere solid enough in that ocean to land our troublesome machine. But in fact we didn't have far to go. The nearest airport, seven hours along the flight path from London to the centremost point of Central America, turned out to be located on the island of Bermuda.
The real trouble started when we touched down.
The entire cargo hold would have to be emptied for safety checks, explained the captain. And because of the time that would take, the crew would not be able to complete the journey within their permitted operational hours. A new aircraft and crew had been hurriedly requested from Newark, but they wouldn't arrive for another six hours.
The benign acceptance of several hundred passengers switched in a second to belligerent irritation. Stewardesses were harangued. Watches were consulted. Whispers and mutters on all sides. Everyone but me, it seemed, was in a hurry to reach Santa Tecla.
Bermuda was hot, the air-conditioned transit lounge icy cold. With the time difference it was still only ten o'clock in the morning, although most of us were already well into a London afternoon. Several of the passengers had identified each other as delegates bound for the Santa Tecla reconstruction conference and had already begun networking, scrolling through the tired list of introductory questions used wherever their taxpayers sent them. Clearly, the event was going to be a big one: I'd tried to book the previous week's flight, only to be told it was already full - packed with junior delegates sent on ahead to prepare the conference.
A look of glacial disdain met me as I passed the plump, unforgiving woman who'd occupied the aeroplane seat two along from mine. Mine, that is, until I'd discreetly asked to be moved. The seat between us had contained her bouncy, equally plump young son, and I knew she'd taken it as a personal insult that I hadn't wanted to sit next to him. I'd offered my politest, most self-effacing smile to assure her the fault lay with me rather than with her son - that I avoided being close to any child, not hers in particular - but she
was determined to view my relocation in the worst possible light. Resisting the urge to return her stare, I assumed an inwardly troubled expression I'd first developed to mollify Chinese border guards in Tibet, and walked quickly by.
At one end of the lounge was an odd little half-row of seats, stuck at an irregular angle to fill the awkward space between a wall and a pillar. It appealed to me. Well away from plump mum and plump son - what was she doing taking a child to a war-torn chunk of Central America anyway? - and comfortably removed from the bulk of the delegates. Sitting down, I stretched out my legs and wrapped my jacket tight around me to keep out the artificial chill.
Airline staff were wandering amongst the unhappy passengers like medieval priests ministering to a leper colony. As one stewardess passed me, I added my own logistical woe to the mountain of problems her passengers were laying at her door. Bermudan officials looked on impassively - primly - from the other side of a glass wall. Beyond them lay a promised land of booze shops and eateries, all pointedly beyond the reach of our band of uninvited refugees.
The novel I'd chosen was failing to hold my attention. I was about to embark on a more or less criminal act that would ensure the exclusion from my life of the only two people who meant anything to me. Fiction offered little comfort. After five pages I gave up, replacing the book with the only other reading material in my bag: an old Sunday Times magazine with a coy close-up of Madonna on the cover.
I never did read the Madonna article.
About ten minutes had gone by before I noticed a man staring at me from the nearest row of seats. He looked away when I stared back, a sudden flick of the head sending his blond hair flopping the wrong way. Still facing the blank wall beside him, he brought a flattened palm up to smooth his hair, with two natty flicks, back into position. His ears, I remember noticing, were tiny. Everything else about him looked overlarge on his rather short body. His chin and nose stuck out and his shoulders seemed too wide, a flaw augmented by the cut of his pale linen jacket. But he wasn't ugly. Somehow the bits and pieces of mismatched anatomy came together to produce a quick, seductive face and confident posture.
The next time he caught my attention, he was standing right beside me.
I hadn't noticed him move. I'd lowered my eyes to the magazine for perhaps a minute at most before I felt his presence and spotted his tasselled loafers out of the corner of my eye.
He was gazing at the magazine. I closed it sharply.
'Good readage?' he asked.
'Good what?'
His head rocked forward. 'You looked engrossed. Is that this week's?'
It was a strange question; I ignored it. 'Got to pass the time somehow.'
He took that as an invitation, though it wasn't and he knew it wasn't. A second later he was on the seat beside me.
'I'm Freddy.'
'Mark.' One of the very few things I can remember doing as a young child was telling people my name. Except, I think I used to say Marcos. I have a feeling that's what my mother called me: Marcos.
'Nice to meet you, Mark,' he said, hand already floating between us. 'Are you going to the conference?'
'No.'
'So what takes you so far afield? Mayan ruins? Rainforest conservation?'
'Business.'
'Oh, that,' he said, smiling. A pause, just long enough for me to notice the strange intonation he'd applied to those two brief syllables. He gestured towards my magazine. 'Interesting?'
'Just something I had lying around.'
'This week's?'
Again that question. I glanced down at the magazine. The date wasn't showing, but a sizeable chunk of Britain must have seen the Madonna close-up a month earlier. 'No,' I said.
'I've got nothing with me. Mind if I borrow it?'
The guy's presumption might almost have been funny if it hadn't been focused on that particular magazine. Instead, it was mildly alarming. 'I'm still reading it.'
'When you've finished, I mean.'
Shrugging, I nodded as lightly as I could.
Another passenger was wandering towards us. A woman, very pale, with wavy dark hair cut short, and a pair of inquisitive brown eyes. Like us, she was in her late twenties. For a moment, I had the disconcerting impression that she too was staring at the magazine. She stopped still when we both looked up at her, then - perhaps encouraged by Freddy's immediate grin - continued on towards us with a jauntier step.
'Not more delegates, I hope?' she said.
'Not us,' Freddy answered.
'Can I join you? I'm so bored.'
She dropped to a crouch in front of us. I might have offered her my seat, but she'd already assumed a posture so relaxed and natural that the gesture would have felt ridiculously formal. A silver cross hung at her throat, perfectly framed by the V of her black sweater.
'Hello,' she said to Freddy. 'Alice Williams.'
'Nice to meet you,' he said. 'I'm Freddy Greenock.'
She avoided shaking his hand by raising hers in a kind of mock salute. Then she shifted her gaze to me. I was so disconcerted by what I'd just heard that for a moment I was speechless. Before I'd even reached Santa Tecla I was in trouble.
'And you are?'
'Mark.' In my confusion, I rushed the word out.
'That's it?'
I said nothing.
She lowered her chin, stared at me through her upper eyelashes. 'You don't have a surname?'
I stared back helplessly - perfectly prepared and yet so unready for this moment. I should have quickly made up something, but my uncle's relentless instruction in honesty had had more effect on me than perhaps even he'd intended. For me, lying was something that had to be practised in advance. Unfortunately, the name I'd rehearsed over and over again was now completely unusable.
Alice's gaze turned quizzical. I said the only thing I could, in the circumstances: 'Weston. My name's Mark Weston.'
Her mouth drew closed, as if she was about to repeat my name. But before she could, Freddy was leaning forward:
'So, Miss Williams, what takes you to -?'
'Mrs Williams.'
'Mrs Williams?' He leaned minutely back. His smile, though, didn't waver. 'Bereaved, abandoned or estranged?'
'Excuse me?'
'Mr Williams isn't with you?'
'Leonard's over there.'
The line of her finger led us to the far corner of the lounge. A stick insect of a man was spread out across four seats, his jacket bundled under his head and his gangly legs hanging off the end of the row. His fingers held the strap of a shoulder bag in a tight grip, but his eyes were closed and there was a blankness about his freckled face.
'He's very tired,' said Alice. 'Poor thing, he finds flying a nerve-wracking -'
A tannoy announcement interrupted her. At the entrance to the lounge, a stewardess was speaking into a microphone: 'Could Mr Greenock please come to the information desk.'
'What now?' muttered Freddy, rising. 'This had better be an upgrade.'
'Mr Mark Greenock to the information desk, please.'
He paused, halfway out of his seat. 'There's another Greenock on this flight?' he said. 'What are the odds, hey?' With a peculiar, somewhat uncomfortable laugh, he dropped back into his seat.
I kept my head down, praying they were too busy to pursue inattentive passengers. It didn't work. A moment later, the stewardess was standing over me.
'Mr Greenock? Didn't you hear the announcement?'
I looked up, trying to avoid eye contact with the other two. 'Sorry,' I said weakly.
'Don't worry. We're all a bit exhausted,' she chirped. 'I just wanted to let you know we've contacted your driver and she's aware of the delay. She said not to worry, but that you'd have to stay overnight in Santa Tecla, as the road to Miraflores isn't safe in the dark.'
'Thank you,' I muttered dutifully, although at that moment gratitude was the last thing I felt towards her.
She leaned forward, confiding. 'Make sure you put in a claim for any accommodation expenses. The airline will pay.'
'Thank you.'
'You're welcome, Mr Greenock.'
As she straightened up, Freddy caught her arm, his fingers light and intimate on her sleeve. 'Look, do we really have to stay in here? The new plane won't be here for hours. Can't we go outside - get a bit of fresh air?'
'I'm sorry, sir, it's Bermudan regulations. Not us.'
'Could you at least ask?'
She looked doubtful, but she gave a noncommittal nod and walked over to the entrance. I kept my eyes on her, unwilling to see the inevitable questions in the faces of my new acquaintances. After a few moments of whispered consultation with a Bermudan official, the stewardess waved us over.
Freddy and Alice stood up.
'I'll just see if Leonard wants to come,' said Alice, walking over to her collapsed husband.
'Coming, Mr Greenock?' said Freddy, the beginnings of a smirk on his lips.
?I ... no, I think I'll-'
'Oh come on, friend, I promise I won't bring it up again. I'll buy you a drink. Christ, you look like you need one.'
His eel-soft hand was already on my elbow. Reluctantly, I stood up. On the other side of the lounge, Alice was crouched beside her husband. His lips moved slightly and his hand reached out to caress her cheek, but he didn't get up. With an affectionate smile, Alice left him to his nap and rejoined us.
'So, let's go,' she said.
*
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