The Island

Chapter 10: The Island

Charley got the call from Old Dave on the morning he was struggling with a load of computer print-outs. He had found several sites, dealing with machine shipments to China. Decided the best thing to do, would be to put himself in the position of someone wanting to start their own business in the far East.

At first, he had a panic attack, when he saw how complicated it would be. But once he found the sites explaining imports and exports, things became clearer.

"Charley you must come in on this deal," said Old Dave excitedly down the phone. "Bob found it and he says it's a sure-fire bet. We could make a lot of money."

"We already have a lot of money Dave, what the hell do we want any more for?" Charley carried on looking at his papers as Old Dave talked.

"So why are you searching for that £200 million?"

"That's personal. A matter of pride."

"Forget that man, we could buy the county with this deal. Bob says we could make hundreds of millions with this land thing."

"What is it exactly?" asked Charley.

"It's buying up new properties in China."

"What?" asked Charley in disbelief.

"Bob met a guy in the pub, you know one of these media people, hanging around the place? And he told him about a big land deal that he was doing a report for."

"He met a man in the pub?" Charley could hear his own hollow words, floating in the air.

"Yes, and this guy says he did this report. Only when Bob sent his brother to find out about it, they wouldn't let him in the building," Old Dave continued with enthusiasm.

"His brother Billy!" said Charley with alarm. "No wonder they wouldn't let him in, he's only been out of prison a week."

"He should never have been there," protested Old Dave.

"Yes, he should. We bought some of those DVDs he stole from the charity shop."

"Well, anyway, he's out, and he went to find out about this company."

"What the hell does Billy know about land deals in China? What the hell does Bob know for that matter?"

"That's the interesting thing," continued Old Dave, not put off in the least. "Because when he tried to find out what it was all about, they told him there was no information available, and he couldn't have it anyway. So he went back to this guy in the pub, and he says, they are bound to say that."

"Why?" asked Charley.

"Because they don't want the little people to get in on the act. So he made some more enquiries and they found out why."

"Dave is this the same brother Billy, that was living on a caravan site with the travellers?"

"Not now Bob brought him a house," defended Old Dave.

"What the hell did he do that for? It will be in flames within a month. Look at the council flat they gave him?"

"Those people all jumped to safety?"

"Go on about the deal," said Charley wearily.

"Well, Bob asked the guy to tell him how he could find out about the land deal. He put him onto a land agent in the Chinese embassy, and he put him onto a guy that was selling the land. We are just waiting for the paperwork to be faxed through and we can have it."

"Dave, hold fire with that, I don't think it's right," said Charley.

"Why not? Even the lawyers say it's OK."

"Because, I've been doing a lot of work looking for this missing ticket, and I've found out a lot about China and how it works. The more I find, the less I like, and this thing you are doing is not right."

"If we hesitate, we could lose out," Old Dave pointed out. "You want in or not? All the other lads are doing it?"

"Don't tell me you are all putting your money in?"

"No, not all of it stupid. Just the liquid capital we can spare. We still have stuff invested, and our houses. Just come over and take a look at it?"

"OK I'll take a look at it, but I'm not promising anything. There's something about buying land in China, that I don't understand."

Old Dave had put the phone down before Charley had a chance to finish. There was something wrong with this deal, but Charley could not think of it. He had read long into the night about buying into properties in the People's Republic of China, and nothing could be as cut and dried as that.

He feared for his friends and their investments. They had been conned before, as he remembered the sorry incident with the Christmas fur coats.

They had all bought cheap coats from a man selling things in the work's yard at Cobol, a year ago. All went well and the men saw the faces of their wives light up as they received their presents. Bob bought coats for several women. One wife getting two coats from different men. The coats were sold as genuine fox fur, and although they had to swallow their pride over the horror of the fur trade, no one minded.

That was until they saw a documentary on TV exposing the scam. The very same man they had handed their hard-earned wages over to, was seen being hauled into the back of a black Miria. Handcuffed to a prison officer, he was barracked by a hail of questions from the investigative journalist, that had exposed the scam. The programme went on to tell where the furs had really come from.

The nearest they could understand, they were made from some sort of animal which scurried about on the jungle floor. Not exactly a rat, but near enough in the animal family, for the women to burn their coats in a communal bonfire on the green. The story even turned up in one of the tabloids. The Brit having a centre page spread.

When Charley got to Old Dave's house, he found it in considerable chaos. As a reporter was being ejected from a bedroom window into the swimming pool. Relationships with the press were not going well, and even the wise advice of the Euro lottery agents could do little to repair things.

Charley looked at what little paperwork Bob and Billy had prepared over the China land deal. For a project costing tens of millions, there was little to show for it. Try as he might, Charley could not convince the men to go slower and be more cautious.

"How much do we make?" asked Nigel walking into the room.

"Not you too Nigel?" said Charley. "I thought you of all people would back down on this one?"

"Why? My money's as good as theirs?" The little man looked around the room at the expectant faces.

"Don't take any notice of him," said Old Dave. He's turning into an old woman. Since we became rich, we have lost the thrill of making big money."

"Hell yes," said Bob. "Over the last few weeks, we have met people who deal with our sort of money in an hour. Why shouldn't we be up in their league?"

"Quite right!" said the others.

"Let's at least go over there and take a look at what we are buying?" said Charley, knowing the deal was in its final stages.

"Foreign travel? Not for me," Old Dave shook his head. "We pay people to do that, why bother?"

"How can you trust them?" said Charley. "They don't trust us?"

"Once we have more money, we can tell them all to piss off!" said Bob drinking from a wine bottle. He had acquired an expensive taste in wines over the last few days.

"I don't disagree with that. But at least let me go over there and do a recce' first?"

"If you aren't in with this deal by tomorrow night, you'll get left out." Old Dave had made up his mind on that one.

"Look I'm going out there anyway to look for our ticket," said Charley.

"We won't need that after tomorrow," laughed Bob, slumping down on his new leather sofa.

"I think I've found where the guillotines have been shipped to."

"We never want to see those bloody things again." Old Dave joined the others in a stiff drink.

"No, listen. I've found a shipping company that deals with a little island off the mainland of China. It used to be a military base, but got used for housing refugees. You know the Vietnamese boat people? Well, they keep asylum seekers there now, and I think they have our guillotines."

"We don't care about any of that now!" Bob shouted out across the room, as the wine began to flow. "Where are those dancing girls we found in London. Come on in girls. They don't speak a word of English but they know what this is."

The various young girls that had been hanging around the house, now joined Bob and his brother, on the sofa. Bob peeled off fifty-pound notes and began stuffing them in their clothing, as the girls just sat there and giggled.

"Shall we make one of our special videos?" Bob laughed as he bounced one girl on his knee.

"Are these the same special videos that were shown on that satellite porn channel?" said Charley finding his coat.

"We have some fun once we get started. Hey girls?" laughed Bob. "We even met that girl Natasha, you know the one from the poster? She makes porn films on a regular basis. Even my ex-misses wants to be in one. "

The Brit newspaper had been running a story that day, about Ann and the story of the porn films. No one had any idea her early work was so well received. Hollywood was mentioned.

"We should keep our heads down for a while," was the last thing Charley said to Bob as he walked to the door.

"So you aren't joining us on this one Charley?" asked Old Dave walking out the room with him.

"No, I'm off to the airport. I have a private jet for Hong Kong, and then onto this island, I've found. I'll take a look at this plot you have all brought, just hang on until I see it with my own eyes."

"We can't wait that long. Forty-eight hours, and the agent wants his money. Even the lawyers say so." Old Dave looked back at the girls performing their striptease. They had rehearsed this a dozen times back in Eastern Europe, long before they had met these silly Englishmen.

"This will all end in madness," warned Charley pointing at the sorry scene unfolding before them. At first, the men were howling with boyish glee, now they stared in silence. " I saw your ex on daytime telly?"

"I know," said Old Dave hanging his head in shame.

"And her sister," added Charley.

"They won't let up on her," Old Dave continued. " Just because she chained her kids to the radiator. They painted her as a monster."

"Well, the media hate us. Let me find out about this China thing?"

But Charley knew he was wasting his breath. Even as the police cars made their way up the drive to serve the ASBOs on Bob and his family, he knew it was all over.

Charley had slept on the plane. Not being used to long-distance travel, he could not get used to jet lag. Even though Gerald had planned several stops for the flight, Charley was exhausted by the time they arrived in Hong Kong.

Having a private jet service certainly had its advantages. Charley was spared the hustle and bustle of airport departure lounges and walked straight into the VIP suite. Trapped in his own private world, he contented himself by reading through the folders he had printed out concerning his investigation. Gerald was an old hand and could spend hours just staring into space. But Charley was a nervous traveller and lost himself in the research.

By a curious coincidence, Charley had found a firm which did nothing else but ship old machines to China. There was even a case, where they shipped the machines out, only to have them sent back again. Once the firm had gone bust, and the directors escaped with the bankruptcy laws; to Charles's amazement, the machines were shipped out once more. He did not pretend to understand a system as crazy as that. Where was the point? To ship the same machines back and forth around the world? At the very least it must cost a fortune? Charley had done extensive research into the cost of shipments and found them to be hideous. But only if you wanted to export anything to China. Once the firm was set up out East, for some strange reason, the shipping costs just evaporated, and the firms could send their stuff to England for virtually nothing.

So in this world, a machine could go round and round the planet, several times, without the worry of getting the money back.

He also found a firm which used them to produce things which were shipped back, to undermine the very industries that had supplied the machines in the first place. One fact did emerge for him though, and that was the disturbing use of asylum seekers in all this.

They were like a new slavery. There were few industries which did not use them. Every business back home relied on illegal labour. The building industry would send out a van to a certain spot, where groups of desperate-looking men would wait. Charley had driven out to see them one morning. On the outskirts of London, in an old car park, cold and frightened men would stand and swap stories of how they had travelled halfway around the world to be here now.

They would wait for that battered old van to turn up, where a man would jump out and select a few to be bundled in the back. Once they had found the building site, they would labour all day, in terrible conditions, with no food or toilet facilities; to be paid £50, and then dumped back in the car park that night.

Charley had also come across other businesses which had employed them. Restaurants, and sweatshops, where people would be trapped in a back room, to slave for pennies. If they complained, they would simply be reported to the authorities, and sent back. Of course, they never caught them, as they would escape to another town, where the whole story would begin again.

It did not cheer Charley to think where the guillotines were going. If things were so terrible, that they were escaping to put up with a life like this, how bad could it be in the first place? Just how bad could the life be to want to getaway? What hell hole he would find at the other end, he could not imagine. Charley and the other men had always thought they had worked in the arshole of the world. But on finding this, he realised they had it easy.

Hong Kong was a wonderful place. If not a bit frightening. For a simple country lad, London had been too much, but this was simply mind-boggling. Gerald had to lead Charley by the sleeve, as he would stand and stare at the wonders of the streets. People eating snakes; selling things he could not describe, and actually making things; the use for which, he could not begin to understand.

That night in the hotel, Charley simply lay on the bed and tried to take it all in. Life in Ampswell had never prepared him for this. The good news was, that Charley was getting more used to hotels now. He came down to the dining room that evening to meet Gerald, with a lot more confidence. There was a time when he had to be told when to leave the room.

Gerald knew Charley did not want to waste a lot of time sightseeing. They went to a little tailors Gerald knew and had him measured for a suit, but that was the only novelty Charley had to endure. One pleasant thing which did happen to Charley, was when he found himself walking out of the hotel door and almost bumped into a girl. He looked up and knew immediately who it was.

"Natasha?" said Charley, quite startled, as they stood on the hotel steps.

"Oh, sorry, have we met?" The girl lifted her designer sunglasses to take a look at the man. Not rude, but not too pleased to be stopped in the street by a stranger, either. She did at least listen to him.

"Yes, at the reception for the Euro Lottery? We won it?"

"I attend so many of these things, you'll have to forgive me. Must dash." with that, she was gone.

Charley knew she had slipped away from him for a second time. He had to look deep into his heart and ask himself if he wanted to get mixed up with another woman after Elizabeth, but there was something about this girl which was different. Sure, she had been in some unsavoury films, but that all changed once you met her. And Charley found himself constantly thinking of her. All that was to change.

For private citizens, getting a connecting flight to China would have been a nightmare, but with Gerald's connections, and Charlie's money, the jet-set off. It landed on a small strip built exclusively for the travel of interested millionaires, curious about investing. With the hiring of an interpreter and the accompaniment of a member of the Chinese trade commission, they set off to find the land his friends had purchased back in England.

From the very start, things were wrong. As they sat in the air-conditioned BMW, Charley knew things were not going well.

"What's he saying?" Charley asked Gerald as they watched the civil servant and the interpreter arguing in a very heated manner.

"I think they are falling out about the land deal," said Gerald.

"You mean they don't want us to see it?"

"I don't think it exists," replied Gerald.

"The land or the deal?"

"Maybe both?"

"We are very sorry," said the interpreter as they got out of the car to look at the landscape.

"What for?" asked Charley surveying the scene. It was gently rolling countryside, with small hills and brownish grass, blowing in the breeze. "This is the place I asked to see on this document?"

"Yes, this is the very same one," the interpreter replied sheepishly.

"So what's wrong with it?" Charley looked at the fax paper in his hand and wondered if Old Dave had sent him the right one.

"This place is no good," said the Trade man, clearly speaking more English than he let on. He simply looked to the horizon, and would not meet their eyes.

"It looks OK to me?" said Gerald. "Would the gentleman from the Trade Commission care to tell us why it's no good?"

"There seems to be a little problem with the land." The interpreter tried to find the words, as they all stood around the two cars.

"It is for sale?" asked Charley.

"Yes, that is true."

"And we have bought it?"

"Yes, that too is true."

"So what's wrong with it?"

"It is bad land," replied the commissioner again.

"In what way?" asked Charley.

"It is polluted." The interpreter was struggling with some of the more complex words now.

"It looks fine to me," said Charley. "The grass is growing alright. If it was very polluted, nothing would grow here."

"That's right," put in Gerald. " I know for a fact the Millennium Dome was built on an old gas works, and that had cyanide in the soil. They simply capped it with concrete."

"So what the hell can be here that is so bad?" Charley wanted to know.

"It seems," began the interpreter," that this was once the testing ground for China's first atom bomb."

"What?" cried Charley.

"Christ should we even be here?" said Gerald.

"It's perfectly safe as long as you don't eat the soil. The only danger is from Alpha particles, so we are fine."

"Let's get back and burn our clothes," said Gerald.

"My new suit!" said Charley, as they jumped back in the car.

"I'll buy you another," said Gerald, very worried now. "And I want this car hosed down before we go anywhere near the plane."

They got back and Gerald handled everything. He was best in a crisis, as Charley was helpless and hopeless.

Charley tried to explain down the phone, that the land deal was worthless, but Old Dave would have none of it.

"Dave, you sign this, and you can kiss your money goodbye!"

"Relax, we have had the lawyers look into it," Old Dave laughed down the phone. " It's the new site for an industrial complex."

"It's an old bomb site."

"No, things are fine, everything's taken care of."

"It's full of radiation," continued Charley.

"Our lawyers have looked into it, and they say the place is safe."

"Well Dave I went out there today and the Trade Commissioner himself condemned it. I think it's a scam."

"We are going ahead with it. Now, the lawyers would not let us do that if there was going to be anything dodgy. They wouldn't get paid."

"Fax me a copy of their contract, and I'll find out as much as I can about them."

With that, the line went dead, and Charley awaited the fax from the hotel receptionist.

In his room, he set up his laptop, and after plugging it into the net, went in search of the law firm handling the deal. Long into the night, Charley had found nothing. Nothing incriminating that is.