The Real Thing by Brian Falkner Read Free Book Online

eventually asked, ‘You like hunting?’
    ‘Crikey, yeah!’ Fraser exclaimed. ‘Tupai and his dad get themselves dropped off by helicopter in the middle of the bush, two weeks from the nearest civilisation, with just two days’ supply of food. They live off the land on the way out.’ There was a grudging admiration in his voice, but it was clear from his expression that he felt it was something you’d be sentenced to if you’d committed a major crime, rather than something you did for fun.
    ‘It’s great,’ Tupai smiled. ‘The only bit I’m not too keen on is burning off the leeches after a trek through a swamp.’
    Fraser shuddered comically.
    ‘Are there wild animals in New Zealand?’ Borkin asked.
    ‘Well, there’re the Captain Cookers,’ Tupai replied.
    ‘Captain Cookers?’
    ‘Huge wild pigs,’ Fraser explained. ‘Big tusks, charge right at you.’
    ‘But they’re all right.’ Tupai grinned. ‘It’s the moas you’ve got to worry about. Giant birds, three metres tall. Legs like small trees. Sharp claws.’
    ‘Holy Cow,’ Borkin whispered, wondering what kind of a place they came from.
    Fraser and Tupai looked at each other, then both burst into laughter. At some point, Borkin realised, they had started teasing her. Only she wasn’t quite sure where that point was.
    Anastasia Borkin decided she was going to enjoy the company of these two exuberant young men.

COCA-COLA PLAZA
    Tupai had come on the journey because Fizzer, who considered himself generally to be at one with the universe, had never been at one with any part of the universe other than New Zealand, and the thought of wandering around a foreign country without at least one friendly face was a little daunting, even for Fizzer, imperturbable Fizzer.
    Fizzer had asked Harry if Tupai could go, and Harry had approved it without even consulting his superiors in Atlanta, which had made them realise that, whatever was going on, it was pretty
big stuff!
    Not two days after his passport arrived – in a plain brown envelope at the office of the motor camp – Fizzer and Tupai pulled up outside Coca-Cola headquarters in a bright red limousine with Anastasia Borkin.
    Coca-Cola headquarters turned out to be not one building but four. It was situated on a road named after the company, Coca-Cola Plaza, stuck right in the middle of North Avenue, Downtown, Atlanta, Georgia, on the south-eastern side of the United States of America.
    A massive Coca-Cola symbol stared down at them from the tallest of the buildings as they were ushered, like VIPs, up the steps of the smallest building, which turned out to be the corporate headquarters.
    There was some compulsory handshaking with a bunch of Important People, with names that both of them forgot as soon as they heard them, overawed, as they were, by the whole process. Then they were whisked off to the tallest of the buildings, in through a huge reception area with floor to ceiling windows and shiny black floors. The windows were covered with a colourful tapestry of transparencies: photographs of Coca-Cola employees and their personal stories.
    They passed through corridors where Coke was dispensed in cans from free vending machines or flowed from soda fountains, up in a plushly upholstered lift, or ‘elevator’ as their hosts called it, and eventually into a large room panelled in a dark, rich wood with a matching table that stretched the length of the room.
    Here, there were more introductions: Mr Fairweather was a tall, grey-haired man with an angular Adam’s apple that bobbed as he spoke; Mr Pansier looked Italian, but spoke with a slow Texan drawl; Mr Capper looked for all the world like a kiwifruit, with little brown hairs sprouting in all directions; Mr McCafferty was young and friendly, but there was a fierce determination behind his eyes; Mrs Whitaker was a rather severe-looking lady in her fifties.
    A series of ten plastic tumblers were set up on small white paper coasters in a row along one