The Real Thing by Brian Falkner Page B

in a series of whirling darts and jabs, that a bo was a great leveller of the odds against a bunch of people armed with just their fists.
    Add into that equation Tupai White, who had grown up learning some nasty lessons on the back streets and rugby fields of Glenfield, and it was a very one-sided fight indeed.
    There were more of them, but Tupai had fists like wrecking balls, which left them doubled up and gasping.
    They tried to grab him and pin him, but he’d twist and break their grips, and again there would be a flurry of those demolition blows.
    And, all the time, there was the swishing noise of the bo, and the thwock sound of hard wood meeting ugly brother.
    Of the five, only Bobby was still standing when it was all over, and that was only because the back of his jacket had caught on an old nail on the side of the barn and kept him propped there on legs that had turned to hay stalks.
    ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Tupai said, breathing heavily.
    Fizzer found that he had barely raised a sweat. The practical application of all his training had seemed so natural, so effortless.
    ‘I’m with you,’ he said. ‘Should we tie them up or something?’
    ‘Nah,’ Tupai said. ‘Let’s just find us some civilisation and send the police over. They’ve got nowhere to run to, they live here.’
    The two of them turned towards the racetrack and started walking. It was the wrong decision, but how was Tupai to know the brothers had a shotgun?
    Or two.

ANASTASIA BORKIN
    Anastasia Borkin was very good at her job, and that job was harder than you might think. There was Executive Protection, Plant Security, Internal Security and, of course, Anti-Espionage, or Counter-Intelligence as she liked to call it, using an old spy term.
    Industrial espionage was a growing problem in the US, partly thanks to the proliferation of small electronic devices that could convey voice and/or video, yet were small enough to hide in a cufflink or lapel badge.
    Like anyone who was very good at her job, but had two major disasters on her hands, Borkin was fuming, angry mostly with herself, but also with anyone who she felt wasn’t doing their job to the absolute best of their abilities.
    Any of her staff seen shirking off home before the early hours of the morning were traitors in her view.
    The Mad Russian, her staff had always called her, when she wasn’t around, but it had been an affectionate term. Now they were using the nickname in a totally different way. She was mad all right, she was downright furious.
    Anastasia Borkin strode the length of the boardroom, unable to sit still in one place while the world was exploding around her. First the disappearance of three of the executives it was her responsibility to protect, and then the kidnapping of the two young New Zealanders they had brought in.
    What was worse, she suspected they had a spy somewhere in the company. That meant tracking down everybody who knew the results of the taste testing, and anyone they might have told about it, intentionally or accidentally, and anyone
they
might have spoken to, and so on.
    And she couldn’t let anyone know what was going on, not anyone. The whole thing had to be done with the delicacy of a brain operation, so as not to alert the spy that they were looking for him, or her.
    Careless spies made mistakes, but spies who knew that hunters were on their trail, shut down their operations and were very careful not to make mistakes.
    She had liked the two boys, which made the second kidnapping a whole lot worse. She had thought that Fizzer had a certain quality, of calmness and peace, which reached out and touched the people around him. Fizzer was destined for something big as an adult, she felt. And Tupai had a huge open smile and a wondrous enjoyment of life that was infectious.
    But now they were also missing, and might even be dead for all she knew, and she was partly responsible.
    ‘We need a little more time,’ she thundered, wondering why the board