Yin Yang Tattoo (19 page)

Now I understood. Due Diligence was the final hurdle that stood before the successful launch of the GDR, and my near-imaginary role in the sales pitch to the visitors from London remained significant. Schwartz interrupted my thoughts:

‘What Mr Chang is saying is that if you play your part here you will get your job fee – '

‘What about the murder investigation?'

Schwartz looked to Chang.

‘It is in our best interests that the investigation is brought to a close as quietly as possible. I have powerful friends who will listen to me, but only
if
you play your part to our satisfaction.'

However much it pained me, playing along was the only option that made any sense. Whatever fraud was involved in the GDR was not of my doing, nor was I to blame for what had surely happened to Miss Hong. If the success of the flotation meant I got my money and Chang saw to it that the Miss Hong thing went away, what did I have to lose? More importantly, what choice did I have?

Three faces, three entirely different smiles. Chang's was seemingly benign, that of a consummate businessman savouring the pleasure of negotiations that were going his way. Martinmass's cat-like grin reeked of pure greed. Only the knowing sneer on Schwartz's face smacked of greater complexity, of deeper satisfaction whose roots continued to confuse me.

They thought they were the cat's pyjamas, but with preppy arses fidgeting on the lacquered floor and knees pointing at the ceiling, they looked more like fish out of water or kids cross-legged in a splintery Boy Scout hall; angled caps, cloying camaraderie, left-hand handshakes and
Bingo Was His Name-Oh
.

Six thousand miles out of London they might as well be on a different planet. They had just arrived from the city I called home, but here in the middle of Korea, the Due Diligence team were the foreigners.

Leader of the pack was a tall Londoner, slightly older than his colleagues, lean and knotted and tanned like a cricketer, with thick blond hair that lapped at the tops of his ears. At regular intervals, a runaway fringe crept down over his eyeline, to be met by a reflexive sweep of his right hand, the long nail of his little finger slipping under the hair, flicking it upward with polished flamboyance that surely spoke of years in the making.

There were six of them, all but the leader in their twenties, all in pressed chinos and polo shirts embroidered with the insignia of stockbroker-belt sports clubs, and at least half of them boasted the one-handed tan of the regular golfer. A variety of regional accents pointed to roots in different parts of England, but the job and its prestige and money and the clubbiness of their outfits brought them together.

The odd one out was a quiet Irishman they called Paddy, who spent a lot of time looking around him as if committing the contents of the room to memory. He examined at length the crockery and cutlery and took bird-like pecks at the appetisers with chopsticks gripped tight between pink office-dweller's fingers. At least he made the effort. His colleagues tittered with relief when serving staff, hiding their amusement at the clumsy attempts to engage chopsticks, offered up heavy silver-plated cutlery, fresh from the box.

Their team leader introduced himself with a beat-you-to-it handshake that ground sinew between my knuckles, and a pewter-plated sincerity stare straight from an MBA training manual.

‘Nethers. Nethers Hollands. Team leader. Birt, Matthews and Lumberg, Merchant Bankers. London.'

Nethers?

‘Alec. Alec Brodie. Proprietor. Alec Brodie. And Associate. Photography. Islington.'

A glint of what might have been anger flashed across the blue eyes. Schwartz's glare warmed the side of my neck.

‘Saw the prospectus,' said Hollands. Thumb and forefingers grouped, he tap-tapped at a manila folder like an auctioneer punctuating a sales pitch. ‘Very impressive. You and me have to sit down. Have a long talk.'

‘I look forward to it,
Nethers
.'

‘Nickname. Had it for years. Real name's Bernard.' Emphasis on the second syllable. Bern
ahrd.

‘Really?'

‘Actually it's rather clever. Hollands, Netherlands – Nethers. Nowadays even Father calls me Nethers.' He spoke as if I ought to know Father, never mind that I obviously went to the wrong schools.

‘
Very
clever.'

The condescending look suggested that bosom buddy status was out of the question.

There were a dozen of us around the long low table that held the middle of a room lined with classical watercolours of sparsely-wooded rocky mountaintops. Chang presided over one end of the table, and I sat around the corner from him with the Irishman by my side and Nethers facing me. The rest of the Due Diligence team were broken up by Korean directors and Schwartz and Martinmass. A gregarious Korean called Yu helped Paddy with his chopstick technique. Schwartz chatted with a couple of wide-eyed boys, hinting broadly at how much they were going to
enjoy
their first taste of Korea and, no, he wasn't just talking about the meal. Knowing grins were exchanged.

Martinmass sat next to a heavyset man called Joss who matched him beer for beer. They talked in a rude private murmur punctuated with explosive cackles.

Schwartz rang a metal chopstick on the side of a beer glass. Conversation dwindled, and after a few more seconds even Joss and Martinmass put a stop to their murmuring.

‘Gentlemen,' said Schwartz, ‘Don't worry, I am not going to bore you with a speech – '

‘Because that's my job,' said Chang, earning a round of laughter. The timing was so perfect that I wondered if it was a regular gag of theirs. Schwartz smiled while he waited for silence.

‘As ever, Mr Chang is ahead of us. I would like to wish you all a warm welcome to Korea before I hand you over to Mr Peter Chang, President of K-N Group. I am sure that Mr Chang's reputation in the commercial world means he requires no introduction – '

‘But you won't let
that
stop you,' said Martinmass. More laughter, this time polite and a little hesitant. Schwartz shot Martinmass a cold glare before re-attaching his smile and taking up where he left off.

‘Mr Chang is not only the President of K-N Group; without him, there would
be
no K-N Group. Nearly forty years ago, armed with only a small inheritance and a duty to help support four younger brothers and sisters, Mr Chang founded the company. He started out trading textiles at a time when the economy here was only just beginning to recover from the Korean War.

‘Today, as I am sure you know, K-N group is one of the most progressively-expanding
Chaebol
, or conglomerates, in Korea, with dozens of member companies employing tens of thousands of workers here in the domestic economy and in multiple overseas markets. Group turnover for the last financial year exceeded twenty-seven
billion
pounds Sterling.'

Schwartz knew his audience. If you wanted to impress a bean counter, you showed him a hill of beans almost too huge to contemplate. Twenty-seven billion pounds Sterling set off a Mexican wave of approving nods and respectful headshakes. The bank's involvement in a Global Depository Receipt of the size planned would generate many millions in fees, and in the merchant banking world, happy employers gave out Bentley-sized performance bonuses.

Job done, Schwartz handed us over to Chang, who said very little of substance but heaped it high with charm and sincerity. Anything the visitors required, anything whatsoever, all they need do was ask. As their hosts, K-N Group were proud and pleased to serve their every need. Emphasis on
every
. But enough talk of business, because tonight was about introducing his guests to hospitality, Korean style. Sadly, due to a previous engagement Chang had to leave the guests in the good hands of his colleagues, who would do their best to make this a night to remember.

After a flurry of handshakes and unblinking eye-contact sessions, he left the room to drawn-out applause.

The Due Diligence team had hardly hit the ground, and already they were putty in Chang's hands.

The door was barely closed behind him when Mr Yu bellowed in the Irishman's ear:

‘Yoboseyo
.
'

Paddy nearly jumped out of his chinos as a waiter scuttled in from the corridor.

‘
Soju
,' shouted Yu.

The waiter waited.

‘Yol byong.'

I shook my head. Paddy watched me.

‘What was that about?'

‘He's just ordered ten bottles of
soju
. Rice wine, they call it, except it's made from potatoes. The national tipple, used to be dirt cheap because of government price controls going back decades. One dictatorship after another figured if they let half the population stay pissed, that was half they needn't worry about rising up against them.'

‘And that's why you're shaking your head, is it?'

‘Eh?'

‘The shame of supping the poor man's balm?'

This guy was off the wall. I liked him already.

‘I was thinking about the hangover you've all got coming to you. In recent years they've dressed it up in fancy glassware and polished away a few rough edges, but
soju's
still fiery stuff, a bit like vodka, and just as bad for you. The locals love it with a passion, Paddy.'

‘The name's Conor.'

‘Yet they call you Paddy?'

‘That's these eedjits for you,' he said, softly. ‘Been gettin' it every day for three years, and they still think it's a feckin' scream.'

He turned when Mr Yu thrust a shot glass at him. Conor took it in his left hand and raised it to meet the bottle. I said:

‘Use two hands, the way he's holding the bottle.'

Conor was quick. He switched the glass to his right hand, and rested his left fingertips against its side. Yu grinned in response.

‘Very well done,' he shouted, filling the glass to the rim. ‘You know Korean customs.' He sat, still clutching the bottle, watching Conor.

Conor looked to me.

‘You'll be good at the next bit. Slug it back in one go, then hand him the glass and pour him a shot. Two hands at all times.'

‘The same glass? After me just drinkin' out of it?'

I remembered the first time I encountered this Korean notion of comradeship, beer and
soju
glasses swapping hands in a centuries-old ritual that declared mutual respect. Hygiene issues apart, it was a custom that soon grew on anyone who enjoyed a drink.

‘Trust me, you'll get used to it.'

I needn't have worried. All around the table glasses soon passed back and forth with metronomic regularity. Sublimely ignorant of the deadly brew, the Due Diligence team were soaking up
soju
with the abandonment of youth. I had been there many times, so I was determined to stick to beer. Then Conor pushed his glass in my face, and my resolve went out the window.

I threw back the shot glass and a shiver wracked me from head to toe, then the liquor lit tiny warming fires all the way through my system.

Joss, the heavy-set Londoner sitting next to Martinmass, surprised me by putting an oversized elbow among the side dishes and shouting across the table.

‘So you're the North Korea expert?'

Before Martinmass could open his mouth, Schwartz answered quickly:

‘Alec has a great deal of experience in both halves of the peninsula, which is why K-N hired him to document the North Korean operations. Isn't that right, Alec?'

‘Something like that.'
That and the small matter of a hanging offence.

Joss had something on his mind, and the drink was lubricating its way to the surface.

‘What I don't understand is why we're not going to the factories in North Korea. We've been brought half-way across the world to perform the Due Diligence – and we can't go a couple of hundred miles up the road to do it right? Something funny about that, isn't there?'

‘Funny? It's fucking hilarious, so long as you get a giggle out of having your country cut in half, ten million families permanently split up by the Superpowers, then Cold War politics keeping the two halves totally divided, not so much as a postcard getting over the border for the next fifty-odd years.'

‘You're shitting me.'

‘No pal,
you've
got to be shitting
me
. Your job is to fly across the world to Korea and check out a deal worth hundreds of millions, and you don't know the first thing about – ' Martinmass leaned forward to interrupt:

‘You have to
remember
, – '

‘Geoff is right, Alec. Joss and his colleagues just got here,' said Schwartz. ‘The team will need time to get up to speed.'

Like the relative at a family gathering who just asked after the host's pregnant thirteen-year-old, Joss nodded in thoughtful agreement as he unwittingly bit a curling green chilli pepper right down to the stalk and chomped happily into it, violently hot seeds and all. I watched his face turn red and tears cloud his eyes before he reached hungrily for a beer glass and drained its entire contents in one swallow.