Yin Yang Tattoo (5 page)

As we butted our way onto the expressway for Seoul, Lee tried to make small talk, but I was more interested in what was going on outside the car.

‘You are very tired from the flight.'

‘I'm sorry, John. Yes, I am a little tired.'

The driver slotted into the outside lane and I went back to watching the city unfold around us. Soon we hustled along a riverside expressway, eight lanes of compressed motorised anarchy. To the north, the Han River and the twinkle of the city centre. To the south, massive new apartment towns that to the first-time European visitor are something of an enigma. We are used to high-rise inner-city ghettos, dilapidated low-rent pigeon lofts for the flightless poor who live with peeling paint, boarded-up windows and overlapping graffiti, the installation art of the terminally bored. Seoul apartment blocks stood tall and proud, modern and clean and fully-occupied by middle-class citizens who paid huge sums for a three-bedroom high-rise box, and who couldn't pick their next door neighbours out of an identity parade.

Coming out of a spaghetti plate intersection we found Youido, a mid-river island that forty years ago was a military airfield. Now, as well as being home to the National Assembly, it was covered in apartment and office towers, many of them new to me. In the middle of the island, a massive paved Plaza swarmed with rental bikes and all around it, tall office towers glowed fluorescent green. The Korean white-collar worker doesn't even think about leaving his desk until the boss heads for the elevator, and a rigid behavioural code means Korean bosses work late every night.

Crossing the northern branch of the river we hit ageing tracts of low-rise housing punctured by eruptions of yet more shiny office and apartment towers. Between the gleaming monoliths, long-time city residents clung to life as they had known it for generations. Small businesses carved a sliver of the wealth created by decades of spectacular economic growth. Fashion retailers, beauty shops, hardware stores, coffee shops, restaurants, Internet cafes and beer-and-fried-chicken joints jostled for space with one-room churches, after-school study institutes and neon-lit Tae Kwon-do
dojang
, their windows flung wide to let in cool air heavy with the fumes of traffic jams that never really cleared.

I scoured the streets for locations that sparked memories. A
bulgogi
beef restaurant where I first encountered
soju
, Korea's take-no-prisoners staple liquor. A side street coffee shop where I met a doctor's wife for weekly English conversation lessons that soon adjourned to a cosy back alley
yogwan
, or inn, where the lonely Mrs Choi cheerfully took over the role of teacher to her diligent and grateful student.

The padded luxury of the big Hyundai must have won out, because the next thing I knew Lee was watching two men in overcoats and top hats load my luggage onto a tall brass trolley. As I climbed from the back seat, a vision of beauty in a burgundy uniform stepped forward and bowed deeply.

‘Welcome to the Grand Hyatt, Mr Brodie. I hope you had a pleasant flight. My name is Miss Kim.'

Miss Kim. Three-quarters of Koreans share three surnames, one of them Kim, yet ever since this trip was mooted,
my
Miss Kim had been tramping regularly through my thoughts.

One of the top hats held open the door, and I followed today's Miss Kim into the hotel.

Although I had been to the Hyatt many times, this was my first visit as a guest. The check-in experience was of the programmed efficiency and fawning courtesy you would expect of an ancient Eastern culture polished and shaped by exacting American training standards.

When Miss Kim asked me for my credit card I hesitated and looked to Lee. He stepped forward.

‘Is something wrong?'

‘I wonder if your office mentioned the hotel bill.'

‘No.'

‘I expected your company to want to take care of it.' My eye was on the full-priced ‘rack rate' printed on the form, US$275 per night. A company with K-N's clout could easily secure a heavy discount on that figure. Lee looked embarrassed and Miss Kim looked away. This was better side-stepped than confronted.

‘Perhaps I can leave my credit card details for now, and you could talk to your office about this?'

Lee looked relieved and Miss Kim's smile was as fixed as a flash photograph.

She tried to make some amends by taking my VISA card with two hands, palms up and thumbs pressing gently down on the card, implying formality and respect. I tried to look unconcerned. That card was nearly maxed out, and I already had no idea how Naz was going to make the next bill.

Eight p.m. local time and I was ready for a long soak in a hot tub, a couple of drinks, followed by about nine hours adrift in a bed the size of a tennis court. I asked Lee about the plan for the morning.

‘President Chang has invited you to dinner.'

‘Tonight?'

‘He will pick you up at nine o'clock.'
Will
. Client's privilege.

Scratch the hot tub. I had time for a quick shower and a shave and maybe a restorative hit of caffeine.

 

Five minutes before nine saw me back among the top-hatted doormen.

Precisely on the hour a big black Mercedes purred to a halt and John Lee jumped from the front passenger seat to open the rear door. Inside, President Chang carelessly folded an Asian Wall Street Journal. He wore a dark grey suit with the faintest of pin stripes. The suit jacket was double-breasted, unusual in Korea, and he wore it open to show off a tie so unforgivably ugly that it could only be Versace. His jet black hair was on the long side, yet looked as if he had only just risen from the barber's chair. He had the ageless features of the healthy Korean; in his mid-fifties, to the Western eye, he could pass for twenty years younger. He stretched out a pale hand with shining, freshly-manicured nails. As we shook hands, I managed to bow and made sure the fingertips of my left hand, palm up, touched my right fore-arm. Maximum respect to a person of superior standing.

‘It is so nice to see you again, Mr Brodie.' He spoke with a plummy English Public School accent that was so much at odds with his handsome Oriental appearance.

‘Thank you for inviting me to dinner.'
And for the assignment from heaven.

Chang looked up to the rear-view mirror and nodded. The Mercedes bolted from the kerb, folding me back in my seat.

‘I do hope you like Japanese food.'

‘Very much.' I tried to hide my surprise. For many Koreans an invite to the table of their former Imperial ruler might imply that their country's cuisine was inferior to that of its arch-enemy. The car slid to a gentle halt in a narrow lane running between the high, broken glass-topped walls that surrounded homes of the seriously rich. We had travelled no more than a quarter of a mile from the hotel, and now the same driver who met me at the airport held the door for Chang. John Lee stepped up to the other door. A rubbish collector in plastic sandals and filthy hand-me-downs manoeuvred a hand-cart around the Mercedes, still clanging oversized shears, crying out for newspapers, cardboard boxes and other recyclables. The gap between rich and poor in Korea is like a continental divide.

A tall wooden gate slipped sideways, and an elderly lady in full Japanese Kimono clacked forward on wooden sandals to welcome Chang like an old family friend. Over the gate, CCTV cameras watched us from three different angles, doubtless letting the mama-san know who she was welcoming before he even got out of the car. Chang and I strode in to ringing choruses of ‘welcome' in Japanese and Korean.

The courtyard was groomed to perfection and beyond. A clear rock-lined fish pond wove between white-painted boulders and teemed with gold and white carp, their hungry maws yawning among floating lilies and orchids that I couldn't begin to name. Over the pond stretched a tiny arched wooden bridge, painted bright red, and beyond that sat a house straight out of a Kurosawa movie.

‘Isn't it something?'

‘It's beautiful.'

‘It used to belong to a businessman who was a great admirer of Japanese art and design.' He led me over the little bridge and towards the entrance where half a dozen figures in kimonos performed synchronised jack-knife bows.

I didn't tell him that I had been here before, or that I knew it used to belong to a business magnate who founded his giant empire by collaborating with the Japanese Imperial Army's occupying forces in the ‘thirties and ‘forties. For nearly fifty years its owner had watched his fortune grow until he fell foul of the military regime of the early eighties. Facing doubtful but genuinely threatening espionage charges, he bolted to Japan and died in exile in Kyoto, leaving his home and much of his wealth to be divided up by the Generals and their hangers-on. It was a very Korean story, and I wondered who ended up owning this place. For all I knew it could be Chang.

Inside, young women clad in exquisite silk competed to remove our shoes and replace them with open-backed slippers embroidered with cranes in flight. They ushered us along a broad hallway decorated with Japanese watercolours of bamboo stalks and more birdlife. A dark-stained wood-and-paper door slid back, and Chang stepped aside to wave me in. The room was small and classically minimalist, with square cushions around a low, lacquered wooden table set in the middle of the
tatami
mat floor. The whole of the far wall consisted of glass that looked out upon a private courtyard of potted
bonsai
trees, miniature bubbling streams and precision-manicured gravel. Standing to greet us were two Korean women in their twenties, fashionably dressed in Western outfits that hugged impressive figures. The room smelled of fresh make-up and the lingering rasp of hurriedly-extinguished cigarettes. They bowed demurely, eyes down, hands clasped, and I looked the other way to hide my smile.

Chang drew the hostesses a blatant look of appraisal before settling himself down beside the taller of the two. She had shining black hair whose thick wavy tresses flowed forward as she reached for a hot hand-towel which she unwrapped and offered to Chang. I took to the cushion opposite them and the second hostess settled beside me. She was very trim, with small breasts pushed skywards beneath a lacy top. Gently hennaed hair was parted dead centre and razor-cropped just below her ears, framing a face immaculately highlighted with expensive make-up in a purplish theme. It had to be
the
current look in the Korean fashion magazines, and though it didn't quite work with her slender facial features, it was still a face that could bring London's rush hour to a screeching halt.

Addressing them with the casual familiarity of an aristocrat talking down to his serving staff, Chang asked their names. Each bobbed her head as she responded, and Chang did the honours.

‘This is Miss Hong.' His fingertips brushed oh-so-casually against her breast. She shone a white-toothed welcome, first to Chang, and next to me.

‘And beside you is Miss Pang.' He switched to Korean. ‘This is Mr Brodie.' Miss Pang, reaching for a hot towel, dipped her eyes as she and her friend chorused,

‘Anyong-hassimnika.'
How do you do?

This kind of personal attention from Chang was a surprise, but the situation was nothing new to me. Fifteen years before, my friend Mr Cho used to take me to his ‘room salons', plush, hideously expensive night clubs where every party occupied a private room. Orders were placed by intercom telephone, and professional hostesses of every stripe might as well have been listed on the menu, so central was their role in proceedings.

It was a role built on fawning obsequiousness, shameless flattery and braying laughter. For some it never went any further, but many were available for a price. I remember the first time Mr Cho took me to a room salon. After a few drinks while we picked at a mountainous fruit salad and struggled for conversation, he reached for the telephone and issued precise instructions. Soon a man in waiter costume arrived with a wiry, tired-looking young woman in garish clothes and carrying a hotel room key, which she put on the table in front of Mr Cho. Pushing the key and a wedge of cash back across the table to my new partner, Mr Cho wished me a cheerful goodnight.

As I sneaked a glance at Miss Hong, something intruded in my peripheral vision. A piece of pineapple on a cocktail stick, held by Miss Pang, her other hand cupped pro„tectively below. I opened my mouth and smiled with my eyes.

As she fed me, the painted nails of her left hand came gently to rest, high on my inner thigh. Things hadn't changed much. Across the table Miss Hong was making clucking noises in Chang's ear while kimono-clad waitresses shuffled in bearing trays stacked with unbelievable quantities of food and drink.

Miss Hong and Miss Pang competed to give us maximum face by pouring the Chivas Regal. Chang played gentleman patriarch by politely pouring shorter whiskies for them.

‘Welcome to Korea, Mr Brodie.' He raised his glass in two hands, implying unwarranted respect that I nonetheless appreciated. I was slipping effortlessly into the Korean routine of vital courtesies displayed at all times.