Yin Yang Tattoo

by Ron McMillan

  He sat back as if there was nothing more to add, leaving me still in the dark.

  ‘So what’s your point?’

  Chang looked to Martinmass, who lifted a heavy handful of printed materials from his lap and let them fall to the table. With an involuntary start I jumped in time with the coffee cups. Prospectuses for the GDR. They had been busy.

  It was your typical four-colour corporate hard-on. I have worked on hundreds of them, commercial profiles that opened with the requisite cliché-ridden corporate portrait, before jumping quickly into sales mode, touting the company’s latest venture in page after page of upbeat prose and glossy illustrations, many of them blatantly diversionary.

  Much of the gloss and almost all of the photographs were down to me. A sweet twilight view of K-N Towers faced the introductory passage watched over by a tight headshot of Chang. I speed-read it. Unbridled optimism over the GDR and the future of South-North economic cooperation that hinged on the success of K-N’s visionary investment in the North Korean manufacturing sector.

  I never tire of looking at my own photographs when they are well laid-out, but as I flicked from page to page, fears confirmed sent beads of sweat running down my spine. For days I had known I was in the shit, but now I had an idea how deep. I was up to my neck in the stuff.

  It was what came after the introductory pages that scared me. A pictorial feature, ostensibly on K-N’s business activities in the North, most of the pictures selected from the stock I supplied Mr Rhee in London. The camera may not lie, but wrapped up cleverly in the right text, it can tell a story far removed from the truth.

  The text told of clothing industry start-ups in the North, factories already in production and exceeding targets, much of the output destined for high-demand export markets in China, Russia and the old Eastern Bloc. It explained that textiles were no more than a modest beginning to a multi-billion-dollar master plan; supposedly in place were planned K-N sister plants for consumer electronics, heavy engineering, shipbuilding and car production aimed at next door’s booming Chinese market. Splashed throughout were my shots from the fake factory in Cholla province, their credence shored up by genuine North Korean street scenes drawn willingly from my London files. To my fast-growing list of grievances I could add the fact that we had not agreed on a fee for the usage of those stock pictures, but maybe now was not the time to bring that up.

  To pull off this sort of illusion the pictures were everything, and the photographs enjoyed a cohesion and unity of quality and film stock and photographer’s angles and vision that came together seamlessly. As a package it presented credibility that money could not buy, except that the mere promise of money had brought me running all the way from London.

  Just in case I was still kidding myself, there, staring out from the inside back page, was my portrait taken from my own portfolio. Below it were two paragraphs that inflated my role as corporate advisor and researcher for documentation backing K-N’s Global Depository Receipt. Alec Brodie, editorial and corporate photographer of international repute, whose client list included some of the world’s best-known news and business publications, and ‘whose recent work in North Korea on behalf of K-N Group so ably illustrates the visionary potential of the Group’s investment in the North.’ Talk about being caught between a rock and two hard places. Major-league corporate fraud, bankruptcy – or a murder charge. Or all three.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chang plucked a tiny mobile from his shirt pocket and pressed a soft pink fingertip to one button. I thought I heard the answering chirp of a phone nearby before the door from the corridor blew open and three men, Chang’s driver one of them, came straight for me. Before I could react the driver had me in a headlock. His friends took hold of one wrist each and twisted hard enough to make me squeal, which the driver put a stop to by moving the headlock up to cover my mouth with the crook of an arm that felt like it was made of mahogany and reeked of stale cigarette smoke. As I fell from the chair I kicked out, sending cups flying but doing nothing to put off my attackers, one of whom responded by leaning a heavy knee across my thighs. I was helpless.

  No-one appeared in the least surprised. Schwartz looked smug and Martinmass clearly enjoyed the show, eyes flicking excitedly from me to Chang and back again. Chang spoke:

  ‘Geoff doesn’t trust you. Ben agrees with Geoff, and I see no point in questioning their judgements, do you?’

  My face buried in the chauffeur’s jacket sleeve, I took that for a rhetorical question.

  Chang nodded to Schwartz. While my captors manhandled me into position Schwartz unbuttoned my shirt down to the waist, ran his hands across my chest and around my back, then loosened my trousers to check inside my beltline, and patted down my pockets and both sides of my legs. He winked at me then he pulled off my shoes and squeezed my socks before shaking his head at Chang who, with a raise of his chin, signalled that I be released. My three attackers brushed their hands over their suits and backed out the door as Chang spoke to me.

  ‘What we have to discuss here goes no further. We have to be sure you are not wearing any kind of recording device.’ While I tried and failed to regain some sort of composure, Chang continued.

  ‘Do you have any idea how far Korea has come in recent decades? Forty years ago we were the poor boys of Asia, lower down the economic ranks than even the Philippines and Burma. In the sixties the West laughed at our pleas for investment but today, every EU member state is on its knees at our door, begging us to build new factories to shore up their run-down economies. Korea is now the twelfth-largest trading power in the world.’

  I waited for him to get to the point.

  ‘You know Koreans are driven. We are committed. We put everything we have into anything we do, whether it is business, sport, politics or religion. Look at the spectacular success of the Korean Olympics or the World Cup we shared with Japan. Outsiders poured doubt and scorn on us until we showed them how to run major international events without so much as a hiccup.

  ‘K-N Group is no different. I started out on my own, travelling the world from one trade fair to the next, nothing to show but a suitcase full of textile samples and a list of Korean suppliers desperate to work on any order I sent them, never mind how small it might be. One telex from anywhere in the world set production lines rolling.

  ‘Today, over fifty thousand Koreans work for K-N Group. Fifty thousand families are dependent on the company. But now the Group is in trouble, and if I don’t sort out the problems, every one of those jobs is in danger. So now we,’ he waved at himself and Schwartz and Martinmass, ‘We have a way to turn it around, to get the Group started on the road back to profitability, to safeguard those jobs.’

  ‘And this is it?’ I slapped a hand on a prospectus. ‘A huge shell game built on a non-existent North Korean investment plan?’

  ‘The plan exists, though perhaps not quite on the scale presented here. This is about much more than investment in North Korea. It is the new beginning for the Group, something that will draw investment from all over the financial world.’

  ‘Driving up your share prices in the process.’

  Chang drew me a look of pure contempt. ‘You Westerners take such a short-term view of things.’

  It was Schwartz’s turn to butt in:

  ‘This guy is a nobody who came running at the first sniff of money – ’

  ‘Money I’ve seen not a penny of.’

  ‘You could still see your money,’ said Chang.

  ‘Could?’ I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Could?’

  ‘It is simple enough. If you want the fee, all you have to do is your job.’

  ‘I came here to take photographs.’

  ‘That remains a major part of your job.’

  ‘What’s the rest? Helping pull the wool over the eyes of investigators who can’t get near North Korea to see these non-existent factories for themselves?’

  Schwartz was furious: ‘I get it now, asshole – you’re just angling for a bigger shar
e for yourself.’

  ‘You forget that I haven’t seen a dollar of my fee.’

  Chang looked at me over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘If you don’t start showing some interest in what we propose, you never will.’

  There it was, on the table at last. Blackmail.

  No wonder they were so cagey about security that they insisted on the heavyweight frisking before the real agenda emerged. Chang spoke again:

  ‘You seem to forget that it is only thanks to me that you are not facing a murder charge. That is, not yet.’

  Martinmass and Schwartz exchanged knowing looks. Chang continued:

  ‘Finish your assignment, do as you are told and go back to London with a handsome fee. We know you need the money. You get paid well for your role, and nobody gets hurt.’

  What about Miss Hong?

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘There is the option of a very public trial whose verdict will be a foregone conclusion. Followed by maybe a year or two in jail while you await the death penalty. A process that I will do nothing to obstruct.’

  I tried to suppress a shiver.

  ‘I still don’t get it. This is worth hundreds of millions to K-N, right?’

  Chang’s face gave nothing away.

  ‘So why do you need me? Schwartz got it right. I’m a nobody here.’

  Chang went on as if I had said nothing. ‘I want an answer. Will you cooperate with us and do what is required? We – ’ A telephone rang next to his elbow. He put up one palm, picked up the phone, and listened carefully before responding.

  ‘Ee boon.’ Two minutes. He turned back to me.

  ‘Detective Kwok is here, and wishes to speak to you immediately.’

  He looked to Schwartz and Martinmass, who were visibly angered by the interruption. They picked up their coffee cups and papers and left by way of Chang’s office. There was a tap at the corridor door and the detective and his two sidekicks came straight in. Kwok pulled a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and held it in front of me. Inside were the wrappings from a video tape.

  ‘This was found behind the curtain in your hotel room. We are going to search the room and your equipment cases again.’

  If they had just found the wrappings, that meant they had already been back at the room, where they had found the equipment cases securely locked. Breaking into the cases might render evidence obtained inadmissible.

  Kwok waved a hand at me. ‘Come with us, please.’

  ‘We will see you again tomorrow,’ said Chang. Like it was a done deal.

  Half an hour later I sat on my hotel room bed as the two detectives rummaged through my equipment cases while Kwok and I looked on. Kwok pulled out the evidence bag with the video wrappings.

  ‘What can you tell me about this?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  One of the policemen called out.

  ‘And this?’ said Kwok, chin pointing at his colleague, who held up a layer of cut foam from one of the cases. Beneath the layer, lying across a wide slot was an unused video tape still in its cardboard wrapping, identical to the wrappings Kwok held in an evidence bag. Next to the tape, a neatly cut cavity in the foam lay empty.

  ‘I sometimes carry a video camera on assignment.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘I can have you arrested at any time.’

  ‘I sometimes carry the video camera to make records of locations and lighting set-ups in case we have to re-create the same lighting at another time or in another location. But on this trip I was travelling alone, and my luggage was overweight, so I left some things behind in London. The camera was one of them. I must have missed the tape when I re-packed in a hurry.’

  ‘So how did this get to your room?’ He waved the evidence bag of tape wrappings.

  ‘It may have been in one of my bags, from an earlier shoot before I came to Korea; it could have fallen out when I was checking my equipment.’ Hypothetical situations can work both ways. So far, they had no evidence to disprove this possibility, and if I had anything to do with it, that would continue to be the case.

  The detectives had finished their search, and had nothing new to crow about. Kwok looked pissed off, his suspicions alone not enough to act upon.

  ‘When this camera turns up,’ When. ‘It will be further evidence against you. Hiding it from us will only make things worse.’

  They walked out, and I buried my face in my hands. For the first time in days, maybe I just did something right.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I savoured the quiet of the room for a moment. Apart from an alcohol-soaked nap in the small hours of the morning I had not slept in thirty-six hours, but right now, sleep was the last thing I could afford. The brushes with Chang and Kwok had been fortunate for me in their brevity only. The morning was not yet over and, so far as I knew, my clients would not be requiring my services today. Tough luck if they did.

  Two minutes under the shower freshened me up and gave me the chance to change out of the beige trousers and off-white shirt that Kwok and his boys had last seen me wearing. I pulled on a pair of dark chinos and zipped a black cotton bomber jacket over the top of a grey polo shirt. I checked the peephole in the door. Nothing. I opened the door in one smooth move and stepped confidently into the corridor. If Kwok had anyone watching for me I would go looking for the chambermaid and ask for some toiletries to replace the ones his detectives had confiscated. The corridor was empty, except for the chambermaid’s trolley sitting outside a room fully thirty yards away.

  Credit card at the ready I turned towards the store-room. I hoped to repeat my earlier easy victory over the lock, but it refused to budge, the door rattling in its frame as I jiggled the card and pushed and pulled at the handle. From the corner of my eye I caught movement at the end of the corridor. I tried to shrink into the shallow recess, one cheek flat against the door. The chambermaid came out of a room with her arms full of soiled linen which went into a bin on the trolley. Only when she retreated back to the room with fresh sheets under one arm could I return my attentions to the lock. This time it gave way, and I was in the store-room, door pushed gently closed behind me. Five seconds to regain my package from high on the shelving, twenty seconds with my ear to the door, and I was back in the corridor and straight across to my room. I transferred the package to a waist bag that I clipped into place beneath the folds of the bomber jacket. I picked up a small backpack and slipped it over one shoulder. Now came the hard part.

  I took the lift directly to the basement and walked quickly into JJ’s. Five paces inside the bar I spun around and looked straight into the gaze of a blue suit following in my tracks. He immediately cut left through a swing door marked ‘Staff Only’. Either he was very good or he actually did work here. From an exit onto the hotel patio I looked towards the pool deck where the only figures visible were uniformed hotel staff and an elderly Japanese couple in matching Burberry bathing suits and sun hats. I hugged the building all the way around to the edge of the car park on the other side, senses alert for any signs of urgency. Just when I was about to relax, Blue Suit cut out of the main entrance and ran towards the pool deck. I nicked around the end of a dividing wall and was gone before he looked my way.

  I kept well apart from the traffic headed for the main entrance, and when the driveway was clear, slid around the gate pillar and slipped into the nearest alley. Fifty yards on, I looked back along the deserted lane as I emerged onto a busy suburban street to find a deluxe taxi parked, driver smoking, the car’s polished nose pointing uphill towards the hotel. Just as I spotted him, the driver picked up on a potential fare. One twitch of my eyebrows and his cigarette was rolling in the gutter. I slipped into the back seat.

  ‘Where you go?’ He looked at me in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘City Hall.’ Ten minutes away – and in the opposite direction to where I was headed. I checked my watch. It was tight, but I should make it.

  He set off back towards the hotel and I
sat low in the seat, peering around the door-frame. As we passed the main gate Blue Suit came running up the driveway, chest heaving, head sweeping from side to side. I ducked lower in the seat. In the mirror, the driver fired me a glance heavy with unasked questions. I pretended to doze off, questions ignored, and he said nothing. He was a taxi driver. Being treated like he didn’t exist went with the job.

  At City Hall I waited until the taxi disappeared around a corner before dipping downstairs into the subway system. Three minutes later I was aboard a train heading south. Instinct sent my hands to check that the video camera fixed to my waist was safe. It was. The subway journey would take about twenty minutes. I scanned the faces of my fellow passengers, but recognised no-one.

  The video business was yet another worry, and with Kwok suspicious about the tape wrappings and the empty space in my equipment case, leaving it in the maid’s store-room for much longer was not a sensible option. All it took was for someone to stumble across them and Kwok would think he had even more evidence of a guilty conscience. Mine.

  Not that there was anything untoward about the videotape itself. I don’t see anything wrong with enjoying tapes of me having sex. It’s a personal thing, consenting adults doing something that gives them pleasure, an innocent turn-on that hurts nobody and breaks no laws. So what if Miss Hong didn’t know about the small camera that I fixed high on a curtain rail while she showered. The way she went along with the Polaroids two nights earlier, I am sure it would not have bothered her. I had known a few women who had participated willingly, even encouraged it, and shared the turn-on of snuggling up to view the resulting show.

  Jung-hwa introduced me to this pleasure source. She arrived at my flat one night with a box in a carrier bag, a clunky video camera that belonged to a family member who was unable to get it to work – or so she said. It took me a couple of minutes to seat the battery and find the correct switch. A little red light blinked above the lens, a grainy black-and-white viewfinder came to life, and I pointed the camera at Jung-hwa, who stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes. Still looking through the camera I followed her to a cassette tape player that sat on top of the television. She hit the play button and tinny speakers filled the room with the sound of canned sex: Sade’s Smooth Operator. Jung-hwa danced a sinuous weave, palms painting the contours of her tight top and even tighter jeans. I yelled encouragement and painted nails moved teasingly to the buttons of her blouse. She started to strip slowly, playing to a rapt audience of one, carelessly flipping clothing over her shoulder, where it came to rest on the TV, on a lampshade, on the floor. When all she wore was a pair of flimsy white underpants, I carefully set the camera down on a coffee table. I walked into shot and was welcomed into Jung-hwa’s arms for a long, hungry kiss. Without breaking away she lowered her hands between us and started to undress me. With a wriggle, she pulled free of my embrace and sank to her knees.