Seoul Survivors

by Naomi Foyle

Genres: Science Fiction; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi

Synopsis

A meteor known as Lucifer's Hammer is about to wreak destruction on the earth, and with the end of the world imminent, there is only one safe place to be. In the mountains above Seoul, American-Korean bio-engineer Dr Kim Da Mi thinks she has found the perfect solution to save the human race. But her methods are strange and her business partner, Johnny Sandman, is not exactly the type of person anyone would want to mix with. Drawn in by their smiles and pretty promises, Sydney - a Canadian model trying to escape an unhappy past - is an integral part of their scheme, until she realises that the quest for perfection comes at an impossible price.

Release date: February 28, 2013

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

‘Ni-suh, Sy-duh-nee – Choigoya – look at camera – thank you – better – pro-fesh-ional – Now, play with Hot-Cold, plea-suh!’

A shock attack of Nu Destruction beats was battering her body, the studio lights were melting her make-up – melting her face – and the scent of her own fried nerves still lingered in the air, but Sydney was on fire now and this was a war zone she never wanted to leave. Jutting her hip toward the camera, she slithered her palms up the black GrilleTex™ jacket. Beneath its slashing neckline, a tight contraption of silk, wire and pump-foam was pushing her tits out beyond maximum volume. Fuck, this outfit was a knife-free boob job: she’d never had such amazing cleavage in her life. But that wasn’t all the OhmEgo designers could do. Tossing her hair, she pinched the metal button stitched over her heart and twisted it all the way round to the left.

Big mistake.

The music hit a disco vein and she made a stab at vogueing, but as she cocked and sliced her arms at asymmetrical angles to the world, an oven of heat bloomed through the jacket.

‘This is brutal, Jin Sok,’ she panted, fumbling for the dial.

‘No!’ he ordered. ‘Go wi-thuh. Go wi-thuh.’

He was totally crazy. But so was she. She reached off-set, grabbed a bottle of water from a white designer stool and, facing front again, squirted the cool liquid down her neck and chest. Ahhh. The photographer stomped in applause and she chucked the bottle aside. Bending low enough for the camera to practically capture her navel, she pouted and traced the glossy circle of her lips with her tongue. A dark blush tingled in the pit of her stomach. Johnny would kill for her to do that at home.

Jin Sok jumped on a chair. ‘Loo-kuh up. Now,’ he commanded.

She raised her chin and he zoomed in on her chest. Beneath her mask of gold make-up her cheeks flared. For a breath-taking instant she imagined scooping her wet tits out of the bra and thrusting them into the shot.

A gush of fear soaked her panties; her bare legs trembled and she thought she might stumble. Fuck. What was she doing, getting turned on at her first major league shoot? What if she stained the OhmEgo shorts?

If Jin Sok noticed her panic, it only aroused his approval. ‘Okay! Ye-suh! Baby – smi-luh!’ He hopped off the chair and kicked it away into the corner of his studio where it sent an orchid pot flying. She threw back her head and laughed out loud. ‘Beauty!’ he roared. ‘Now kissing, Sy-duh-nee – ki-suh please!’

Crisis past, the GrilleTex™ heat now just bearable, she smacked the air noisily. Her blonde braids tipped with metal cones knocked against each other with empty precision as she strutted to the front of the set. Arms crossed, she toyed with the OhmEgo logo warped into the jacket’s left shoulder. Peeping at Jin Sok from behind a web of storm-proof mascara, she turned to display the puckered omega. What felt like a bucket of sweat sluiced down her spine.

‘No, really, I’m too hot!’ she complained, louder this time. Jin Sok couldn’t expect her to keep going under these blazing lights, not with the GrilleTex™ temperature cranked up to the top. No wonder her body had zoomed out of control.

Jin Sok’s shaved head gleamed above the lens and with his free hand he jabbed the air, keeping the momentum of the music moving through the room. ‘Cool it, baby – i-suh cream option – chill out!’ he called.

Thank fuck for that. Sydney twisted the dial round to the right. An icy shiver ran through the thermo-threads embedded in the jacket and goosebumps pinged up on her arms. Shit, that was no good either. Even in a sauna of a studio, who wanted to be cold and clammy inside full-blast air-con clothes?

She shrugged off the jacket and let it slip to the floor. Her abs were still a work-in-progress – okay, non-existent – but the bra was fringed with silky black tassels that hid her puppy fat and felt lovely and swishy against her skin as she moved. Johnny hated them – ‘Fringes? What are you, a lampshade?’ he’d sneered when she’d showed him the MoPho files – but he wasn’t here, so fuck him. Shaping her hands into pistols, she sprayed the room with bullets, picking off all-comers before merging the guns into one and pointing the barrel directly down towards the camera.

Jin Sok urged her on in Korean and as she wiggled and winked, blew kisses and blinked, her heart finally dared to dart all its little silver arrows up into the music, up up up to the high white ceiling of the studio. Was it really true? Was she really posing for a leading international techno-fashion photographer, not being told just to ‘look pretty’ by some dork in a tacky suit? Thank fuck Jin Sok had spotted her in that cheap lipstick campaign. This was where she was supposed to be. Johnny could go find himself a new girl scout: she didn’t need to sweet-talk his stupid clients any more – maybe she didn’t even need to suck his big cock any more … Please, she silently groaned, closing her eyes, please let this never stop, let this feeling never end, set fire to my clothes, let me die now, please …

‘Eye-suh open!’ Jin Sok whooped, blasting the music until it rattled the roof. She hurled herself back into the room with a flying Taekwondo kick. Right now, everything was Ohm-E-Go-Girl-Go.

*

The truck jerked to a halt, slamming Mee Hee’s head into the corner of the box. Tears stung her eyes, but she swallowed hard and forced herself not to cry out. The doctor had said, No matter what happens, don’t make a sound. She licked her cracked lips and, as silently as possible, took a deep breath. The truck engine died.

Bu-ung, bu-ung. Bu-ung, bu-ung. Mee Hee’s heart hammered at her ribs, in her ears, right down in the pit of her belly: bu-ung, bu-ung; bu-ung, bu-ung, louder and faster, until her whole body was booming, until the truck itself must be shaking like the lid of a rice sot left to boil over by a bad, foolish wife. Oh, why must her own heart betray her? Why couldn’t her heart be small and quiet and still?

A tear slid down her cheek. The pounding in her chest subsided just enough to remind her that her head was throbbing, her neck bent at a sharp angle to her shoulders. But she didn’t dare shift or stretch, not even a finger or toe.

Was this it? Would she hear men barking at the doctor, the back of the truck rattling open? Would the empty crates and sacks piled above her be flung out, one by one, onto the road; would boots clump across the metal floor that was her roof; would the trapdoor heave open and flood her sweating, aching body with light?

No. The truck belched and lurched forward, and a thick shudder ran through her. Stifling a whimper, she pushed herself back onto the blanket the doctor had given her. If only she could sit up – but the box was so small, she could only lie flat, or curled up like a foetus on her side. Try to sleep, the doctor had said – but who could sleep sweltering in this heat, afraid that, at any minute, petrol fumes might start seeping through the air-holes poked into the walls of the box?

Beneath her, the tyres crunched over something on the road. She tried to imagine what had just been flattened: not a rabbit or a magpie, she hoped, but a tin can, perhaps, or a farmer’s tool, dropped off a tractor or cart. It was important to picture the day outside, not to lose herself in the box; to remember she was travelling, going somewhere far away. But they were so many miles from her village now that she didn’t know how to think about the land blurring past. She could imagine smudged mountains, beautiful as the ones she had left behind, or terrible scenes of parched paddies and swollen-bellied children lining the road: either way she might be creating a false world in her head, one that could never prepare her for where she was truly going.

A large drop of condensation splashed onto her forehead. She wiped her face with a corner of the blanket, then groped around until she found the water bottle. She took a small sip. The water was as hot as soup, and there wasn’t much left. Maybe soon – oh please soon – the hatch behind the driver’s seat would open again and a cool bottle would rumble down and hit her shoulder with a thud. Would the doctor push another bag of kimbap down as well? Three or four hours to the border, he had said, then eleven or twelve hours to Beijing. It was the longest day of the year, she knew. The longest day of her life.

Oh, how many more hours until she could eat? Mee Hee crossed her arms and squeezed the water bottle between her breasts like a doll. She must stop thinking about food. She’d had two meals today already, a whole bowl of ramyon in the medical tent before dawn and then, later, the eight pieces of kimbap the doctor had given her. She should have saved them, like the water, but once her lips had closed around the first perfect chewy circle of rice and kim, stuffed with thin, crunchy slices of kim chi and cucumber, she hadn’t been able to stop eating until the very last piece had vanished. That was not so long ago; she shouldn’t be hungry now. She shouldn’t be tormenting herself with thoughts of dried squid, warm from the coals, smelling like a man, or soft and heavy dduk, dusted with sugar powder and filled with a dollop of sweet red-bean paste.

Her guts curled like the noodles in the ramyon, sending heat corkscrewing through her body. Her skin was grimy and slick, her lungs were burning, her head hurt. If only she could get a message to Dr Tae Sun, tell him to stop the truck, to let her get out and breathe, paddle in a stream, shelter in some pine trees from the midsummer sun. If only she could ask him to tend to the new bruises she could feel stealthily blossoming beneath the old ones; soothe them with the ointment he had used in the medical tent the day before, his quiet hands smoothing the milky lotion into her skin, not asking how her body had come to be a lumpy porridge of yellow and purple flesh. If only Dr Tae Sun could lay his hand on her forehead now, smear his sweet-smelling herbal cream along her ribs – but even if he could hear her from his seat beside the driver, she couldn’t cry out, couldn’t scream, couldn’t beat the insides of the box. She was tired, so tired, and her throat was dry as tree bark, her belly bloated, her skin shrinking and tearing …

Then, just as she thought she would split open, her whole body began to simmer like a stew. It was almost beautiful, that feeling: her muscle, bone and skin melting into the hot, humid air, until, warm and weightless, she was floating on a greasy pillow of steam, rising up into a golden light, up and far above the stinking cauldron of the truck.

*

It was a wonder he had any room for lepidoptera, what with the wall-to-wall cargo packed in his guts, but the butterflies in Damien’s tummy were flapping so wildly a fucking mountain range in China had probably collapsed. He was also bursting for a pee. The second the seatbelt sign went off, he frogmarched himself down the gangway to the loo.

The tang of antiseptics in the cubicle hit his nostrils like a pinch of cheap coke. Christ, he was so keyed up he could have wanked – but he mustn’t disturb his system, Jake had written: for twenty-four hours before the flight, no spicy foods, no coffee, no sex. Besides, he thought, watching his urine swirl down the stainless steel bowl, who’d want to masturbate in a fluorescent-lit cell, stifling every gasp, and keeping your elbows tucked in like you were eating school dinner? Of course he wanted to join the Mile High Club – but he wanted to do it properly, not with himself.

The relief of an empty bladder was almost as good as an orgasm. But his stomach was still uncomfortably, unignorably, there. He splashed his face with water, ran his fingers through his lank black hair and grinned dementedly into the mirror. He didn’t look like an international criminal: same annoyingly boy-band lean cheeks as always; same sky-blue eyes and bloodless white skin. Though there was a tad less stubble on his chin – Jake had said that the cleanshaven look was the best policy. Jake had said a lot of things, and because Damien was flat-broke, legally fucked, shit-scared and a fool, he’d listened.

No. Raising one eyebrow, he fixed himself with a stern, Gregory Peck meets Alex Ferguson, half-time bunker pep talk sort of look. Not a fool. There was another reason – an unimpeachable, winning season kind of reason – why he was flying by the seat of his Asda boxers out of yet another wet Sussex summer into the biggest, daftest gamble of his life. He was out-manoeuvring Lucifer’s Hammer. And he had to keep his eyes firmly on the prize: Plan Can.

As pepped as he was going to get, Damien returned to his aisle seat. The Korean beside him, a bloke in a blue Lacoste shirt and Prada specs, was tapping away at his laptop, filling the screen with rows of tiny circles and squares. What had Jake called the Korean alphabet? Anyway, it was easy to learn, apparently – especially if you were locked up for ten years with fuck all else to do.

Damien shifted in his seat. When was the in-flight entertainment going to start? He’d had to sell his own laptop and iPod to help pay for the carbon tax on the flight, and it didn’t look like his neighbour was going to be striking up a friendly chat to distract him from thoughts of acute THC poisoning or imminent lengthy imprisonment. Though according to Jake, Korean jails weren’t so bad – not malarial mosh pits like in Thailand or the Philippines, anyway. He’d also said the whole country ran on a well-oiled system of bribery and corruption, though Damien suspected that young foreigners could probably only pay their way out of stuff like getting pissed and thumping random strangers, or teaching ESL without a work visa. And besides, you needed money to bribe someone and he was on this plane in this condition precisely because he had less than none of that.

Christ. His brain was whirring like a stuck DVD drive. He had to stop thinking about the future – actually, to stop thinking entirely would be best. In an attempt to focus on his immediate surroundings, he stared at the seat-back video screensaver: Han Air: Treating Our Customers Like Nature: With Attention and Respect. Corporate eco-speak was the new opiate of the masses, but it wasn’t nearly as effective as crap 3D vid-games. He craned a look down the aisle. Thank fuck: a trolley-dolly was tripping towards him with a plastic sack of headphones and Digi-IMAX glasses. He sat up straight and pushed his hair out of his eyes.

Jake always boasted that Korean women were the hottest in Asia. This stewardess was petite and heavily made-up – probably a Han Air’s executive’s wet dream, but she wasn’t Damien’s type; still, when her creamy fingers brushed his, he felt his face rush beet-red like some gangly schoolboy. Mortified, he busied himself with the headphones. Apart from a gut full of drugs, what was wrong with him today?

At least Han Air delivered a good range of games. Laptop guy closed his lid and logged straight on to the in-flight Starboarders. He was clearly at some ultra-high level of frequent flyer galaxy-building: within seconds of slapping his 3D glasses on over his Pradas he was zooming around, checking up on all the planets he’d colonised, punching the air as he racked up new points. Just watching him made Damien feel spacesick – though doubtless the ballooning sensation in his gut had a more immediate cause. He dug in his pocket for the Imodium tablets Jake had recommended. He’d taken two already, but a couple more would set his stomach like cement. He washed them down with the last of his duty-free water then, jittery again, got up to dispose of the box in the loo. There should be nothing suspicious on his person at Customs.

Ahead of him, the stewardess laughed: a high, girlie tinkle with a throaty catch. Damien blinked – and for a jolting moment, the blue-grey chairs were all tilted tombstones, and the giggle was a small, sharp fist: a punch from the past, landing right between his ribs.

He grabbed his seat-back. His mouth was parched, his vision swimming and that god-awful feeling was back in his stomach – not the anxious clamping and squeezing of the last eight hours, but that old, vast, burning emptiness, that scalding feeling of having been ripped open, torn in half, of dying to puke or sob or throw breakable things at the wall. A Jessica flashback – why now?

‘Are you okay?’ The stewardess touched his shoulder and he realised a small circle of Koreans in Digi-IMAX specs had interrupted their conquests of Andromeda to turn round and peer at him.

Guy Debord would have been proud, but Damien was in no shape to mentally compose Situationist Tweets. Resisting an urgent desire to clutch at his stomach, he muttered ‘I’m fine,’ and slid back into his seat. He was running hot and cold now; he was trembling; his whole body was blistered with sweat. Jesus Christ, why was this happening? Did one of the condoms split? Was dope leaking into his system? If he did vomit, would the hash baggies come up too? Fucking hell … what would Jake ‘Godsend’ Lee tell him do?

‘Fin-ish-ee.’ Jin Sok set his camera down on the long white studio table. ‘Super-fantastic work, gentlewoman, thank you.’

‘Thank you,’ Sydney croaked. Jeez, she sounded ridiculous. She was parched, that was why: she needed some water, but she’d squirted all hers down her cleavage. A towel would help too – the sweat was pouring off her like Niagara Falls. ‘Jin Sok,’ she tried again, but the photographer placed a finger on his lips.

‘Shhh.’ From the back pocket of his NoChi jeans Jin Sok produced a pink hanky with a flourish. He patted her forehead and cheeks with the cloth, which exuded a light yet beguiling aroma. When she opened her eyes he was offering it to her in the formal Korean manner, one hand outstretched, the other supporting the opposite elbow. ‘Present for top new Canada model in Seoul.’

‘Me?’ she squeaked. Was she ever going to act normal in front of Jin Sok?

‘Okay, top new Canada mousie in Seoul!’ He guffawed as Sydney took the hanky.

She was pleased she remembered to bow slightly and to place one hand at her elbow. It was a square of traditional Korean linen, spritzed with perfume – and now smeared with gold make-up. She twisted it into the shape of a flower and buried her nose in the folds. Sun-warmed peach? And a drift of vanilla?

‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered.

‘Is “Summer Passion”, classic aroma from Yi Min Hee, Korean movie star. Heliotrope and many secret fruits. I recommend for you.’ Jin Sok saluted her, then picked up the GrilleTex™ jacket and folded it carefully over the back of a chair.

She gasped. ‘Oh please, let me do that.’ Her first time modelling ultra-expensive thermo-tech gear and she’d been throwing it all over the floor.

‘Oxi, oxi. You go crazy in photo-shoot, you need relax now. Sit, have water!’

Obediently, Sydney perched on a stool and took a bottle of IceCap from the bar. Jin Sok was absolutely by far the nicest person she’d met in two months in Seoul, and super-sexy too, with his rock-solid buttocks, bossy roar and simple black T-shirt-and-jeans style. So what if he was camp as a sequinned tent? She didn’t need a new boyfriend, she just needed a friend, not to mention, please please, a six-month high-end modelling contract. Still, glugging her water, she couldn’t help but admire Jin Sok’s biceps as he packed away his Leica.

Briskly, the Korean snapped the case shut. ‘Sy-duh-nee, you know today longest day?’

‘Longest day? No?’

‘Yes, is summer eating party day. Come to Stack Bar. Lots of models, nice girls, dancing. You wear day-glo wig. I promise.’

An eating party? She so wanted to say yes, and for a moment she almost did, then her stomach contracted and something like a chill whistled through her. ‘I can’t,’ she muttered. ‘I told Johnny I’d go back to Itaewon straight away.’

‘Ah, yes, Mr Johnny Boyfriend. He come too. Tell him no funny stuff, I very good boy.’ He gave an exaggerated wink.

She smiled, but didn’t laugh. ‘I’m sorry. He wants me to meet some, umm, friends of his. Another time, I promise.’

Jin Sok threw her a mock-stern look. ‘You promise? Good! Tonight Itaewon is lucky, Apkuchong must wait.’

‘Shiteawon, Jin Sok, is where I have to go.’

‘Shiteawon! I like,’ he roared. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ He bowed three times, and now she did laugh, not so much at her own joke as at the photographer’s clowning determination to cheer her up. ‘But I am think for you, gentlewoman, Apkuchong is better,’ he continued, wagging his finger at her. ‘I want you move to Apkuchong.’

Apkuchong was heaven in concrete: designer shops, cafés, rooftop terraces … Jin Sok’s studio. But Johnny hated it – he called it Fag Central – and there was no way she could afford a place here on her own.

She sighed. ‘It’s so expensive, Jin Sok.’

‘Okay, yes, and I am think so. Shinch’on, Hongdae better for you. I show you, north of Han River, old city. Night-life, my friend bar, I take you. In location van. Soon.’

‘Yeah?’ For a moment, Sydney dared to believe she might do it: go out dancing with Jin Sok, without Johnny; get her own apartment, be a famous model in Seoul.

Heading for the changing room, she squeezed the pink hanky in her fist. What right did Johnny have to tell her what to do?

*

A bus pulled up beside the Caddy, its engine rumbling like the guts of a North Korean farmhand. Elbow resting on the wound-down window, Johnny Sandman raised the volume on his MoPho ear-clip and placed his middle finger into ‘Fuck off’ position against his cheek. Longest day of the year, a cool breeze cutting the heat: perfect weather for cruising with the top down – and he had to get a call from that nitpicker Kim.

‘Sorry, Doc. Say again?’

‘The girl has been here for two months,’ Kim repeated tightly from some white-cube ‘environment’ high above Seoul. ‘GRIP is on schedule. We need to know that the Project will be put to her as soon as possible.’

Johnny patted his jacket pocket. Where were those OxyPops? He might need them. ‘Look, Doc,’ he replied suavely, ‘she’s coming along nicely, but like I said last week, now is a delicate phase.’ The light changed and he stepped on the gas, though not nearly as hard as he felt like. It was rush-hour in the glass heart of Seoul and bumper-to-bumper Hyundais and Kias were nudging through the shadows of corporate HQs. ‘She’s still complaining about the pollution. And the food,’ he improvised as he fumbled in the glove compartment for the Oxys and chucked the bottle onto the passenger seat. ‘We both agreed she’d have to fall in love with Seoul before we scooped her into the deal, did we not?’

‘Fall in love with Seoul, or fall in love with you, Mr Sandman?’

Johnny scowled. A minor point had been scored. Breathe, he reminded himself, breathe deep. Don’t sweat the small stuff; paint the big picture. Don’t fight the losing battle; win the war.

In his ear-clip Kim started ranting on about unauthorised operations, inexcusable delays. For the next five minutes he concentrated on negotiating the swankiest crossroads in the city, a grid of space-age towers yoked together by four-lane ramps full of morons watching flocks of 3D starlings swirl out of vidboards instead of where they were going. In any other country that would be illegal, but Korea had invented CGI Skylife, and its good citizens had decided they were going to fucking well watch it, even if a busload of school kids was killed in the process. Johnny’s knuckles were bloodless and his fingers practically indented into the steering wheel by the time he exited the intersection.

But at least he was out in the open now, floating past the central flower bank of the boulevard down to Namdaemun, catching some rays. At last Kim paused. Johnny smiled his broadest milk-and-cookies smile – you could hear a smile, Beacon had said – and crooned, ‘Doc, baby, calm down. The more Sydney digs me, the more likely she is to say yes to the Project. As far as the night shift goes, she’s a natural, and she likes the spending money.’

‘There is absolutely no need for her to be entertaining your private clients,’ Kim hissed. ‘You are well aware that once she signs she could be independently wealthy in a matter of weeks. GRIP insists that you make your overtures immediately.’

GRIP insists? GRIP insists? Johnny nearly put his fist through the dashboard. If it weren’t for Johnny Sandman, GRIP would still be splicing the stem-cells of aborted poodles into the livers of rich drunks. Not only had he sourced the clinic, he’d convinced the head honchos in Cali to invest in the Doc’s own personal Whacko-Jacko wet dream. He’d been telling ConGlam for months that post-Fukushima, post-Arab insurrections, post-Alpine snow-melt, Korea – with its cherry blossoms, spicy food and luxury ski resorts – was primed to become the globe’s top tourist destination: the new Japan, Egypt and Switzerland rolled into one. Yeah, ConGlam’s top South-East Asian trend-spotter and fixer had backed the Doc’s ‘creative contribution’ to the Project down the line – for a cut and benefits, of course – but you’d never guess that from the way Kim talked to him now.

‘Sandman? Are you there?’

‘Just turning a corner, Doc.’ Fuck Andrew Beacon; it was time for some chemical assistance. He reached over and grabbed the OxyPops bottle, flipped open the cap and tipped a couple of pills under his tongue. The concentrated oxygen fizzed up into his cerebrum cortex, clearing his brain of tension. Almost instantly, his shoulders relaxed. These things worked like magic. A shame you could only take them every four hours.

‘Good. Now can you assure me that you’ll speak to Miss Travers this week?’

This week? Johnny sucked his teeth. Obviously he was going to have to talk to Sydney about the Project at some point, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was give the girl any leverage. She’d been such a pain since old Stinky Gym Sock asked her in for that test shoot: bitching about everything, leaving her shit lying around the apartment, criticising his favourite DVDs, even forcing him to watch that bizarre catwalk channel while they were having sex. It had all been getting to him, and last night he’d reacted. Not in a good way, in the old Black Label Johnny kinda way.

But as Beacon said, you shouldn’t dwell on the occasional backslide. Right now he needed to play softly softly catchee Sydney again. Not hand her a twenty-year ConGlam contract: do that, and the girl and her candy-apple ass were likely to swing right out the door.

‘Look, Doc,’ he cajoled. Now he was relaxed, it was so much easier to try the Beacon approach: mirror back your opponent’s feelings; assert your authority in a calm, inclusive manner; posit a win-win scenario. He’d practised it a hundred times on the course. ‘I know GRIP’s all ready to go. I know you’re anxious about deadlines. But LA trusts me on this one, and I’m sure it would help build ConGlam’s confidence in GRIP if we at least appeared to be working together out here.’ Another bus farted a cloud of concentrated smog in front of him. Fuck, when were they going to go hydro in Korea? He’d have to dry-clean his suit tomorrow, and get the Caddy washed – not to mention buy a whole new pair of lungs.

‘All right.’ You could almost hear the tooth enamel disintegrating. ‘So when do you suggest we talk to her?’

Yo: re-sult. The almighty Doctor Kim was backing down; chalk one up for the guy in the vintage convertible. And Andrew Beacon and the OxyPops parent company too, natch.

‘After I get back from China.’ Revving the engine, Johnny overtook the bus.

‘China? That’s weeks away.’

‘No point getting her all excited until Beijing is sorted, and LA agrees.’ He was coming up to the night market now; time to merge and swerve. He’d bring Sydney here soon; a little underground bargain shopping at two a.m. was sure to turn her on. Yeah, all he had to do, now he’d bought a little time, was spoil the girl rotten, get her all loved up again.

‘There’s been far too much excitement already, Mr Sandman,’ Kim spat. Johnny let the poison run off him. Ya di ya da. The Doc sure needed a fuck. ‘If you don’t approach her the day you return from Beijing, I’ll go over your head so fast the Venturi Effect will rip your hair out by the roots.’

Johnny frowned. Who knew what the Venturi Effect was – and who cared? No one, but no one, threatened the Sandman, or his fine head of hair. ‘Now, now, Doc,’ he replied coolly, ‘there’ll be no need for Air Force One.’

‘I sincerely hope not. Now, what about your appointment with Rattail? Don’t tell me that’s been delayed too?’

‘Heading there right now.’ A girl on the back of a scooter gave him a cool once-over; he adjusted his balls and returned the favour, clocking the crack of her ass cheeks, just visible above her belt. Nice.

‘Did you get my message about the vital stats?’

‘Sure, sure: female, five-four to five-five, skinny. Mid- to late-thirties. Nice tits.’ He couldn’t resist.

‘Not essential,’ Kim snapped, ‘just the height and ballpark weight. That’s one hundred and ten pounds. Perfectly average for a Korean woman.’

‘Whatever you say, Doc; whatever you say.’

But Kim had already rung off. Johnny jammed his MoPho back into