Running With the Pack Read Online Free PDF Page B

palpably. Fully aware of what a stupid idea it would be, he inserted both index fingers, bracketed the swelling, and squeezed experimentally. The resultant right-hook of pain sent him staggering back from the mirror, cursing and whimpering through a mouthful of abscess and hurt.
    In this way Hayden spent most of his first night in Hong Kong: alternately checking out the site of the damage in the mirror and pressed against the window in search of distraction. The waxing moon rose over the Island, soared across the tops of the skyscrapers and plunged into the fuzzy sink of light pollution above the western districts. Hayden followed its progress like a wounded timber wolf, baying with each pulsing wave of toothache, the pain as relentless and regular as the jets that slid across the night sky, heading for Lantau and the International Airport.
    He was up in plenty of time for his nine o’clock at Chen 2000 Industries. Unfortunately, between the sleeplessness and the jet lag, he looked like a homeless man who’d sneaked in off the street to panhandle cash in the atrium. With some difficulty—everyone at Chen 2000 spoke excellent English, but he was starting to sound more and more like the Elephant Man—he went through his sales pitch, careful not to let his molars clash as he spoke. Suffice it to say that the case for fast-surface gate conductors from England could have been better put. On the way out he tried to make a joke of it all, pointing ruefully to his swollen cheek, and was rewarded with polite nods and smiles from the junior executives assigned to see him off the premises. Their smooth uncaring faces had showed marginally more interest in his PowerPoint slides and sales patter.
    If the first night had been bad, then the second had been raw torture. As part of his duties, he’d been obliged to attend a banquet in the company of several important clients. Torn between not eating, which he understood would be disrespectful to the local culture, and eating, which he knew would probably end in tears, he’d chosen the latter, and had gingerly inserted a dressed tiger prawn into the opposite side of his mouth from the shattered tooth. Even before the chopsticks had cleared his lips the magnitude of his mistake became apparent. The hot hoi sin had sluiced around his tender mouth and gone straight to the root of the infection, where it had cut clean through the various analgesic treatments he’d been able to score from the pharmacy next door to the hotel. Like a dental probe wielded by some Nazi Doctor Death, the chili sauce skewered straight into the flaming abscess. The pain that ran up the outraged nerve nearly split his head in two.
    His involuntary moan of anguish had turned heads all around the table. Passing it off as a cough hadn’t really helped, since even the slightest movement of his head was by now enough to make it feel as if his jaw was about to crack apart. Desperately, he’d searched the platters spread out before him for something—anything—he could reasonably appear to be eating (his plan was to nibble round the edges, and to smuggle the rest of it into his napkin), but whatever wasn’t marinaded in chilli appeared to be crispy and/or chewy, and neither option was feasible for Hayden in his current predicament. He’d spent the evening with one hand clamped to his jaw, as if trying to suppress the mother of all belches. From time to time a more than usually vile blast of pain would cause him to make a squashy razzing noise like an electrical buzzer under water, which he suspected was unacceptable in any social context the world over.
    Somehow, he’d got back to the hotel. Things were starting to fray around the edges by this time, though no matter how much he drank the numbing edge of the alcohol never quite kicked in. It was the pain that was blurring things; that, and the killer sleeplessness. He’d made yet another raid on the nearby pharmacy, triple-dosed on everything (ignoring the