THEY WENT TO a broker. Working their way through the maze of the air market felt beyond them, if they wanted to get the best possible price. Brokers knew buyers – collectors and connoisseurs, dabblers and dilettantes. They took a percentage cut. The broker’s eyes started popping like the ones on their great-grandmother’s Papuan death mask when they placed the bottle on his desk. Otherwise, he managed to maintain a composed demeanour.

‘It all depends on the provenance,’ he explained. ‘Buyers demand an airtight history.’ He paused. His pun was definitely for effect. His office was a hermetically sealed pod on the fifth floor of one of the glass buildings in Downtown. It had a view over the skyline. Obscured that day, as it was increasingly, by smog.