Counterattack (1)
The investigation room of the Presidential Office’s inspection division.
Lee Jin-gyu, the special inspector from the Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs’ watchdog unit, stared at Na Kang-hae with naked greed.
He looked like a beast that had just spotted prey.
A hunting dog.
That had been Lee Jin-gyu’s role back when he was still in the prosecution, before he was dispatched to the Senior Secretary’s Office.
Family. Education. Connections.
The sort of post given to those who possessed none of those things, yet were sharp of mind and ravenous with ambition.
Thanks to that, Lee Jin-gyu had handled the kinds of cases that set the whole country buzzing: a bribe taken by a heavyweight politician, slush funds hidden away by a conglomerate chairman, even celebrity drug scandals.
One wrong move and he’d be thrown under the bus without hesitation.
And yet Lee Jin-gyu had gladly borne the risk.
He had never failed a hunt.
Not once had he let prey escape him.
And the man sitting before him now, Na Kang-hae, would be one of those prey as well.
Na Kang-hae was different.
He was a target chosen personally by the Senior Secretary himself.
One of the very few people who had survived the recent sweeping cabinet reshuffle, holding on to his position alongside Yoo Jeong-hun, the chief of staff.
Last night, Senior Secretary Lee Sang-woo had summoned Lee Jin-gyu.
At the time, Lee Jin-gyu had been serving drinks to his senior prosecutors in a Gangnam room salon.
Dispatches didn’t get to stay in the Presidential Office forever.
More than anyone, Lee Jin-gyu understood that he would eventually have to return to the prosecution.
So instead of making enemies of the prosecutors who had once looked down on him, he had chosen to become one of them.
“Hey, Mr. Lee. Have a drink.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Lee? He’s an inspector from the Special Inspection Team at the Senior Secretary’s Office.”
“Oh, my mistake. Have a drink, Inspector.”
They were seniors who had once not even deigned to sit at the same table with him, but now they smothered him in thinly veiled flattery.
Lee Jin-gyu smiled like a good-natured man and accepted the glass with impeccable courtesy.
“Seniors, really, there’s no need for this. You’re making me uncomfortable. Please, treat me like anyone else.”
And while he was downing the bomb shots they mixed for him, one after another, the phone call from Senior Secretary Lee Sang-woo came.
Lee Jin-gyu did not step outside the room.
He took the call right there.
“Yes, sir. I’ve got the call.”
Everyone held their breath and listened in silence.
Lee Jin-gyu deliberately cranked the volume all the way up.
“Where are you?”
“I’m just having a meal with my seniors right now.”
“Come over now.”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
After hanging up, Lee Jin-gyu could tell the look in the seniors’ eyes had changed from a moment ago.
Jealousy.
And even greater than jealousy, envy.
“You’ve invited me out after all this time, and now the Senior Secretary has suddenly called me away... I’m truly sorry.”
Lee Jin-gyu bowed deeply to them.
The seniors waved him off.
“If the Senior Secretary calls, of course you have to go.”
“We’ve kept a valuable man here for too long. Go on, hurry.”
“Let’s get together again soon.”
Lee Jin-gyu bowed once more and left the room.
And he was certain they would call him again before long.
Lee Sang-woo had not called Lee Jin-gyu to the Presidential Office, but to an upscale yoteong in Samcheong-dong, Jongno District.
Through the window, he could see the meticulously tended lawn and trees, along with a high stone wall built from granite.
Shrrk.
A female attendant in a hanbok opened the door to the room where Lee Sang-woo was seated.
The moment the door opened, Lee Jin-gyu bowed at a ninety-degree angle.
Only after he raised his head did he notice someone sitting beside Lee Sang-woo.
The man at Lee Sang-woo’s side was Seo Seong-guk, a retired general who had recently resigned after serving as Minister of National Defense.
He had stepped down because of North Korea’s armed provocation, but the President’s trust in Seo Seong-guk remained unchanged.
Given time, it was obvious the President would call him back.
“This is Minister of National Defense Seo Seong-guk.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Lee Jin-gyu.”
Lee Jin-gyu bowed ninety degrees toward Seo Seong-guk.
“And this is the junior I value most. He works under me.”
“...!”
That was how Lee Sang-woo introduced him.
The lingering haze of alcohol from moments earlier vanished in an instant.
“Have a drink.”
Seo Seong-guk poured him a glass.
Lee Jin-gyu accepted it politely and drank.
After another round had gone around the table, Lee Sang-woo slid a file across.
“Our minister brought something interesting with him.”
The file was the one Ha Seok-jun had recently prepared in order to carry out Na Kang-hae’s emergency arrest.
That file had been reported up to the Counterintelligence Command commander.
And the commander had passed it on to Seo Seong-guk.
Lee Jin-gyu took the file Lee Sang-woo had offered and began reading through it at speed.
“Well?”
Senior Secretary Lee Sang-woo asked, licking a drop of liquor from his lip.
Lee Jin-gyu immediately understood what he meant.
“It can be done.”
“It’s the National Security Office. You don’t need to force it.”
As if.
Lee Jin-gyu knew perfectly well that Lee Sang-woo’s words were empty courtesy.
That foxlike bastard...
He swallowed the curse down inside.
As Lee Sang-woo had said, the National Security Office was troublesome.
More than that, the National Security Office director was one of the rising powers inside the Presidential Office.
But when had that ever stopped him before?
He had made heavyweight politicians rumored to be presidential contenders bow down, and even conglomerate chairmen backed by giant law firms had been forced to kneel.
Compared to that, coaxing a military officer in his early twenties until he turned pliant seemed no more difficult than eating cold rice.
“I can do it.”
“Then handle him well.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Lee Sang-woo smiled with satisfaction and lifted the bottle.
Lee Jin-gyu swiftly raised his glass to receive the pour.
Then he emptied it in one go.
The liquor coating his tongue was sweet.
Savoring the taste that lingered at the tip of his tongue, Lee Jin-gyu thought to himself that you had to taste something before you could know what it really was.
Whether it would turn out to be honey or poison.
And at that very moment.
From the rooftop of the building opposite the yoteong, someone captured the three men drinking together on camera.
A little later, that same someone pulled out a phone and placed a call to an unknown number.
“Yes. It’s me.”
“Speak.”
“I just confirmed that Minister Seo Seong-guk, the Senior Secretary, and one investigator from the Senior Secretary’s Office met a moment ago.”
“Good work.”
“Yes. Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
* * *
“Then let’s begin.”
It was Lee Jin-gyu who broke the silence.
He adjusted the file laid out before him.
“Mr. Na Kang-hae.”
“Yes.”
“Did you participate in the top-secret operation approved on October 4, codenamed Storm?”
“Yes.”
“What weapons were used in the operation?”
“One rifle, one handgun, a knife, and three grenades.”
“Then were you aware that the rifle was the KS-7 recently developed by the Agency for Defense Development?”
Lee Jin-gyu, who had been using honorifics until then, naturally dropped the formal speech.
“Yes.”
“The KS-7 is issued only to Special Warfare Command Unit 707 and the Information Command.”
It was something Kang-hae already knew.
The rifle hadn’t even been shown at Armed Forces Day, to prevent outside exposure.
“During Operation Storm, you were spotted by the enemy. Five personnel were killed on the spot. After that, you returned to the Paju MDL with another Information Command operative, Kim Ha-jun. Is that correct?”
“...”
Kang-hae didn’t like the phrase spotted by the enemy.
It hadn’t been a spotting. It had been a leak from someone.
He wanted to correct Lee Jin-gyu, but he held back.
Instead he sat quietly and listened.
“We’re both civil servants, but the Information Command is really something—no, seriously, how the hell did you make it all the way from there to Paju?”
“...”
“Did you swim? Or walk? You walked even in daylight?”
“...”
“I’m starting to get on in years, you know. I really should work out. What’s better, swimming or running?”
“What exactly is it you want to ask?”
“Na Kang-hae.”
The playful look from a moment ago was gone without a trace.
Lee Jin-gyu’s sharp eyes drove forward as if they meant to pierce him outright.
Lowering his voice, Lee Jin-gyu spoke slowly.
“Why did you kill Kim Ha-jun?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“There were four bullets recovered from Kim Ha-jun’s body. One in the forehead. Three in the chest. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you did. You fired them.”
“...?”
“The bullets recovered from Kim Ha-jun’s body matched the KS-7 perfectly.”
“...!”
Lee Jin-gyu smiled at Kang-hae, who said nothing.
It was a smile of utter cruelty.
* * *
The office of the National Security Office director.
The moment Kang-hae was taken away to the interrogation room, Ko Jeong-un summoned Seong Ha-yeong to his office.
When Seong Ha-yeong entered Ko Jeong-un’s room, she snapped a salute at the sight of him, then hastily lowered her hand.
It was an old habit.
Back when Ko Jeong-un had served as commander of the 53rd Regiment of the 22nd Division, Seong Ha-yeong had been his direct aide.
As an ROTC cadet, she had served twenty-eight months in the 22nd Division after graduating from university.
And for one year, she had assisted Ko Jeong-un.
“You called for me, sir?”
Ko Jeong-un looked at her in silence.
She was principled and righteous, that much he had seen for himself.
Of course, there was the matter of her family, which gave him pause.
But she was one of the few people in the National Security Office he could trust.
That was why, several days earlier, Ko Jeong-un had given her a covert order.
He had told her to monitor former Minister of National Defense Seo Seong-guk.
Seo Seong-guk was also one of the suspects who might have leaked state secrets to the enemy.
The one who had filmed the meeting between Seo Seong-guk, Lee Sang-woo, and Lee Jin-gyu last night had been Seong Ha-yeong.
Not only that, but several days ago, she had also filmed Seo Seong-guk and the Counterintelligence Command commander exchanging documents at the same location.
As soon as Ko Jeong-un received the report that Seo Seong-guk and the commander had met, he called his former subordinates.
There were many younger officers in the Ministry of National Defense who admired Ko Jeong-un.
And now that he had been promoted in a shocking leap to National Security Office director, his request was not just a request.
It took less than a day to obtain the file Ha Seok-jun had prepared and that the Counterintelligence Command commander had secretly handed to Seo Seong-guk.
Ko Jeong-un already knew.
He knew the bullet recovered from Kim Ha-jun’s body was a KS-7 round.
And he also knew that the file had been fabricated.
But he hadn’t expected them to move this quickly.
“Go to Sae Life Hospital immediately.”
The Sae Life Hospital Ko Jeong-un mentioned was the hospital contracted by the Ministry of National Defense.
It was also where Kim Ha-jun’s autopsy had been carried out.
“Find the forensic doctor there. Secure every record related to Kim Ha-jun.”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
Seong Ha-yeong left Ko Jeong-un’s office at once.
Then, ignoring the staff who asked what they had talked about, she headed for the parking lot.
Once she was in her car, she fell into thought for a moment.
Can I trust the director...?
She didn’t know exactly what was going on, but it was obvious the matter was urgent.
Following Minister Seo Seong-guk could also become a problem later.
But the moment she received the order, she had gone ahead and done it without hesitation.
Because no one knew better than she did that Ko Jeong-un was not the sort of man to do anything reckless.
This time will be no different.
As always, Seong Ha-yeong decided to trust Ko Jeong-un once more.
She started the engine.
A moment later, her car pulled out of the parking lot and raced toward Sae Life Hospital.
---