The Broker
The next day.
Kang-hae asked Joo Hyeon-woo, a senior from his days at the National Intelligence Service, for help.
Joo Hyeon-woo introduced him to a broker who could arrange a boat out of the country and fake identification papers, and Kang-hae headed for Incheon with the twin sisters to meet the man Joo had recommended.
Incheon Yeonan Pier.
They passed a fish market thick with the smell of the sea, and at last the sign they’d been looking for came into view.
Sejin Hardware.
It was a shabby little hardware store with a battered sign hanging above the door, and dusty tools stacked haphazardly inside.
“Is anyone there?” Kang-hae called as he stepped in.
After a moment, the door at the back opened and a middle-aged man with graying hair appeared.
“What can I do for you?”
“I need two bolts for some welding.”
“Where were they made?”
“As long as they aren’t Chinese.”
Kang-hae gave the answer Joo Hyeon-woo had told him to use.
The man stared at Kang-hae, then at the twin sisters standing behind him, Lin Xiaojing and Chu Meijun.
“Follow me.”
He turned and went back into the room he’d come from.
Kang-hae and the twins followed.
Inside was a steel desk and an old fabric sofa, its cushions marked with countless cigarette burns.
The man took out a cigarette, lit it, and said, “Are these two girls the ones going?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a boat heading into Shimonoseki the day after tomorrow.”
“How much?”
“Three thousand per person. No haggling.”
It was far more than Kang-hae had expected.
He looked at the twins as if asking what they wanted to do, and Lin Xiaojing gave a small nod.
“Up front.”
“Can I pay in U.S. dollars?”
Lin Xiaojing asked, looking at the man.
“Then there’ll be a little fee on top.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Lin Xiaojing took out five bundles of hundred-dollar bills from the bag slung over her shoulder.
“Fifty thousand U.S. dollars.”
It came to about seventy million won.
The man pulled an infrared counterfeit detector from the desk drawer.
He took a few bills from the bundles and held them up to the light.
A moment later, he smiled with evident satisfaction and said, “Come back here at midnight tomorrow.”
After they left the hardware store, the twin sisters said they wanted to look around the fish market, so Kang-hae went with them and wandered through the stalls.
They looked exactly like tourists.
There was no trace left of the killers who had entered Korea just days ago to take lives.
And like any tourists, they were quickly cornered by a sashimi restaurant owner doing his best to lure customers in, then ended up ordering raw fish on the spot.
“Cheers!”
Lin Xiaojing filled a soju glass, then raised it.
Kang-hae found the sight of a foreigner proposing a toast with soju a little strange.
“I told you I’m a huge fan of Korean dramas.”
With a resigned look, Kang-hae clinked glasses with them.
Clink.
The twins drank the soju as if it were nothing.
“Aaaah!”
Even the exclamation they let out after swallowing was unnervingly natural.
“We’re paying. Eat as much as you want.”
Lin Xiaojing said, looking at Kang-hae.
He said nothing and simply reached for the sashimi laid out on the table.
It wasn’t quite as fresh as seafood he’d caught himself off the East Sea during his days in the Development Group, but it was still remarkably good.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“...?”
“What’s your relationship with that woman?”
Kang-hae knew the woman Lin Xiaojing meant was Seong Ha-yeong.
“A coworker.”
“That’s all?”
“...?”
Lin Xiaojing looked amused, drained another shot, and said, “At first, when you tried to send that woman home, I thought you were just trying to keep us around and have some fun. But then I thought about it, and you already knew why we came, didn’t you?”
“... .”
“You like her?”
“No.”
Kang-hae answered immediately, but they still didn’t look convinced.
“In Korean, a strong denial means a strong yes, you know.”
“... .”
“Then what about us?”
“Us...?”
Kang-hae didn’t understand what they meant and looked back and forth between the twins.
“Since we’re twins, our taste in men is the same.”
“I like that look in his eyes, like there’s a story behind it. What about you, sis?”
“His scar on the chin?”
“Kind of sexy.”
The twins sat there discussing Kang-hae to his face.
Kang-hae was seized by a sudden, bitter regret that he’d helped these insane sisters for nothing.
Before long, he changed the subject.
“What are you going to do when you get to Japan?”
“Who knows... We’ve got money saved up, so I’m thinking we’ll open a shop or something.”
They didn’t exactly have a plan either.
“Will Stacy Ho just let the two of you go?”
At that, the bright energy on the twins’ faces dimmed for a moment.
“No. If she finds out we ran, she’ll come after us before she comes after you.”
“You sure you’ll be okay?”
“If you’re that worried, why don’t you be our bodyguard?” Chu Meijun chimed in, echoing her sister.
“Not a bad idea. We’ll pay you plenty.”
“I’m not joking. Think about it seriously.”
But Kang-hae refused the twins’ offer at once.
“I’ve got things to do.”
“Those things—do they involve killing people by any chance?”
“... .”
He didn’t answer, but Lin Xiaojing understood well enough that killing people was exactly what he had to do.
“I knew it.”
“I knew it too,” Chu Meijun said, backing up her sister.
“If you ever need help doing it, let us know.”
“We’ve been killing people since we were eighteen, you know.”
At the memory of the clumsy way she’d swung a knife at him last night, Kang-hae burst out laughing before he could stop himself.
“You don’t have to kill people with knives!” Lin Xiaojing protested, suddenly indignant.
She had a point.
Kang-hae smiled and brought the soju glass back to his lips.
He hoped these troubled twins would be able to live in Japan without anything going wrong.
Two days later.
The twins boarded the ship from Incheon Port to Shimonoseki, Japan, and Kang-hae heard through the broker that they had arrived safely.
They never called him.
Good, Kang-hae thought.
* * *
At a high-end Chinese restaurant in Yeonhui-dong, Seoul, Senior Presidential Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Security Oh Hyun-soo looked across the table at Chinese Ambassador Zhang Lifeng, who was drinking pu'er tea.
The Chinese embassy had quietly requested the meeting the previous week.
It was the first time the Chinese ambassador had asked for a meeting since the NLL shelling.
“Now that dinner’s over, you can tell me what this is really about, Ambassador.”
While Zhang Lifeng and Oh Hyun-soo had worked their way through seven different dishes, they had only made small talk.
Now it was time to hear the real reason Zhang had asked to meet.
“Not long ago, one of our cargo ships caught fire at EZZ, and your side offered us a great deal of help. For that, we are deeply grateful.”
There was no way he’d called just to offer thanks.
Oh Hyun-soo responded politely to Zhang Lifeng’s words and waited for what came next.
“However, after speaking with the crew on that cargo ship, I was told that there was a man on board who held citizenship of the People’s Republic of China.”
Oh Hyun-soo knew that already.
He also knew that a man named Baek Kang was being interrogated by the NIS International Crime Team and had said nothing for ten straight days.
“No one has reported that to me.”
Oh Hyun-soo drew a line there.
“I was told he’s in the National Intelligence Service.”
Oh Hyun-soo nearly spat out the pu'er tea he was drinking.
But he held it in.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“We will cooperate with Korea as much as possible. However, please allow us to conduct the investigation on our side.”
It was no different from telling them to hand over Baek Kang.
This was not something Oh Hyun-soo could decide on his own.
“I’ll look into it first and get back to you.”
After saying that, Oh Hyun-soo got to his feet.
And then he headed straight for the Blue House in Yongsan.
Something’s definitely going on.
President Kim Jin-cheol was certain of it after hearing Oh Hyun-soo’s report.
If Baek Kang were just an ordinary man, the Chinese ambassador would never have involved himself.
Kim Jin-cheol called in Go Jeong-un.
A moment later, Go Jeong-un appeared in the presidential office.
“You called for me?”
“It seems China knows we’re investigating Baek Kang. Have you found anything yet?”
“The NIS is still investigating.”
Kim Jin-cheol wasn’t ignorant of that either.
“If this drags on any longer, it could blow up into a diplomatic issue. Find out as quickly as you can.”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
Kim Jin-cheol gave Go Jeong-un a displeased look.
At first, he had liked Go Jeong-un.
His steel and unwillingness to bend had caught Kim Jin-cheol’s attention.
But lately, the impression he got was that the man only started fires and then failed to put out a single one properly.
Still, it was too late to replace the director of the National Security Office now.
Doing so would amount to admitting he had made a bad appointment, plain and simple.
And in times like these, it would only hand ammunition to the opposition and the press.
“You may go.”
With Kim Jin-cheol’s sour stare at his back, Go Jeong-un left the presidential office.
He called the NIS director at once.
Yes, Director. This is the NIS director.
“Is the investigation into Baek Kang still not finished?”
He refuses to say a word, sir.
“Then send him back to China.”
That could cause problems later, couldn’t it?
“That can be dealt with later.”
Yes, sir. Understood.
“I’m hanging up.”
After ending the call with Go Jeong-un, NIS Director Oh Ji-hoon barely managed to keep himself from throwing his phone.
The fact that a mere two-star general until just a month ago was giving him orders rubbed hard against his pride.
Director Oh Ji-hoon called Kim Hyeon, the International Crime Team chief in charge of Baek Kang’s interrogation.
“You bastard! You can’t even get a proper interrogation out of one lousy Chinese prick?”
He roared like a lion.
“He just won’t open his mouth...”
“Then, damn it, torture him, threaten him, do something! You’re a level-three civil servant, for Christ’s sake!”
“Understood.”
After taking that abuse from Oh Ji-hoon, Kim Hyeon headed straight for the International Crime Team’s interrogation room where Baek Kang was being held.
He called all the team members out of the room and unleashed on them exactly the same bellow he’d just suffered from the director.
All the International Crime Team staff had managed to learn from their interrogation of Baek Kang was that he came from Harbin and had graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology with a degree in software engineering.
Kim Hyeon thought that damned human rights nonsense was ruining the NIS.
Unlike them, the younger agents never did anything outside the rules for fear of causing trouble later.
Damned spineless bastards...
After staring at his mute juniors for a long while, Kim Hyeon said he would do the questioning himself and went into the interrogation room.
Baek Kang was sitting alone inside, radiating with his whole body the determination to say nothing at all.
“I hear you’ve had contact from China,” Kim Hyeon said as he sat down across from him.
In that instant, he saw Baek Kang’s eyes flicker.
“Seems they’re going to repatriate you soon.”
“N-no, that can’t happen.”
Baek Kang finally spoke.
Fear colored his voice, and Kim Hyeon could see all too clearly how gently the younger agents had handled him until now.
“You’ve kept your mouth shut this whole time, so how long do you think we can keep a Chinese national like you here?”
“It’s not China that’s calling for me. It’s North Korea. They’re trying to kill me...”
“Why would North Korea want you dead?”
“If I open my mouth, the Republic of Korea will be turned upside down.”
Kim Hyeon swallowed the laughter trying to burst out of him.
He had heard that line countless times in the NIS.
People who mistook the information they had for something grand.
Or delusional fools who believed they were some kind of major player.
More often than not, what they had was either trivial or already known.
“If what you’re saying really is information that could help the Republic of Korea, then I, no—our NIS will vouch for your identity, Mr. Baek Kang.”
Kim Hyeon raised his register compared to before.
Then he offered inducement, speaking beyond the limits of his authority.
After all, if he wanted the man to talk, he had to give him something to work with.
“There’s a mole here too. Turn off the camera and the recorder.”
Kim Hyeon did as Baek Kang asked and switched off the camera and recorder.
Then he pressed the red button beneath the desk as well.
The staff behind the glass mirror could no longer hear the two men speaking either.
This might cause trouble later.
But if that happened, it would be someone else’s problem.
If he were a rookie, maybe. But as a section chief, this much was nothing.
“Now even our people outside can’t hear us.”
“You’re sure?”
Kim Hyeon nodded.
Baek Kang let out a long breath, then told him everything he knew.
And Kim Hyeon realized that the thought he’d had just moments earlier had been a gross mistake.
Baek Kang was no delusional fool.
What he was saying really could turn the Republic of Korea upside down.
If it was true.
“You’re serious...?”
Kim Hyeon could hardly believe what he’d heard.
So he had no choice but to ask if it was really true.
And Baek Kang, his face hard with certainty, nodded.