Tianjin (3)
An Hyun-beom said nothing.
Jo Seong-jun felt as if his blood had turned upside down.
The Information Command and the NIS were always competing over intelligence, but he had never even heard of someone tipping off a host country directly.
Besides, Information Command was always pushed behind the NIS in everything. From mission funds to personnel, they had far less than the NIS did.
The NIS could not possibly be ignorant of that reality.
That was why some people had defected to the NIS, sick of being treated like dirt.
“So if you didn’t answer me, I should take that as an answer.”
“……”
An Hyun-beom took out a cigarette and put it between his lips.
Then, after smoking the whole thing down to the filter, he finally told Jo Seong-jun everything that had happened.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Two days earlier, in a shabby hot pot restaurant in Tianjin’s old city.
An Hyun-beom had met Kim Soo-hyun, the NIS Northeast Asia Intelligence Operations Division chief who had been dispatched to Tianjin.
By the time An Hyun-beom arrived, Kim Soo-hyun was already dead drunk, and a bottle of baijiu over forty proof had been emptied on the table.
Kim Soo-hyun had been a year above him at the military academy, and the two of them had met a few times in Tianjin and Beijing over the years.
But it had always been for brief meals, and all they ever exchanged was work-related talk over food.
Today was different.
“Senior, is something wrong?” An Hyun-beom asked carefully as he sat down at the table.
“Hey. Is this really how it should be?”
“What do you mean by that……?”
“The bastards from the little house. They say to deal with them.”
“Deal with them, as in……?”
Kim Soo-hyun made a slashing motion across his own throat.
An Hyun-beom asked again. “Deal with where……?”
“First.”
“……!”
The hairs on An Hyun-beom’s body stood on end.
First Team—he meant Tianjin Team 1, led by Lee Min-su.
An Hyun-beom and Lee Min-su had been classmates at the military academy, and though they were distant now, they had been close back in cadet days.
“Why on earth……? Does that even make sense……?”
“I don’t know either. They told me to do it from above.”
“No matter what, that’s absurd……!”
“It’s already been decided. They’ve already passed the information to Woo Market.”
Woo Market was a Taiwanese-American information broker who maintained covert ties with intelligence agencies around the world and traded in information.
Handing First Team’s roster over to Woo Market was no different from handing it to every intelligence service on the planet.
“I know Lee Min-su—no, I know Team Leader Lee. He’s inflexible, sure, but he’s not the kind of bastard who’d blow a job. He was the sharpest of our class. Why would you throw away a man like that, for God’s sake?”
An Hyun-beom said in desperation.
He knew better than anyone what happened to intelligence officers once they were arrested abroad.
Kim Soo-hyun silently took out a fresh cigarette and lit it.
Without saying another word, he got up and left.
Back home, An Hyun-beom couldn’t sleep a wink.
Even after reporting to the consulate the next day, he couldn’t focus on anything.
And then he thought about it.
Senior Kim Soo-hyun must have known too.
That he and Lee Min-su had been close friends back in their military academy days.
Then was telling me that fact some kind of silent message……?
In the end, after much agonizing, An Hyun-beom told Jo Seong-jun, a Team 3 leader in Tianjin whom he knew by sight, what had happened.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
After hearing An Hyun-beom’s story, blue veins stood out on Jo Seong-jun’s forehead.
He wasn’t the sort of man to be easily shaken by anything, but this time, he couldn’t hold it in.
He fought down the urge to put the pistol in his hand through An Hyun-beom’s skull.
In truth, An Hyun-beom hadn’t done anything wrong.
It would have been better if he had said something sooner, but if their identities had already been exposed, they would have been arrested in the end anyway.
What he still couldn’t understand was why the NIS would leak their own information.
Jo Seong-jun tucked the pistol back into his waistband.
He was about to warn An Hyun-beom, then stopped himself.
The NIS already knew he had called.
Inside the organization, he would already be classified as a traitor.
And if anything happened, they would cut him loose without hesitation.
But Jo Seong-jun didn’t say any of that.
An Hyun-beom would know it already.
Without a word, Jo Seong-jun left An Hyun-beom’s house.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
In the heart of Tianjin’s Binhai New Area.
As a modern economic development zone, Binhai New Area was packed with towering buildings, and all kinds of businesses had moved into them.
Among them was a cloud services provider called HubNet Technologies.
It was one of the overseas cover companies run by the Ministry of State Security’s Foreign Counterintelligence Bureau.
The members of Information Command Tianjin Team 1 had been imprisoned in the basement on the seventh floor of that building as soon as they were arrested at the gambling den, and Wang Qiang, the chief operations officer of the MSS Foreign Counterintelligence Bureau’s Second Division, had decided to interrogate them personally.
Two of the men waiting outside had been shot and killed.
They had been men Wang Qiang valued.
He thought he should honor their spirits.
But less than an hour after they were taken away, orders came down from above.
Transfer them to Beijing.
Wang Qiang couldn’t understand the decision from headquarters.
Sending the Korean rats to Beijing meant turning the whole affair into a public issue.
Besides, it was obvious Korea would deny their existence anyway.
In that case, he thought it would be far more profitable to interrogate them in the basement until they were on the brink of death and wring out everything they knew.
When had they come to Tianjin?
What had they been doing there?
Who had betrayed their country and collaborated while working in Tianjin?
And who was the rat that had fled the gambling den?
Wang Qiang was confident he could find out.
So, in order to reverse the order from above, he went to see his superior, Jo Lei, the Second Division chief of the Foreign Counterintelligence Bureau.
“Why on earth are you sending the rats to Beijing?”
“Seems they want to negotiate.”
“What kind of negotiation?”
“A trade.”
“As far as I know, we haven’t arrested any of their agents in Korea.”
“Not one of our agents.”
“Then……?”
“I don’t know the details either. I heard the Korean NIS is holding our programmer.”
And at that same moment, the Chinese ambassador, Zhang Lifeng, requested an urgent meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Like last time, he was received by O Hyun-soo, the chief secretary for foreign and security affairs.
This time as well, the meeting was held at a high-end Chinese restaurant in Yeonhui-dong.
Zhang Lifeng ordered à la carte rather than a set course, signaling that he had no intention of sitting here long.
And before the food he had ordered even arrived, he got straight to the point.
“As you may know, our Ministry of State Security has arrested three officers from the Republic of Korea’s Information Command who were active in Tianjin.”
“That’s news to me.”
O Hyun-soo denied it first, though he already knew.
“Chief O, I’ll keep this brief. The man called Baek Kang whom we requested be repatriated last time—you return him this time, and we will immediately forcibly deport the Information Command personnel we arrested.”
“I’ll verify the matter and get back to you.”
No sooner had O Hyun-soo finished speaking than the food arrived, but instead of lifting a spoon, he got up from his seat.
Then he headed straight to the presidential office.
Kim Jin-cheol was waiting for him in the study, with the aides, Ko Jeong-un, and Seo Seong-guk all present as well.
After O Hyun-soo finished his report, Kim Jin-cheol asked, “The man China is requesting to be repatriated—was he the one who developed North Korea’s cryptocurrency last time?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Didn’t we hear there were Koreans buying the cryptocurrency North Korea developed? What became of that?”
“We investigated it, but found nothing unusual.”
At the NIS, they reviewed the statements Baek Kang had made when he was under investigation.
As Baek Kang had said, there were Koreans who had bought the cryptocurrency developed by North Korea.
And among them were children of chaebol families and politicians.
The NIS suspected some kind of clandestine deal between them and North Korea, but after investigating, they concluded that it was simply a group of fairly wealthy people getting together and playing games—basically, just screwing around.
The group consisted of fourth-generation chaebol heirs, children of politicians, and financial asset experts from Yeouido, and for several years they had been placing fake buy orders for newly listed cryptocurrencies on exchanges around the world, pumping prices and making huge profits.
Of course, there had been some suspicious flows in the process.
But with the death of the NIS director and pressure from politicians and chaebol families, the investigation had stalled.
“Director. Isn’t it a little suspicious that they’d forcibly deport three of our people just to get one cryptocurrency developer?” Kim Jin-cheol asked, looking at Seo Seong-guk.
“It is, Your Excellency. I’ll look into Baek Kang in more detail.”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Information Command Tianjin Team 3 waited near Tianjin Port.
Na Kang-hae was with them as well.
Team 3 had received intelligence that the steel imported from Jung Run Precision Machinery Co., Ltd., where North Korean Minister of Railways Lee Ho-cheol had paid a visit, had arrived at Tianjin Port.
At the port, containers from Germany and Japan were stacked high.
After midnight, the agents began infiltrating Tianjin Port.
They moved in pairs, and Kang-hae was paired with Jo Seong-jun.
Finding the containers while avoiding the CCTV cameras installed all over the place was a hassle, but it wasn’t particularly difficult.
Jo Seong-jun checked the blue container number with a flashlight and nodded at Kang-hae.
Kang-hae quickly opened the lock.
A moment later, the container doors swung open, revealing a load of metal ingots packed inside.
Jo Seong-jun pulled out the portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer he had on him.
He brought it to the metal and held it there.
The analyzer began scanning.
It told him the ingots were made of titanium.
The other metal ingots were the same.
Every piece of metal in the container was titanium.
The same was true of the other containers.
When the job was done, Jo Seong-jun and Kang-hae slipped back out, and the other agents did the same.
In the car on the way back to their lodging, Jo Seong-jun checked the information confirmed by the other agents.
The other containers were also loaded with titanium.
And in yet another container, there was ceramic.
“Looks like it’s missiles, not railways,” Team 3 agent Park Jae-yong said.
But Jo Seong-jun didn’t answer.
Whether the bearings North Korea had ordered were for railways or missiles didn’t matter.
It would be up to headquarters to decide.
Silently, Jo Seong-jun took out a cigarette and lit it.
Then he stared at Kang-hae, who was sitting across from him.
“Hey, runt.”
“Yes.”
“You were right.”
“……?”
“The one who leaked First Team’s information—it was the NIS.”
At Jo Seong-jun’s words, the expressions of the Team 3 agents hardened.
None of them could believe what he was saying.
They had never imagined the NIS would do something like that.
“Hey, runt. How did you know?”
“I didn’t know. I only thought it was possible.”
“……”
For a brief time, Kang-hae had seen Lee Min-su’s image in Lee Woo-hyung.
Lee Min-su had shown no weakness, no opening at all; he had been solid to the core.
Kim Young-chan and Choi Seong-beom were the same.
They didn’t seem like the sort of people who would be caught with their tails between their legs so easily.
Then perhaps there had been a traitor within, he thought.
Just like during Operation Storm.
Of course, other factors were at work too.
The conflict between Ko Jeong-un, a former commander of Information Command, and Seo Seong-guk, the newly appointed NIS director, was no secret in the presidential office, and Kang-hae knew it as well.
The chances were very slim, but if there really had been an internal betrayal, then the NIS had to be considered a suspect too.
“Hey, runt.”
“Yes.”
“Headquarters issued an order.”
“……?”
“Tomorrow, you’re going back to Korea.”
“Understood.”
“Before that, let me ask you one thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“No matter how much I think about it, it pisses me off so bad I can’t let it go.”
“……”
“We’re already living on borrowed lives, but this isn’t how we’re supposed to die—stabbed in the back by one of our own.”
Kang-hae thought Jo Seong-jun was right.
As long as he belonged to Information Command, he would have to be prepared for death at any time.
The lives of Information Command personnel could even be traded away or sacrificed for the greater good.
But he couldn’t accept dying like this.
“If you go back to Korea, can you find out who was behind it?”
“I’ll find out.”
“Yeah. Find out. We’ll handle the rest.”
“Understood.”
Kang-hae looked at Jo Seong-jun.
His eyes were calm, but Kang-hae knew he would keep every word he had just said.
And Kang-hae resolved that he would, too, find out who was behind it, as far as he was able.