NIS Foreign Intelligence Division, Japan Unit (2)
There was no way that could be true.
His brother was dead.
Dead in Cambodia.
Beaten to death by the Jeguk-pa bastards.
And yet that middle boss from Jeguk-pa had said his brother was alive.
Thwack—
Kang-hae drove his foot into Lee Jeong-tae’s stomach.
Two of Lee Jeong-tae’s ribs cracked with a sickening snap.
“Ghk…….”
Lee Jeong-tae couldn’t breathe for a moment, and Kang-hae dropped into a crouch, grabbing him by the hair.
“Do you think I’d spare you for saying that?”
“N-no……! N-Na Dong-hae is alive……! I-I’m sure of it……!”
Lee Jeong-tae shouted it in a panic, tears pooling at the corners of his eyes.
And Kang-hae remembered the RTI training he had received at the Development Group.
Not only the training for enduring interrogation, coaxing, and torture when captured by the enemy during a mission.
He had also been trained to handle situations where a captured enemy would lie or stir up emotional chaos to throw off judgment.
Kang-hae drew in a long breath.
And kept his pulse under control.
He could not afford to be excited.
I’m not falling for it.
Kang-hae did not believe Lee Jeong-tae’s words.
Lee Jeong-tae, reading the look in his eyes, realized he wasn’t being believed and screamed again.
“I-I’m serious……! Na Dong-hae is alive……! W-we handled Na Dong-hae specially……!”
“Handled?”
“Y-yeah……!”
Kang-hae kicked him in the face.
Thud—
“How does kidnapping and confinement become ‘handling’?”
“Urgh…….”
Lee Jeong-tae clutched his face in pain, and Kang-hae regretted reacting at all a moment ago.
He no longer needed to hear another word from Lee Jeong-tae.
He had decided to kill him.
Kang-hae stepped toward him in silence.
“Y-you brother… N-Na Dong-hae… he used to manage the server……! B-but we could tell he was smart. We-we may be thugs, but we can still tell that much……!”
With his hair still trapped in Kang-hae’s fist, Lee Jeong-tae spilled the words out in a hurry.
He kept talking.
“Orders came d-down from the big boss……!”
“……”
“Cryptocurrency, y-you know, that fucking Bitcoin stuff! They said they n-needed a p-person to d-develop that coin……!”
“……”
The hand gripping Lee Jeong-tae’s hair kept tightening.
He still thought he should kill him.
And yet Kang-hae found himself waiting for the rest.
“We needed cryptocurrency when d-dealing with North Korea! When goods came through Kaesong Industrial Complex, we used the cryptocurrency your brother developed to move the money……!”
Kang-hae knew that much already.
He knew his brother had developed cryptocurrency.
But that had nothing to do with whether his brother was alive.
And yet……
At last, Kang-hae asked his first question.
“Which exchange did you use?”
“A H-Hong Kong exchange! It was a coin listed on an exchange in Hong Kong……!”
“……”
Lee Jeong-tae’s answer matched everything Kang-hae had already uncovered.
Kang-hae stared at him.
Lee Jeong-tae stared back, his face desperate and pleading for his life.
“My brother, you know. After he was beaten by you bastards, he died on the street.”
Kang-hae said it aloud.
He was saying it to himself, too.
To keep himself from being deceived by Lee Jeong-tae’s words.
And Lee Jeong-tae shook his head violently.
“My brother was dead, then cremated at the Cambodian National Morgue.”
“N-no……!”
“Then who was the one who died there?”
“A-another guy we handled, n-no, locked up……! Y-your brother escaped……!”
“If you were me, could you believe that?”
“I-it’s hard to believe, b-but…… it’s the truth……!”
“Then why didn’t you reveal this?”
“B-because there were so many people we killed…… We only found out later t-that your brother had died, too…….”
“……”
Kang-hae’s mind went back over the memory.
What the police had told him was that his brother had been classified as an unclaimed body, kept at the Cambodian National Morgue, and then cremated after some time had passed.
And the columbarium where his brother’s ashes were kept had been flooded in a deluge.
If the police had failed to investigate properly, or if the testimony of the other victims who had been held captive at the time had been wrong, then Lee Jeong-tae might have been telling the truth.
But he couldn’t believe it at face value.
“Then where is my brother now?”
“T-that…….”
Lee Jeong-tae trailed off.
And Kang-hae saw his pupils shake.
A different reaction than before.
“I-I don’t know……! I-it’s true……! I told you before……! Your brother escaped……! B-but I can find him……!”
“If you don’t know, how are you going to find him?”
“J-just put out a search for the guys who were in Cambodia back then……!”
Bang—
And then Lee Jeong-tae’s head burst open.
Blood sprayed across Kang-hae’s body.
“Don’t move!”
Then a strange man’s voice echoed through the factory.
Footsteps came from several directions.
“Hands up.”
Kang-hae raised his hands as ordered.
A moment later, armed men appeared inside the warehouse.
They moved toward Kang-hae.
And Kang-hae knew at once that they were NIS Black Team.
If they were officers from Japan’s Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, they would not have killed Lee Jeong-tae.
Just as Kang-hae had guessed, they were the NIS Foreign Intelligence Division’s Japan unit.
They had come here by tracking the locator that was still active inside Kang-hae’s body.
And Team Leader Park Do-hyeon was glad they had not tried to storm the safehouse.
If a firefight had broken out, there would have been casualties.
And if backup forces had arrived, they could have been isolated and wiped out.
More than anything, Park Do-hyeon had looked over the safehouse’s location and guessed there would be a secret passage connecting it to the mountain.
“Let’s move.”
Park Do-hyeon said that.
There was no need to verify Kang-hae’s identity.
They had been watching him from the hotel.
Park Do-hyeon ordered his team to recover Lee Jeong-tae’s body, then took Kang-hae out of the warehouse.
About a hundred meters from the warehouse, several cars were parked.
Those were the vehicles the NIS Black Team had arrived in.
“Get in.”
Park Do-hyeon climbed into the driver’s seat of a white Toyota Aqua.
Kang-hae got into the passenger seat.
Through the side mirror, he watched the NIS officers load Lee Jeong-tae into a Nissan Caravan.
Vroom—
Until they left the factory district, Park Do-hyeon didn’t say a word.
After driving for an hour, they reached an auto repair shop that had closed for business.
There, Park Do-hyeon switched cars.
This time it was a dark-colored Toyota Prius.
“Where are we going?”
Kang-hae asked as he got into the new car, looking at Park Do-hyeon.
“To Niigata Port.”
Ferries between Niigata Port and Incheon Port were in operation there.
It was also a place where ships of various nationalities entered and left on routes crossing the Korea Strait.
“But first we need to interrogate you.”
After saying that, Park Do-hyeon closed his mouth.
Kang-hae asked no further questions.
He simply turned his head and looked out the window.
Outside, the blue haze of dawn had begun to settle over the world.
Headquarters of the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office in Japan.
Everyone in the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office’s leadership was gathered in the conference room — Director Fukuda Norihiro, the deputy directors, the director’s aides, and even the intelligence coordinators.
Like a criminal before a tribunal, Satō Haruto, chief investigator of Section 4, stood before them with his head bowed.
Just moments earlier, Satō Haruto had reported everything that had happened to the executives.
And none of them had been able to keep their faces in check as they listened.
All of them thought the incident was the most humiliating one since the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office had been established.
“So not only did you expose the safehouse, you also lost the Korean we had in custody?”
Deputy Director Fujimoto Isamu, whose position was probably closest in South Korea to the NIS deputy director, repeated the question.
“I apologize…….”
“Who did it?”
“The Korean NIS is the most likely possibility, but we can’t rule out Military Intelligence.”
“The evidence?”
“We are investigating the high-explosive impact round used in the attack on the safehouse.”
“You’ve found quite the evidence.”
“……”
At Fujimoto Isamu’s words, Satō Haruto fell silent.
A few blast marks were hardly proof of anything.
“Where is the Section 4 chief now?”
“W-well… he’s being treated at the hospital…….”
Hirasawa Shūichi, who had been struck in the head with a gun by Kang-hae and knocked unconscious, had been admitted to the hospital the moment he came to.
It wasn’t exactly a serious injury.
But he had anticipated what was coming.
And to avoid a hearing or anything like it, he chose hospitalization.
He moved like someone who had rolled around in politics long enough to know the game.
“What a useless bastard…….”
Fujimoto Isamu let the curse slip from his mouth.
Silence spread through the conference room.
After a moment, Satō Haruto spoke carefully.
“U-um…….”
Everyone’s eyes turned to Satō Haruto.
He read the room, then continued.
“All the National Security Office staff from Korea have left the country, but the man called Na Kang-hae who approached us has no departure record. He definitely hasn’t gone back to Korea yet.”
“So?”
“We’ll capture h—”
But before Satō Haruto could finish, Fujimoto Isamu hurled a glass tumbler.
Crash—
Broken shards rolled across the floor.
“There are over eight hundred ships entering Japan every day! And tens of thousands of containers! Are you planning to search through all of them?”
“……”
“Useless bastard……!”
“I’m sorry…….”
Fujimoto Isamu glared at Satō Haruto, then shifted his gaze to another deputy director, Sakai Akihiro.
Sakai Akihiro was in charge of Section 4.
He was also the man who had brought the hospitalized Hirasawa Shūichi into the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office.
“What are we going to do now?”
Fujimoto Isamu asked, glaring at Sakai Akihiro.
It was essentially an order to take responsibility.
“We can’t let this go as it is.”
“Then what exactly are you suggesting?”
“Didn’t he say he gave them his personal information? We should eliminate him.”
Sakai Akihiro said it like that.
The other executives thought killing one agent would hardly solve anything.
Still, nothing else came to mind.
In the end, they gave Sakai Akihiro’s suggestion their backing.
Near Nakataminato Wholesale Market in Ibaraki Prefecture.
An office belonging to a company that exported salted seafood and salmon roe to Korea.
Kang-hae sat across from Park Do-hyeon, team leader of the NIS Foreign Intelligence Division’s Japan unit.
Kang-hae told him everything that had happened without concealing a thing, and Park Do-hyeon listened in silence.
“So you decided to become bait yourself. You figured we’d follow you.”
“That’s correct.”
“And if we hadn’t shown up? What then?”
“Then I would have waited for an opening and eliminated Lee Jeong-tae.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“……”
Park Do-hyeon looked at Kang-hae with interest.
He didn’t seem like he was bragging.
It was hard to tell whether he was reckless or simply brave.
“But tell me this.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you take Lee Jeong-tae all the way to that abandoned warehouse? You could have killed him right away.”
That was the part Park Do-hyeon found most puzzling.
The objective had been Lee Jeong-tae’s elimination.
But if he had not killed Lee Jeong-tae immediately and instead brought him to the abandoned warehouse, there had to be a reason.
“There was something I needed to confirm with Lee Jeong-tae.”
“What was that?”
“The National Security Office chief suspected that there was some high-level figure in South Korea backing Lee Jeong-tae’s narcotics smuggling out of Kaesong Industrial Complex.”
“So you confirmed it?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Park Do-hyeon didn’t ask any further.
Their orders had been to eliminate Lee Jeong-tae.
In any case, Lee Jeong-tae had been eliminated.
And the information Kang-hae possessed was, strictly speaking, outside the mission.
After a moment, Park Do-hyeon spoke.
“You’ll go back on a fishing boat bound for Busan at dawn today.”
“Then the interrogation is over?”
“No. Once you return to Korea, you’ll face a proper investigation.”
“……”
“The order I received was to dump you in the Korea Strait if you seemed suspicious at all.”
“Then you trust me?”
“No. My judgment is that you’re hiding something right now.”
“……”
“But I don’t think there’s any need to kill you.”
“……?”
“Even if I don’t, you’re going to die.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Japanese, they’re persistent and cruel. Telling them your identity was practically the same as suicide.”
Park Do-hyeon said that, watching Kang-hae closely.
There wasn’t the slightest sign of agitation on Kang-hae’s face.
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“It was already something I had prepared for.”
“I’ll tell you one way you might survive.”
“What is it?”
“Become NIS Black.”
It was an unexpected answer.