Suspicious Intersection
"Let's get started. I just got home."
Yeon-woo's voice came through the headset, but Han Hae-un stood in front of the mirror, busy flipping the card on his finger this way and that.
When no response came, Yeon-woo tilted his head.
"Han Hae-un? Hae-un."
The sound of hurried movement crackled through the headset, and then Han Hae-un answered.
"Ah, yes. Team Leader. I was just doing something."
"Right. Always working hard, aren't you."
Han Hae-un, who had been idly playing in front of the mirror, broke out in a cold sweat at the sound of Yeon-woo's voice.
"Ahem. I've classified the materials the agents collected into a timeline and sent them over. For the file decryption key, please refer to E-45."
"Got it."
Yeon-woo opened his diary at Hae-un's words.
Important materials were secured with complex encryption algorithms like this. The only place the symmetric key code for unlocking them existed in the world was the diary Hae-un had handwritten himself in his past life as Baek Yu-hyeon, so even if the transmission were hacked midway, it would remain safe.
Yeon-woo possessed an identical copy of the cipher keys transcribed from the diary Hae-un had taken from his own urn.
When Yeon-woo entered the key listed under entry E-45 among the ciphers in the diary, the received materials opened.
It was a compilation of the movement routes and notable particulars of specially suspicious individuals from the prosecution, the police, and the military high command, organized by time slot.
"There's quite a volume here. Both the agents who collected it and you who organized it must have had a rough time."
Hae-un's reply came back.
"The one who has to analyze that vast information will have the hardest time of all, Team Leader."
Hae-un was right.
Based on the organized information, he would have to analyze the movements and peculiarities of all these people and extract meaningful data. That was work only someone with vast experience and all-encompassing insight could pull off.
And the one who had done that work best of all—serving the longest term as operations commander overseeing the overseas black agents—had been Yeon-woo in his previous life.
"Well then, shall we get started on that hard work."
With no particular schedule until the commercial shoot, Yeon-woo shut himself in at home for several days, analyzing the materials and instructing Hae-un to investigate any points that raised suspicion along the way.
Looking at the itinerary through France and Italy, this is just a junket-style business trip, and that seminar earlier was confirmed as an actual seminar that took place…
From among the many suspects, he sorted out only those with frequent overseas trips and began checking their routes.
Three days passed that way.
"Hae-un. I sent the organized materials, so take a look. Open it with decryption key C-23."
"Yes. Understood."
Hae-un opened the materials Yeon-woo had passed along, grasped the connections, and nodded.
"Definitely suspicious. Going overseas and then suddenly having three or four days of empty schedule."
The several individuals Yeon-woo had uncovered while analyzing the materials had gone on overseas business trips around the same period, completed their official schedules, and then, for no particular reason, failed to return home and instead spent several days only at their hotels, according to the records.
"Whether these people really stayed only at the hotels, or whether they used that as cover and went somewhere else, is another matter entirely."
In his agent days, Yeon-woo himself had sometimes, when surveillance by the local authorities grew too intense during an operation in a foreign country, deliberately left for another country and then re-entered under a false identity to carry out the mission.
If someone looked back at Jeon Su-hwan's records from that time now, they would probably appear in much the same pattern as the ones he had just found.
Enter the country, hole up in a hotel for several days without coming out, then suddenly return home.
"Smells fishy, doesn't it? Check the flights that would line up perfectly if these people left under false identities at that time and came back again."
"Understood."
After giving Hae-un the order, Yeon-woo began looking into it himself as well.
Thinking about the routes that could have left immediately from Chiang Mai, Thailand at the time, and the radius within which they could return inside the window…
This one went missing in Vladivostok. Cross-compare that with the one who vanished from Chiang Mai…
Laying out the flights the suspected targets could have chosen, he found one place where they overlapped.
Here it is.
Just then Hae-un's voice came through.
"Team Leader. I think I've found it."
"Okinawa."
"Okinawa—"
Yeon-woo and Hae-un spoke at the same time.
"Ah, so you found it too, Team Leader. At this point, we can consider it certain."
"You remember last time, when we were looking through Ha Ju-ran and Kim Gye-sik's past entry-exit records and found one oddly overlapping route?"
While handling the cleanup to pin things on Hwang-geum's subordinate who had fled to Minsk, Belarus, they had coincidentally uncovered one crosspoint among the Baeksol agents.
"Yes. That was Okinawa as well. There's clearly something there."
"Looks like we'll have to sift out the individuals of Korean nationality who stayed in Okinawa at that time and are suspected of using false identities. Then use satellites to check their movements."
"Uh, Team Leader. That might be a bit difficult. The equipment we have now is a level or two below what we used to be able to access, so…"
Hearing Hae-un express difficulty, Yeon-woo tilted his head.
"Is it hard to identify the list of people who stayed in Okinawa?"
"No. That we can do. But the satellite part is difficult. With the gear we have now, hacking a satellite is beyond us."
Yeon-woo scratched the back of his head with a blank look.
"…Hae-un. Why would you hack a satellite? There's Google Earth on the internet. Finding maps these days is ridiculously easy. And it's all free."
"Ah…"
Jumping straight to hacking.
Yeon-woo suddenly recalled the orders he had been giving Hae-un lately.
Hae-un. Hack the Immigration Office for me.
Hae-un. Hack the Belarus postal network for me.
Hae-un. Hack the integrated management system so I can track the military high command's movements.
He had a feeling he had been ordering Hae-un to hack far too many things lately.
"Hmm. All my fault, I suppose."
After that, the shoot date for the smartphone commercial drew closer, and Yeon-woo, wanting to finish everything while he still had room, stepped up the analysis with Hae-un.
They screened the suspicious individuals suspected of using false identities and mapped their movements based on payment records within Okinawa.
While marking routes across the whole of Okinawa with lines of various colors, they discovered a strange intersection.
"This is just a coastal road. Why did every single target pass along this road? It's not even a major thoroughfare."
When Yeon-woo shared his screen and pointed out a section of the map, Hae-un nodded.
"I'll look into what's around that area."
Some time later, Hae-un's answer came back.
"Team Leader. There's a small pier near that road."
"A pier? It's not on the map."
"It seems to be a small pier that local residents use for fishing."
At those words, Yeon-woo stroked his chin with an intrigued look.
"A pier, huh…"
He zoomed out from the enlarged satellite map to take in all of Okinawa, then swung the mouse cursor the other way.
Toward the sea near the pier.
"Well, look at that. Quite a few outlying islands. Their destination probably isn't Okinawa itself, but one of the small islands around it."
"Outlying islands… That makes sense. Where should we dig to get information on the islands?"
After thinking a moment, Yeon-woo continued.
"We'll have to start by going through the Statistics Bureau under the Japanese Cabinet Office. Just figuring out the resident composition of those islands should let us compare with the satellite photos and roughly infer which island it is."
"Understood. I'll connect right away."
Hae-un fell silent for a while, apparently working.
Not long after, a troubled voice came through.
"Team Leader. Why do these people build computer systems and then, when you go to the trouble of bypassing your way in, everything just says to refer to the related appendices?"
Yeon-woo clapped a hand to his forehead as if realizing something.
"Mm, they're always like that. It's a country fanatically attached to analog, so they probably printed it on paper, bound it into booklets, and stored it offline."
Japan still clung so earnestly to analog that even in companies, people still walked up to their superiors to get seals stamped on reports for approval. There was even a joke that when the government issued guidelines to automate and abolish the inefficient seal-approval culture that only complicated procedures and tanked work efficiency, instead of eliminating seals and introducing electronic approval, they built robot arms that automatically stamped seals in place of people.
"Hmm. Then what should we do? Sending agents to infiltrate the Statistics Bureau of the Japanese Cabinet Office seems like a stretch."
After a brief consideration, Yeon-woo gave Hae-un an order.
"Then dig through the materials of the Japan Coast Guard under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. There should be patrol logs or reports for the territorial waters those nearby islands belong to."
"Understood."
Having given the order, Yeon-woo separately investigated additional statistical materials published by the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.
While digging for a long while, he found one island whose power consumption was suspiciously high relative to its area and registered resident population.
Hmm…? Looks like they used their own generators so no audit flagged it, but what on earth are they doing on an island that burns this much power?
Yeon-woo issued a new order to Hae-un.
"Hae-un. Check whether there are any patrol reports for the island called Maejishima at coordinates north latitude 26.26, east longitude 127.58."
"North latitude 26.26, east longitude 127.58 confirmed."
A good while later, Hae-un's reply came back.
"Nothing at all. They patrol everywhere nearby, yet somehow that island alone is always skirted around. It's a small island, of course, but it's a blind spot in the maritime patrols."
"That island looks suspicious. Power consumption is excessively high. It also spiked recently, and when you compare the timing, it starts right after the targets headed for Okinawa."
After thinking a moment, Yeon-woo continued.
"I think we need to dispatch one of the agents for direct reconnaissance. In my view Kim Su-hyeok has the best operational capability. What do you think?"
"I think the same. If one of the three has to carry out a reconnaissance mission in secret, Kim Su-hyeok is the best choice."
A sniper was both a one-man army of formidable combat power and the eyes of the battlefield that could scrutinize farther and more finely than anyone. With outstanding patience and observation skills, and specialized training in infiltration and concealment, Kim Su-hyeok was the right man for the job.
"To avoid raising their suspicions later, have him enter through Kagoshima and then take a boat into Okinawa. I'll write up the detailed route in the mission orders."
"Understood. But Team Leader, weren't you in charge of Europe and the Middle East? How do you know the East Asian routes in such detail?"
"I was handling Europe around the time you joined the NIS. Before that I worked East Asia and South America too."
"Huh. Is that so."
And so, while Yeon-woo prepared for the commercial shoot, they decided to send Kim Su-hyeok to Japan under the surface.
Whatever Baeksol was plotting on a foreign island, it would not be anything good.
If they're putting this much effort into running something in secret, I have a pretty good idea what it is.
He was estimating it was related to Baeksol's main business: drugs.
Whether it's a manufacturing plant or a storage warehouse, watching it go up in flames would make for quite a show.