Delivery Operation (1)
Kim Min-su finished helping Yeon-woo sort the items that needed declaring at customs and pack them into the suitcase, then stepped out of the room.
Just as he had the day before, Min-su hung the Do Not Disturb card on the door handle before leaving. Once he was gone, Yeon-woo began preparing to head out himself.
Been a while since I used one of these. Or is this the first time in this life?
In his previous life he had possessed any number of false faces. Just the officially sanctioned identities alone would have required both hands to count. Beyond those, there were the covert ones he had used in secret—among them the Korean-Brazilian businessman Terren Williams that Han Hae-un was currently running, and Yang Hyeong-gwon, the deep-sea fishing vessel officer, plus several more.
But unlike Jeon Su-hwan, who had been average height and average-looking with no particularly memorable features, the present Yeon-woo could still be recognized in Korea by his height and proportions alone even when he covered his face with a mask and a hat.
I can only really use this when I'm overseas.
Inside the country it was impossible. Besides, Hae-un and the operatives were already there, and the infrastructure was solid enough now that Yeon-woo himself rarely needed to step into the field.
This was the first time he had done the work in this body, yet in his previous life it had been as routine as eating a meal. With practiced, familiar hands he affixed the silicone mask to his face.
He could not completely relocate the eyes, nose, and mouth, so he made only subtle adjustments—yet the result was still a rather handsome face. He added a little flesh around the high bridge of the nose so that, compared with his real features, it looked slightly broader and flatter. Shifting the position and thickness of the eyebrows just a fraction softened the whole impression into something faintly delicate.
"Throw on a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and mess up the hair a bit…"
The finished look was neat enough, but not the kind of face that would turn heads.
The false identity Yeon-woo would play today was a Chinese-Brazilian national who had somehow gotten tangled up in illegal business and was now naively trusting a friend—an IT worker of the soft, trusting sort.
Yeah. Looks right. Exactly the type.
He nodded at his reflection in the mirror. Finally he packed the castella cake and the items that would serve as boric acid into his bag, then stood at the door and pressed a stethoscope against it.
The quiet resonance of the hallway traveled through the steel hotel-room door and into the stethoscope. Five minutes before midnight, the sound of an elevator arriving broke the silence of the corridor.
Ding—
The moment the elevator doors opened, the voices of the security officers exchanging words carried clearly through the stethoscope into Yeon-woo's ear.
"—Good work. Nothing unusual, right?"
"—Unusual? Around ten they all went to their rooms…"
While the two officers stood face-to-face in front of the elevator finishing their hand-off, Yeon-woo quietly opened his door and slipped out with footsteps that made no sound at all. In one swift motion he opened the emergency stairwell door and slid inside.
He did not close it fully. He held the handle just short of the latch catching.
If he shut it now, the security men might hear the click of the latch.
Voices drifted from the far end of the hallway beyond the door.
"—Got it. I'll head down first, then. Take it easy."
"—Yeah, good work. Get some rest."
The officer who had worked the day shift stepped into the elevator.
Clack—
At the same instant Yeon-woo released the handle; the emergency door's latch engaged. He pressed the stethoscope to the door again and listened for a moment. The sound of the elevator closing seemed to have covered the noise; the remaining officer appeared to have taken his seat without noticing anything.
Time to move.
Yeon-woo climbed the emergency stairs to the floor above. He was not planning to leap to the neighboring building or rappel upside-down like something out of a movie. Because SL Electronics had assigned him a suite, his room sat on the hotel's top guest floor; the level directly above was the rooftop pool.
He stepped out onto the already-closed, darkened rooftop pool deck and boarded the staff elevator. From the R floor he rode straight down to the first floor.
Entering the lobby, Yeon-woo walked toward the security officer guarding the main entrance, smiling as he pulled a caramel from his pocket and offered it.
The foundation of any intrusion is not scaling walls or climbing roofs—it is a smile and a gift. Strictly speaking this was an exit rather than an entry, but the principle held.
"Até amanhã."
"Oh, perfect timing—I was craving something sweet. Thanks. Ah, obrigado!"
Because the hotel regularly hosted large numbers of Korean tourists, many of the staff were either Korean-Brazilians or mixed-heritage locals. The two security men at the front door, seeing the well-dressed man with a backpack and a face they did not recognize, simply assumed he was a local hotel employee finishing his shift. They accepted the caramel with a nod.
Security, of course, focuses on people coming in, not people going out. In a hotel this size, with so many employees, stopping every unfamiliar face leaving the building to demand identification would have been absurd.
Once outside, Yeon-woo flagged a nearby taxi and climbed in.
"Cracolândia, please."
"Sir, even taxi drivers refuse to go into that area at this hour. I don't know what your business is, but I strongly recommend you don't go there either."
"Hmm. Then take me to Bom Retiro."
Only then did the driver put the car in gear. On the way to the Koreatown district of Bom Retiro the man kept glancing back, clearly still worried.
"Why did you ask for Cracolândia in the first place? If someone told you to meet them there at this hour, cut contact immediately. Classic crime setup."
"Nothing like that. I just heard there was a well-reviewed taberna and wanted to check it out."
At a red light the driver turned fully around.
"You speak our language well, but you're not someone who lives in Brazil, are you? You came from abroad."
"Oh? What makes you say that?"
"People from São Paulo never take a taxi to Cracolândia. They'd sooner climb into a coffin. And the way you pronounced 'taberna' is Spanish."
Yeon-woo nodded. Brazil used Portuguese, but he had learned Spanish first. The two languages shared Latin roots and a great many words, yet the small differences in pronunciation were numerous enough that mere study rarely produced perfect native-level distinction. He would never sound completely local the way he could with other languages.
Then I need to rewrite the script entirely. There are bound to be more local pronunciation differences I don't know.
On the spot he revised the role he would play tonight from "Chinese-Brazilian national" to "Chinese-American visiting Brazil." The prepared script was rewritten in his head just as quickly.
Hmm. This version might actually look even juicier to them.
A radio transmission crackled in his ear. This time it was not Han Hae-un but Lee Gyu-jin's voice.
"—Ah, Omega? This is Delta. I've located the bar where the target is currently sitting. Uploading the coordinates to the server now."
"Copy."
Yeon-woo opened the channel briefly to answer, then checked the location data that had just appeared on the secure server via his phone.
"We're almost at Bom Retiro. Where should I drop you?"
"In front of Estação da Luz, please."
When the taxi arrived, Yeon-woo thanked the helpful driver, added a generous tip to the fare, and stepped out. Within moments he melted into the darkness.
Erasing his presence, he passed through Bom Retiro and entered the very crime-ridden district the taxi driver had fretted over—Cracolândia. After a long walk he reached the coordinates Gyu-jin had sent.
"Omega entering the objective."
"—Copy."
The moment he stepped inside the bar, thick cigarette smoke enveloped him. It was not only tobacco; the air reeked of marijuana and every other drug imaginable mixed together.
Wearing the soft, bookish expression of his cover, Yeon-woo waved a hand through the haze and sat at a table.
"Hey, can I get a bottle of beer over here? And whatever the house snack is."
The bartender only tilted his head, not understanding English.
"You don't even know 'beer'? Come on. Cerveja. Okay?"
"Okay."
Yeon-woo set his bag on the empty seat beside him. Immediately, eyes around the room began to fix on him—subtly, but unmistakably. This was a place where even Brazilians from outside the neighborhood never set foot, let alone foreigners.
In the far corner, the targets who had been drinking quietly also turned their attention on him. They were the bottom-rung thugs of this district whom Gyu-jin had tailed the night before.
Following the script he had prepared, Yeon-woo pulled out an American-brand smartphone and began acting as though he were on a call. Even though he was an SL Electronics model, American brands moved better on the local black market.
"So you need to come down here and handle it yourself. I don't even know what neighborhood this is—how am I supposed to do 'business' here on my own?"
He started to take the laptop out of the bag, glanced around, then shoved it back in.
"Not now. I'll send it once I'm back at the 'hotel.' No idea. There aren't even any 'taxis.' I wandered around forever, got thirsty, and just walked into the first place I saw. So you're arriving tomorrow morning, right?"
The bar owner set a glass of beer in front of him.
"Here you go."
"Ah, obrigado."
Yeon-woo took a long swallow and continued talking.
"Until we connect with the 'broker,' my cut is the biggest one, remember? You better deposit the 'commission' you promised me. Got it?"
In the corner the thugs watched him in silence, listening. Whether they spoke English or not was unclear, but words like "business," "hotel," "taxi," "broker," and "commission" were ones they used themselves; they could hardly fail to understand.
After draining the first beer in one go and ordering several more in quick succession, Yeon-woo began to sway on his feet.
"Hey. Over here."
He raised a hand; the owner approached. Yeon-woo staggered upright, pulled a thick wad of cash from the bag, peeled off a few bills, and handed them over.
"Keep the change. Tip."
"Okay. Thank you."
The owner gave him a friendly smile and a nod. Yeon-woo lurched toward the back door of the bar and disappeared through it.
The men in the corner rose at once, locked eyes with the owner, and exchanged wolfish grins.
"Didn't even have to go looking tonight—sweet little meal just walked right in on its own."
"Gotta have days like this once in a while. Can't work hard every single day, right?"
Men who proudly called shaking people down and beating them for money their "job" followed Yeon-woo out the same back door.
"Hey, amigo."
Calling him "friend" in a falsely warm tone, they closed in.
Yeon-woo turned around.