The Nature of the Gift
Annam Police Station’s Intelligence Team conference room.
The whiteboard covering the wall was a chaos of black lines and red circles.
One detective from the Intelligence Team had rolled up his sleeves and was tapping the board with the hand that held a marker.
"All right, let’s start here."
He pointed to the section labeled [Call Center – Manager, Transfer Mule, Account Mule - Money Laundering] and drew a string of arrows downward.
"We compared the messenger chats recovered from the manager’s phone with the internal settlement sheet left on his laptop. These bastards are doing voice phishing and pig butchering at the same time, just as we expected."
When Moon Dong-cheol nodded, the detective with the marker continued.
"We believe the call center is in China, and contact with victims is routed through Korean caller IDs. They’re running several VoIP servers and making an average of twenty thousand calls a day; the hit rate is estimated at around three percent."
He wrote the numbers on the board as though calculating them in his head.
"That means forty to fifty victims a day, minimum."
"Those disgusting sons of bitches."
Moon Dong-cheol, who had been listening with his chin in his hand, frowned hard.
"That’s just the voice phishing side. The romance scam is a separate beast. We looked through the high-value victim list carried by the manager we caught this time, and some of them were in the two-hundred-million-won range."
"We’ve got plenty of proof they’re scum. So what’s the total damage?"
"We’ve confirmed 137 first-stage transfer accounts. Most of them are mule accounts, and the average turnover per account is about one hundred million won. Add in the unconfirmed accounts and the money that got laundered into cryptocurrency, and..."
The detective paused and wrote the number in large figures.
"Conservatively? Forty-five billion won."
"If one year is already that much, how long have these bastards been at it?"
Moon Dong-cheol’s face hardened.
Once they really dug in, the scale was far beyond what anyone had expected.
"The evidence is overflowing, which is nice. So? Do we have anything that can get us to the head of the snake?"
"That’s the problem. Nothing came up on the ringleader."
"Nothing at all?"
"It’s bad enough that the organization was run as a strict cell structure, but the biggest issue is that all instructions were passed through a one-time encrypted messenger. It seems to be a program they built themselves, and it auto-deletes after a set period, so even if forensics gets involved, we’ll probably just be left staring at an empty shell."
The mood in the conference room turned visibly heavier.
Everyone knew why.
If they couldn’t catch the ringleader, the chain of evil would never be broken.
"So in the end, we only have two pieces of information on the boss? That he lives in Qingdao and studied at Tsinghua University."
For a moment, the room fell silent.
Just as the investigation had seemed ready to surge forward, it had slammed into a wall.
"At this point... shouldn’t we at least drag in the lower-level guys?" one detective suggested.
Moon Dong-cheol shook his head.
"If we arrest them now, the ringleader will vanish completely. Once things calm down a little, he’ll just go and recruit new puppets to replace them, like he’s showing off."
Since that was the obvious next move, no one could really object.
The meeting tapered off into uneasy silence.
No one had a clear answer.
"Damn it. We have to grab the head no matter what..."
Frustrated, Moon Dong-cheol ground his lips together.
Then he looked over at Pyo Se-joon from the Foreign Affairs Team.
"How about asking the Chinese Public Security Bureau for joint cooperation?"
Pyo Se-joon weakly shook his head.
"That’s hard. The Chinese side doesn’t usually accept requests like that, and even if they do, the process is incredibly complicated. We’d have to go through the Foreign Ministry, contact Public Security through the Korean embassy in China, and even then, the fastest it’d happen is eight months."
"This is maddening."
The meeting turned in circles several times without ever reaching the heart of the matter.
Everyone was stuck, and all they could do was complain about how impossible it all felt.
"What if we make him come to us of his own free will?"
A quiet voice drifted through the room.
All eyes turned to the far corner,
to Song Tan, who had been sitting there with no presence at all.
He was still in his fluorescent safety vest, wearing his duty uniform.
"Hey, what the hell would a probationary officer even know—"
One detective tried to speak, but Moon Dong-cheol held up a hand to stop him.
"Keep talking."
Normally, he would have reacted the same way, but his instincts were telling him something different.
This probationary officer was not ordinary.
After taking a breath, Song Tan stood and walked to the whiteboard.
"With the information we have now, we can’t even identify the ringleader. In that case, we have no choice but to make him reveal himself."
"Easy to say. How is that supposed to be possible? He’s the kind of man who hides even from his middlemen. Why would someone like that move so easily?"
"Then we make it impossible for him not to move."
Marker in hand, Song Tan wrote a large set of Chinese characters.
Interest Lures, Duty Blocks the Way.
"It means enticing someone with profit while blocking the proper path. Fraud may take many forms, but the essence of men like this is always the same."
For an instant, Song Tan’s eyes flashed.
"A greed that ignores everything else. If we use that against him, we might be able to make this whole thing easier."
Back when he had been Number Twenty-Eight in the Pursuit Corps, there had been times when he had to track a target that had vanished without leaving even the faintest trace.
That had been the method the corps leader taught him.
For lechers, bait them with a woman whose beauty is hard to ignore. For great thieves, lure them out with a treasure of high value. Break their reason by exploiting the desires they already carry. Keep that in your head.
The methods varied, but the essence was always the same.
"We can’t know if he really studied at Tsinghua, but at the very least it’s clear he’s skilled enough with computers to build his own messenger."
"You could outsource that kind of thing and have it done in no time."
"Would a man who doesn’t even trust his middlemen hand that over to someone else?"
The detective who had raised the objection shut his mouth.
"Fine. Let’s say he’s some kind of computer genius. So what?"
"We use their cryptocurrency laundering against them."
"Explain it like I’m five."
"We send a message. Say the money in the wallet keeps failing to transfer to China. Say we don’t understand why."
".........Go on."
The detectives who had been looking at him with skepticism were now wearing serious expressions.
"He’ll probably check the cause remotely. And then he’ll panic, because some safeguard he set up in advance has been triggered."
"A safeguard?"
"He doesn’t trust people, fundamentally. He’s likely installed something that locks the transfer route if money is moved through any other channel, just in case something goes wrong during laundering. And that lock can’t be lifted by anyone except the person who made it."
"How do you know that?"
"I confirmed it through Mr. Haowu. He came back to me later, saying he’d remembered something."
"........."
The other detectives looked as if they had no idea what the hell they were hearing, but Moon Dong-cheol and Pyo Se-joon, who had seen the whole thing firsthand, couldn’t help believing him.
"So... we set a trap that leaves him no choice but to come into Korea?" Moon Dong-cheol asked, stroking his rough beard.
"What do you all think?"
"I think it’s possible."
"If we get support from the cyber unit, we could probably build a decent setup."
Pyo Se-joon nodded in agreement.
"If we don’t have any better options, this sounds like the best plan."
By then, the other detectives’ eyes had started looking different when they turned to Song Tan.
"Okay. We don’t have time. Bong-seok, get support from the cyber guys. The rest of you start marking the confirmed transfer mules and account mules. Under no circumstances can the ringleader sense that something’s off. Not until he comes into Korea."
"Yes, sir."
"All right, dismissed. Call me immediately if anything comes up."
The detectives scattered with military precision.
By the time the room cleared, only three people remained: Moon Dong-cheol, Pyo Se-joon, and Song Tan.
"Foreign Affairs will keep handling the middlemen. He’s the only one who can still contact the ringleader, even if it’s just through a messenger app."
"We’ll do that."
Pyo Se-joon looked at Song Tan with an expression that seemed to ask for help.
Song Tan smiled faintly back at him.
"Mr. Haowu will cooperate properly now. I’ve put it in terms he could understand."
"Really? Whew. That’s a relief."
Only then did Pyo Se-joon let out a breath.
If another officer had seen it, they would have been stunned.
A lieutenant, practically jumping at every word from a probationary officer.
"If he acts uncooperative, let me know. I’ll talk to him again."
"Haha. Just hearing that is reassuring."
Pyo Se-joon gave him a thumbs-up and casually tossed out a line.
"By the way, seriously—once your probation ends, are you interested in coming to Foreign Affairs? If Song Tan’s willing, I can find a way to pull some strings."
Moon Dong-cheol, listening from the side, twitched his brows.
"Hold on, hold on. Lieutenant Pyo? Our Song Tan is coming to Intelligence. You can’t just poach him like that."
"Excuse me? What are you talking about?"
"That kid’s brain works too damn fast for anything but Intelligence. I was already planning to drag him over the second his probation ended."
"Oh, come on, Team Leader Moon. That’s not right. Song Tan came here because I personally requested support. And he absolutely has to come to Foreign Affairs. His language skills are great, sure, but you saw it yourself. That Chinese suspect couldn’t even move."
"You saw it too. When everyone else had their mouths sealed shut like they were full of honey, he was the only one who came up with that brilliant idea. He belongs in Intelligence."
"I’m telling you, Foreign Affairs!"
It was a ridiculous scene: the two men arguing over a person who hadn’t even agreed to anything.
After a few rounds of bickering, both of them turned to Song Tan at the same time.
"You! You’re coming to Intelligence, right?"
"You’ve got to come to Foreign Affairs, don’t you?"
Truthfully, neither place was easy to get into.
Especially for a rookie officer who had only just shed his probationary badge.
They were both desirable office posts, and stepping stones to bigger things later on, like the Major Crimes Unit or the National Police Agency’s Investigation Bureau.
"I..."
Song Tan scratched his head, looking apologetic.
"I’d like to go to the Violent Crimes Team."
"What?"
Neither of them had expected to be rejected, and both froze in dumbfounded silence.
Moon Dong-cheol was the first to recover, trying to coax him gently.
"Sounds like you’ve watched too many movies. If you go there, people just get chewed up and spat out. There’s no such thing as that work-life balance your generation likes so much. None at all."
"Exactly, Song Tan. I know a lot of violent crimes detectives, and every single one of them lives on painkillers and patches. They get called out in the middle of sleep, go to the scene, come back, and then go out again for surveillance. Man, that’s no way for a human being to live."
Just moments ago, the two had been ready to tear each other apart, and now they were united in trying to talk him out of it.
But Song Tan’s resolve was firm.
From the beginning, he had become a police officer because he had decided he wanted to be a violent crimes detective.
"I appreciate your concern, but I truly want to become a detective in the Violent Crimes Team. That was my dream."
At the word dream, the two men had nothing left to say.
"Anyway, movies and dramas really do ruin kids. They feed them useless fantasies."
Moon Dong-cheol muttered to himself and gave Song Tan’s shoulder a few light pats.
"All right. There’s still some time before your probation ends, so you might change your mind by then. The only advice I can give you is this: don’t chase romance alone. Think seriously about the practical side too. It’s your future we’re talking about."
Moved by the sincerity in his tone, Song Tan bowed deeply.
"Thank you for the good advice."
"Ah, and I can promise you one thing. If we really do catch that ringleader..."
Moon Dong-cheol and Pyo Se-joon exchanged a look, then nodded in unison.
"...there’ll be a pretty impressive gift waiting for you too."
"A gift?"
Moon Dong-cheol and Pyo Se-joon looked at each other again and nodded.
"So pray hard. Pray that the bastard takes the bait and comes into Korea."
"I’ll sincerely hope for his arrest."
And just like that, the storm of support work for the Foreign Affairs Team finally came to an end.
The next day, Song Tan reported to the district office as usual.
The moment they saw him, Kang Tae-won and Yu Gyeong-ho rushed over.
"What the hell did they have you do?"
"They asked me to talk to a drunk Chinese man who was causing a scene, so I just went and spoke with him."
"Huh? They called you in just for that?"
"Just for that? Come on. That guy freaks out only when he’s facing Tan for some reason."
"Even so, sending in a probationary officer for support requests? Have you ever heard of that?"
"Of course not."
The two of them traded the kind of banter that sounded almost like a comedy routine, then patted Song Tan on the shoulders.
"Still, good work. It was a valuable experience."
"Yeah. Just making contact with Foreign Affairs is a big gain for you."
At that moment, the two of them were thinking the same thing.
They assumed Song Tan had merely gone and played something like an interpreter.
And then two months passed.
In the district office’s shared cafeteria, the TV was showing the news.
The officers eating in the cafeteria stared at the TV in awe.
"Wow, Annam Station struck it big. They caught the head guy in Korea even though he was all the way in China."
"I’m jealous. Really jealous. For a case that big, isn’t a special promotion pretty much guaranteed?"
As everyone was offering envious remarks, the cafeteria door swung open and the district chief stormed in.
His face was flushed with agitation.
"Song Tan! Song Tan, where are you!?"
From the corner where he had been eating, Song Tan quietly raised a hand.
"You brat! What the hell did you do!? Do you have any idea what call I just got!?"
The tense atmosphere made the cafeteria fall silent.
"I just got a call from the head of investigations at Annam Station. He says he wants to put you on the special promotion list. Have you heard anything about this?"
Only then did Song Tan understand the true nature of the gift Moon Dong-cheol had spoken of.