Chapter 55

Chapter 55

Just then, Lee Seung-uk had brought his remaining opponent to his knees with a low kick and was turning to look at Yi-hyeon.

The instant the last man's hand slipped inside his jacket, Yi-hyeon crouched low and then sprang into the air.

"Huugh!"

By the time Yi-hyeon landed, he had the man's neck and upper body trapped beneath his left arm.

"Where's Team Leader Lee?"

Yi-hyeon asked Lee Seung-uk as he casually dropped the man he'd been holding onto the ground. The man was already unconscious.

"He'll be here any moment. Ah, there he is."

Just as Lee Seung-uk said, headlights flashed in the distance, and two vehicles arrived. One was an SUV, while the other was a van.

"Sorry I'm late."

Lee Myeong-hun spoke as he jumped out of the SUV.

"Take these men with you. They came here to take me to someone in the middle of the night, so question them thoroughly. But we don't have much time. We'll have to hand them over to the NIS."

Yi-hyeon pointed at the men and turned away, then added,

"Oh, and collect all their weapons. Looks like we've finally acquired some firearms of our own, even if they weren't obtained through official channels."

"Understood."

After Lee Myeong-hun answered, Yi-hyeon turned to Lee Seung-uk.

"Let's go."

"Yes, sir."

Once Yi-hyeon and Lee Seung-uk departed, the surroundings quickly fell silent. Soon, however, an airplane taking off from the airport runway thundered overhead. It was so close that, in daylight, they would have been able to make out the airline's logo and the windows.

Lee Myeong-hun listened to his surroundings before instructing his subordinates.

"Tie these bastards up and load them into the van. Gag them, too. They might start making a racket along the way."

"Yes, sir."

The men, whose hands and feet had been bound with cable ties, were gagged and loaded into the van.

"Let's go to Siheung."

At Lee Myeong-hun's command, both vehicles immediately departed. They had purchased an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Siheung under Lee Seung-uk's name. Situated at the foot of a wooded hill with no residences nearby, it would be an ideal place to interrogate these men.

The four would-be kidnappers(?) spent the next day having a great many conversations with Lee Myeong-hun.

Then, that afternoon.

"Looks like Team Leader Lee has already scored a success. Haha."

Yu Min-seon arrived in Siheung with several NIS agents to take custody of the four prisoners.

"It wasn't me. Representative Song handled them personally, together with Lee Seung-uk."

Lee Myeong-hun answered curtly. The two had already been introduced through Yi-hyeon and had even shared a meal together.

"Well, did they talk willingly? Judging by how they look, you don't seem to have beaten them too badly."

Yu Min-seon glanced at the four men being loaded into the vehicle, and Lee Myeong-hun gave a bitter smile.

Not beaten them too badly?

There was no way Lee Myeong-hun would resort to halfhearted measures. Those four could barely walk now.

Still, looking at this woman, he found it difficult to think of her as a woman at all. Even now, she wore jeans, black sneakers, and a black padded jacket. At a glance, she could easily be mistaken for a man, partly because of her height.

"We've learned a few things, but I can't tell you anything yet. I haven't even reported to the representative."

Yu Min-seon readily nodded at Lee Myeong-hun's matter-of-fact response.

"That's the proper order of things. Well, then."

After Yu Min-seon departed with the four prisoners, Lee Myeong-hun hurried to finish his own business. He hadn't slept a wink all night, yet he wasn't tired in the slightest. If anything, he felt bursting with energy.

"All right, clean this place up thoroughly. I'm going to report to the representative."

"Yes, sir!"

His subordinates answered sharply, just as they had during their military service.

* * *

"As instructed, we didn't handle them too roughly."

Yi-hyeon merely smiled at Lee Myeong-hun's report. Although Lee Myeong-hun had been his superior during their military days, he was now quite respectful toward Yi-hyeon. He was accustomed to serving superiors and following orders within an organization.

"First, two of those men were carrying Chinese diplomatic passports. They kept screaming for us to contact the Chinese embassy. The other two are ethnic Koreans from China."

As Lee Myeong-hun spoke, he showed Yi-hyeon photographs of their passports taken with his phone. He'd carefully returned the originals to their owners, since the NIS would need to examine them as well.

Yi-hyeon nodded. This was precisely why cooperation with the NIS was essential.

As a civilian with limited authority, he couldn't afford to cause incidents inside Korea. He could no longer charge around recklessly as he'd done while serving in the special forces.

"Also, those two appear to belong to a Chinese intelligence agency, but we couldn't establish that through interrogation."

Naturally. Trained operatives could endure considerable torture. Unless their bodies were completely broken, there were limits to how much could be extracted through interrogation. Truly elite operatives could even withstand certain drugs. Of course, it would be another matter if Yi-hyeon personally intervened.

'Sion, remember the passports of these two men. We need to investigate their backgrounds.'

- Understood. I'll look into them. Wait, hmm. These two belong to an external branch of the MSS. In other words, they're part of a field operations unit.

'Huh?'

He could find that out so quickly?

Oh, right. Sion had taken control of the MSS servers now, hadn't he?

Yi-hyeon felt his confidence rising. With Sion at his side, there was nothing they couldn't accomplish.

At that same time, in the basement of the Chinese embassy in Myeong-dong.

"You still haven't located them? And where is that Song Yi-hyeon?"

"He's at his company office in Samseong-dong. He's been arriving at work on schedule for the past few days."

Two men were conversing in an underground room.

"It's been three days since we received a scheduled report from the execution team, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

To be precise, two full days had passed. The man sitting behind the desk, receiving the report, sank into thought.

He was among the personnel assigned to the Chinese embassy in Korea who did not follow the embassy's chain of command. He took orders exclusively from headquarters in Beijing.

Several members of the execution team dispatched to monitor Song Yi-hyeon and abduct him to a safe house at an opportune moment had disappeared. Yet their target, Song Yi-hyeon, was calmly going to work as usual.

"Something's gone wrong. I'll have to report this to headquarters. Open a secure line."

"Yes, sir."

Seeing the gravity of his expression, the subordinate standing before him answered tensely.

Bureau Seven of the NIS was just as busy.

"Please give me a little more time, Director."

"No! Too much time has already passed. Release those men. We'll soon receive an official protest from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the embassy. Once that happens, the situation will escalate."

Despite Yu Min-seon's pleading, Director Lee Gyu-seong remained adamant. Anyone who reached the rank of director in the NIS had to be sensitive to political developments and the shifting circumstances surrounding them. That applied not only to relations with foreign countries but also to domestic affairs. Without political instincts, a man couldn't hold on to such a position.

Thus, the four men who had come to abduct Yi-hyeon were released, and all the parties involved now understood what was happening. Yi-hyeon, the NIS, and someone high-ranking within China's MSS were all aware of the same facts.

[Someone within the MSS is targeting Yi-hyeon.

Yi-hyeon knows this and has begun responding with force.

Finally, a department of the NIS has also become unofficially involved in the affair.]

Yi-hyeon and the NIS—or rather, Bureau Seven of the NIS—now concentrated on discovering the reason.

Why was China's MSS trying to abduct Yi-hyeon?

In this regard, Yi-hyeon was approaching the truth far more quickly than the NIS.

- They must be exercising caution themselves. There are hardly any internal MSS records concerning the operation.

'That means the operation targeting me isn't an official MSS mission. There's a strong possibility someone with the authority to command MSS operatives is conducting it unofficially.'

- A reasonable deduction. And there's a good chance these people are an entirely separate group from the organization that controlled Ekran in America.

As Yi-hyeon conversed with Sion, he felt the pieces gradually falling into place in his mind.

'They need me alive. Either there's something they want to hear from me while I'm alive, or something they can only obtain as long as I'm living.'

Yi-hyeon formed the thought almost like a groan.

'The OOPArt!'

- My ring!

Now it was clear. After that, the MSS became outwardly quiet.

However,

"This is a top-secret directive issued by the Party. We can no longer mobilize the official organization. The Korean NIS will intervene if we do. Ultimately, we'll have to handle it ourselves."

The man, who appeared to be over fifty, spoke with veins bulging against his darkened face. His voice was hoarse, perhaps from years of heavy smoking.

Chinatown in Bukseong-dong, Incheon.

Buildings and alleyways followed the area's naturally steep terrain. Most establishments were Chinese restaurants or souvenir shops, but an aging three-story building tucked into a corner of the hillside appeared to have nothing to do with the restaurant business. Its entrance was closed despite the daylight, and the room in question was located two floors underground.

Seven men and women sat before the dark-faced man.

"All right, let's consider our options. Song Yi-hyeon already has several bodyguards accompanying him. The NIS is also watching from a distance. It'll be difficult to find an opening during his commute. Does anyone have a good idea?"

Someone spoke up.

"First, we need to establish his schedule and movements. He's not attending university and is concentrating on his company, so we need access to his business schedule."

"His company was only recently established and is still hiring employees. Couldn't we exploit that opening?"

"Impossible. The NIS is conducting background checks on everyone they hire."

The dark-faced man shook his head.

"If the NIS is conducting the background checks, that might actually give us an opening. I'll handle that part myself. Any other suggestions?"

The room fell silent until a man in his thirties wearing glasses spoke. He was the only man present dressed in a suit.

"Since his company is an investment firm, why don't we organize an investment-related event and send him a formal invitation? The embassy should be willing to cooperate with something like that."

At that moment, someone else interjected.

"We can't do this halfheartedly. If we're going to proceed, we should choose another country where we have influence and organize something on a grand scale. We can invite other major Korean investment firms as well. And I believe we must find some way to plant our own personnel inside his company."

The speaker was a woman, and a strikingly beautiful one at that. She didn't appear particularly old, but judging by the confidence with which she spoke, she clearly held considerable authority among those present.

The dark-faced man listened and nodded before speaking.

"Let's combine the ideas we've discussed and develop an operation. We'll mobilize every resource available. Whatever support you need, you'll have it."

They had gathered around lunchtime, but the meeting continued until late that night before they finally dispersed.

* * *

Yi-hyeon was reviewing his American investment portfolio with Sion when Senior Associate Kim Yu-ri knocked and entered his office.

"Representative, the Indonesian embassy has sent an invitation for you to attend an investment promotion event."

The number of employees at the recently established Korean S&K investment company had been growing rapidly. That was the result of Yi-hyeon's instruction to spare no expense when recruiting talented personnel.

Executive Director Kim Hyeong-su, whom Yi-hyeon had hired not long ago, was doing an excellent job. He'd previously been an executive at a commercial bank, but perhaps because he was still relatively young, in his early fifties, he was flexible in his thinking and had a cheerful disposition. He lacked the stiff demeanor often associated with career bankers.

The first thing he'd done after joining the company was recruit employees.

Senior Associate Kim Yu-ri had worked for four years at an investment trust company before moving to S&K. Lee Seung-uk had suggested hiring a dedicated secretary, but Yi-hyeon had vehemently refused. As a result, Kim Yu-ri, whose actual job was investment analysis, also served as his secretary. Her desk stood directly outside Yi-hyeon's office, facing Lee Seung-uk's.

During her job interview two weeks earlier, Kim Yu-ri had boldly declared that she was leaving her previous employer because she despised its discrimination between male and female employees. Strangely enough, however, she showed little dissatisfaction even when performing miscellaneous tasks such as tidying Yi-hyeon's office or running errands.

"All right. Leave it there."

"Yes, sir."

After Kim Yu-ri left, Yi-hyeon put down the documents he'd been reviewing and began talking with Sion.

'Something smells suspicious, doesn't it?'

He was referring to Kim Yu-ri, who had just left. Sion immediately agreed.

- I think so too. Did the NIS conduct her background check properly? The history I investigated for that woman was completely legitimate.

'What if she was sent here by one of the NIS's "contaminated" departments?'

- ···Hehehe. Shall we use this opportunity to catch someone even higher up?

'Exactly! Sion, we're thinking the same thing.'

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