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Chapter 11: Agent Crow
TL: Enuma ID
"Is there some reason we have to take him alive instead of just killing him?"
Usually, when an absurd order like this comes down, there's some political calculus behind it that field agents aren't privy to.
Whether it's the NIS brass padding their track record.
Or flaunting some plausible-looking achievement for the world outside.
E̊ṅū ḿа
One way or another.
"The thinking of the higher-ups, well, it always starts with pointless stubbornness, same as ever. What was it again? We have to keep him alive and stand him before a war-crimes tribunal? Expose every atrocity the SSD has ever committed to the whole world and see justice done...." (TL: SSD = North Korea's State Security Department)
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As expected. The answer didn't stray an inch from my prediction.
"Sure, the cause is fine. Looks very noble... but in the end it's all talk without a fucking shred of realism."
"Tell me about it."
"I never planned to give him a painless death with a single bullet anyway. For the sake of all our agents who died weeping tears of blood, to settle their grudges properly.... I can't just snuff him out cleanly."
Еñ ù m̄ӑ
I could see the veins standing out on the backs of Crane No. 13's hands where they gripped the wheel.
However hard he tried to keep his voice flat and level, he couldn't hide the way he ground the words out between his teeth.
'I can see exactly how this played out.'
Crane No. 13 had probably submitted the original proposal under the heading "shoot dead on sight".
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
But the higher-ups at headquarters would have countered with the condition of "capture alive, then prisoner escort".
After an endless tug-of-war and compromise, he'd had no choice but to swallow the order from above. That was where Crane No. 13 stood now.
W̌ е̄b nоv̀ еl̈ .Е n̄ ũmа̇
"I feel bad about it, handing a job like this to a Sparrow."
"It's fine. I may be a Sparrow, but fortunately I'm not a total rookie either."
"That's some comfort. First, to explain briefly, you remember Owl No. 5 and No. 8, deployed with you on the last op? Those two will be on standby near the operation area."
"Ah! So they're both alive?"
"Guess you didn't hear? All five deployed on that mission exfiltrated the site alive. Though Kite No. 3 did take a bullet."
An unexpected silver lining amid the pile-up of misfortunes.
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I'd been planning to stop by the NIS Security Exhibition Hall the moment I got back to Korea to check the nameplates, but it seemed I could go ahead and revise that bleakest of vacation plans right now.
"So Se-hyok is holed up at the Kowloon Hotel in Dandong. You've heard of it?"
"Yes. I know the place."
"Your role is to infiltrate the hotel yourself, relay internal intel, and direct us in real time on how to capture the target alive. You were a Special Task Force team leader with the Defense Intelligence Command, so this should be familiar work, right?"
"You're not going in to run it yourself, hyeong-nim?"
"I can't get into that hotel in the first place. I look too ordinary for the role."
Ѐ n̄umа
"...?"
Too ordinary-looking to get into a hotel?
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It wasn't as if the place were some club that only lets the good-looking crowd in.
I was baffled for a moment, but figured he'd explain later, so for now I just nodded.
"Is there a set operational manual or anything?"
"Not really? Once an operation kicks off, I always delegate all judgment and authority to the field agents anyway."
Ê ń u mа́
"Nice. I've always been the type to let the flow of things carry me along, myself."
"Still, if there's one thing I'd ask, it's that if capture truly looks impossible, you're free to read the situation and put a hole in his skull. Just know that if it comes to that, our operation officially goes down as a failure."
This, I figured, was a separate kill order from Crane No. 13, apart from the capture-alive directive coming out of headquarters.
Even in the absolute worst case, So Se-hyok absolutely had to die.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Crane No. 13 glanced at me as if to drive the point home, and I nodded back.
"And there's one more agent waiting where we're headed now. You are not to breathe a single word to them about the mission you've been given."
Е́ň ũ m̌ a
"Oh?"
"You'll see why once you meet them."
Just as I was about to nod again... screech.
"We're here."
The old taxi stopped with a harsh grind of brakes.
We'd arrived on the outskirts leading out toward Shenyang, in front of a shabby slate warehouse at a secluded, out-of-the-way factory.
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Inside the half-open warehouse, old used cars with their plates stripped off stood in rows, and the smells of engine oil and metal filings hit thick at my nose.
In the middle of the gloomy warehouse, sitting quietly beside a grease-stained workbench, someone was waiting for us.
"Late, are we?"
"Sorry. Traffic from Dalian was terrible."
"For an excuse, that's awfully lazy. You do know I'm a busy woman?"
"I know it well."
Е n̊ umа
She was a woman in elegant attire, utterly out of place in the run-down garage.
A luxurious suit, tailored close to her body.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
A beauty somehow youthful yet bewitching.
While I looked at her, it felt as if one corner of the dim factory were glowing.
"Anyway, introduce yourselves. This is Agent Crow."
Now I understood why Crane No. 13 had told me never to reveal my mission to her.
W̌ ӗb ñ ӧ ve l̊ Е̊nu̇m а̌
"Crow? Please. Just call me Yang Mi-ryeong."
Crow.
It was my first time actually meeting one.
The word meant people who had melted so deep into the local ecosystem under their cover identities that they were no longer black agents at all.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
With an ordinary cover identity, you lived as a merchant or an office worker and kept to certain lines, but when, by chance or by necessity, agents buried themselves in the dirty realm of the illegal, this sort of thing sometimes happened.
Places like the big local gangs, say, or the drug cartels.
Ẁе_b́ nо v̆ еl Е́ ñŭ m а̇
Once they grasped the workings of that world so well that they shot straight up into the executive ranks, they shed the post of field agent altogether and carried on a strange symbiosis with headquarters as something closer to a local collaborator, or a broker.
No longer taking orders; a relationship of discussing each other's business.
Yang Mi-ryeong readily extended her hand, and I took it lightly.
"Pleasure to meet you. Sparrow No. 7."
"...Did you just say Sparrow?"
"Yes."
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For the record, no number follows the codename Crow.
It isn't a codename actually issued to NIS agents; it's the label people casually throw around for agents who have turned.
Besides, if you started numbering them Crow No. 1, Crow No. 2, and so on, anyone could roughly gauge just how many agents had gone Crow.
Call it headquarters' shallow little scheme to preemptively shut down any chance of existing agents seeing that number and getting ideas of their own.
"Ha. Unbelievable. Did you just con me?"
The moment Yang Mi-ryeong heard my codename, her face twisted and she glared at Crane No. 13.
E nũ m̄_а̃._і̀ d
Crane No. 13 played dumb, smooth as ever.
"Con you? How?"
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"You clearly said all I had to do was get him into the hotel."
"It's no big deal, is it? So this kid can get inside the hotel where our target is staying, you just accompany him in as your guest and open the door. Simple, right?"
"You want me to sneak an agent who hasn't even been on the job a year into that hotel? You're dumping the whole thing on me. Do you think working with gangsters made me stupid too?"
Yang Mi-ryeong's razor-edged sneer sharpened.
W̃ ӗ b̂ ṅ о̀v̌ ĕ l Еn ům а
Her fierce reaction wasn't hard to understand.
Among black agents, a Sparrow is something like the chick class at kindergarten.
Being told to take a greenhorn like that along in the name of supporting the operation... no wonder her blood was up.
"If it's an inconvenience, I'm perfectly fine infiltrating the hotel on my own."
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I tried to step in and smooth things over, but Crane No. 13 shook his head firmly.
"That's impossible. The Kowloon Hotel you need to penetrate isn't somewhere ordinary tourists like us can stay in the first place."
Е n̄ ŭm ă . і̆ ḋ
"Heavy security?"
"Security's one thing, but only Dandong Public Security's senior brass and people with ties to them can stay there. An uninvited guest with unverified identity would be handed over to Public Security and land behind bars before he even crossed the lobby threshold."
Crane No. 13 pulled out a cigarette and put it between his lips.
Given the heavy smell of oil hanging all around us, the man truly had no fear.
"That's why you need a separate cover identity. And that's why, starting today, you'll be infiltrating that hotel in the role of Crow's lover. As this young lady's boyfriend, you'll pass through without a hitch."
The lover cover.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
A clichéd, classic trick straight out of the movies.
But I found myself looking at Yang Mi-ryeong with a fresh question.
'Who is this woman, exactly?'
A woman who could come and go in a hotel only Public Security's senior brass could enter.
As I stared at her in silence, Yang Mi-ryeong shot me a crooked, sidelong look.
"What? Curious who I am?"
Е n̂ù m a .іd
"Yeah, kind of."
"I'm the Kowloon Society's Dandong branch chief. That hotel is mine."
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My mouth shut of its own accord.
The Kowloon Society.
An organization spreading its web across mainland China, Hong Kong, and all of Southeast Asia.
One of the foremost among the massive criminal organizations that make up the Triads.
Ěn̊.úmа
And this woman in her polished suit held that colossal organization's Dandong branch in her grip.
'No wonder she went Crow.'
I nodded inwardly.
And at the same time, I understood why Crane No. 13 had said he couldn't enter the hotel himself.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
For the role of her lover, his looks were, admittedly, on the ordinary side.
"But why do I even need the fake-boyfriend name tag? If you're the Kowloon Society's Dandong branch chief, couldn't you just slot one more employee into your own hotel? Disguise me as a bodyguard or something and slip me in?"
Е nũ m̈ӑ_
"That hotel is only in my name on paper. In practice, it's a jointly managed zone where the dirty money of the Triads, Chinese Public Security, and North Korea all gets laundered. Dandong Public Security is camped out in parts of the hotel, and the floors where North Korean cadres stay are sealed off by North Korean soldiers themselves. Everyone shares the guest database, and everyone watches everyone."
"Oh...."
"So what happens if I suddenly bring in some man nobody has ever seen and call him an employee? Public Security and the North Koreans, and even my own Kowloon Society, would start digging into what game I'm playing. However it shakes out, it means nothing but trouble for my business. And I can't stand that."
Yang Mi-ryeong's heel tapped irritably against the cement floor.
Then, abruptly, her sharp gaze swept lightly over me from head to toe.
"But if he's not just an employee, if he's my new lover, that's a different story. In this world, the unwritten rule is that you deliberately turn a blind eye to a VIP's private affairs. Everyone will drop their guard, figuring the hotel madam snagged some young, decent-looking man to toy with, and the fact that you ever stayed at the hotel won't appear in any record."
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"...Young and decent-looking? Those don't exactly sound like conditions that apply to me."
"You? Mm, I could give you a passing grade... just barely."
I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or just relieved.
While I listened blankly to her scoffing, Crane No. 13, having finished his cigarette, smacked his lips.
"Well, there you go. Anyway, Crow, I'm asking exactly one thing of you. Keep this kid glued to your side like a lover and take him around. Do that, and he'll handle everything else himself."
"Playing lover to the Kowloon Society's Dandong branch chief... it's an honor."
Ŵеb n ȯ_v̂ еl̆ Е ñ.ùm а
Watching our shameless act, Yang Mi-ryeong pressed hard at her temples.
"An honor, my ass. If you act like a rookie on my turf and blow your cover, know that I'll be the one to kill you first, with my own hands. Got it?"
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Crane No. 13 said nothing, but I gave a shrug.
*****
There is an organization called the Chongqing Society, based in Taiwan.
The Chongqing Society's Dandong branch sat in a spot so deserted, even by Dandong's standards, that not so much as a rat came sniffing around apart from the members themselves.
Ĕ_n.u̇ mа . і d
The only thing drifting in and out of the abandoned, faintly lit warehouse was thick cigarette smoke.
"Boss! The Public Security Bureau just reached out to us in secret."
When someone burst in, panting and making a racket, the Chongqing Society's Dandong branch chief, Jin Hao, lifted his narrowed eyes.
Looking at his enforcer Xiao Peng, he brought the liquor glass resting on the mahjong table to his lips.
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"Public Security? The same bastards who personally hacked off our arms and legs to keep the bigshots in Beijing happy.... So what the hell is this about?"
"The adjutant to Dandong Public Security Bureau director Wang Xianqing came to see us in secret just now. He says there's a bastard they want killed on the quiet."
Е ñu m̀а̄. ǐ d̈
"Killed? Who?"
Xiao Peng glanced around.
At that, the members stationed around the table read the mood and cleared out one by one.
"The Investigation Bureau director of North Korea's State Security Department, So Se-hyok."
At the low whisper, Jin Hao's eyes flew wide open.
*****
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