Ch.121Episode 6 – The Omniscient Spy’s Perspective

# CRUNCH!

The cassette player shattered with a terrible sound. After spitting out a distorted final sound like a death rattle, the player quickly reached the end of its life and was ejected. I threw the smashed player under the table.

I sat quietly, closed my eyes, and seethed.

Whether my action of destroying the player stemmed from the shock of being eavesdropped on, or from anger at myself for not thoroughly checking the communication network despite my experience, I couldn’t tell.

One thing was certain, though—the contents of my call had fallen into someone else’s hands.

“…”

As I silently continued my thoughts, Francesca Ranieri across from me stared at me intently.

Then she spoke.

“I didn’t expect you could crush a player with your bare hands. You’re stronger than I thought.”

“…”

“It was quite a sturdy device.”

Episode 6 – Omniscient Spy Perspective

There was a brief commotion, but the atmosphere quickly calmed down.

Since I hadn’t done it to intimidate her in the first place, I had neither reason nor need to threaten Francesca Ranieri.

She was surprised, but that was the extent of it.

Thus, no one paid any attention to the shattered player.

I remained seated, and the administrative officer from the Magic Tower Secretariat sat opposite me, sipping the punch she had made.

“…”

I stalled for time, pondering where the call might have been leaked from.

“Who gave it to you? That tape just now. The Magic Tower? The Empire?”

The administrative officer answered.

Neither, she said.

“It wasn’t the Magic Tower or the Empire.”

“Then who? There aren’t many people bold enough to eavesdrop on Ambassador Abbas’s phone calls on this continent.”

“Why don’t you think I was the one who eavesdropped…?”

The administrative officer crossed her legs and asked with a somewhat provocative attitude.

In truth, judging by her expression and tone, it was less provocation and more a genuine question of “Why aren’t you suspecting me?”

I kindly answered her question.

“I’m asking because I know you don’t have that capability.”

Wiretapping? That’s not something just anyone can do easily.

In the 21st century modern society, all kinds of surveillance equipment might be available to civilians and easily obtainable on Amazon or eBay, but here, such a market didn’t even exist.

Above all, I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for such a low-level tactic.

“That call was made using a prepaid phone from a moving vehicle. Intercepting a moving target is difficult without mobile equipment.”

For example, something like a satellite that can access civilian communication networks from space without spatial constraints, or a signal intelligence reconnaissance aircraft capable of intercepting communications at low altitude.

Such equipment was information assets that even decent countries on Earth would struggle to handle.

Wasn’t it reality that even to use a single South Korean satellite, the Ministry of National Defense, Unification Ministry, Foreign Ministry, and Police had to line up for National Intelligence Service approval?

“Operating high-performance information assets isn’t something even private companies can easily do. They’re national strategic assets.”

So it was impossible for a mere individual to handle such equipment.

Unless it was something like the signal intelligence collection van owned by the Technical Intelligence Department of Unit 73.

“What if someone listened from close by…?”

“That makes even less sense.”

Setting aside the moving vehicle, even eavesdropping from a close distance isn’t easy.

If it were a direct conversation between Veronica and me, perhaps. But communications are difficult to intercept.

Why?

“Telephone poles and magic waves are obstacles to intercepting communications. And that area had many telephone poles, and due to high cargo volume, plenty of magic waves too. If not that, then you’re suggesting someone knew my phone number and recorded the conversation at the base station every time a call was made.”

“…”

“Given how many prepaid SIM cards I’ve purchased from the Magic Tower, that makes even less sense. If I were that easy to catch, the Public Order Protection Bureau or police would have known beforehand.”

A government administrative employee having better intelligence gathering capabilities than intelligence agencies and police?

That’s nonsense. Even third-world intelligence agencies you’ve never heard of aren’t that incompetent.

No matter how much the gap between advanced and backward intelligence agencies might be like the difference between Usain Bolt and a high school track team’s main runner in a 100m race, they would never fall behind ordinary civilians.

So the idea that Francesca Ranieri had better information gathering capabilities than the Magic Tower didn’t make sense. Even fiction writers would get criticized for such a plot.

It would be more realistic to say that a foreign intelligence agency or the Magic Tower’s counterintelligence agency had passed information to Francesca Ranieri.

And above all,

“I’m not an idiot.”

I wasn’t stupid enough to have my communications with a foreign intelligence agent intercepted.

If I were, I would have long since been tarred and dead somewhere in the West Sea or the South China Sea.

Since an honest person has nothing to be ashamed of or hesitate about, my question was infinitely light.

“Who gave you that recording tape?”

The alchemist’s answer was similarly straightforward.

“I heard you were skilled… but you’re much better than I expected…”

As I thought.

Someone had delivered the recording file to the alchemist.

So,

“And where did you hear that from?”

“Where indeed…?”

“…You’ve got quite the straw stuck in there.”

It meant some bastard had leaked my information to the outside.

“You must be feeling quite full.”

*

Francesca Ranieri has my call recording. It means someone leaked my information to her.

I don’t know which bastard did it.

It wasn’t the atmosphere to ask, and she didn’t seem like the type to answer straightforwardly if asked, so I postponed finding the answer to this problem for later.

“What are you going to do now?”

I asked the alchemist sitting across the table.

“Good question. What should I do…?”

The alchemist looked at me with a grin, wrapped in a bathrobe. She was truly a novel kind of crazy woman. She had a slightly similar vibe to Veronica, but she seemed a bit less mature, so it wasn’t exactly the same feeling.

If Veronica was a crazy woman who was reasonable but unpredictable, Francesca Ranieri was a crazy woman whose thoughts were impossible to read. Looking at it this way, she also had something in common with Camilla in that her psychology was difficult to read.

Somewhere between Veronica and Camilla.

Francesca Ranieri was a woman who existed at that ambiguous point.

“…”

By the way, I wonder what the hell her handler from the National Security Bureau is doing.

Could it be that Sophia is being sloppy with her work?

That wasn’t it. As far as I knew, Sophia was someone who always prioritized work. In short, a workaholic.

Sometimes it got so extreme that collaborators committed suicide or informants died, but she was the type to calmly return to work even after such incidents, so Sophia definitely wasn’t the type to slack off just because she worked hard.

Then could she possibly have been arrested or expelled by the Magic Tower’s counterintelligence agency?

This was somewhat plausible, but honestly, it wasn’t the case right now.

Sophia was an operative who had been active in the Magic Tower for a sufficiently long period (she lied to me that she was recently dispatched to cover for Fabio Verati), and unlike me, who had official cover with diplomatic immunity, she was an unofficial cover, so if she had been caught by the Public Order Protection Bureau, she would have been expelled long ago.

So where did Sophia go?

Could it be that Sophia herself leaked the information?

“…”

No, definitely not. This really wasn’t it.

Passing information to a surveillance target, especially information about a foreign intelligence agent, didn’t make sense.

The National Security Bureau, which works closely with the Abbas intelligence agency, wouldn’t allow it. That would mean Sophia acted independently, but the Sophia I knew was definitely not that kind of loose cannon.

Then the answer would be that another intelligence agency leaked information to the alchemist.

But why?

“Alright, alright…”

The alchemist sighed deeply as if tired and slumped.

“What’s important to you isn’t that, Military Attaché…”

“…”

Thud.

A brown envelope was tossed onto the table. Like a die.

“You need information about La Cardenal, right…? More precisely, information about the Magic Tower Oracle’s slush fund…”

“…Who told you that?”

“Hmm… Maybe a passing albatross left it by my pillow…?”

Ignoring the alchemist’s nonsense, I opened the envelope. Inside were export-import documents related to La Cardenal. Specifically, documents about the flow of funds earned by smuggling goods into the Magic Tower using shell companies.

Accounting ledgers.

“…”

I remained silent for a while, pushing the documents around with my finger.

After a long silence, Francesca Ranieri tilted her head and spoke.

“You’re not looking at them…? It’s a gift I prepared…”

“How am I supposed to know if this is food you’re offering as a gift or rat poison you’ve set out to kill me?”

“You haven’t even touched the punch I gave you yet…”

So why should I trust and eat this?

“Hmm…”

The alchemist slumped in her seat, resting her chin on her hand as she looked at me.

Given her posture, it seemed as if she was looking up at me, but in reality, neither of us was looking down on or up at the other.

We sat equally at the table, looking at each other.

“You’re as cautious as I’ve heard…”

I’m not sure if our gazes were the same, but.

The alchemist grinned as she slowly examined me, as if observing. Her demeanor was like that of a picky customer checking merchandise, which made me feel slightly uncomfortable.

“Let’s not waste energy. You seem to know everything already.”

“Know what…? That I’m the one filling the Oracle’s back pocket…?”

“…”

“Or that you’re not really a diplomat or a hero’s companion, but a spy…?”

The alchemist smiled softly, narrowing her eyes. Between the depths of an unfathomable ravine, violet eyes flickered.

I wonder if it’s just my feeling that those eyes seem like an abyss.

Probably not.

“If you expose that I’m a spy, and I reveal that you’re not actually an alchemist from a prestigious family but a smuggler who fills the Oracle’s coffers, who do you think will die first?”

“I would die first, wouldn’t I…? You have a home to return to… but I don’t have anything like that…”

It was quite an honest answer.

So honest that I couldn’t tell if it was a lie or her true feelings.

The alchemist continued speaking with a sorrowful smile.

“The Oracle has absolute support within the Magic Tower… and since the current Tower Master is from the Empire, the Empire politically supports them from outside, so they won’t easily fall…”

The alchemist began to recite the domestic and international political situation of the Magic Tower with a melancholic smile.

“The problem is economic… Corruption among leadership exists to some extent in both democratic and monarchical states… and there’s a self-purification process, so it’s not a major risk, but not in the Magic Tower… This is a magical society, so its circumstances differ from other countries…”

“…”

“Of course, companies won’t easily pull out just because such risks exist… The infrastructure and transportation networks are good, so after shipping, this is the most attractive route for distributing goods to the Empire… And with so many ongoing businesses, they’d be reluctant to waste their investments…”

The alchemist spoke without hesitation.

“Other countries could impose economic sanctions to restrain the Oracle… But no matter how much the Treasury and Foreign Ministry try to suppress trade and commerce… markets don’t always align with government interests…”

“…”

“Economically, the Magic Tower won’t collapse… Honestly, the same goes for politically…”

The alchemist had somehow become an administrative officer of the Magic Tower Secretariat.

“So in the end, I’m the only one who’ll die with my head against a dragon’s bone… As I said earlier, you’ll be well protected by your country…”

And then she returned to being an alchemist.

“…”

Francesca Ranieri took a sip of the punch placed in front of her. Just like my grandfather who used to drink soju straight from the glass without any side dishes.

That makes me sound old. That crazy woman is still only in her mid-twenties.

“…”

Now that I look at her, she’s quite good at self-objectification. It means she knows her place.

So I ask this.

“Why did you choose this adventure when you know all this?”

What the hell am I supposed to do about it?

“If you want to commit suicide, go see a counselor or jump off your building. I don’t understand why you’re sticking your neck out asking to be killed. Even making this expensive punch.”

It was a message between professionals to cut to the chase instead of dragging things out.

I asked.

“What do you want?”

The administrative officer answered.

“I wonder…?”

“If you keep this up, I might really kill you.”

The alchemist said.

“At times like this, rather than asking what I want…”

“…”

“Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to ask what I’d like to do…?”

I looked at the alchemist’s remaining punch and my untouched drink.

And asked.

“What exactly would you like to do?”

*

At 02:37 AM, as drizzle began to fall from the cloudy sky.

Someone urgently knocked on the door of the Abbas Representative Office in the Magic Tower.

“Who is it?”

“Ambassador, it’s Lieutenant Jake from the Defense Attaché’s Office.”

As soon as the ambassador’s permission to enter came through the brown wooden door, Jake hurriedly entered the ambassador’s office.

And after opening the door, he turned around and closed it again.

“Lieutenant Jake. What brings you here at this late hour?”

“I apologize for the intrusion at dawn, Ambassador.”

Jake, who had rushed to the representative office after verifying that the director had gone missing by running all kinds of radar while everyone else was asleep, wiped his forehead, soaked from running a long distance, with the back of his hand as he was about to state his business.

“So, what’s the matter?”

“Actually, Military Attaché Frederick has gone miss-“

He froze stiff.

“Hello?”

The supposedly missing man waved his hand while sipping whiskey in a corner of the ambassador’s room.

What’s going on here?

“What the fuck?”

As Jake, who had struggled through the early morning hours, was caught in a buffer of confusion.

The operative finished his whiskey glass, placed it on the ambassador’s desk, then trudged over and put his arm around Jake’s shoulder.

“Had a good time. Thank you, Ambassador. Please tell the administrative officer that I got in well.”

“…”

“What are you doing? Let’s go quickly.”

The operative left a cursory farewell that barely qualified as one and exited the room.

Jake, who had finally come to his senses after the ambassador’s cough, hurriedly ran out to follow the operative.

“Director! Where on earth have you been?! Sir?!”

“Ah shit. Hey, lower your voice. You’ll make all the neighborhood dogs bark.”

“Where did you go?!”

“I was briefly kidnapped just around here. Took a roundabout way back.”

“What?”

“I said I met with an informant and collaborator, kid.”

The senior operative trudged down the stairs, and the junior operative hurriedly followed, saying:

“Kidnapped? Where were you?! The unit staff are in an uproar looking for you even at this early hour-“

“Can you contact the staff?”

“What?”

“I’m asking if you can reach them.”

“…Well, of course I can?”

“Good. Gather the staff at the designated location, pick up the analysis team, and bring them to the safe house.”

What nonsense is this?

Jake looked at the director with a bewildered feeling.

“…Why?”

Why, you ask?

“What else would spies gather to do?”