Ch.316Episode 13 – There Is No Country for Wizards

After being kidnapped and taken somewhere by boat, I find myself in front of Leoni. I have no idea what’s going on.

“What is this about?”

There was no answer.

Leoni, sitting across from me, muttered into the air while wiggling her fingers as if even speaking was difficult.

“Just untie him.”

“Yes, Director.”

Men standing in the corner approached and removed my restraints. They cut the ropes binding my hands and feet with a knife, then collected the remnants from the floor.

The man spoke Abassian with fluency comparable to a native speaker. No, forget comparable—it was authentic local pronunciation. In other words, the bastards who kidnapped me were Abassians.

When my arms, which had been bound tight enough to cut off circulation, were freed, the first thing I felt was a dull pain. As blood flowed back to my extremities, a tingling sensation spread through my fingertips and entire arms.

“……”

As I rubbed my wrists and looked around after being released, Leoni continued with her own agenda despite the chaotic situation.

“I suppose you’re wondering what the hell is going on.”

“……”

“Let’s move somewhere else first.”

With an audible grunt of effort, Leoni rose from her seat and spoke as she left the room.

Episode 13 – There Is No Country for Wizards

Leaving the room I’d been brought to, we arrived at a spacious room in an underground building.

Screens densely packed along one wall were broadcasting the interior of the room. I could see the faces of men following us through the corridor in real-time, and there were floating images of workers in orange vests busily moving around the dock, loading cargo.

With her back to those screens, Leoni pulled out a chair and tossed files from the folding desk toward the edges, then said to me:

“Sit.”

I slumped into the chair, dragging my exhausted body.

“What is this place?”

“Can’t you tell by looking?”

Leoni sat down across from me and bluntly stated:

“It’s where we pull out fingernails.”

The moment those words reached my ears, screams began echoing from the corridor beyond the wide-open rusty iron door.

As I reflexively turned my head toward the sound, I suddenly noticed a familiar face on one of the wall monitors.

Gabi Schneider.

The wizard from the International Department of the Magic Tower Secretariat was being beaten like a dog by a masked man.

When a clenched fist struck her left cheek, her fragile body staggered. The man grabbed her head as it was about to fall and lifted it up, then swung his fist again to strike her face.

Though no sound came from the screen, screams leaked through the iron door of the torture room and echoed through the empty corridor like wailing ghosts.

After watching that screen for a moment, I asked Leoni:

“…Is this some kind of survival training?”

“Does this look like training to you?”

She meant it was a real situation.

I looked at Leoni’s face with her eyebrow raised crookedly, then turned my gaze back to the screen.

On screen, the intelligence officer hit Gabi Schneider about four more times. Then, slightly bending his knees, he shouted something into her ear as she repeatedly lifted and dropped her head like a broken wooden doll. I couldn’t hear what he said since there was no sound, but it seemed like he was asking questions.

“……”

It felt somehow unreal to be watching someone I had met just this afternoon—or perhaps yesterday afternoon—being tortured. I felt detached from reality.

While scenes of torture played unfiltered in the background, Leoni showed not even a speck of interest. Rather than the video, the sound seemed to bother her more. Annoyed by the screams coming from the corridor, she ordered the intelligence officer who had followed us into the room:

“It’s noisy, close the door. And the rest of you, wait outside.”

“We need staff to record the audiovisual material.”

“There are cameras in the room anyway. Compile and edit that footage later.”

The intelligence officer tapped an employee’s shoulder, gesturing for them to leave. The woman who had been operating equipment in front of the screen removed her headset and left the room with the other staff.

*

The rusty iron door shuddered with impact, making a desolate sound. After a moment, Leoni, who had been silently keeping her place in the emptied room, sighed deeply with wrinkles forming between her eyebrows.

“She’s caused so much trouble. I even sent her on vacation to keep her from snooping around, but she couldn’t resist flying hundreds of kilometers to cause a scene. I didn’t realize in her early days that she had such a talent for exhausting people.”

“……”

“If you have questions, ask now.”

“…Was this company business?”

Leoni nodded. Well, fuck.

So I went on vacation abroad, and by sheer coincidence, I got caught up in an intelligence operation that the Military Intelligence Agency was conducting locally. It’s beyond frustrating—it’s absurd.

I closed my eyes tightly and let out a faint sigh as a headache washed over me.

“Was it a rescue operation?”

“Yes.”

She says it was actually a kidnapping operation.

As soon as I heard that, everything made sense.

The Military Intelligence Agency was trying to kidnap Gabi Schneider. For whatever reason, they conducted an operation in Fatalia, an allied country. But unfortunately, I got caught in the middle and caused a traffic accident. When the situation became complicated and the operation was at risk of failure, they decided to forcibly continue by kidnapping me as well, like a buy-one-get-one-free deal.

Leaning back in her chair, Leoni slouched and opened her mouth.

“We were only going to kidnap her, but things got complicated, and we ended up kidnapping you too.”

“Does that even make sense?”

I looked at Leoni with an expression of disbelief. No, it wasn’t just an expression—I was genuinely dumbfounded.

Conventionally and statistically, most intelligence operations are destined to fail.

Informants changing sides, failure to approach targets, failure to obtain information, misjudgments by intelligence officers, errors in information analysis, policy makers issuing stop orders, and so on. No matter how hard you try, if you’re unlucky, intelligence operations fail.

This situation was exactly that.

Getting caught in the middle of a kidnapping operation? Yeah, maybe that was my fault.

If I had known in advance that the company was planning to kidnap Gabi Schneider, that is.

“If things got complicated, you should have kidnapped her when she was returning alone, or lured her away separately, or just aborted the mission altogether. Why kidnap someone on vacation without any warning, hijack their vehicle, and drug them? ‘Things got complicated?’ Is this somehow my fault?”

Of course, Leoni would have her reasons too. Very obvious reasons. And just as I expected, they matched exactly.

“Do you really need to know that?”

“Is it because of security?”

Leoni said:

“If things had gone according to plan, you wouldn’t have been loitering in that café in the first place. While you were eating at a resort in Galbria, the field team would have kidnapped the target and brought her here, and there would have been no reason for you to be dragged before me.”

“Oh, come on…”

“The reason you, who had absolutely nothing to do with the operation, were kidnapped by our staff is because you flew to the capital via warp gate to meet that woman.”

Leoni pointed at the screen as she spoke. I was speechless and turned my head in exasperation.

The Military Intelligence Agency didn’t inform me about the operation for the sake of its success. They maintained security.

It was obvious that if they had informed me—someone who wasn’t even participating in the operation—there was a risk of leaking confidential information or creating unnecessary complications. So they didn’t tell me.

“Fine. What human being could have predicted that the company would kidnap someone in broad daylight, coincidentally in the town where I’m vacationing? But if you knew the target was a wizard who had contact with an informant, you could have at least warned me. I would have stayed put in my hotel room instead of crawling into that cramped, shitty alley and messing up the company’s business.”

“Let me say it again: you didn’t need to know in the first place. If you hadn’t insisted on working during your vacation, this would have passed quietly.”

Suddenly, my head felt hot, and anger welled up inside me.

I shouted in her face:

“So it’s a crime that I worked? Huh?”

“If you went on vacation, you should have behaved like a civilian with no connection to the company. Why did you fly over here looking to pick up scraps? Huh?”

Leoni’s language became a bit harsher, perhaps annoyed at being cursed at by a much junior colleague.

But I didn’t back down.

“When I’m in the field, you make me work even during vacations, but now you’re saying I should act like a civilian because I’m on vacation? Excuse me, Director, are you approaching death? You seem to be suffering from dementia.”

“You have no respect for your seniors.”

“Well, I’m a civilian now, so I’ll speak without regard for rank or seniority. Why Fatalia of all places?”

Intelligence agencies conduct various types of covert operations, but activities like kidnapping and torturing someone are all classified as paramilitary operations.

Kidnapping, torture, information extraction, raids, assassination, terrorism, fostering local warlords, rescue operations, and so on. Like infiltrating somewhere to snipe a general, training warlords hidden in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, or extracting an informant from prison.

To put it simply, it’s the kind of stuff Call of Duty protagonists do. In fact, paramilitary operations fall under the subcategory of special operations, which is why intelligence agencies sometimes bring in military special forces units for intelligence operations.

Of course, it’s hard to find anything legal in what intelligence agencies do, but there’s a reason these intelligence operations like paramilitary operations are called “covert” operations.

So conducting a paramilitary operation in Fatalian territory by the Abassian intelligence agency was insane from the start.

I pointed at Gabi Schneider being beaten on the screen.

“You’ve kidnapped a Magic Tower official from a third country in Fatalian territory and are even torturing her—what are you going to do about this? It’s obvious that if the Fatalians find out, their Foreign Ministry will summon our ambassador, show them photos of that person’s bruised face, and demand to know why we did this in their territory.”

Leoni turned her gaze to the screen with indifference. On screen, Gabi Schneider had a cloth over her face, and the intelligence officer was starting to pour cold water over it.

Waterboarding, water torture, underwater ballet—it goes by various nicknames, but frankly, it’s just water torture. And torture is illegal under the laws of any country.

Of course, I didn’t bring this up to take issue with the torture itself. Whether they torture or not, why should I care? I’d probably start by punching someone in the face if things went south too.

The real problem was elsewhere.

“Look, Director, let’s think about this logically.”

I looked at Leoni and laid out the current state of affairs.

“You’ve kidnapped a foreigner in an allied country’s territory. I don’t know what wrong she did, but the fact is that Abassian officials kidnapped a civilian on Fatalian soil. And you’ve tortured her.”

“…Yes.”

“And wasn’t the last person she met an Abassian diplomat?”

It was my decision to meet with Gabi Schneider, who had been crying and begging Francesca.

However, it was Leoni who forced the operation to continue when communication broke down and the situation became complicated.

“If the last person she met before being kidnapped was a foreign official, wouldn’t common sense suggest that official is the culprit?”

Pressing deeply on the wrinkles between her eyebrows as if annoyed, she answered with a “what can you do” attitude.

“Then should we have left you there? A foreign official was kidnapped on Fatalian soil. And right after meeting with a foreign military attaché. Who do you think the National Security Bureau would suspect?”

“No, then you should have postponed the operation and kidnapped her another day, or quietly kidnapped her when she was alone, or if that wasn’t possible, lured her to another country or aborted the operation. Why continue with it and kidnap me too? What’s the point?”

Though I wasn’t pointing to anything specific, what I ultimately wanted to say was this:

“You should have kidnapped her in the northern Empire or at the Magic Tower instead.”

Though I pressed strongly in an excited state, Leoni’s response was ice-cold.

“That’s a naive assumption for someone with your experience.”

“……”

“Do you really think kidnapping her in the north would be easier than in Fatalia? If the field agents had made even a small mistake or been caught and interrogated, the Imperial Guard or counterintelligence units would have arrested you within three hours. Abassian spies operating in a martial law area—who else would they suspect of helping those spies besides you and your team?”

“What about the Magic Tower?”

“The Prime Minister’s Office rejected the operation. They told us not to conduct any separate operations at the Magic Tower for the time being.”

“……”

“If the captured field agents had leaked your identity during interrogation, or if you had been assigned as staff for this operation, the National Security Bureau would have raided your hotel room first when things went wrong.”

A sigh flowed from her crooked lips.

“To prevent such mishaps, we separated the teams, only informed the team leader and deputy leader about your personal information to control information as much as possible… and even conducted the operation in an allied country…”

“……”

“Yes, thanks to you loitering at the scene, now the entire team has figured out your identity. Who should we blame? It was my mistake for not anticipating that you would fly hundreds of kilometers during your vacation to meet that woman.”

Somewhere between self-deprecation and sarcasm, Leoni explained why they had kidnapped me.

“If you had escaped from there, the National Security Bureau would have suspected you first. If we hadn’t kidnapped you and had carefully put you in a car, Gabi Schneider would have realized that you and the kidnapping team were on the same side.”

“…So she doesn’t know I’m with the company?”

“She probably thinks you’re being tortured in another room.”

“Has the National Security Bureau noticed?”

“No, they don’t even know she’s been kidnapped.”

Did Francesca not report it? Perhaps another intelligence officer found her and silenced her.

And the café owner…

“…The café owner. He’s with the company, right?”

“An informant. It was a café that woman frequented.”

“I thought so.”

The situation became clearer in my mind.

Kidnappings are usually carried out in places away from public view. So if you’re going to kidnap someone in a commercial building like a café where random people visit, you either need to recruit the owner as an informant or have an intelligence officer run the café directly. Otherwise, the owner and employees would be the first to call the police.

The Military Intelligence Agency must have recruited the owner of the café that Gabi Schneider frequented as an informant and secured their cooperation for the kidnapping operation. With the café located in a secluded alley, once the customers were sent away, there would be no one to report the kidnapping—perfect for the job.

No wonder he was chasing customers away despite good business.

“……”

I had many questions but lacked the energy to ask them. What exactly had Gabi Schneider done? Why were wizards like Martinez under company surveillance? Why did they have to cause this mess in an allied country’s territory?

As I frowned at my increasingly throbbing headache and lifted my head—

“Director.”

One of the intelligence officers who had been outside came in and called for Leoni.

“What is it?”

“We’ve received a message from our informant. The police have visited her home after receiving reports from local residents about today’s commotion.”

“Location?”

“She appears to be at home.”

Leoni didn’t elaborate further.

“Handle it yourselves. Clean it up so there’s no aftermath.”

“……”

“And by ‘clean it up,’ I mean the same goes for your informant.”

The Director of Overseas Intelligence Operations of the Military Intelligence Agency instructed me:

“Make sure that woman doesn’t run her mouth. Threaten her, bribe her, do whatever it takes.”

She was referring to Francesca.

After giving that order, Leoni gestured to call in the intelligence officers from outside. Then she pointed at me.

“Take him back to the mainland. Create an alibi in advance. What anesthetic did you use? Chloroform?”

“It’s what we use at the company. Something stronger.”

“Get him a cup of cold water to wake him up. The Bureau Chief will be coming in the morning, so I need to report. Start the boat’s engine.”

As an employee handed me a cup of water from a kettle, Leoni put on her coat and began speaking.

“Due to this unfortunate complication, you must have many questions. But you’ll find out everything when you return anyway, so just enjoy your vacation quietly without causing trouble.”

“……”

“I’ll see you at the company.”

*

By the time I left the dark underground torture chamber and boarded the boat, the sun had already set beyond the horizon, and the sky was filled with stars.

I sat on the deck, watching the gradually receding, dimly visible outline of an unnamed island shrouded in darkness.

The intelligence officers, following Leoni’s instructions, took me back to the mainland.

Just before the ship reached the dock, I grabbed a line that the intelligence officers had marked with something like a light stick, entered the sea, and then made my way to shore through a path hidden from people’s view.

When I climbed ashore looking like a drenched rat, a car was waiting for me. I approached the person who flashed the lights with the agreed-upon signal, and they silently opened the rear door of the sedan for me.

Actually, I’m not sure if it was a man or a woman. I was tired and couldn’t focus my eyes well, and my whole body was shivering after going into the cold sea. My mind must have been really disoriented because I thought I saw cat ears protruding from the driver’s seat.

What would a person be doing with cat ears? They’re not even a beastkin…

“……”

I found a blanket spread on the back seat and covered myself with it urgently. It had some fur-like material on it and smelled like animal odor that made my nose wrinkle, but I needed to cover myself with something to maintain body temperature.

The vehicle that picked me up started moving along the coastal road after passing through the national highway.

Since I didn’t converse with the driver, I didn’t know our destination, but I could tell from the stars that we were heading south. With the blanket over me and my head leaning against the window, I closed my heavy eyelids and took a short nap.

After some indeterminate time had passed, my eyes naturally opened.

The scenery outside the window was dim, as if dusk had fallen. I opened the door, got out of the car, and looked around.

The view seemed strangely familiar. When I turned my head, I saw a hotel standing tall about two blocks away. I dragged my reluctant body through the blue-tinted alley, trudging along.

By the time I reached the hotel entrance with my slow, forced steps, a familiar face was there in front of the hotel, where not even a bellboy was standing.

“…You’re here?”

A woman with lush purple hair draped to one side, holding a smoking haposek pipe.

Bright white skin and violet eyes that shone even in the deep darkness. Her eyes, resembling violets, slowly turned to look at me.

On the empty dawn street where no one was passing by.

Francesca was standing there alone, waiting.

With an extremely tired face, she smiled sadly and spoke to me.

“I’m glad you returned safely.”

Then, extending her hand that wasn’t holding the haposek pipe, she said:

“Shall I guide you this time?”

Fourteen hours and twenty-one minutes.

From land, across the sea, and back to land again.

After completing what could hardly be called an adventure, spanning nearly half a day, I finally returned to the hotel. Only then did I approach her like someone who had just returned from work, taking her hand.

“Let’s go in.”

“…Yes, let’s.”

In front of the brightly lit hotel.

I held Francesca’s hand and headed toward my room, dragging my tired body.