Ch.553Episode 20 – Who Threatened You with a Knife?

A moment ago.

Three women—a mother and two daughters—came into Frederick’s view as he was looking around Timarshak Park.

“…Caucasians?”

One older woman who appeared to be the mother. Two girls who seemed to be her children.

The girls looked so young that he doubted whether they had even entered the middle school division of the Academy.

If there was anything distinctive about them, it would be that they were somewhere between elementary and middle school age, and that both the woman and the two girls had the distinctively pale skin of Caucasians, clearly different from the people of Ashtistan. Yet Frederick didn’t find anything particularly suspicious about the Caucasian family appearing in Timarshak Park.

Although the Republic of Ashtistan was somewhat closed off, it was still a country that maintained relations with the outside world.

Shizya was a tourist destination visited by countless travelers and simultaneously a hub where diplomatic missions, overseas branches of private companies, and foreign correspondents from various countries coexisted.

Encountering Caucasians in such a place wasn’t particularly strange.

Nevertheless, his eyes kept being drawn to them for some reason.

“……”

The woman held the two girls’ hands tightly while constantly looking around. She had been doing this for a while now.

The way she surveyed the park with a somewhat restless gaze. After observing for about 10 minutes, her vigilance showed no signs of diminishing.

Frederick, who had been staring at her intently, folded his newspaper methodically and thought:

“…Hmm.”

The first instinct of a human placed in a hostile environment.

Unconsciously scanning the surroundings, looking for an escape route.

Episode 20 – Who Threatened You with a Knife?

When receiving a new assignment along with the acceptance notice.

The intelligence agency’s instructor, whom I had met as a trainee, always emphasized being careful about one’s ‘actions.’

“……”

Unconscious gestures and gazes are like mirrors reflecting human psychology.

Comfortable situations versus uncomfortable ones. Within these contexts, human instinct manifests through non-verbal communication, and sudden behavioral changes that deviate from the baseline can be a measure to gauge emotional responses.

Behavioral psychology is a subject taught not only by investigative agencies but also by counterintelligence organizations.

At the same time, it’s a field deeply explored by unofficial cover intelligence officers dispatched abroad by intelligence agencies.

Therefore, I kept a close eye on the three women’s behavior.

“……”

The girls laughed and chatted like innocent mischief-makers.

The way they playfully ran around with ice cream in hand was behavior fitting for their age group. It was so natural that it was difficult to find anything unusual or peculiar.

In contrast, the mature woman looked extremely uncomfortable.

I’m not talking about her not cautioning the frolicking children or looking at them with anxious eyes. As a parent, it would be a natural response to worry about one’s children getting hurt.

What was truly strange was that the woman was excessively protective of the two girls.

“Be careful! Don’t go too far!”

The woman, speaking in fluent Kiyen, raised her voice and then, while watching the children, kept surveying her surroundings.

From citizens passing near the family to pedestrians at quite a distance.

The woman continuously remained wary of others and kept glancing at the visible walkways and paths around them. From her attitude, I instinctively noticed something odd.

That woman.

She’s currently trying to grasp the overall structure of the park.

“Hmm….”

While human tendencies and characteristics differ from person to person, the non-verbal behaviors that reveal human emotions and instincts are somewhat universal.

To put it simply, ‘the body is honest.’

For instance, the behavior of looking around, like that woman is doing, is a common response when people find themselves in unfamiliar or hostile environments.

In technical terms, it’s called the Fight or Flight Response.

When exposed to powerful external stimuli like fear, anxiety, or stress, humans seek coping strategies to overcome the situation. Like deciding whether to ‘run away’ or ‘fight back’ when encountering a tiger.

In this process, the amygdala, a part of the limbic system, receives and integrates external stimuli (information) to produce emotions, and the more immediate and intense the stimulus, the more it activates.

It’s at this moment that ‘impulsivity’ and ‘aggression’ tend to increase dramatically.

That’s why people who are usually calm may show intense movements when faced with a crisis.

In that context, the woman rolling her eyes with urgent gestures was a very suspicious person.

Too suspicious to dismiss as just ‘a married woman with children out for a stroll.’

“Camilla? Could you come over here right now? There’s some suspicious person in a public place, and it doesn’t look good. …A terrorist, you ask? How would I know? I just saw them myself.”

By the way, I was somewhat curious. What exactly was that woman’s identity?

A Kiyen citizen? Or a mixed-nationality person from the Moritani continent?

Perhaps she could be a terrorist, a member of a large criminal organization, or even a spy.

Could the reason the priest of Al-Yabd summoned me here have something to do with that woman? If so, what relationship did the woman have with the priest of Al-Yabd, and why did he leak her location and time to me…?

I thought I might discover some important clue if I kept watching.

So I observed the woman’s movements while maintaining an appropriate distance.

“Mom! Look at this!”

After circling around the three women with natural steps for a while, I suddenly stopped in my tracks.

The familiar language that came from the girl’s mouth passed clearly and distinctly through my ears. It wasn’t Ashtistani but a foreign language, yet there was no need for separate interpretation.

After all, no one deliberately tries to interpret their native language.

“…Damn.”

It was Abbasian.

*

People who have traveled abroad would understand, but hearing your native language in a foreign land is quite a refreshing experience.

Whether the distance is far or near. Whether it’s someone you know or a stranger.

Amidst the noisy foreign languages, your native language suddenly popping up tends to stick in your ears, regardless of distance or acquaintance.

In that sense, the spy gentleman who had been traveling abroad on taxpayers’ money (a slanderous claim) couldn’t help but be surprised.

“No. Why on earth did you come to the Republic of Ashtistan?”

Was he caught loafing around on taxpayers’ money and now feeling guilty? That wasn’t it.

Was he happy to meet a fellow Abbasian in a foreign land? That wasn’t it either.

Then why did the Abbasian civil servant call out to an Abbasian citizen he encountered on the streets of Shizya?

The reason was quite simple.

The Republic of Ashtistan was a country that didn’t issue visas to Abbasian nationals.

“You didn’t come here without knowing it’s a travel-restricted country, did you? If that were the case, they would have stopped you at the immigration checkpoint when you tried to leave with your passport.”

The Kingdom of Abbas and the Republic of Ashtistan maintain hostile relations with each other.

Unlike the Kiyen Empire, the two countries have not established diplomatic relations, and naturally, they haven’t set up embassies in each other’s capitals. Moreover, both countries have banned entry to each other’s citizens, making it impossible to pass through immigration through normal means.

“How on earth did you get here?”

Though the question was asked with incredulity, Frederick had a vague idea. The fact that the three women had entered Shizya through illegal means.

Of course, even if visa issuance was blocked, there was a ‘possibility’ of getting a visa if there were unavoidable reasons such as government delegations, international competitions, economic cooperation, volunteer work, event invitations, and so on. (For reference, Frederick fell into this category)

But the possibility that the three women had entered the Republic of Ashtistan through such means was virtually non-existent.

This was because, despite searching through the entire Ministry of Justice’s immigration management network and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ computer system, he was the only Abbasian citizen staying in Shizya.

This was information he had obtained through Clebins, who had connections in the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and it was a fact he had confirmed multiple times by making his sister Adela, who had just gone home, turn back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters.

“You didn’t enter with a forged passport, did you?”

Frederick asked with a bright smile.

It was a question that wasn’t really a question.

“These days, I hear foreign service officers are getting headaches because of people who come to travel-restricted countries claiming to do volunteer work but actually trying to proselytize.”

More precisely, his sister Adela had been getting headaches.

“Are you perhaps also someone who came here for missionary work?”

“……”

Frederick, muttering as if in passing, found himself frowning without realizing it.

There was no particular reason; it just reminded him of the past.

Even when he was working in the Middle East, hadn’t Protestant groups entered countries where bullets were flying, claiming to be on missionary work or pilgrimages?

Among them were people whose departure was hard to track because they used visa-free agreements, and some even crossed borders illegally through brokers.

He still vividly remembered his senior colleague, after examining a telegram sent from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, clicking his tongue and saying, “Are these people spies? Missionaries? Do they think they’re the National Intelligence Service or something…?”

Having witnessed such scenes, it was easy for him to guess that the three women had entered Shizya through illegal immigration brokers or forged passports.

Frederick rubbed the back of his neck with a tired look.

“…Oh my goodness.”

“……”

“I’ll explain everything to the Republic of Ashtistan police, so please come with me for now. If you wait at a nearby embassy, diplomats from another country will come to pick you up soon.”

After pouring out words in a deflated voice, Frederick began looking for a friendly country’s embassy in Shizya that could protect the three women.

Of course, he wasn’t just trying to provide accommodation out of kindness. Even if they were Abbasian citizens, there was no particular reason for Frederick to step in and help them, whether they ended up in an Ashtistani prison or not.

But there were children involved, weren’t there?

“Why did you bring young kids along, seriously? Tsk, tsk….”

The Republic of Ashtistan government would foam at the mouth saying, “How can you just send back citizens of an enemy country who entered illegally?!” But the Abbasian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no other choice either.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with its duty to protect its citizens, couldn’t stand by while its nationals—especially two minors—were detained in an enemy country, or they’d face a beating from the entire nation.

Of course, the Republic of Ashtistan government also knew.

That if they didn’t rescue their citizens, the Abbasian government would be cursed by the entire nation.

Naturally, they were likely to use the safety of the three women as a bargaining chip.

For instance, easing sanctions against Ashtistan.

Perhaps the release of Ashtistani intelligence officers arrested by counterintelligence agencies, or the possibility of drawing the Abbasian Prime Minister or Foreign Minister directly to the table for domestic propaganda purposes, but whatever it might be, it was clearly going to be a headache for the Abbasian government.

I can already hear my sister Adela’s wailing. Should I buy her a gift when I return?

“Let’s see… Where is the nearest embassy…?”

The man in the suit hummed a tune as he searched for the shortest route to the various embassies.

The small hand clasped in the larger one trembled slightly. The larger hand gripped the smaller one even tighter. The brown eyes that had been looking at the PDA moved away from the screen to capture the movement of the mother and daughters.

At that very moment.

“Run!”

The woman, turning her back, quickly began to flee in the opposite direction, leading the children.

*

Watching the three women suddenly start to flee, Frederick let out a faint sigh.

Somehow, I thought they might run away, and I was trying to buy some time until Camilla arrived, but I failed in the end.

He briefly raised his head to look at the sun.

The sun, not fully covered even by sunglasses, was too hot and dazzling.

“This vacation is turning out to be quite spectacular.”

His hand, which had dug into his inside pocket, came back out into the world. The retracted slide sprang forward, and the cocked hammer aimed at the primer of the cartridge loaded in the chamber.

After completing the loading, Frederick gripped the handle with one hand and quickly pulled the trigger twice.

– ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ !! ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ !!

Two gunshots shook the park.

“What’s going on?!”

“Kyaaaah!”

Citizens enjoying their peaceful daily lives fell into chaos. Dozens of people who had been watching around the fountain all sat down at once, and as he fired the pistol again in succession, they began to flee in all directions.

In the park, which resembled pandemonium, religious police who had been conducting random checks shouted into their radios and rushed toward the fountain.

Frederick pulled the trigger again. As if he didn’t need to worry about the police. Rather, he even smiled slightly, as if he had been waiting for this.

Frederick, who had been firing a gun in the middle of the park, naturally raised his hand that had been hanging down. He wrapped his hand and the gun with the jacket he had taken off earlier.

Then, pointing at the three women who had crouched down on the ground, he shouted to the police rushing toward the fountain:

“Kidnappers!”

“Over there, a woman with a gun is kidnapping those children—!”

At the words “armed abduction,” the moral police’s eyes widened like moons.

Plus, so did the alleged kidnapper’s.

“Huh…?”

“Stop right there!”

The moral police, drawing their batons, all rushed forward, and the three women, suddenly branded as kidnappers and victims, began to flee in confusion.

Meanwhile.

Kicking away ownerless clothes and bags, covering the bullets on the ground, Frederick muttered in an exasperated tone:

“I can’t believe they fell for that.”

It was the crazy talk of a serial shooting terrorist (fact) that would make even a serial arsonist shudder.