Ch.560Episode 20 – Who Threatened You with a Knife?

Like the expression “ten thousand thoughts,” they say humans think about 60,000 things throughout the day.

It’s impossible to count exactly how many things we see, hear, feel, or think about every day. But most would agree that the vast majority of these thoughts are negative—concerns, anxieties, and worries.

Siegmund was no different.

Until his hand touched the doorknob, countless thoughts had clearly occupied his mind.

A sharply torn beer can. Like a drunkard hiding his last lifeline from a disapproving wife only to be discovered, Siegmund concealed the beer can behind his back.

As with all wives’ scoldings, the torn edge was extremely sharp, ready to slice someone’s throat or crush their face at any moment.

In the inner pocket of the trench coat hanging on the rack.

Like a second wife named Folding Knife that had accompanied the seasoned intelligence officer throughout his life.

What was there to hide?

To be honest, yes. He thought he would be kidnapped the moment he opened the door.

Siegmund was an office worker who had dedicated decades of his life to his workplace, a civil servant who had traveled abroad away from his family.

If he had learned one truth in the process, it would be “the sooner you discard optimistic outlooks, the better.”

Even as he called out his daughters’ names.

His mind was endlessly complicated, like seaweed tangled around duck feet.

Who had rung the doorbell? The Royal Intelligence Service? Or the Imperial Guard? How did they find out his room number?

In the brief moment his hand moved toward the doorknob, Siegmund was caught in endless worry and deliberation. Helen might have safely returned with their two daughters, but he had buried such optimistic hopes decades ago when he left this place.

-Creeeeak…

The corridor’s silence seeps through the half-opened door.

Siegmund revealed himself in the narrow space where not even a presence could be felt.

Though he had already determined no one was watching, tension lingered as if someone might burst out of the opposite room and surround the area at any moment.

“…”

Siegmund carefully looked left and right, listening for a while to sounds from neighboring rooms.

A silence so profound even the faintest breathing could be heard clearly. Doors firmly shut with no sign of opening.

Stale cigarette smoke and traces of deodorizer lingering in the air. No suspicious signs.

Was it just his imagination? Perhaps excessive tension had made him mistake a doorbell sound from another room or floor. If one were to think optimistically.

He had clearly heard it. The sound of someone ringing the doorbell and walking away. That’s why he had first opened the door and checked the left corridor.

He hadn’t seen the face. But he could easily find traces left by the mysterious visitor.

In fact, it required no effort at all.

It was conspicuously placed in front of the room.

Siegmund brought the small envelope and phone inside.

It would have been extremely dangerous if it were a bomb with the seal connected to the detonator, or if unknown powder extracted from mold would scatter upon opening. But Siegmund didn’t hesitate at all.

Unless it was the Inquisition hiding dark intentions behind priestly robes. At least the Imperial Guard and Royal Intelligence Service weren’t kind enough to send such things to someone they wanted dead.

Of course, things would be different when dealing with traitors, but if the Royal Intelligence Service wanted to kill him, they had many other methods. Tools far more convenient and simple than this cumbersome package.

And crucially, wasn’t there a phone with it?

“…Hmm.”

He picked up the phone and thoroughly searched through the calendar, diary, messages, and contacts. Everything was clean. The phone was empty.

He thought he might find something in the pension record card, but that too had been completely wiped, making it difficult to recover even with a technical expert. Even the inscriptions on the internal magic circuits and electronic components had been perfectly erased, making it impossible to trace the factory of origin.

Siegmund pushed aside the blank-slate phone and quickly checked the contents of the envelope.

By cutting one corner with a knife and shining a flashlight inside.

Carefully into the glimmering darkness.

“Oh, my.”

It was evidence.

Evidence that a couple had shared when making vows on the same day.

Remembering his wish for their child to be born with green eyes, a wedding ring crafted from emerald that he had obtained with difficulty during a business trip.

The ring he had placed on Helen’s ring finger long ago was inside the envelope.

Along with three unnaturally stiff segments of a ring finger.

Episode 20 – Who Threatened You with a Knife

Upon discovering his wife’s wedding ring and a severed finger in the envelope, Siegmund picked up the finger without hesitation.

The cut is clean. No traces of being sawed off. It was likely severed using a heavy, sharp tool that cut through skin, muscle tissue, blood vessels, and bone all at once. Something like an axe or a meat cleaver.

Siegmund tilted the finger to closely examine the side of the cut surface. The end of the severed finger was slightly curled inward.

This was the result of skin tissue elasticity, meaning the cut area had curled due to elasticity.

To put it simply.

Someone had cut off the finger while the victim was still alive.

“Ha…”

The wedding ring had always been kept by Helen. So was the finger Helen’s?

Siegmund firmly grasped his scattered, chaotic thoughts. His hand clutching the severed ring finger roughly swept across the table.

Who did this?

The Royal Intelligence Service? Those overly neat suit-wearers wouldn’t do this.

The Royal Intelligence Service was a group that breathed in sewage while pretending to be gentlemen on the outside. Even if they were to dispose of a traitor, they would cleanly disguise it as suicide or an accidental death. Without bothering with such messy business.

Siegmund knew this all too well.

Military Intelligence? The defense intelligence officers he knew weren’t the type to do this. Though the Military Intelligence Bureau was as despicable as the Royal Intelligence Service, at least Clebins Hendrick wasn’t someone who preferred such extreme measures.

He was a carriage leisurely traveling down a path rather than a runaway locomotive, and his gentlemanly attitude was quite well-known among foreign intelligence agents.

Above all, Clebins had no reason to get involved in Royal Intelligence Service matters.

Even if Clebins Hendrick showed enthusiasm for investigating the security breach at the Royal Intelligence Service, the Military Intelligence Bureau chief, who valued balance between intelligence agencies, would never allow it.

Leoni Rischach? Yes, she might be capable of this.

The female intelligence officer, who had claimed the title of first female branch director since the agency’s founding, was a notorious maverick within both the Military Intelligence Bureau and Royal Intelligence Service. That’s how Siegmund had seen her a year ago.

It’s still vivid. When rumors began circulating that the old men of the Magic Tower were plotting suspicious conspiracies, she unhesitatingly proposed assassinating the Oracle.

Leoni, who had secured the position of Director of the National Operations Bureau’s 2nd Department, presented options for eliminating the Magic Tower leadership without showing any discomfort.

Her attitude was so nonchalant that even the 1st Department Director and her direct superior, the Bureau Chief, objected, saying it was “a plan difficult to consider at present,” but Leoni didn’t show any disappointment. Instead, she was summoned by the Intelligence Director and went to meet him with a new plan.

No one knew how Leoni had persuaded the Royal Intelligence Director. The Operations Bureau Chief only claimed that her second plan was more “constructive.” So Siegmund—no, the high-ranking intelligence officers of the Royal Intelligence Service—all expected Leoni’s new plan to be “less aggressive and much more peaceful.”

But when the operation began, news that over twenty Magic Tower intelligence agents had been blown up shocked everyone. Siegmund, who received the telegram at his regular tavern, was among them.

It was a violent incident that could have sparked a war. Yet the plan’s architect, Leoni Rischach, appeared in the conference room as if nothing had happened.

Even during the briefing that the eliminated Magic Tower personnel had been turned into pieces of meat in the explosion, the 2nd Department Director didn’t bat an eye.

Instead, she criticized the branch director’s inadequate handling, asking, “Why are the surviving targets still on respirators in the hospital?” and “Isn’t it our department’s role to resolve this before they’re transferred to the security ward?”

No one knew why the cabinet had approved such a violent operation.

Siegmund had heard rumors that Leoni had cultivated an executive from the Magic Tower as a collaborator and handed them over to an intelligence officer deployed in the field.

There were attempts to find out who this Magic Tower executive was and which department’s intelligence officer was operating them as a collaborator. More precisely, it was Siegmund’s doing.

Though not requested by the Imperial Guard, if Leoni Rischach had handed over such an asset, it would certainly be to one of the Royal Intelligence Service’s executives. So it personally intrigued him.

With Siegmund’s authority as the head of counter-intelligence, his curiosity could have been satisfied within days. At most, a few weeks. As the counter-intelligence chief, Siegmund had access to vast amounts of information, and because of this, the Imperial Guard placed unlimited trust in him.

But despite extensive inquiries, he couldn’t find the subject of the rumor within the Royal Intelligence Service.

What reignited his interest in what seemed to be fading away was a telegram and a visitor.

More precisely…

“Finger.”

His deeply bowed head suddenly lifted. It was right after a forgotten memory surfaced in Siegmund’s mind.

“Yes, finger. It was a finger.”

On a day when everyone was being swept away by rapidly changing currents, Leoni, the 2nd Department Director of the National Operations Bureau of the Royal Intelligence Service, visited the counter-intelligence office.

‘Director Siegmund. I have a favor to ask.’

‘What kind of favor? You must be busy with the Magic Tower operation, so what brings you to counter-intelligence…’

‘I’m here because of the Magic Tower matter. One of the field officers got entangled in a troublesome problem. Because of the Empire’s people.’

‘The Imperial Guard or Reconnaissance Command, I presume. Or perhaps the Counter-Intelligence Unit? Could also be the Imperial Police.’

‘In my opinion, it seems like the military side, but I’ve uploaded the data to the company network, so let’s take a look.’

The data from the National Operations Bureau was delivered to Siegmund’s desk.

And on the same day, the same data was delivered through another channel.

《Reconnaissance Command operation team of 5 lost contact. Presumed dead. Data requested. Royal Intelligence Service counter-intelligence officers in the Magic Tower. Urgent.》

A note from the contact connecting Siegmund to the Imperial Guard.

Noticing a yellow thumbtack stuck in the fifth tree on Gabi Road, indicating orders from the Imperial Guard, Siegmund read the note left by the contact in a nearby shopping district’s ground parking lot and vaguely realized.

The intelligence officer who had received the Magic Tower executive from Leoni Rischach and was attacking the Oracle within the Magic Tower had killed the Reconnaissance Command operation team.

If the 2nd Department Director personally handed over the intelligence network, she might personally take care of that person if they had problems with foreign intelligence agents.

It’s only natural for such an important intelligence officer.

Despite using his authority as counter-intelligence chief, Siegmund couldn’t find anyone among the Royal Intelligence Service employees connected to Leoni Rischach.

So he began tracking traces of the intelligence officer over several months.

During meals with Helen, while taking his daughters to school, in soundproofed meeting rooms, lying in bed staring at the ceiling—it was all he could think about.

What started as curiosity became an investigation through notes, and as the Magic Tower issue gradually settled, it developed into collection.

The Imperial Guard no longer sought the intelligence officer.

Whether they no longer needed to consider the military’s circumstances, or were busy with the Hero’s visit to the Empire, I don’t know. In any case, the Guard’s interests had shifted elsewhere, as had the missions assigned to “Domovoi.”

Siegmund was different. His mind was entirely focused on the unsolved puzzle.

After several months passed.

As usual, after discovering a mark left by the Imperial Guard’s contact and visiting the subway locker, he fatefully spotted a new clue.

《Frederick Nostrim. Military attaché at the Abas Embassy in Petrograd. Currently contacting 3 traitors. Attempting defection presumed. Data requested. Internal personnel record cards of official cover Military Intelligence Bureau officers stationed in the home country. Urgent.》

The intelligence officer he couldn’t find with his counter-intelligence chief authority. The intelligence officer he couldn’t discover within the Royal Intelligence Service.

If it were the Defense Ministry, it would explain everything he couldn’t find. Why Leoni Rischach handed a collaborator to an employee of another company, why she tried to resolve the intelligence officer’s problem herself.

If the subject of the rumor was one of the military intelligence agents active in the Magic Tower at that time.

All questions would be resolved.

A year ago, Siegmund found documents he had forgotten in the special records and document archives. Documents about the Reconnaissance Command operation team presumed to have been killed by a Military Intelligence Bureau officer that year.

The record keeper had meticulously documented how extensively the field officer had left clues about the enemy agents they had killed.

Live teeth with nerves and gum tissue attached, fingerprints extracted from all ten fingers, hair with roots intact, photos of ears that couldn’t be changed by plastic surgery or magic, and so on.

And today, Siegmund finally recalled the memory he had forgotten.

The intelligence officer who had clashed with the Reconnaissance Command operation team at the scene had kindly sent evidence to the Royal Intelligence Service.

Teeth that seemed cut off with a knife, handfuls of pulled-out hair, dozens of film photographs.

Fingers preserved with antiseptic to maintain fingerprints.

“…Yes. It was fingers.”

Just as Siegmund muttered this, absentmindedly touching the ring finger on the table.

-Ring ring ring!

The phone awakened his mind from its reverie.

*

When the ringing began, instead of immediately reaching for the phone, Siegmund checked the time first.

The call came about 15 minutes after the uninvited guest had rung the doorbell and disappeared. Enough time for a suspicious person to check the contents of the envelope, but woefully insufficient to prepare for aftermath and planning.

Siegmund held the phone and took several deep breaths first. Inhaling deeply, then exhaling deeply.

“Hello?”

As if all his nerves were concentrated on his hearing, he pressed the call button and began listening to the sound coming from the phone.

-‘Domovoi?’

Kiyenese.

The answer from the other end of the phone was clearly in Kiyenese.

Though he had asked in Abas language, the other party responded in Kiyenese. With Siegmund’s code name, no less.

They’re not mocking me, are they? It could be ridicule. If the goal was to gain the upper hand, ringing the doorbell after finding the exact room and leaving the ring and ring finger in the envelope would have been enough. Or perhaps it’s a ploy to shake his mind by reciting his code name one last time.

“Headquarters?”

Siegmund firmly replied in Abas language. Asking if it was from the Royal Intelligence Service.

To this, the voice on the other end of the phone answered.

This time in Abas language.

-‘No longer the company you work for, I suppose.’

“Of course not.”

Narrowing his already slitted eyes, he focused on the voice of the Royal Intelligence Service employee.

Not a man. The high-pitched, slender voice was clearly that of a woman. He could be certain it was a perfect live voice without any modulation.

Psychological warfare specialist? Probably. Given that they called, they must be an employee dispatched from that department. Intelligence officers who handle psychological state analysis of expressions during negotiations, interrogations, or operations.

There was no way to determine exactly which department they worked in, but Siegmund thought the other party was an intelligence officer quite confident in their speech.

-‘Don’t worry, Siegmund. Your wife and children are safe. Henya asked me to send her regards to her father.’

“Are you sure? That my family is safe.”

-‘Your daughters had upset stomachs from eating too much ice cream. Other than that, no external or internal injuries.’

Not too slow, not too fast.

A moderate pace. A leisurely continuing voice. Like a gentle counselor, easing the listener’s tension while not easily giving up control.

Yes, this is definitely the speech pattern of a trained person. The Royal Intelligence Service’s Social Research Bureau, hiding behind the ridiculous sign of “Social Cultural Center.” The psychological warfare officers there often spoke with such voices from behind phones.

It’s a voice he had heard countless times in the audio records of the Social Research Bureau that he had once checked out for counter-intelligence work. Calls that were automatically recorded as soon as the other party dialed the number, even before picking up the receiver. The woman contacting Siegmund was exactly the type of person who would emerge from such a place.

Siegmund continued speaking deliberately.

“Shouldn’t you at least allow me to talk to them? I need to hear my family’s voices.”

His shoes muffled sounds on the rug, and the voice on the other end of the phone satisfied his curiosity.

-‘If you want, conversation is possible right now. But they need to rest, so it would be difficult to connect you.’

“Cutting off fingers and then talking about rest. Giving medicine after causing the disease?”

-‘As I said earlier, your wife is safe without a single injury. If you look carefully at the delivered ring finger, you’ll see it’s a man’s finger, not a woman’s.’

As she said, the ring finger wasn’t Helen’s. In fact, Siegmund had been uncertain right after checking the contents, but the finger in the envelope was subtly different from his wife’s hand in his memory.

It felt familiar. But it wasn’t his wife’s hand.

This was something he had confirmed before receiving the call, carefully examining the ring finger placed on his palm, and even inferring the owner’s identity.

So Siegmund asked to confirm.

“Is William safe? My contact.”

-‘He’s still alive.’

William. The contact person designated by the Imperial Guard, William. The former Foreign Ministry official who smoked cigarettes and played chess at the café every day. The small scar on the ring finger from oil splatter was identical to the scar he had seen numerous times when moving chess pieces or dealing cards.

Should he call it fortunate? Or unfortunate?

At least if he’s alive, they will meet again someday.

After confirming the contact’s survival, Siegmund demanded to speak with his family. Though people in their line of work are known for constant lying, in a situation like this, neither side had reason to deceive the other.

A deal is about taking from the other what you don’t have, and what the Royal Intelligence Service wanted was to prevent information leaks. If they harmed the family they were holding hostage, they knew he could backstab them at any time.

-‘If there’s no particular problem, you can talk to them soon.’

“What about seeing their faces? When will you let me meet them?”

-‘That’s impossible right now. We can help you if you fulfill a few requests.’

“Of course you would.”

Siegmund muttered as if he had expected it. With his hands in his pockets, standing crookedly and leaning against the wardrobe, he chuckled.

“You’ve taken my family hostage, so naturally you want something. Yes, of course.”

They’re not hostages. Such sugar-coated words wouldn’t come back. Protecting citizens in a hostile country, not intending to harm uninvolved relatives. Both Siegmund and the Royal Intelligence Service knew that such comforting words were all nonsense.

They couldn’t not know. Especially Siegmund. He had once been in the position of offering comfort to others, but even as he smiled and said everything would be fine, he knew it was a lie.

It was the same with the general who had tipped him off about growing public aspirations for the Republic, and the bureaucrat who had confided his misgivings about the secret police under monarchical rule. Some dreamed of a new life as defectors, others of a rosy future as repentant individuals remaining in the Republic. But all those futures ultimately became unrealized fantasies.

And as people who know everything always do.

It’s important to know only the main point, skipping the introduction.

“Tell me what you want.”

Siegmund asked for their demands, and the woman readily provided an answer.

Since they both knew what was going on, neither wanted to waste precious time on idle talk.

-‘If you go to the 25th floor of the annex, you’ll find a spa. Make a reservation.’

“Time, course, and location.”

-‘9:30 PM. Reserve for 90 minutes and enter Room 3.’

“Safety signal?”

-‘Brown slippers for a safe situation. Green slippers if it’s dangerous.’

“What am I supposed to do there?”

-‘You’ll find out when you get there.’

The woman answered.

-‘I hope you arrive safely on time.’