Chapter 119: Like Taking a Shit and Not Wiping

TL: LittlePeach

Branch Chief Mario’s eyes darted wildly from side to side, searching for a way out.

Utterly terrified, he barely managed to squeeze out an excuse through trembling lips.

“S-Secretary, you see... For, for an amount that large to be transferred, I-I-I have to go inside the b-branch myself and go through the security procedures....”

“Is that so?”

There was no way to know right now whether he really had to go to the bank himself to make the transfer, as he claimed, or whether he was trying some pathetic trick to survive this situation.

“Then it cannot be helped.”

“R-Right? It can’t be helped, can it?”

“Then I shall have no choice but to kill you here and come back to the bank next week.”

“Y-Yes? What?”

Frankly, I didn’t give a damn either way.

If it can’t be done, make it happen.

Had the Swiss never heard that saying?

“By then, I imagine someone far more competent will have taken your place instead of a useless branch chief who cannot even properly make a transfer over the phone. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Ah, ah....”

At the slightest sign that things were going south, I intended to kill Branch Chief Mario right here.

After all, the mere fact that he had hired contract killers to murder me had already settled, by my standards, the question of whether or not I had any reason to spare him.

“I-I was m-mistaken! O-Of course! A phone call! Y-Yes, one phone call is all it takes!”

So it had been a trick after all.

With his lips trembling uncontrollably, Branch Chief Mario called his secretary.

Ring, ring, click.

“H-Hey! Sofia! I-I need you to make a transfer for me, q-quickly!”

“Put it on speaker.”

At my casual instruction, Mario hurriedly nodded and fumbled with his phone.

Before long, a pleasant woman’s voice came through the speakerphone.

-Yes, understood. I’m at your computer now, Branch Chief. Which transfer should I process?

“T-There’s a m-memo file I saved separately in the r-right corner of my desktop....”

-I found it. This is the transfer for Secretary Pak Mun-ju, correct?

“Y-Yes, that one!”

His desperate voice came out in a constant tremble.

Then the woman on the other end spoke in a leisurely, puzzled tone.

-Oh my. The amount is five hundred million dollars? For a sum that large, I’ll need your security OTP....

Gulp.

At his secretary’s muttering, Branch Chief Mario swallowed hard.

The look he shot me seemed to say that he had been telling the truth after all.

But only for a moment.

-Your OTP is in the drawer where you always keep it, right? I’ll take it out myself and process the transfer.

“Y-Yes....”

Branch Chief Mario looked like he wanted to burst into tears.

Competence could sometimes be a curse.

Clack, clack.

All that came through the phone now was the steady tapping of a keyboard.

Branch Chief Mario could sweat buckets for all I cared.

‘Nice view.’

I leisurely gazed through the window at the snow-white slopes of the Alps stretching far into the distance.

Then.

-The transfer is complete, Branch Chief. I’ll text you the details, as you always ask.

“Y-Yes. Thank you, Sofia.”

-Not at all.

The call ended, and a moment later, ding.

A text arrived immediately.

“Give me the phone.”

“Y-Yes! H-Here!”

The message contained all the details of the transfer that had just been made.

A total of five hundred million dollars had been transferred to ten UK-based trading companies under the NIS’s name.

“Let’s see....”

I was comparing the details against the memo I had brought with me when.

Crash!

“Secretary! Are you all right?! I thought I heard gunshots, so I came running!”

Sure enough, Halla No. 1, who must have been lying low nearby, rushed through the half-open door.

Even with suppressors, gunshots were still gunshots, so his reaction was only natural.

The moment Branch Chief Mario spotted the pistol Halla No. 1 had at the ready, he scrambled across the floor, looking as though he might faint.

“Eek!”

“W-Wait. What... what the hell happened here....”

The moment he saw the corpses scattered across the floor, Halla No. 1’s expression became almost indistinguishable from Branch Chief Mario’s.

I casually tucked my pistol away and waved a hand dismissively.

“There is nothing to worry about. Everything has been resolved without issue.”

“W-What are all these bodies?”

“They were scoundrels who tried to threaten me and extort funds belonging to our great Republic.”

At my matter-of-fact tone, Halla No. 1 clamped his mouth shut.

Seeing the Micro Uzis lying openly among the sprawled corpses, he swallowed hard.

“A-Are you all right, Secretary?”

“I am perfectly fine.”

After checking the transfer records one by one, I confirmed that everything had gone through properly.

Just before leaving the scene, I crouched down and met Branch Chief Mario’s eyes.

“Branch Chief Mario.”

“Y-Yes! Secretary!”

“A man whose business depends on his customers’ money and the trust between people should not conduct himself this way, should he?”

“N-No, of course not!”

Did he think I might kill him before leaving?

Mario’s trembling expression became even more desperate.

“If you ever try this sort of interest racket again, you shall face the Republic’s rain of fire. Do you understand?”

“O-Of course!”

I lightly patted his quivering cheek.

Then I picked up one of the Micro Uzis lying on the floor and tucked it inside my coat.

“Why are you taking that....”

“If you keep something around long enough, you’ll find a use for it eventually.”

“I-I see.”

Afterward, we avoided the surveillance cameras in the hallway, took the emergency stairwell, and calmly slipped out of the hotel.

Halla No. 1’s car was immediately visible parked along the main road.

Click.

“We’ll leave immediately.”

“Very well. You have worked hard.”

“Not at all. You’re the one who....”

Vroooom.

From the passenger seat of the rapidly moving sedan, I once again gazed at the Alps in the distance.

With that, the operation was over.

‘Still, it feels like taking a shit and not wiping.’

I felt relieved, sure, but for some reason, I was also strangely unsatisfied.

I had finally gotten the chance to pull off a proper operation and had wrapped it up perfectly, so why did I feel like this?

“Um, Secretary, were you perhaps with the Reconnaissance General Bureau before?”

“No, I was not. Why do you ask?”

“Well, you took on three contract killers all by yourself.... Your nerve is truly remarkable.”

“Ah.”

Then something suddenly came to mind.

At that moment, I realized exactly where this lingering dissatisfaction had come from.

“We’ve arrived at the train station, Secretary.”

Halla No. 1 had just pulled over near the taxi stand at Bern Station.

Riiip!

Rip, tear!

“Huh?”

I slipped a hand beneath my chin, grabbed hold of the special-effects makeup, and ripped the prosthetic disguise straight off.

Halla No. 1, who had been staring blankly at me, widened his eyes in shock.

Watching what looked like a person’s actual skin peel off right before his eyes must have been horrifying beyond words.

“Whew! That feels good.”

“Uh, uh....”

“Thanks for all your hard work, Agent.”

“Ah.... Huh?”

Only then did I finally feel the satisfaction of having taken a good shit and wiped clean.

“What the fuck....”

Receiving Halla No. 1’s glowing praise, I grinned with satisfaction.

‘Right. This is how a spy movie is supposed to end.’

And with that, the operation truly came to an end.

***

Mario Miller.

He looked back on his life, trying to figure out exactly where he had gone wrong.

No matter how much he thought about it, he had made only one mistake.

‘How the hell was I supposed to know that Secretary Pak Mun-ju was some kind of monster who could shoot three armed Mafia members dead in the blink of an eye?’

It was a damn good thing he had established such cozy, corrupt ties with the hotel in advance.

Otherwise, the Swiss police would have hauled him away by now, and he would be sitting behind cold iron bars.

‘I thought he was just some diplomat....’

He had nearly died.

Just recalling the corpses sprawled across the hotel floor made him swallow repeatedly.

The brief relief of having escaped death soon passed, only to be replaced by a far more practical concern.

‘My money! My five hundred million dollars!’

Just an hour ago, he had been making ambitious plans to keep Pak Mun-ju on a leash and put the money to work throughout his various business ventures!

The five hundred million dollars that had practically been served to him on a platter had vanished into thin air, leaving him so furious that his entire body trembled.

Ring.

Ring, ring, ring.

“Dammit....”

As if things were not bad enough already, reality was already demanding an answer from him.

The name on his phone screen belonged to Royce, an officer of the Avinante Family who had helped him with this job.

He was probably calling to demand an explanation for why there had been no word from his men.

Cornered on all sides, Mario had only one option left.

‘Right. Pak Mun-ju is the culprit. I have no choice but to pin everything on him.’

Ring, ring, click.

At last, he answered the phone.

-Hey, Mario. Why the hell haven’t you been answering, huh?

“R-Royce! Something terrible happened!”

-Terrible? What do you mean? What the hell is going on over there?

Mario forced urgency into his voice and answered breathlessly.

“I-It’s not that....”

He spilled everything that had happened a short while ago.

Not only had Secretary Pak Mun-ju shot three members of the Avinante Family dead without so much as blinking, he had also taken every last cent of the five-hundred-million-dollar slush fund and fled.

-Hmm. I never knew Secretary Pak Mun-ju had that kind of nerve.... Was he with the Reconnaissance General Bureau or something? That would be news to me.

Royce’s muttered disbelief came through the phone.

Then, in a subdued tone, he pressed Mario.

-This has taken a very strange turn. So, Mario, how exactly do you plan to make things right after getting three of our family members killed?

“R-Royce. Calm down first.... We can’t just let this go, can we? I have a good idea.”

-What idea?

“We formally contact the North Korean embassy. We tell them Pak Mun-ju was the one who first approached me, saying he wanted to take North Korea’s slush fund and seek Swiss naturalization.”

-Oh? And then?

“Then we say I arranged a meeting with the Avinante Family in good faith because I wanted to propose a business deal, only for Secretary Pak Mun-ju to suddenly shoot the Family members dead and flee! That ungrateful bastard!”

At that moment, Pak Mun-ju’s face floated before his eyes, utterly unchanged even as he pointed a gun at him.

‘Otherwise, you will die.’

Along with that warning.

Mario swallowed hard and promptly shoved the memory aside.

“We can’t do anything about the slush fund going back into North Korean accounts.... But at the very least, suspicion that he tried to naturalize in Switzerland will remain. Once North Korea starts hunting him down, Pak Mun-ju will remember our offer of naturalization. In the end, if he wants to survive, he’ll have no choice but to return to Switzerland. That’s when we avenge the Family members who died!”

-Hmm.

“W-What do you think?”

Truthfully, Mario had no idea whether the plan would work, but for now, he had no choice but to sell it as though it would.

If he failed to convince Royce right now, there was no doubt the Avinante Family would come swarming in to kill him.

Mario’s face had gone pale and his lips were trembling when.

-All right. Not a bad idea.

“R-Right?”

-But I’ll be billing you separately for the loss of three of our people. Make sure you understand that.

“O-Of course! Don’t worry about that! I’ll pay you handsomely.”

Once Royce agreed, Mario could finally breathe again.

This would also give him at least some excuse to offer USB headquarters for the five-hundred-million-dollar shortfall in his branch’s results.

“Whew....”

After ending the call, Mario finally let out a deep sigh.

Overcome with belated relief, he slumped back into the chair.

But he could not simply sit around resting.

‘Pak Mun-ju, you fucking bastard.... I’ll show you exactly what a Swiss bank that even made off with the defeated Hitler’s slush funds is capable of!’

He immediately started hammering at the keyboard, composing a letter to the North Korean embassy.

He quickly finished the protest letter and sent it to the North Korean embassy’s official email address, then half-reclined in his chair and stared blankly into space.

How much time had passed like that?

Crash!

Smash!

“W-What the hell are you doing?!”

“Move aside right now if you don’t want to croak!”

Like a bolt from the blue, disaster struck.

More than a dozen armed robbers dressed in black suddenly stormed into USB’s Bern branch.

The bank guards panicked and drew their guns, but.

Bang, bang!

“Aaaaaah!”

“S-Somebody help!”

The robbers opened fire without hesitation, shooting the guards dead before advancing straight into the bank.

They seemed completely indifferent to the ordinary customers who were screaming and throwing themselves flat on the floor.

Boom!

“Eek!”

“You the branch chief? Where the hell is that damn bastard Pak Mun-ju?!”

The robbers charged straight past the counters and into the branch chief’s office.

As the armed men closed in, reeking of blood, Mario once again felt death looming over him and crawled beneath his desk.

“You bastard! I asked where that damn bastard Pak Mun-ju is!”

The man who appeared to be the leader of the robbers seized Mario by the collar and hurled him down.

Mario still had absolutely no idea why this was happening to him.

“P-P-P-P-Pak Mun-ju?”

“That’s right! Where is he now?!”

“H-He’s n-not here anymore! H-He left a long time ago....”

The armed robber shoved a gun toward him and ground his teeth.

“What in blazes did he come to this bank for?”

“H-He came to t-transfer the sl-slush fund North Korea had st-stored here.”

“What!”

At that moment, the robber’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“That goddamn bastard! Cancel the transfer right now! Do you have any idea what kind of money that is?!”

“T-That’s impossible! Headquarters already approved it, and the t-transfer has already been completed....”

“Goddammit!”

At Mario’s answer, the armed robber grabbed a fistful of his own hair and tore at it.

Watching the sudden change in their demeanor, Mario finally realized that something about this entire situation was very, very strange.

Before his face could completely drain of color or he could scrape together an excuse.

“Y-You... you...! Die!”

“W-Wait....”

“Repay the harm you caused the Republic with your life!”

Bang, bang!

“Ghk!”

Mario Miller.

Once again, he looked back on his life, trying to figure out exactly where he had gone wrong.

Bang, bang!

“Ghk....”

Now he had absolutely no idea.

*****

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