Chapter 91: Sized Up in a Snap

TL: LittlePeach

Maybe it was because I'd cheerfully paid out the price of a brand-new scooter for one that was now scrap metal?

"Come, you've been through a lot. Let's have a coffee."

The moment we got back to the shop, the rental shop owner hummed a little tune and set a cup of fragrant espresso in front of me.

I hadn't entirely cooled off yet, but the coffee smelled far too good for me to keep sulking.

"Thank you. It smells wonderful."

"I knew you'd like it. By the way, where did you learn Italian? You're really fluent."

"An old colleague of mine was Italian. He was from Sicily."

"Ah. No wonder some of that vocabulary crept in."

We sat across from each other at the table and savored the espresso at a leisurely pace.

Thanks to his coffee, the anger that had been boiling in me slowly cooled.

"Say, sir. Earlier you told me not to go up to northern Naples. Are there a lot of Mafia there?"

I circled back to the remark he'd let slip in passing a little while ago.

Something in it had sounded like that part of town was crawling with Mafia.

At my question, the rental shop owner smacked his lips, his face turning careful.

"It's shameful to admit, but yes. Tourists don't see it, but in practice the Mafia have all of Naples in their fist. Hundreds of clans operate as a federation under the name Campione, and their home base is in the northernmost part of the city."

Naples, with tourists pouring in without end, was a well that gushed money.

Which was why the Mafia stayed tucked in the shadows, quietly working the city however they pleased.

"It's a place called the Scampia Housing Complex. It started out as public housing being built for the poor. But after the project ran aground for one reason or another, the Mafia took over the half-finished buildings and started using them like a base of operations. It's Sodom and Gomorrah out of the Bible, so don't so much as show your face over there."

With no idea what was actually going through my head, the rental shop owner launched into an impassioned lecture on just how dangerous the place was.

But if by some chance the hit-and-run driver who'd clipped me was Mafia, he might well surface somewhere around there.

Which meant my next destination had just been chosen for me.

"These days I even hear foreigners from Southeast Asia travel all the way to Naples to take contract killings. Assassinating a rival clan's boss is routine, and they'll have some innocent bystander shot just for rubbing someone the wrong way. About one person every three days dies like that, for nothing. Mamma mia...."

"How can foreigners get away with something like that?"

"Because the second the job's done, they're straight onto a plane and gone. By then it's far too late, and whenever the police finally get around to investigating, the Mafia get in the way."

To keep me from going anywhere near Scampia, the rental shop owner scraped together every grisly rumor circulating about the area and laid them all out for me.

It was practically local-asset-grade intelligence, and every last piece of it welcome.

"Understood. Don't worry too much. I won't set foot anywhere near a place that dangerous."

"Good. And for a good young man who listens to his elders, I have a present."

"A present?"

While I blinked at him, baffled.

Scratch, scritch-scratch.

"Just across the way there's a wood-fired pizza place my cousin runs, a decent-sized one. Tell them Fabrizio sent you, that's my name, and they'll pour you a beer on the house."

"Oh."

The rental shop owner pulled out one of his business cards, scrawled his signature across it, and handed it over.

He gave me a smile as soft as sunlight and patted me on the shoulder.

"You had a rough time of it today, but I hope you'll see nothing but good things while you're in Naples."

The single business card in my hand felt strangely warming.

Enough that I was sorry to see my espresso cup drained down to the bottom.

"Thank you. The coffee was excellent."

"Of course. You've had a long day. Come by again sometime."

"I will. Oh, sir, any chance I could rent one more scooter?"

"...No! No! Nooooo!"

The rental shop owner crossed himself and drove me out of the shop.

I'd taken a shot at it just in case, but apparently that was out of the question.

Sniff.

"Tch. Nothing I can do about it."

Rough day or not, Naples was still Naples.

Shhhhhhhhh.

A clifftop overlook opened up before me, the whole coastline spread out in plain view below.

Whoooooo.

A soft sea breeze brushed lightly across my cheek.

Gazing down at that impossibly romantic view, I made myself a promise.

'First I wreck that hit-and-run bastard, then I go eat pizza.'

For now, I decided to launch the operation in earnest on the back of the rental shop owner's intel.

Working on the assumption that anyone tooling around downtown Naples in a supercar was nine times out of ten Mafia, my first stop would be this Scampia Housing Complex.

I went back to the roadside and waved down a taxi.

"Welcome, signore. Where can I take you?"

"The Scampia Housing Complex, please."

"...."

"Is something wrong?"

"G-Get out. Get out!"

"Huh."

"I don't go there!"

But no matter how I tried to get there by taxi, the drivers turned white and threw me out.

Offering double, then quadruple the fare, made no difference.

Only after being refused a ride twice more did it sink in that reaching this neighborhood absolutely required a private vehicle.

'Do I have to buy a used car or something?'

I was clicking my tongue and snorting to myself when it happened.

Brrring.

"...Huh?"

A call was coming in.

And on the satellite phone the NIS had issued me, no less.

I checked the caller with a sinking suspicion, and sure enough, it was the number of the local agent I'd been trying so hard to reach.

"What's this?"

They'd spent all this time chewing my calls up and spitting them out, and now, out of nowhere?

I found myself frowning.

I'd assumed they'd leave me hanging a good three days, the way the Cambodia dispatch squad had.

'Well, that's a problem.'

My existing plan to go turn the Scampia Housing Complex upside down was about to collapse entirely.

Brrrring.

Still, now that the call had come, I could hardly play dumb and let it ring out.

Click.

"Yes. Speaking."

-Good day. Head office passed along your number, so I'm making contact.

The voice sounded a touch young.

He continued stiffly, his tone tense.

-Am I speaking with Team Leader Kim of the technical team, here on business from Yangjil Trading Co.?

Team Leader Kim of Yangjil Trading Co.

It was one of the codes set in advance, like a challenge-and-password in a military unit.

He'd asked me to verify my identity, which meant I had to prove it with the prescribed response.

"No. Team Leader Kim's appendix burst a few days ago, so he couldn't come. I'm Team Leader Choi, from the PR team."

-Ah, I see. Understood. You've arrived in Naples, correct?

"Yes, yes."

-We'll send you an address by text.

"Understood."

Identities confirmed on both sides, the call ended.

I checked the address the man sent, and it turned out to be a neighborhood not far from central Naples.

I had no idea how any of this was unfolding, but it seemed I'd have to move to the site.

"Haah. Guess I'm going. Guess I'm working...."

As for the hit-and-run, I decided to bury it in a corner of my chest for the time being.

Apparently heaven was handing down a punishment for slacking off instead of doing the job I'd been given.

*****

Posillipo, a stretch of coast that isn't especially well known.

It was a wealthy residential district, the sort where every self-respecting magnate in the world kept a summer house, and the lodging prices were so steep that ordinary tourists rarely bothered with it.

Mansions and villas built at an angle beneath the sheer-cut cliffs stood in rows facing the emerald sea, and handsome street cafés were tucked all through the alleys.

"This should be it...."

When I arrived at the address I'd been texted, I found a shabby building with a café on the ground floor.

As I loitered near the café entrance, a man who'd been hovering some distance off sidled over and spoke to me.

"Excuse me, are you Team Leader Choi?"

The agent who would finally brief me on the operation had come.

He was a young man dressed so that, from a distance, he could pass for a foreign student studying in Italy.

"That's right. Team Leader Choi of Yangjil Trading Co."

"Ah, um. Welcome. I'm Assistant Manager Kim."

But there was something hard to place about the expression on the young man's face as he greeted me.

A sour, uncertain look, the kind reserved for someone who doesn't inspire much confidence.

Every emotion was written plainly across his face, so one glance said it all.

'He was expecting a veteran with decades in the field, and instead he gets someone his own age. Must be throwing him.'

That was exactly the flavor of his expression.

"Is there somewhere we can sit down?"

"Uh, let's talk in my room. It's just up here, this way."

I followed the man, who hesitated a moment first, into the alley running behind the café.

Passing through a gap in that bright, warm little street, I came out into a back alley that reeked of must and mildew.

"Up this way, please."

At the rear of the building was a staircase leading to the upper floors.

Hunching my shoulders through the cramped stairwell, I barely made it up to what amounted to a very run-down rooftop room.

A super single bed with a stool beside it, and that was the whole of it.

"I'm sorry to greet you like this, in a place like this. I'm Taebaek No. 7."

"No need to apologize. You can call me Team 5 leader."

"...So that wasn't a code phrase, you actually are a team leader?"

"Yes, yes."

The codename Taebaek was entirely unfamiliar to me.

They apparently ran on a separate code system from our Special Operations Group.

At any rate, we shook hands and settled into seats in the room.

Taebaek No. 7 gave the bed up to me.

"I never heard a word from anyone, so I was starting to think I was being frozen out. Are the other agents all in the field?"

"Ah, that...."

"I'd be grateful if you'd share the operational brief."

Originally, believing they were freezing me out, I'd drawn up nothing but plans for knocking around Naples having fun.

Well, even that had been rewritten from scratch the moment I ran into that hit-and-run driver.

Now that I knew it wasn't the case, I fully intended to cooperate with the operation in good faith.

Whether as a surveillance operative sitting perfectly still.

Or as the infiltration operative who had to tear the whole thing wide open.

But somehow, the look on Taebaek No. 7's face was strange.

"Um, actually, you are being frozen out."

"Sorry?"

"Our team leader said that forcing in an agent from HQ could wreck the operation.... He instructed us not to take your calls until the job was finished."

"Ah."

"B-But they aren't bad people, really. They were just afraid of ruining an operation they'd spent so long preparing under so much strain...."

So I'd been right after all.

I stared blankly at Taebaek No. 7.

"But in that case, why did you.... contact me?"

"Because even so, it seemed like too much. It weighed on me, just leaving you out there.... So I contacted you in secret."

"Ah."

"Everyone's so desperate for results.... Let me apologize on their behalf."

The soft-hearted youngest agent was the only one whose conscience wouldn't let it lie, so he'd called me in to tip me off about the operation.

I was grateful for his admirable conscience.

Thanks to him, I found myself curious to hear what the mission actually was.

"Thank you for the apology. May I ask about the operational brief, then?"

"Yes. Then, just a moment.... Do you see that resort over there? The white one near the water."

I looked out the window through the binoculars Taebaek No. 7 handed me.

Beyond the terrace, countless luxury villas lay in clear view.

Among them, a resort of white marble in an ancient Greek style sat pressed up against the foot of a mountain that was very nearly a cliff.

"The marble resort, correct?"

"Yes. Ri Jong-il, minister or at the North Korean embassy in the UK, is staying inside that resort on vacation."

"Hmm."

Sharing the same view, Taebaek No. 7 calmly laid out the story.

How Minister Ri Jong-il had crossed into Italy under the pretext of a holiday.

The secret that he'd actually slipped off to Türkiye while pretending to vacation.

The supposition that he'd then quietly closed a deal with Iran.

And the indications that he'd secured missile technology and returned to the resort.

"Our team's operation is to seize Minister Ri Jong-il's briefcase by whatever means necessary. When Ri Jong-il drives out of the resort, the Taebaek Team agents will box his car in front and rear and cut off his escape."

"No bodyguards to worry about?"

"He has about four embassy security men with him. They'll be armed, so we're each carrying a sidearm and wearing full body armor."

"That sounds dangerous."

"Given what's likely to be inside that briefcase.... everyone's already made their peace with it."

"Hmm."

A quick sweep with the binoculars showed the entrance sealed tight behind a security system.

The perimeter wall had no handholds whatsoever, which made going over it look next to impossible.

Except for one thing.

"It backs onto the cliff, doesn't it?"

"Yes, that's right."

The cliff standing behind the resort like a folding screen.

One look, and the whole job was sized up in a snap.

"The operation should be wrapped up within a few days, so I think the best thing would be for you to stay nearby and handle surveillance work, like me."

I nodded at Taebaek No. 7's words to show I understood.

'Better knock this out tonight.'

The Taebaek Team surely had a plan of their own already in place, but it wasn't important to me.

Right now, Ri Jong-il wasn't even on my radar.

*****

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