Chapter 94: Simple Is Best

TL: LittlePeach

There is no such thing as perfect security in this world.

No matter how many layers of encryption a line carries, an unexpected gap always reveals itself the moment someone lets their guard down.

Data that travels over external lines, like phone calls or the internet, always carries the risk that anyone with enough determination can eavesdrop on it at any time.

So in this highly advanced modern society, the only way to keep a secret close to perfectly is, paradoxically, to go thoroughly analog.

[Taebaek Team, target secured]

Which is why, as far as the Taebaek Team operation went, the bare fact of the mission's success was reported to headquarters exactly like this.

But tacking on the detail that a minister-level diplomat was defecting would have carried far too high a risk of a leak.

[Additional key asset secured beyond primary target]

So the fact that a defector had turned up mid-operation was relayed in roughly this vague, lumped-together form.

All of it strictly controlled so that no one at headquarters could know who was defecting, or how many.

'A formal report probably won't go in for another three or four days.'

In other words, until Taebaek Team touched down at Incheon Airport, I had two to three days of free time on my hands.

'Which means more than enough time to find the hit-and-run driver and crack his skull open.'

And so I took the car Taebaek No. 1 had left behind and drove straight for the Scampia apartment complex.

Before long, as shabby concrete buildings came into view through the windshield.

"So this is the place."

Past a certain invisible boundary line, I just knew this was it.

Long corridor-style apartment blocks, five stories or so, like run-down old public housing, stretched out in shabby rows.

Rough graffiti sprawled chaotically across the drab gray walls, and laundry hung precariously from every floor, fluttering in the wind.

'So this is the home turf of the Naples Mafia clans? Weirdly homey, somehow.'

Security felt less tight than I'd expected; if anything, the place was wide open.

Armed guards with rifles slung over their shoulders were visible here and there, but most of them were too busy laughing and joking with their buddies.

Screech.

First, I pulled into a parking area where a fair number of cars had gathered.

"Honestly...."

Sitting there with the engine off, quietly watching through the window, I couldn't help letting out a dry laugh.

I could see why the government so openly left a place like this alone.

"This place is absolutely unreal."

For starters, all I could see around the apartments were junkies shambling about like zombies.

From early morning they crawled into the buildings and back out, then plopped down right on the pavement and busied themselves tearing open disposable syringe wrappers like it was nothing.

While the junkies stuck needles into their forearms, on one side of the complex, half-naked women drifted past with sultry little smiles, luring in passersby.

Sodom and Gomorrah.

The scene fit the phrase to the letter.

As time passed and noon rolled around, the scenery outdid itself.

Vroom.

Screech.

Dozens of cars converged on the parking lot, and only then did the complex's businesses open for the day in earnest, to booming trade.

"Amigo. Is the stuff ready?"

"Welcome, boss. We got your call and had it set aside in advance."

The first floors of the apartments were mostly drug shops.

People of every race, dressed in sharp suits and driving luxury cars, bought their product through errand boys without even stepping out of their vehicles.

One of those errand boys, apparently mistaking me for a junkie too since I was sitting in my car, sidled up.

"Good day, sir. Do you need any product, by chance?"

"...."

"We have meth, we have heroin, just say the word."

I slid the window down and jerked my chin.

"Whose product is the best?"

"The Narancia Family's, obviously. Their stuff boasts one hundred percent purity. Costs a bit more accordingly, though."

"One hundred percent purity? We are talking about meth right now, yes?"

"That's right."

"Bullshit. The only place on earth that pulls that kind of purity out of meth is North Korea."

"Unofficially, we assume it's North Korean product too. Though how the Narancia Family gets their hands on that stuff, nobody knows."

"That so? Give me one."

“Thank you! Nice and simple, one fifty-euro bill!”

When I handed over a fifty-euro note, he passed me a small packet of product.

As I watched the errand boy's back as he closed the sale and left, lively music soon blared out from somewhere inside the complex.

Droning woofers, pounding beats.

The second floor was running a club.

Half-naked men and women wandered in and out of the wide-open balcony, dancing through the noise like it was second nature.

Drunk and high, they tangled and mingled and swayed... it was utter mayhem.

But the truly serious problem lay elsewhere.

'This is driving me insane.'

In the open lot in front of the complex, right where the junkies sprawled, little kids were running around kicking a worn-out soccer ball like it was nothing.

They even rode their bicycles through alleys littered with discarded syringes, shrieking with laughter.

Because not far from the mafia-occupied apartments, there was actually a separate block of apartments where the poor lived.

'With kids running around like this....'

My plans tend to be simple, every time.

Lately my go-to move was loading the back seat full of gas cylinders and ramming the car in.

Maybe that was why.

I smacked my lips in disappointment and glanced back at the LPG gas cylinders loaded in the rear seat.

Because even I wasn't the kind of maniac who sets off a massive explosion where children are playing.

'Can't detonate this one.'

This is exactly what makes the Italian Mafia so despicable.

They live casually intermingled with the local residents, entwined deep into the roots of everyday life.

They burrow into ordinary people's lives without the slightest hesitation, and in the end use them as their own human shields and bullet sponges.

Dealing drugs right next to children at play.

It genuinely turned my stomach.

'While I'm at it, I might as well go in and take a look for myself.'

At this point, I had no choice but to go with the classic approach.

Even setting aside my goal of finding the convertible hit-and-run driver, this apartment complex had more than enough problems of its own.

I opened the car door and stepped straight out.

With any performance, as always, the concept is everything.

'Nguyen Kodam mode on.'

Enter the hitman who takes blank-check contracts.

*****

Not every building in the Scampia complex is a mafia stronghold.

The buildings the mafia used as bases numbered five or six, mostly similar in structure and similar in use.

The first and second floors were for openly selling drugs or running prostitution; the air changed distinctly from the floor above.

The third floor served as the storehouse for the entire building.

"...."

"...."

As a stranger walked openly around the third floor, I could feel the stares of everyone in the building fixing on me.

A clear difference from the wenchi in Cambodia.

'The Mafia heartland, sure enough. Well organized.'

If the Cambodian wenchi had been a cauldron of lawless chaos, this apartment complex in Scampia was closer to a well-ordered fortress.

Lookouts lurked in hidden balconies and stairwell gaps all over the building, and the moment they spotted me they flicked their chins at one another in silent signals.

Thud, thud.

As I crossed the corridor ignoring those murderous stares, a few mafiosi began sauntering along behind me.

And then, at last.

"Hey, Asian."

Five or six men planted themselves squarely across the narrow corridor.

Among them, a big man with a vicious face lifted his chin and stepped forward.

"Who the hell are you, strolling around our turf like you own it?"

"Outsiders get the second floor and no further. Who said you could crawl up here?"

Clank.

They flashed the pistols at their waists in open threat.

They looked ready to blow a hole through my forehead the instant my answer came even a beat late.

"If you don't want to croak, state your business, straight and plain."

Of course, from where I stood, a shootout right here and now would have cost me nothing.

As it happened, a pistol I'd taken off the North Korean SSD agents was tucked at my own waist.

And if things truly got complicated, I could simply vault over the corridor railing and slip out of the building.

But my business today couldn't end at something that small.

"I heard there's contract work here that pays big money. That's why I came."

"What money?"

With any performance, the concept matters; with any concept, immersion matters.

I was, after all, a man with a track record of tearing through the Shanyuan Society, that infamous contract outfit in Vietnam, and wrecking every last one of them.

I gazed silently at the men blocking my path.

Recalling the memory of a few days ago, when I'd run riot through the Shanyuan Society's apartment building.

"I make my living in Southeast Asia doing contract work."

"...."

"I trust you didn't stop me because you wanted a demonstration."

Something in my eyes must have unsettled them; two or three of the men in the back row swallowed hard.

Sure enough, a fight was all about momentum.

"I hear Italians are all famously kind. You must be offering to show me the way."

"Uh, hm."

"If not, step aside."

When I pressed on shamelessly, without so much as a blink, the Campione men fingering their pistol grips began edging backward.

They traded sidelong glances for a moment, and before long they scattered toward the nearby stairs and turned tail.

Which left exactly one of them.

"...Ah, my apologies. Allow me to show you the way."

"Thank you. So the talk of Italian kindness was no idle rumor after all."

"Heh, heheh. But of course."

Guided by the man, we made our way calmly up to the floor above.

The fourth floor had been deliberately left completely vacant.

To keep the third and fifth floors separate, it seemed.

"Hey, Roberto. What's with the Asian?"

"Ah, he's.... here looking for work."

The fifth-floor space we arrived at was crawling with mafiosi.

A good fifteen of them, at least.

"That so? And does the gentleman speak any Italian?"

"I speak a little."

"Oh. He understands. Pretty fluent accent, too."

"A man must learn whatever it takes to earn his bread."

"Heh heh. Good attitude. Right, this way."

The fifth floor looked half-finished, gaping wide open without a single partition wall; only columns stood here and there in one broad empty expanse.

Inside, the mafiosi wandered around at their leisure as if it were their own playground.

Most were busy laughing and chatting over liquor pilfered from the club.

"Right, go on in."

Toward the back was a small room resembling an office.

A workspace with a desk and bookshelves.

Click.

The man came in behind me and locked the door.

"Abduction, murder, robbery, assault, extortion, arson, body disposal. Which of these is your main specialty?"

He got straight to the point, no preamble.

Running down the list, every single item on it was old news to me.

"All of them."

"Heh heh. Now that's what I like to hear. Where have you mainly operated?"

"China, Taiwan, Cambodia. All over."

"Well, well. Look at me, failing to recognize a professional."

At my indifferent answer, he twisted up the corner of his mouth and opened a drawer, pulling something out.

Thump.

A file folder, maybe twenty or thirty pages thick.

As I sat down and flipped through the pages, the man simply watched my face at his leisure.

The contents were considerately printed in English, Chinese, and Italian side by side.

[Client: Casa Rosa]

[Address: Via Giovanni Paladino, 51, 80100 Napoli NA / Via Palermo Restaurant]

[Target: Restaurant owner was offered a buyout but refuses to sell. Abduct his 25-year-old son. Hold the target in hiding until the deal is complete; if required, further demands such as finger amputation with photo documentation to follow.]

[Payment: 7,900 EUR]

I did my best to keep my expression from changing.

Because whichever page I picked at random, the contents were quite the spectacle.

When I stopped on a page and began reading closely, the man seated across from me checked the contents along with me and nodded.

"Ah. The restaurant job. The owner next door handed his shop over nice and easy after a few days of scaring. But this old man... guess all those years taught him nothing, 'cause that neck of his just won't bend."

"You handled the shop next door yourselves. Why did this one go out as a contract?"

"The son we'd be abducting is an active-duty Naples cop. If we take the job ourselves, somebody has to go to prison for it down the line. We'd rather not deal with that kind of cleanup."

Beyond that, the contracts were remarkably varied.

The next page was a job to kill the enforcer of an up-and-coming mafia outfit expanding its power through the southern red-light district, disguised as a mugging gone wrong, then dump the body in a slum garbage heap.

There was also a contract to burn down an old soup kitchen on the outskirts of Scampia, to clear a site for a waste landfill slated for a government project.

A separate note actively encouraged arson casualties, since if the homeless living inside burned to death, demolition would only come faster.

A job to attack the accountant of a local merchants' association who had refused to cook the books for money laundering, severing the ligaments behind his elbows and knees, came with a condition attached, that he had to be kept alive, to serve as an example.

"This one."

I pulled out the job on the up-and-coming outfit's enforcer and slid it forward.

The man nodded, mouth curling upward.

"An old contract finally meets its rightful owner."

"How do you plan to confirm that I've completed it?"

"Kill the man, photograph his face, and send it in. That's all."

"And the fee?"

"Twenty percent up front, seventy-five on completion. The remaining five percent is our commission."

"Payment method?"

"We've got lockboxes planted all over Naples. You'll get the location and combination by text."

While I nodded absently, the man summarized the file's contents into a memo and handed it to me.

I tucked it into my pocket and glanced around for a moment.

"I just flew in, so I'm light on weapons. Can I get some here?"

"We've got them, but we only take cash."

"Cash is all I carry."

When I drew a bundle of euros from my jacket and held it up, the man rose from his seat without even checking the amount.

He produced a key and opened the steel locker standing right beside the office.

Click.

"Here. Take your pick."

Inside, rounds, magazines, pistols, suppressors, shotguns, all manner of goods, sat stacked in neat order.

Most of them were cheap weapons whose model names I could not recognize.

Then, the moment I spotted a wooden crate sitting beneath them.

"Hm? What are you planning to use that for?"

I crouched right down on the spot, opened the crate, and took out a grenade.

And then... snap.

I popped the safety clip straight off.

"Huh?"

A bewildered noise came from behind me.

Paying it no mind, the moment I pulled the safety pin as well.

Ping, clang!

"You're.... what are you...."

The man at my back apparently still hadn't grasped that there was no turning back now.

I counted the seconds in my head.

"Thanks. I'll put it to good use."

"Wh, what?"

"I'd been holding it in, you see."

After roughly three seconds had passed, I flung the grenade behind me.

Clutching the crate in front of me tight against my chest like precious cargo, so it wouldn't get caught in the blast.

"F, fu, fuck! You, you...."

The man's eyes could bulge all they wanted.

Finally.

Kaboooom!

"Now that hits the spot."

Simple is best.

The operation had begun.

*****

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