Seo Seung-hyun might have lost his sharpest blade after cleaning up the Pocheon studio, but in fact, he had many other weapons, including a loyal and competent chief secretary, a former prosecutor.
The search for Ji Jung-hoon, who had lost contact in Shanghai, was sluggish, but Choi Yoon-seok was quickly found. It was Jeonju. Given the current situation where the prosecution was zealously hunting down operatives both domestically and abroad, it seemed he couldn’t easily flee overseas. Considering the proverb that the darkest place is under the lamp, it wasn’t a foolish choice.
Seo Seung-hyun had someone keep tabs on Choi Yoon-seok.
Fortunately, the wait wasn’t long.
Just six hours after he had someone watch Choi Yoon-seok, Seo Seung-hyun received welcome news.
For nearly twenty days, Lee Young-jin, who hadn’t been found except on a blurry CCTV screen in Jeju, had made contact with Choi Yoon-seok in Jeonju.
Six hours.
It was a narrow margin.
If Seo Seung-hyun had been six hours late in finding Choi Yoon-seok, he would have had to start chasing the already vanished traces of Lee Young-jin all over again.
This meant there was only a very slight difference in the speed of obtaining information between Lee Young-jin and Seo Seung-hyun. It also meant that the human and material information network, built with hundreds of billions, barely managed to keep up with just one person, Lee Young-jin.
Well. He would think about his private intelligence agency improvement plan later.
Seo Seung-hyun smiled slightly and stood up from the heavy chair. Jang Young-hee, standing five steps ahead, said with polite manners.
“We just got helicopter takeoff clearance from the Seoul Regional Aviation Administration.”
“Hmm. Alright.”
With a leisurely smile, Seo Seung-hyun took a stride. He passed Jang Young-hee in a couple of steps. Jang Young-hee followed him at a perfectly measured pace, neither too fast nor too slow.
Jang Young-hee pressed the gleaming elevator button, leaving no fingerprint. The elevator door, used exclusively by Seo Seung-hyun in this 47-story building, immediately opened smoothly to the sides. Inside the elevator, highly polished marble tiles shone enough to reflect a face, just as the dust-free dress shoes stepped on them.
The elevator began to ascend.
The numbers on the high-definition LED display changed quickly. 45, 46, 47, R. The elevator stopped.
As the elevator doors opened and turned a small rectangular corner with flower decorations and a couch, a securely closed tempered glass door appeared. Jang Young-hee pressed his index finger against the sensor on the left, and the panel display lit up with a blink. [ACCESS APPROVED===JYH] The glass door opened with a whir, and a fierce wind rushed in, stirring the suit jackets and ties of the two alphas. Jang Young-hee quickly tried to place the coat he was carrying over Seo Seung-hyun’s shoulders, but Seo Seung-hyun waved his hand to decline it.
Tadadadadat! The helicopter propellers rotated, filling the rooftop with a tearing roar, and the strong wind swept all around.
As Seo Seung-hyun boarded the helicopter, the pilot operated the control panel to signal the ATC. Below, Jang Young-hee, undisturbed by his neatly arranged hair being tousled by the strong wind, bowed deeply.
“Have a safe trip.”
Instead of answering, Seo Seung-hyun merely nodded lightly.
The door closed, and Jang Young-hee turned without hesitation to go back inside the building, his figure receding. An office employee already onboard handed Seo Seung-hyun a large headset. As soon as he put on the headset, the pilot’s dry voice came through clearly against the background of the muffled propeller noise.
“We’re taking off.”
As the rotor blades spun rapidly, the rounded fuselage slowly lifted off the ground. The helicopter wobbled from side to side as the H mark etched on the vast rooftop gradually receded. The gleaming 47-story glass tower quickly shrank below. Seo Seung-hyun glanced out the window below. SH FINANCIAL. The eleven alphabets proudly embedded on the building’s glass surface sparkled under the noon sunlight.
The black MD 520N helicopter left Seoul behind, speeding over the winding roads filled with cars at 250 kilometers per hour.
During the 48 minutes to Jeonju, Seo Seung-hyun listened to his secretary’s report and formulated a few plans.
As plans tend to be, they were futuristic and, somewhat uncharacteristically for him, even peaceful.
When he moved to a limousine waiting at a helipad a little away from downtown Jeonju, Seo Seung-hyun received a report that Lee Young-jin’s H plate number wagon was being reliably tracked. Thus, his plans became even more benign.
The limousine he was in headed towards a less trafficked road on the southwestern outskirts of Jeonju. The secretary beside him constantly checked his smartphone for updates, reporting back to Seo Seung-hyun every ten minutes.
Everything seemed smooth, or at least appeared to be.
Until the moment he caught up with the gray wagon in the middle of the Saemangeum North Road leading to Gunsan City, and it was confirmed that the person getting out of the wagon was not Lee Young-jin.
Seo Seung-hyun slightly adjusted his plan.
He personally opened the limousine door and stepped out to inspect the gray wagon.
His subordinates rushed to open the wagon’s trunk and thoroughly searched underneath the seats, but it was still hard to believe.
“What the hell! What are you!”
The young man, forced to stop his car in the middle of the road surrounded by several intimidating SUVs, struggled. He instinctively seemed to realize that Seo Seung-hyun was in charge and yelled at him.
“Who are you, huh! Gangsters? Police?”
Seo Seung-hyun ignored him and signaled to his secretary. The secretary, with a perfectly professional expression, approached the young man and began to explain the situation with 90 percent lies mixed in, while the employee responsible for tracking the gray wagon came sweating to Seo Seung-hyun.
“The clothes were definitely the same… It seems there was a switch at some point.”
“When?”
“Probably at the gas station…”
The employee trailed off.
Instead of blaming his inattentive subordinate, Seo Seung-hyun laughed shortly.
“Ha! I knew it. This is what makes it interesting.”
Then he turned without hesitation.
The secretary quickly followed by his side.
“Deploy more cars. Launch the drone. Send someone to check the gas station where Lee Young-jin stopped.”
Caught in an unexpected chase, the experienced secretary showed no sign of confusion and nodded.
Under the command mediated through the smartphone of the second most powerful person in the secretary’s office, people scattered across a 50-kilometer radius around Jeonju using all available rental cars, shared vehicles, taxi unions, and public transport.
Thirty minutes later, a 1.5-ton truck was found at a rest stop between Iksan and Nonsan on the Honam Expressway. Lee Young-jin was not there, but a substitute driver with a grim face testified.
“No. I only heard the request to return this truck to Jeonju. Who? How would I know that. Just through the call center, you know, the company. They must’ve called there.”
Within ten minutes, Seo Seung-hyun had obtained all call records from the substitute driving service’s call center. The problematic reservation had been made the day before, with the call originating from Geumcheon-gu, Seoul. It was as if this absurd chase had been anticipated. Seo Seung-hyun couldn’t help but chuckle.
No matter how cunning Lee Young-jin was, it was impossible to hack every surveillance camera he passed by. A search would eventually turn up something, as it had for a brief second in Jeju.
Moreover, Lee Young-jin’s movements were restricted.
His route was limited to two dimensions, in contrast to Seo Seung-hyun’s three-dimensional capabilities.
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