“What? You can’t get through?”
Without realizing it, Kuroda tightened his grip on the phone.
The voice on the other end came a beat late.
- I’m sorry.
The caller was a section manager at Arata Consulting.
Arata Consulting was a front company operated by the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office.
When someone commissioned Arata Consulting for advice, it presented the best possible option for the situation.
It selected a team suited to the mission, handled the paperwork for deploying them to the country in question, arranged their travel routes, and even falsified their identities.
It was the support headquarters that took care of the busywork,
and also the headquarters that planned everything.
Kuroda leaned his chair as far back as it would go.
Fatigue suddenly washed over him.
Sending Kagero to Korea had been a considerable burden even for Kuroda.
Arata Consulting had told him that they could send someone of a slightly lower grade, but Kuroda had singled out Kagero.
Because he wanted to succeed at all costs.
Because Kagero had never failed.
If Anna died,
Japan would naturally come under suspicion.
It was the place with which they had recently had the strongest conflict.
Japan had suffered immense losses because of Taelim Insurance.
Even without evidence, the circumstances pointed that way.
No one could help but suspect Japan.
But if the architect were to disappear,
Kuroda had judged that such suspicions were something they could endure.
Suspicion alone could accomplish nothing.
That was the calculation behind his attempt to eliminate Anna.
He had never considered the opposite outcome.
Because he had never imagined that Kagero would fail its mission.
It was not even a difficult mission.
It was a simple task: eliminate the CEO of an insurance company who had no security detail.
From Kagero’s perspective, it was almost embarrassing to call it a mission.
And yet.
“What? Annihilated?”
“I’m sorry.”
This was not merely an operational failure.
A powerful asset called Kagero had been wiped out.
And above all,
it had ended up proving that Japan’s final card was powerless.
They had no other way,
so they had tried to eliminate Anna even through force—but that too had failed.
It was like declaring to the world, ‘We have no cards left to play.’
That was why Kuroda had waited.
He had waited for Kagero to complete the operation.
But the result was total annihilation.
Kuroda was too shocked to stand.
It felt as though the air were pressing down on him.
“Say that again.”
“All Kagero personnel have been confirmed eliminated at the scene. No biological signals are responding.”
The report was concise.
So concise that it felt unreal.
Kuroda slowly leaned back into his chair.
He pressed a hand to his forehead.
No way…
Had even this been part of her design?
Replaying the chain of events, it seemed that it had.
Kuroda wore a bitter expression.
Now he understood.
Anna had been waiting from the very beginning.
She had known Kagero would come.
She knew they would try to eliminate her,
and had minimized her movements to pinpoint the operation site.
He had been outplayed.
“…We lost perfectly.”
A low laugh escaped Kuroda’s lips.
He had been defeated so perfectly that laughter came more naturally than anger.
Even if they fought again, he could not imagine being able to win.
He wanted to run away.
He had lost the will to fight.
*******
Tokyo, Japan.
“This is my first time in Tokyo.”
Scott spoke as he ate two dango at a time from the skewer.
Scott was definitely a strange bastard.
We had not come to Japan as tourists.
And this certainly was not a food tour.
We had come to Japan to carry out a terrorist attack.
Yet even with a terrorist attack looming ahead of him, Scott was calmly stuffing his face with dango.
And not just dango.
Takoyaki, yakitori, taiyaki, and so on.
Whenever he spotted anything even remotely delicious while walking down the street, he ate it immediately.
He had lost a little weight,
and just when I thought he was finally beginning to look like his old self again, had he gained it all back?
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“Being nervous won’t make something impossible become possible. I’ll worry about it when the time comes. Besides, I’m sure the boss will take care of everything.”
Could I really work with someone like this?
Should I replace my secretary?
I had thoughts like that several times a day,
but whenever I watched him work, he never made any major mistakes.
He also stepped up when necessary.
For now, I decided to keep him with me.
“Oh. And boss. I heard Anna is safe.”
Was this really something to say while eating dango?
No, he should have told me before eating the dango.
He should have told me the moment he heard.
Anna had been placed below dango in importance.
I really should replace my secretary, shouldn’t I?
“Is she hurt?”
“She didn’t even get out of the car.”
“Good. What about the Japanese?”
“Allen took care of them. He says he left only one alive.”
“Tell him we’ll deal with him after we finish here, so leave him in an uncomfortable state. If he’s too comfortable, he’ll start acting up for no reason. Tell him to keep him just barely alive.”
“Understood.”
We intended to carry out terrorist attacks on Tokyo Port and Japan’s other two major ports.
At first, the plan had simply been to disrupt Japan’s customs system by leaving items that could not pass customs at its ports. There had been no detailed plan.
But once containers had entered my inventory, the operation changed.
The revised operation required us to prepare more things.
That was why it took longer.
Fortunately, Dennis, Simon, and Sandro helped us with the preparations, making things go smoothly.
“But how are we going to get into Tokyo Port? Are we climbing over the wall like last time?”
“That was what I intended to do, but it’s no longer necessary.”
“What?”
“Here he comes.”
At that moment, Kurokawa, the boss of the yakuza alliance, appeared.
“Old man, it’s been a while.”
Kurokawa was no longer a fugitive.
He had regained his dignity.
He was recovering the aura of a yakuza.
“You came? You should visit more often. I might forget what you look like.”
“Why do we keep meeting when we aren’t exactly close? We can just keep things moderate.”
“I only say that because it’s a shame.”
Kurokawa let the words slip out with a smile.
“So how do we get into Tokyo Port?”
“I do have some connections from my days as a yakuza, but we don’t need those anymore.”
“What?”
What did he mean, they weren’t necessary?
Couldn’t we get in, then?
Were we supposed to climb over the wall?
“We handle Tokyo Port’s waste disposal now. We can just drive in comfortably in one of our trucks.”
Already?
I had dismissed him as an old yakuza, but how had he managed to establish business with Tokyo Port?
It could not have been easy.
“……”
“We’ll have enough time while we’re loading the waste, right?”
Regardless of my curiosity, Kurokawa was asking whether I could do it.
“I think there will be plenty of time.”
All I had to do was take the containers from my inventory and set them down, so it would not actually take long.
The only issue was that I could not take them out just anywhere.
I had to move to a suitable location while avoiding the CCTV cameras, then take out the containers.
But Kurokawa’s expression was far too calm.
“Old man. Aren’t you worried?”
“About what?”
“I’m not going into Tokyo Port to do anything good, but you’re letting me in like this? If things go wrong, you could get arrested too.”
“If I go, then I go. I’m not at an age where I need to fear prison anymore…”
Kurokawa stopped speaking for a moment.
He did not look afraid or frightened in the slightest.
If anything, his face looked refreshed.
“You know, I’m grateful to you. We yakuza have never joined forces even once in our entire history. We’ve fought over trivial things, the smallest of matters, but we’ve never worked together. And only now, when we’ve grown old and lost our strength, have we learned how to live together. You taught us that. So I’m grateful. I have no regrets anymore.”
“I might be about to attack Tokyo Port. You don’t hate me? You’re Japanese too.”
“Why would I? It has nothing to do with me. I like you far more than I like Japan, which made my life miserable, because you were the one who recognized me.”
For some reason, Kurokawa’s eyes looked moist.
.
.
.
Six in the morning.
We headed for Tokyo Port in a waste-disposal truck.
It was a simple job: load the special waste generated at Tokyo Port onto the truck and bring it away.
But getting into Tokyo Port was not easy.
Looking at it again, the place was structured in a way that made it difficult to climb over the wall.
It had been a good decision to recruit Kurokawa.
They compared the vehicle’s license plate, verified the driver’s identity, and checked the schedule.
When that was done, we waited for a while.
According to procedure, radiation and chemical detectors scanned the vehicle.
The process felt unusually long.
“Phew~”
Once we safely entered Tokyo Port, the breath I had been holding burst out all at once.
On the way to the waste-disposal area, the truck slowed down briefly.
We had reached a blind spot outside the CCTV cameras’ view.
“More than thirty minutes would be dangerous. Be sure to come back before then.”
Kurokawa cautioned me.
“Yes.”
I answered absentmindedly, then quickly got out of the truck and slipped between the containers.
I called Scott through the earpiece.
“Scott!”
“I’ve been waiting.”
“What about the CCTV?”
“We have control of it.”
The entire CCTV network of Tokyo Port appeared on Scott’s screen.
“From where you are, go between the green containers in the ten o’clock direction.”
“Okay.”
“Go two more blocks, then turn right.”
“Wait a moment. The camera is rotating. Twenty seconds remain.”
“Go one more block, then head toward four o’clock.”
“You’re hidden from view there by the containers. It’s a perfect blind spot.”
“Okay.”
I quickly looked around.
The condition of the ground, the distance between the containers.
This was the optimal location.
The place Scott had selected.
I took a deep breath and called up my inventory.
Countless containers appeared.
I took out the containers I had prepared, one after another, in order.
The order could not be changed.
The containers appeared with a series of whooshes.
The sight of the containers popping into existence.
Even I had to admit it looked incredibly cool.
So cool that I could hardly believe I had done it.
I took one container after another from my inventory.
I took out four containers and stacked them neatly.
They were stacked perfectly, as if a crane had done the work.
“How does it look?”
“You can’t tell at all from the CCTV.”
“Good.”
After looking over the neatly stacked containers, I returned to the waste-disposal truck.
By then, the waste had already been fully loaded.
Kurokawa gave me a subtle smile when he saw me.
“Withdraw.”
I climbed naturally back into the vehicle.
And just like that, we safely left Tokyo Port as though nothing had happened.
.
.
.
Ten o’clock.
I was holding a detonator in my hand.
The containers I had left at Tokyo Port had bombs installed inside them.
And not only bombs.
They were packed with weapons, counterfeit bills, drugs, counterfeit luxury goods, and more.
The containers were filled with things that should never be at a port.
The moment I pressed the detonator here, they would explode.
Then everything I had prepared would be scattered across Tokyo Port.
Burning containers,
weapons strewn around them, counterfeit bills going up in flames, luxury goods engulfed in fire.
Perhaps I had planned all this simply because I wanted to see that sight.
Even so, I had not detonated them. I had only kept the detonator in my hand.
I had placed the containers at six, but there were several reasons I still had not set them off.
The first was that I did not want Kurokawa to come under suspicion.
If the bombs exploded immediately after our truck left, people might suspect Kurokawa’s waste-disposal vehicle.
I wanted to keep Kurokawa as far away from suspicion as possible.
That required a time gap.
Even a difference of a few hours
could redirect the suspicion.
The second was the time of day.
Six was too early.
Few people would witness the accident,
and the number of eyes on the scene would be limited.
In other words, the Japanese government might be able to cover it up and control the situation sufficiently.
I did not want the event I had worked so hard to prepare to be buried.
I wanted the time when Tokyo Port had the most people,
when there would be as many spectators as possible.
The third was the risk of discovery.
Leaving them there too long would also be a problem.
If unidentified containers occupied a spot for too long, someone might become suspicious.
Ports were more sensitive places than one might think.
So I had intended to detonate them after at least six hours had passed, but now I wanted to set them off sooner.
I did not want to wait any longer.
I wanted to press the detonator quickly.
I ordered room service.
They said it would take about thirty minutes.
The timing was perfect.
If the explosion happened now, wouldn’t breaking news be airing around the time room service arrived?
Wouldn’t I be able to watch the breaking news while leisurely eating my room-service meal?
Now.
I removed the safety pin from the detonator in my hand and pressed it.
Click.
A few seconds later.
Rumble. Boom, boom.
Along with a slight vibration, I heard the sound of the bombs exploding.
The port was more than three kilometers away, but I could hear it perfectly clearly.
Had I put in too many bombs?
I had added quite a lot to attract attention, but had I gone overboard?
Or was the ammonium nitrate I had added because I felt reluctant to waste the bombs the problem?
Either way, I had succeeded in drawing everyone’s attention.
After a while, sirens began to ring out.
Fire trucks and police cars all headed toward the port.
I stood by the hotel window, watching the fire trucks move.
Knock, knock.
Someone knocked on the door.
Room service had arrived.
Once the food was set out and I sat down, breaking news was already being broadcast.
[Breaking News] Explosion at Tokyo Port container yard.
I quietly began to eat.
It had begun.