January 28, 2020,
NIS branch headquarter, Naegok-dong, Seoul.

Jin was checking some files for the last time. The coffee in front of him turned cold long ago. He glanced at his watch. It's almost four. He had to go out soon. There were two meetings set for the night. And He was supposed to take Nari out at five. Maybe she was waiting.

He met this young geologist in the last Amazon expedition. She is a beautiful, confident and smart girl. The interest was solely from her side though, but she was patient and persistent. She didn't have anything lacking, in one word, a likable girl. He didn't refuse when she asked him to meet her. He needed to head out soon if he didn't want to be late.

He peeked at his watch again and got up. He better not be late.

He came out of his room and gave his secretary the papers and asked to compose those for him gently.

The intercom in his room rang before he leaves. He came back to his room and picked it up.

"Kim Seokjin, you have been summoned," Soojin's dramatic voice came out from the phone.

Jin frowned a little. What was Soojin doing here?

"Come quick. Cheif has been asking for you!"

When it's Soojin, it must be a joke. So Jin glanced at his watch one more time and answered shortly, "I won't."

"Why? May I know?" This time the husky and deep voice was from an elderly man.

Jin's face froze at once. It was chief on the intercom.

"I..."

"Come to my office, now!" The phone was cut.

Jin let out a breath and put down the receiver.

Lee Soojin was sitting behind the counter of the chief's secretary in front of his office. Seeing Jin, a sly smile appeared on her face.

"You didn't tell me he was in the line," Jin raised a brow at her.

"You have a bad temper, little guy. Think before you say something next time," She indicated to him a specific door, "Go, see for yourself if you still have the job."

"Trust me, you won't be happy if I lose the job," Jin winked and went in.

Soojin let out a chuckle and concentrated on the paper in her hands. Seeing a pair of eyes on her, she looked to her side, "What?"

Cheif's actual secretary, Jihyun was sitting there with a shook expression.

"Did he...did he just speak with you casually and even winked at you? Unnie? I have been working here for the last five years and never heard him say more than one sentence!"

Soojin just smiled.

"Tell me unnie, who are you?"

"Show me the papers," Soojin avoided the question.

She was called here for a new assignment. And for this, she needed to learn and know everything the chief's Secretary should know. She'll accompany him as his secretary to the next defense conference set to happen next month.

Jin knocked on the door as he entered.

"Come in," A deep voice came through.

The chief was strolling back and forth slowly with a cigar in between his fingers.

Seeing Jin, he pointed the cigar towards a chair in front of his desk,
"have a seat."

Jin sat down.
He took a file from his desk and looked at him, "you had been asked to submit the report from the last expedition. Complete?"

"Yes, sir."

"In short-" he sat in his seat opposite to the desk.

The chief was a man in his mid-sixties with streaks of white in his crew-cut hair, running this secret wing of NIS which is virtually non-existent in documents after his retirement as major general from the air force.

"We collaborated with the team of anthropologists and geologists in Amazon. While they searched for Mayan civilizations, we lead the team through Pastaza, Maranon, and The great Amazon river as we were instructed. We lead them into the sun temple of the Jivaro Indians and let them find the scrolls as we planned."

"Those scrolls and the codex are now safe in the hands of the explorer's association. They don't know our involvement behind this. So good job!" The chief nodded.

Those lost scrolls and the codex were discovered during a lookout in the works of DARPA secretly in the deep forest. Those scrolls were too precious and could be milestones in Anthropology history to keep hidden.

But revealing those would expose the spying of NIS onto DARPA. So the chief pulled some strings to arrange a joint expedition of civilian scholars and let them discover those scrolls themselves by infiltrating two NIS agents into the team who deliberately lead them to discover those.

"Go on."

"We got separated from the team in Surinam. We started towards the north of the Amazon along the pasta river on foot. We collected a canoe in Bara se San Manual and from Rivalta we entered Bolivia through Madaria. After seventeen days, we got into a steamer setting towards north America. Then I met with J in Amsterdam. Jungkook was told to report to Brussels while J took me to Den Helder. I was asked to come back two days ago," Jin finished his report. Precise and thorough and clean.

Chief took out another file from his shelf and placed it down on the desk, "Your training report."

Jin remained silent the whole time chief read the file. The room was filled in pin-drop silence except for the sound of flipping of pages.

"You've got a triple star in fitness, reflex, unarmed and armed combat, and weaponry."

Jin's face was indifferent like before. He nodded a little towards him in acknowledgment.

"You've secured a double star in the shooting."

Jin lowered his gaze.

"Don't get it wrong, triple star in shooting- it's impossible to get from J. Even double star - it never happened before. Great job!"

No change in Jin's expression was seen. But just a tinge of very little pink was surfacing on his ear.

"Though I didn't call you here to give you your performance assessment. I called you cause you've got a new assignment."

Jin looked at the chief.

He pushed a file towards him.

Jin silently read the file for a while.

"Read the rest later. So far, any question?"

"Weapon smuggling and border killing. How authentic is this?" Jin asked.

"North Korea constantly denied the last three attacks. They always showed the audacity to declare their acts whenever they violated the armistice, but the last three weren't that big, yet they denied them every time. Rumour is, this time it really wasn't them."

"And?"

"Here comes the weapon smuggling. We know that weapons had been smuggled out from some of the military outlets around the borders in North Korea. We were waiting for the missing weapons list to match those with the weapons we got from the gunfights done last three times on the border. If they matched, we'd had leverage to raise fingers to the North Korean government that they let out the weapons in ignorance, overlooking the smuggling or at worst, their officers are directly involved in this smuggling."

"But if they were involved, isn't it too silly to kill our soldiers with their weapons? Ultimately they'll be the ones we'd blame!"

"That's why we assume it has nothing to do with them. Someone has his hands over those smuggled weapons and using those weapons on us to clearly frame North Korea. Either North Korea doesn't know anything, or they are denying the smuggling happened to get off the responsibilities. To prove our suspicion, all we need is the list of all of North's weapons."

"How'd we get those lists? Isn't those highly classified data?"

"We've got someone in there."

"A double agent?" Jin frowned a little.

"Whatever we know till now is from that asset. Our agent had infiltrated in there three years ago. Got their trust fully and even secured a higher position in a very short time."

"And?"

"But unfortunately our agent got exposed after hacking into their security mainframe for those documents."

"But?"

"But our agent managed to get off the grid after stealing those documents and killing three of their higher officials."

"The three murders from back then which caused a lot of stir-ups in Pyongyang, it was his work?"

"HER work," The chief corrected him. "Yes, it was indeed her work. But unfortunately, we never got our hands on those highly confidential documents."

"Why? Did she double-cross?"

"No. She got killed in a plane crash while fleeing with a hijacked MIG 29 from Pyongyang after killing those officials."

"Plane crash?"

"Israel shot down her aircraft when they noticed that it was from North Korea in the Israel- Libya border."

Jin remembered the commotion clearly, it was a huge uproar back then. So, it was a secret agent from NIS? Who would guess?

"But..."

Jin looked at him with questions in his eyes.

"But she was seen in France seven months ago. She helped one of our sleeper agents from literally getting killed and she was spotted in Tripoli two weeks ago again by another agent."

"What do you want me to do sir?"

"I want you to go there. Extract her. Extract the documents. She is alive yet she chose not to contact us can mean only one thing- she betrayed and defected and has no interest to come back or hand us over the documents. Probably she is trying to sell it to the eligible customer though this is highly unlikely for her."

"What should I have to do to her?"

"I'd love to say that bring her over. But she betrayed and that can't be tolerated. Go there, collect the documents if she still had those. If she doesn't have those, track those down from wherever you can. She knows many things about us as she was one of our best assets out there. If she decides to talk to other intelligence agencies, we'll be in trouble. So the only solution is..."

"Kill her?" Jin's voice was calm.

"Yes," sighed chief, "I wish I could say to bring our girl home. But she burnt the bridge long ago herself when she decided to go off-grid."

"Anything else, sir?"

Chief smiled a little. He knew Jin was a little bit disappointed. This whole mission seemed too simple. Go, extract, kill, come back. Anyone could do that.

"I know you are disappointed. But SJ7, you didn't consider one thing. As for the political treaty summit going on between Libya and Israel, Tripoli is now swarming with MOSSAD agents. I don't know how, but they seemed to spot her too. I don't know the roles of MOSSAD in there, but they are trying to tail her too. Our double agent in MOSSAD confirmed it when he knew about MOSSAD hunting her down. And it's suspicious cause if MOSSAD knew her existence all these times, why we weren't informed about those?"

MOSSAD was fully supported by the CIA all the time. And who doesn't know that South Korea had a great diplomatic relationship with America? If MOSSAD knows, the CIA knows it too, if the CIA knows but didn't tell NIS, there must be something going in there.

"For diplomatic purposes, you are not allowed to kill any of the MOSSAD agents. You have to be alert, lay low all the time. Do not engage in fighting, we will not be able to provide any help there."

"Got it," Jin nodded.

"Go there, extract the documents, kill her, and most importantly, don't get caught. And don't kill others, enemies, or innocents."

Jin picked up the file in his hands.

"We thought about sending Jungkook for this mission."

Jin looked at him.

"But he is still in his training in Brussels. And he is hot-tempered. If he kills or attacks someone from MOSSAD, the diplomatic relationship between South Korea and America will be destroyed for attacking their allies."

Jungkook? Jin thought for a second. Though the mission seemed easy, he was now seeing the odds here. He can't let Jungkook thrown into this uncertain pit.

"I'll do it, sir."

"Good. Now go to Namjoon. He'll brief you about the whole situation."

The indication was clear, "Get out now."

Jin bowed politely and came out of the room with the file.