A Day In The LIfe of Mr. Park

I arrived at the Foreign Consulate building right on time as Mr Park would. I made sure to put on his carriage, which I'd intensely practised under the criticising eyes of Stiff, as I walked into the building through the back entrance I had to stop at a guard post.

There I was scanned with a wand, and went through an x-ray rigged passage that used thermals to detect every item on my person.

Once they decided I was clean, the Nork guard asked for the password of the day. I had Park’s phone and had received today's password, so I told them. “오이 샐러드.” At that they waved me through.

I nailed not just the accent but also Mr. Park's voice. This was all thanks to the Black Ops training I'd received during my time in the military, it had prepared me for moments like this and was the reason why I was familiar with twenty three languages and fluent in twelve.

오이 샐러드

Or as the transliteration went oi sae-leo-deu, was ‘Cucumber Salad’. Curious word to use as a password, but I guess it was also smart, not something anyone would expect from the Norks.

Personally I'd expect something like 'The Supreme Korea’ or ‘Nuclear Kings’ even ‘Death to the Americans’. But it seemed like they weren't so gung-ho on belligerence that it showed in every aspect of their lives. It looked like they still took some time to relax with some good old cucumber salad.

I made my way to the cafeteria immediately and from there to my office near the kitchen. I and the on-site doctor were the ones who decided on what everyone ate based on dietary needs.

He'd already emailed me the changes that would be made to every staff worker's diet yesterday. The man was kind of a workaholic, but the same could be said about all East Asians. It was ride or die for them.

Initially I had to be the same as I was Mr. Park now. So I had to decide yesterday what food the staff workers and execs would be eating today so that groceries would be done post haste and the menu prepared and printed.

That was my work done, but I still had to be on-site in case of any complication or someone wanted to eat something else. It was part of Park's contract and it was consultation work. The doctor did it too, and he had twice Park's workload. He was, after all, the Consulate's on-site doctor.

I got to my office and sat down to begin preparing for the day. Lynx was impersonating a Mrs Gu, who was the Head Chef, and would be arriving with the rest of the kitchen staff at 07:40 which was still five minutes away.

There wasn't much to do. I did Park’s work the previous day as was usual for him. I knew, through Stiff’s interrogation of the man, that he mostly spent his days playing video games, watching movies and web cams. In fact, logging into his computer I could see all the websites he frequented.

I wouldn't be doing as Mr Park does today, it was not like I was interested in Fortnite and obese African women with gargantuan udders anyway.

“M, how is it going with finding out where our Earthworms are?” I asked.

The most frustrated sigh I'd ever heard came from my AI. “Maybe we would have something by now if the North Koreans were even interested in investigating their stolen nukes or concerned about alerting the world to the threat, but they're just sitting down and twiddling their thumbs. If they even started an investigation then they would have declassified all the data concerning the weapons and the submarines which may help me find them faster.”

I let out a deep breath. This was an old complaint, but I understood why it kept vexing M. The Norks were really dragging it out. Someone took their nukes and they were like ‘we will figure it out’.

I couldn't understand that. “Could they be duds?” I asked.

M scoffed at that. “You’ve met the man, do you think he would be fooled by duds?”

I shook my head at that. Stiff indeed would have known if the bombs were duds, so that left only one last possibility regarding the Norks' inaction.

“He infiltrated them too, didn't he?” He asked.

“Stiff is known for his favors. He does international favors for everyone. He's a political Santa Claus. His favors have earned him friends the world over, so there's hardly any country which he doesn't have infiltrated. He might be so deep in the Norks that they haven't realized yet that their submarines are missing,” M outlined for me, making me give up on that particular line of investigation.

We wouldn't be finding the bombs soon, and that was quite clear.

In the meantime, our focus would best be targeted at things we had hope of finding within a favorable timeframe.

“Any luck on the search for his moles here in the government?”

“I have found eighteen, including one here in the Consulate,” she responded.

“Wait…a mole? Here?”

“Yes, I don't have her name yet, but she's one of the operatives and the third member of Lynx’s teams. Lynx calls her Trojan and she's posing as one of the interns here.”

Damn, they had someone on the inside.

This made plans of betraying them to foil the plan just a bit harder, but it would have been worse if I didn't know about the mole at all.

I would have thought I could at least trust the hostages, only to get stabbed in the back by one pretending to be.

“Have you detected any word of another plan? Probably something Lynx did not brief the rest of the team about?” I asked.

“Yes,” M confirmed. “Like you know the Foreign Consulate was heavily surveyed and visited by another team in the organization. That was how the blueprints of the building with Lynx were obtained.”

I knew that already. We'd studied the embassy's layout thoroughly. The Foreign Director's office was what we were to hit first. He was the de facto North Korean ambassador to the United States.

His was located in the basement, adjacent to the elevator that led up to the roof which had a helipad.

Today there was to be a meeting and we had a 30-minute window during the diplomatic reception to put the entire building on lockdown.

There were also the team roles. Hammer’s job was to carry and, if the need called for it, use the heavy weapons. The grenades, RPGs, dynamite, etc. Cyborg was a tech expert, once we are on the go he'll disable security cameras and alarms.

While mine and Chasm’s teams' job was to handle the security personnel of the building.

“Trojan’s role as the Inside woman is to pose as an Foreign Consulate’s intern, providing intel and distraction. She's a trap waiting to happen for both the hostages and operatives.”

Stiff was a fucking bastard.

As I was still adjusting to the reveal of a traitor inside the building, the phone started ringing.

Not mine, I never carried my phone with me as David. It was not David's either, as David couldn't rightly be seen with anything that could connect him to David while he was impersonating someone.

No, it was Mr Park’s phone.

Worse, was that on the caller ID, it said ‘Wife.’