Chapter 728: There's a Mole!

Since the person was already missing, the Metropolitan Police Department naturally no longer needed to be so evasive; for a time, Superintendent General Watanabe Eiji immediately announced a large-scale alert, and simultaneously, aside from the Investigation Division One First Section and Second Section who were investigating other matters, Third Section Chief Kashiwagi Jin, Fourth Section Chief Shimano, and Fifth Section Chief Itami all rushed over.

In addition, a Public Security Police squad led by Inspector Ozawa Sumiko and members of other Special Mission Units reported for duty one after another — well, except for Nango Yui. Three days, only three days!

If they cannot find Hayase Mary and guarantee her safety within three days, then the entire Tokyo Metropolis may suffer a bomb attack! If it were someone else it might be manageable, but Honda Atsuhito — there is no doubt he possesses sufficient execution capability and ability!

"Hey, Uesugi my brother, how could you make a blunder like this?"

Kashiwagi Jin came over and hooked his arm around Uesugi Muneyuki's shoulder, cracking a joke.

The joke was a bit ill-timed, because at this moment the atmosphere in the APA Hotel temporary command center was like stagnant leaden clouds before a storm. Immense pressure made the air viscous; every breath carried a heavy, iron-rust sensation. Uesugi Muneyuki forced himself to discard all emotion — self-reproach, anger, anxiety — one by one, devoting his entire mind to cold data and video analysis.

Time was the most extravagant and most cruel enemy he faced right now.

Hearing Kashiwagi Jin say this, everyone else including Eirina glared at Kashiwagi Jin, but Uesugi Muneyuki knew this guy actually bore him no ill will; he genuinely came to help, it's just that this guy's personality is indeed unlikable — he simply had to emphasize a line to express "I came to help you," only the words came out sounding like…

Looking for a fight, are you?

"I made a mistake." Uesugi Muneyuki frowned tightly, in no mood to joke with Old Ren, yet he still calmly admitted the error. He had indeed slackened.

Uesugi Muneyuki's mental state was highly tense when meeting Mary and escorting her; but once Mary was smoothly delivered into the APA Hotel room, both Uesugi Muneyuki and Nango Yui inevitably relaxed psychologically.

The reason was simple: the person had been received and confirmed safe; the APA Hotel cooperates with the Metropolitan Police Department and has tight security; a large force of plainclothes and police from the Metropolitan Police Department were rushing over; and Uesugi Muneyuki and Nango Yui had already checked in and were guarding the end of the hallway.

Under these circumstances, anyone would subconsciously lower their guard.

At this time Nango Yui even struck up a conversation, wanting to debate with Uesugi Muneyuki, explaining the behavioral motives of Honda Atsuhito and the behavioral logic of Hayase Mary — and this wasn't groundless; criminal psychology has always been considered one of the most important police disciplines — so after debating a while, Uesugi Muneyuki relaxed his vigilance further.

He should have expended some Po to have Hironaka monitor!

But there was no help for it now; and those familiar with Uesugi Muneyuki's investigative methods all know: Uesugi investigates, first watch the footage! Under direct orders from the National Police Agency, the hotel management retrieved all relevant time-period surveillance footage at highest priority. On multiple screens, black-and-white or color images played back at varying speeds; Uesugi Muneyuki, Okada Masayoshi, Uesugi Minami, as well as Kashiwagi Jin and Inspector Shimano and others, eyes unblinking, stared fixedly.

Clues, like phantoms gradually taking shape in darkness, were outlined bit by bit.

The timeline rewound to when Uesugi Muneyuki and Nango Yui escorted Mary into the hotel.

An inconspicuous corner of the parking lot — a featureless gray Toyota Hiace van with a license plate verified as forged — parked almost bumper-to-bumper with them.

A man wearing dark blue coveralls, a low-brimmed cap, large sunglasses and a mask, moved calmly from the driver's cab. Medium build, firm stride, no superfluous movements; he went straight to the rear, opened the trunk, and dragged out a huge, seemingly heavy black hard-shell suitcase.

"Standard large checked-luggage size, enough to hold a curled-up adult." Kashiwagi Jin nodded: "Old trick."

"Yes, old trick. Back then Superintendent Higurashi suspected Hironaka might have been taken out of the Odaiba Building this way." Uesugi Muneyuki mused. In the surveillance, the man pulled the suitcase, unhurried, toward the hotel side entrance; his pace and rhythm indistinguishable from an ordinary guest or maintenance worker. He cleverly avoided the direct view of several cameras facing the entrance; brim and sunglasses maximally obscured his facial features.

"Look, this guy has been observing the whole time — or… waiting." Okada Masayoshi pointed at another screen showing the hotel's interior corridor surveillance.

The timestamp showed: about fifteen minutes after Uesugi Muneyuki's group entered the room, this "maintenance worker" dragging a suitcase appeared on the same floor. At the edge of a surveillance blind spot, he stopped near the fire escape, seemingly inspecting the wall-mounted fire hydrant, but actually sharply scanning both ends of the corridor. When Nango Yui walked out of the room alone and headed for the elevator, he did not act immediately, but waited very patiently — waited for Nango Yui to enter the elevator, for the floor display numbers to start descending — then dragged the suitcase with a seemingly casual but actually precise stride toward Mary's room. He perfectly exploited the brief convergence point of the corridor surveillance blind spots.

"He knew Nango would leave, and knew roughly how long it would take." Ojou-sama Minami's voice carried a chill: "He might even know what Nango went to buy… so he calculated the return time precisely."

Next came the critical moment: Nango Yui returned carrying a convenience store bag; the instant she pressed Mary's room doorbell, the man who had been lurking in the fire escape shadows, suitcase already leaned against the wall, silently sprang out like a hunting cheetah; the baton in his hand struck the back of Nango Yui's neck fast, accurate, ruthless.

The entire assault took no more than three seconds — clean and efficient to a chilling degree.

"This person is absolutely a veteran." Eirina assessed.

Afterward, he quickly opened Mary's door, dragged the unconscious Nango Yui inside for a moment; soon after, he reappeared — this time the large black suitcase was pulled out, clearly heavier than when he entered; its wheels pressed deeper tracks into the carpet.

"Miss Hayase is probably inside already." Fifth Section Inspector Itami said.

The man dragged the suitcase, still calm and collected, toward the fire escape, avoiding the main elevator route back to the guest rooms. Subsequent surveillance showed he used the fire stairs to transport the suitcase to the underground parking lot, loaded it back into that gray Hiace van, then drove off swaggering, disappearing into Tokyo's late-night traffic.

A few blocks after leaving the hotel perimeter, the vehicle completely lost tracking — either it entered an old district dense with surveillance blind spots, or it switched license plates or vehicles.

The image froze on the last blurry taillight of the gray Hiace.

The conference room fell dead silent.

One person, one box, one car.

Just like that, they effortlessly breached the entire hotel's blockade and countless security measures, and took the person away?

This is simply a humiliating disgrace!

Everyone's gazes turned to Uesugi Muneyuki.

The surveillance yielded some findings, but clearly not enough — at least insufficient to identify the culprit and determine a search direction, and there's no body either… Uesugi Chief, what do we do next?

Uesugi Muneyuki remained silent.

Besides suffering a massive blow, he also felt a bit… a bit too forced.

How to explain this bizarre forced feeling?

One should say the footage seen in surveillance is simply like the "scripted kills" in many games.

I spawned, got one-shot by the enemy! WDNMD!!

It's roughly that feeling — pop your head out and get insta-killed, zero reaction time, even suspect the opponent is hacking.

He pondered for a long time, then suddenly spoke: "Time window… his appearance timing is terrifyingly precise."

"What do you mean, Uesugi?" Kashiwagi Jin's eyes lit up; he thought a moment and nodded: "Right. If we had completely locked down the hotel earlier, conducted a full security sweep and personnel verification, he would have had zero chance of sneaking in with such a large box. If we were later, the Metropolitan Police plainclothes and the hotel's own reinforced security after being alerted would have fully deployed, forming a tight net — he likewise would have had no opportunity. He precisely caught the 'window period' when we had just checked in, slightly relaxed, but the outer cordon and internal surveillance network had not yet seamlessly connected — the most vulnerable moment." "Exactly. And this window period is extremely short — only from when Nango and I brought Mary in, to when Minami brought Master Eirina over to see me, because the large plainclothes force arrived following Minami." Uesugi Muneyuki nodded: "Therefore, no matter how we calculate it, the action window left for him was less than fifty minutes. Fifty minutes isn't short, but to learn the intel from zero, analyze, plan, execute, and escape cleanly — it's not generous either."

"And there's one more thing… Muneyuki and Nango going to meet Mary should have been top secret; at least initially the other side hadn't discovered it, otherwise they would have stopped them from taking Mary away. But when Muneyuki and Nango brought Mary into this hotel, he actually knew Mary's room number — even to some extent he might have known Nango would temporarily leave her post due to a seemingly reasonable request… This is no longer simple tailing or luck." "Powerful intelligence system, outstanding on-site judgment and execution." Uesugi shifted his gaze from the screen to Okada and Minami: "The opponent has considerable understanding of our action rhythm, internal procedures, and even possibly the psychology and behavior patterns of the participants. This points to two possibilities: either they possess surveillance and technical infiltration capabilities beyond our imagination; or…"

He paused, each word spoken with exceptional clarity and weight: "…there are their eyes inside the hotel, even inside our police. A mole."

That word, like a chunk of ice thrown into boiling oil, made the conference room atmosphere even more tense.

A mole?!

Indeed, if there is a mole, it means their every move could be relayed in real time; all seemingly confidential deployments could become a footnote in the opponent's script. In the seventy-two-hour rescue where every second counts, this is undoubtedly fatal.

The Metropolitan Police Department's screening work has fully unfolded: vehicle tracking radiating from the hotel, background checks on all on-duty hotel staff and recent guests, dragnet screening of surrounding road surveillance, tracing the origin of that "maintenance worker" disguise… The massive machine roars to life under high pressure, but everyone knows conventional methods take time to show effect against such a cunning and well-prepared opponent — and time is what they lack most.

Uesugi Muneyuki sat in the chair, hands crossed against his forehead, shutting out the surrounding busy noises and the flickering light and shadow on the screens.

A tremendous sense of frustration and urgency pressed on him like two great mountains, but the more critical the moment, the faster his brain spun.

A vague thought, like a bubble in deep water, gradually rose, becoming clearer and clearer.

Something's off.

From the very beginning, something has been off.

Did I overlook something?

Sitting in the chair, Uesugi Muneyuki ran through everything again from start to finish.

Honda Atsuhito's sudden appeal……

The corpse in Arakawa Ward that happened to have been dead for four weeks, and whose identity happened to be "Imaizumi Yukio"……

The Red Goldfinch's so-called "Successors" exercising precise control and coercion over Marie……

And this hijacking, as precise as a scalpel and timed to perfection……

What is the connection point of these events? Is it merely because Honda Atsuhito is the former boss of the Red Goldfinch?

Or……is there someone else, weaving a larger net?

Right, the corpse!

Everyone says this case has no corpse, but that's not true—there is a corpse! Imaizumi Yukio's corpse is still frozen in the refrigerator!

His thoughts suddenly froze on that rotting corpse.

Imaizumi Yukio.

The identity that Honda Atsuhito assumed and then died strangely.

Why did this guy die? Why was his identity replaced? And why was he arranged to die at the exact point of planning to go abroad four weeks later? Uesugi Muneyuki thought that perhaps the answers to some things lay on this corpse.

"Ikeda, come with me, to the Medical Supervision Institute." Uesugi Muneyuki suddenly said: "Call Mikoto-nee."

"Eh? Now?" Ikeda Erena was obviously surprised.

"Yes, right now!" Uesugi Muneyuki said coldly: "I want to perform a second autopsy on Imaizumi Yukio's corpse!"